Tag: washington post

#rsrh QotD, *WHO* Said That, Again? Edition.

The topic is Libya, and the snark is epic:

So what the hell are we doing? I realize that President Obama and his advisers have answered this question many times, but I feel it’s necessary to keep asking until the answers begin to make sense.

So sayeth… Eugene [Robinson], of the Washington Post.

Eugene?  Eugene [Robinson]?  Eugene’s writing things like that?

Barry…  Barry, you have a problem.

Moe Lane

PS: I was shell-shocked from the sheer insanity of it all and wrote Washington when I meant Robinson.  That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.  Good catch by reader Phil Smith.

Media Matters for America forgets the first rule about Fight Club.

Not that MMfA is cool enough to be associated with Fight Club.

Executive summary of this Washington Post article: Media Matters for America (MMfA) has come up with its latest ACME-approved method for beating the Road Runner Fox News: a secret training camp in which they teach selected liberal acolytes secret Barking Moonbat Pundit Kung Fu techniques that will let them infiltrate and dominate an unsuspecting “right-wing media!”  Well… at least those elements of the aforementioned right-wing media that don’t read the papers, because, again the entire exercise got written up in the Washington Post by Jason Horowitz.

The entire thing is, in fact, almost sad.  Even if you concede the central premise that it’s a good idea to be prepared for television appearances – which it is; and it’s one reason why I don’t even try to do TV – it is still always bemusing to see people refuse to give up a cherished, yet quite wrong, notion.  As someone privately pointed out to me – and I agree – MMfA still thinks that it’s their messaging that’s the problem for progressives, not the message itself  (despite decades of empirical evidence to the contrary).  It’s also interesting that the article itself admits that the trainees themselves were more comfortable with arguing the conservative points of view than the liberal ones; sure, they try to explain it away by saying that “it’s more fun to be the bad guy” – but they haven’t really thought that thought through.  It’s fun to play the bad guy when the bad guy is over-the-top – but if conservatives were as over-the-top as progressives think that they are, then conservatives wouldn’t be winning the debate.  And MMfA is starting out by admitting that conservatives are winning the debate.

Continue reading Media Matters for America forgets the first rule about Fight Club.

Washington Post Making Mock of Uniforms…

Mask, slipped.

…that guard us while we sleep*. I’ll summarize the WaPo’s (quite vile) op-editorial for you: the author (Colman McCarthy) still wants to keep ROTC off campus in this new, post-DADT environment because the military is made up of icky people who actually approve of the thought of going out and fighting evil. With guns. And who have a completely different working definition of Christianity than Colman McCarthy and the rest of his professional ‘peace activists.’ But Colman McCarthy still loves the troops! …all the way over there. But Colman McCarthy doesn’t want them stinking up his precious university system with their guns and God and the inconvenient truth that they embody – said truth being that the only use that a professional “peace activist” has in the fight against evil is that he or she might take a bullet that might otherwise hit a worthwhile human being.

And if you think that was offensive, you should have seen what I originally wrote: it was some deliberately inflammatory (note: not ‘inaccurate’) speculation on how low a professional peace activist like Colman McCarthy would have gone to defeat Bush in 2004, or stop the liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq in the first place. Let’s just say that the terms ‘small child,’ ‘gasoline,’ and ‘matches’ were involved…

(Via RCP – also, note the difference between the old title [‘ROTC Taints University Campuses’] and the new one. RCP generally doesn’t editorialize in its title choices.)

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: Whichever editor approved this Washington Post article should be ashamed of him- or herself. I do not expect shame, but it’s long past time that we started telling these people when they’ve done something foul.

Continue reading Washington Post Making Mock of Uniforms…

#rsrh WaPo/Plame: Man Bites Dog.

I mean, I knew right from the start that the movie that they made about Joe Wilson/Valerie Plame was going to be errant nonsense, but it’s a bit of a shock for the Washington Post to use up valuable editorial space to declare shenanigans.  After casually eviscerating the central premise and main narration of the movie, the WaPo forthrightly – and very accurately – calls Joe Wilson a lying suckweasel (I paraphrase):

Hollywood has a habit of making movies about historical events without regard for the truth; “Fair Game” is just one more example. But the film’s reception illustrates a more troubling trend of political debates in Washington in which established facts are willfully ignored. Mr. Wilson claimed that he had proved that Mr. Bush deliberately twisted the truth about Iraq, and he was eagerly embraced by those who insist the former president lied the country into a war. Though it was long ago established that Mr. Wilson himself was not telling the truth – not about his mission to Niger and not about his wife – the myth endures. We’ll join the former president in hoping that future historians get it right.

(Via Hot Air Headlines) The truly tragic bit? I’m almost certain that there will be almost no explosions, automatic weapons fire combined with a car chase, and/or catsuits involved in the film.  That might have made the silly thing watchable.

Moe Lane

#rsrh WaPo hires Jen Rubin of Commentary.

This is so shockingly a good idea on the Washington Post’s part that I’m wondering whether they’re feeling well.  I’ve met Jen a few times: she’s a devastatingly good reporter, and good people generally.  Putting her in on the online editorial side makes a heck of a lot of sense for the WaPo.  Too much sense, given that print news in general seems kind of determined to commit slow-motion suicide these days.  Ach, well, they can’t always do precisely the worst possible thing, right?

See also Dave Weigel, who is praising this from the other end of the spectrum.

Moe Lane

#rsrh QotD, Harbinger of DOOM edition.

From the WaPo, on the President’s no-doubt-temporary inability to rally the youth vote:

On Saturday, student organizers waved signs outside Camp Randall Stadium [at the University of Wisconsin] as thousands of fans filed out of the football game. The Badgers won in a rout, and the young Democrats tried to break through the excitement of the game with perhaps a more exciting announcement: “President Obama on campus Tuesday!”

Some fans gave thumbs up or yelled “Go, Obama!” Others responded disapprovingly, as in “How’s that hope and change working out for you?” Hundreds more walked past in their red-and-white gear without paying any attention.

Bolding mine: it’s nice to see the kids mock all those no-longer-trendy Democrats, but it’s even nicer to see rather more of them ignore them totally.

Moe Lane

PS: Ron Johnson for Senate; and Scott Walker for Governor.  And click the NRCC link on the side there for the House candidates.

QotD, Savor the Irony Edition.

This is from Thursday’s WaPo, and it’s part of an article about how liberals feel apathetic and disinterested and vaguely dismayed about how everything’s turned to excrement since… err, January 2009*. WHICH IS OF COURSE A COINCIDENCE. And you’re a racist to even suggest otherwise, of course.

Still, it’s apparently not salad days for progressives: Continue reading QotD, Savor the Irony Edition.

#rsrh Wrong question on the WaPo’s Black Panther problem.

[Odd: this should have published two days ago.]

(Via Hot Air Headlines) The question is not, actually, “What took them so long?”  We know the answer already: the WaPo thought that they could make the voter intimidation story go away by ignoring it.  No, the question is, “Now that they’ve admitted that the story isn’t going away, why isn’t the below on the front page?”

The story has its origins on Election Day in 2008, when two members of the New Black Panther Party stood in front of a Philadelphia polling place. YouTube video of the men, now viewed nearly 1.5 million times, shows both wearing paramilitary clothing. One carried a nightstick.

Early last year, just before the Bush administration left office, the Justice Department filed a voter-intimidation lawsuit against the men, the New Black Panther Party and its chairman. But several months later, with the government poised to win by default because the defendants didn’t contest the suit, the Obama Justice Department decided the case was over-charged and narrowed it to the man with the nightstick. It secured only a narrow injunction forbidding him from displaying a weapon within 100 feet of Philadelphia polling places through 2012.

Actually, we know the answer to that, too: The WaPo still wants the story to go away.  They figure that they can point to the Ombudsman and claim that they’ve addressed their inability to tell people, you know, the news.

Moe Lane

PS: It’s actually at least as important a story as, I don’t know, Bob McDonnell’s college thesis.  Excuse me: GOVERNOR Bob McDonnell’s college thesis.

Alas, I am *not* writing for the Washington Post now.

Let me just put that rumor to bed.

Imagine my surprise when British news magazine The Week announced that I was writing for the WaPo:

Who they are referring to is actually the Washington Post’s Charles Lane, who indeed is not particularly buying the ‘distraught over his foreclosure’ defense being made on Faisal Shahzad’s behalf.  But if it makes The Week feel any better, I was as skeptical about this particular defense as Charles was…

Moe Lane

(ahem)

Moe Lane.  Of RedState (and MoeLane.com).

Read the Washington Post! Quickly, before it changes!

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers.

I’m not sure if this reflects a bad link on Hot Air’s part, or whether the AP’s Erica Werner really did drastically did rewrite this article between 10:35 PM and 12:52 AM. Compare two equivalent passages for an idea of how extensive the latter would have been.

Original (WaPo, supposedly; copy found at Breitbart)

Obama used the same language toward Republicans as he did toward extremists in the Muslim world in his inaugural address. Of Republicans, he said Wednesday, “We extend a hand and get a fist in return.” In his inaugural address last year, he said the United States “will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”

WaPo’s version:

The president said he meant it when he told House Republicans that he wants to work with them. Then he sharply added: “We’ll call them out when they say they want to work with us, and we extend a hand and get a fist in return.”

The rest of the piece is like that, of course.  I’m singling out Erica Werner because she’s listed on the WaPo article as a contributor to the article, but not what looks to be the original: if this was a rewrite, presumably she had a busy night*. Or somebody did.  If we start seeing articles being rewritten hastily after they show up in major blogs, well, then we’ll know.  And need to start screenshotting again, of course.

As to the specific bit here about how the President thinks of my party in the same terms as he does of armed terrorists who take special care to murder women and homosexuals… well, let me put it this way.  The first draft of this post was a satirical apologia for President Obama’s repeated attacks on Las Vegas.  I was going to excuse him for it because he had been raised in a profoundly insular, somewhat xenophobic, and definitely rigid sub-culture that was notoriously intellectually indifferent to the belief structures of other groups: in short, he was a typical urban academic.  I couldn’t make it work, and I couldn’t figure out why.

I have now figured out why: I wasn’t being satirical.  It was all true.

Moe Lane

*I’d really like to believe that this was a bad link on HA’s part, but I can’t, quite.

Crossposted to RedState.