Where Are My Keys?

Good for you, Rush..

The radio giant threatens to sue the DCCC:

Radio host Rush Limbaugh has threatened to sue the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) for defamation, The Daily Caller has learned.

Limbaugh retained the services of lawyer Patty Glaser and demanded that the DCCC “preserve all records in anticipation of a lawsuit for defamation and interference” after the Democratic Party group led a campaign against Limbaugh based on out-of-context statements the host made about sexual assault. Limbaugh’s legal team delivered a letter to DCCC representatives Monday informing them of the legal threat. Limbaugh has also demanded a public retraction and apology.

The Limbaugh team is currently proceeding from the standpoint of litigating and has not yet made a decision as to whether the DCCC could make any concessions at this point to prevent the lawsuit.

The DCCC “has intentionally disseminated demonstrably false statements concerning Rush Limbaugh in a concerted effort to harm Mr. Limbaugh, and with reckless disregard for the resulting impact to small businesses across America that choose to advertise on his radio program” according to the GlaserWeil law firm’s letter to the DCCC, which was obtained by TheDC. “Mr. Limbaugh clearly, unambiguously, and emphatically condemned the notion that ‘no’ means ‘yes.’”

“Let’s be clear: Rush Limbaugh is advocating for the tolerance of rape” the DCCC stated in a September fundraising email after Limbaugh mocked Ohio State’s new mandatory sexual consent guidelines.

A Liberal hero suggest one "punch back twice as hard".  Limbaugh seems to be doing just that.  He has deep pockets, time, and what appears to be a winnable case, so why not file suit?

There's the added side bonus of the DCCC having to toss money that could otherwise be put to better use (maybe helping to find better candidates than the ones they offered up in the last election) than having to defend themselves.

A win-win for Republicans.

I agree, Jake Tapper..

From his appearance on the Laura Ingraham radio show:

In an interview with Laura Ingraham, White House reporter Jake Tapper said that the media is failing the country. 

"A lot of people are hurting out there. Unemployment is 8.3 percent. That doesn’t even take into account the underemployed,” he said, arguing that too much time has been spent not talking about the economy.

Tapper also criticized the media for not giving enough attention to the war in Afghanistan. 

"We are spending a lot of time in the last few weeks, those of us in the political world, political journalists and also politicians, talking about things other than the economy," said Tapper. "[A] lot of people are hurting out there. I’d like to see more action taken and more emphasis given to this issue.”

Tapper also said he relates to Mark Halperin's recent comments about the media. Over the weekend, Halperin said, "I think the press still likes this story a lot, the media is very susceptible to doing what the Obama campaign wants, which is to focus on this."

"I have said before… [that I] thought the media helped tip the scales. I didn’t think the coverage in 2008 was especially fair to either Hilary Clinton or John McCain," Tapper said. 

On the 2008 coverage, he noted, "Sometimes I saw with story selection, magazine covers, photos picked, [the] campaign narrative, that it wasn’t always the fairest coverage."

Maybe this will help other "reporters" to wake up?

 

I wonder how long it took to put this together?

Getting a protest together is hard work.  You have to pick your target, pick a date, pick a time.  Then you have all the logistical stuff, alert the Media, busses, parking, port-a-potties, water stations, trash cans, first aid stations, staging areas, sign making, PR area, and the list goes on.  Then you have to get your message out, have those people recruit more to show up, get them in the right place ant the right time, with the right chants and messages, get them the signs, and then protest away!

NOW has been working on a National Day of Protest against Rush Limbaugh sine April 19, enlisting women to show up at their local Rush affiliate to do their think.

You can only imagine the turnout after all that planning to go after the Most Hated Man in America.

 

Well done, Ladies.  You really made a difference, and changed some minds out there.

Who decides?

I have a feeling this will make its way to the Supreme Court in fairly short order.

City Council members took a step closer on Wednesday to becoming the first in the nation to adopt a resolution condemning certain types of speech on public airwaves.

Councilmember Jan Perry introduced legislation that would call upon media companies to ensure “on-air hosts do not use and promote racist and sexist slurs” on radio and other broadcasts.

Members of Black Media Alliance, National Hispanic Media Coalition, Korean-American Bar Association, American Indians in Film and Television were on hand to voice their support for the proposal.

I'd venture that it's a safe bet that at any given time, everything said on the radio will offend at least one person.  So who gets to decide what is offensive, and at what time?

Is it offensive if 10 people complain?  100?  100,000?  How about if the number is just 1?

When will it cross over to television?  After all, radio isn't the only place where feelings may get hurt, right?

Then of course there are newspapers, magazines, and blogs.  Surely there are examples of people getting offended from those mediums, right?

How about books?  I think The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a classic.  Some in the black community feels it is not, because of the "n" word used in it.

Movies?  I see lots of stuff there that crosses the line.  Get rid of those as well.

Plays, musicals, and other theatre productions?  Can't have those out there, someone might say something offensive, racist, or sexist.

Billboards?  I've seen a few racy ones.  Better add those to the list.

Where does it end, and who decides what is "offensive"?

We've always been at war with Eastasia..

Joe Biden doesn't know who Van Jones is.  It must not have been a very memorable interview when the Vice President vetted him to become the Green Czar.

 

"Oh, Van Jones.  I thought you said Stan Jones."

Pretty cool..

I was watching the Broncos and Seahawks playing in the third game of preseason last night.  At the beginning of the game, the announcers had mentioned that one of the keys to the game for Seattle was to get the First Team Offense on track, as they had not been able to score at all in the first two games.

But at least he didn’t have to answer questions about the No. 1 offense’s inability to score – as was the case after the first two games. Jeff Reed kicked a 52-yard field goal in the first quarter and Jackson then passed 1 yard to tight end Dominique Byrd for a touchdown in the fourth quarter.

(emphasis mine)

Fast forward to the fourth quarter, and the Seahawks starters finally got into the end zone.

I tweeted to ESPN's Colin Cowherd that the 'Hawks finally reached paydirt in Q4 of the third game.

I woke up this morning to learn that he had "retweeted" my comment to his 156,000+ followers. 

 
It's pretty cool to see someone you listen to on the radio everyday acknowledge you.

Perhaps Ed can now be the lead-in for Olbermann over on GoreTV?

Ed Schultz, displaying the "new civility" of the Left, calls Conservative talk host Laura Ingraham a "slut", and gets suspended:

"MSNBC management met with Ed Schultz this afternoon and accepted his offer to take one week of unpaid leave for the remarks he made yesterday on his radio program," MSNBC said.

The Daily Caller first noted the epithet in the midst of Schultz's critique of Ingraham’s criticisms of the president’s trip to Ireland.

“And what do the Republicans thinking about?” Schultz said. “They’re not thinking about their next-door neighbor. They’re just thinking about how much this is going to cost. President Obama is going to be visiting Joplin, Mo., on Sunday but you know what they’re talking about, like this right-wing slut, what’s her name?, Laura Ingraham? Yeah, she’s a talk slut. You see, she was, back in the day, praising President Reagan when he was drinking a beer overseas. But now that Obama’s doing it, they’re working him over.”

Ingraham reponded via her Facebook page on Wednesday.

“Re. the crude comments made about me by Ed Schultz on his radio program: First, I was surprised to learn that Ed Schultz actually hosted a radio show. Is it only available online?” she wrote. “ Second, I have to get back to recording the audio edition of my new book "Of Thee I Zing." Now I'm tempted to insert one additional zing--about men who preach civility but practice misogyny.”

I guess that means he is banned from contributing over at the Huffington Post too, right?

I will say that it is nice to see some women's groups finally sticking up for non-Left women getting these types of attacks:

The Women’s Media Center, the nonprofit founded by Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem, sent out an alert urging MSNBC to suspend Schultz.

“While conservative bloggers and watchdog organizations are highlighting Schultz’s remark, the Women’s Media Center also calls on MSNBC to suspend Schultz for his comments, since they not only attack Ingraham, but all women,” the group wrote in an alert Wednesday, according the Daily Caller. “Ms. Ingraham is no friend to the Women’s Media Center, but a sexist and misogynist attack based on her gender and not her political views or comments is harmful to women in media, politics, and beyond.”

NPR caught on tape, showing why they don't deserve Federal funding..

And at the same time, admitting they don't.  They also toss in a bit of anti-Semitism for good measure.

Later in the lunch, Schiller explains that NPR would be better positioned free of federal funding. “Well frankly, it is clear that we would be better off in the long-run without federal funding,” he says. “The challenge right now is that if we lost it all together we would have a lot of stations go dark.”

When one of O’Keefe’s associates asked, “How confident are you, with all the donors that are available, if they should pull the funding right now that you would survive?,” Schiller answered this way: “Yes, NPR would definitely survive and most of the stations would survive.”

That is precisely the opposite answer Schiller’s boss, NPR CEO Vivian Schiller (no relation), gave at a press conference Monday in Washington. “We take [federal defunding] very, very seriously,” she said. “It would have a profound impact we believe on our ability – of public broadcasting’s ability – to deliver news and information.”

At the Café Milano lunch, Schiller said he’s “very proud of” how NPR fired Juan Williams. “What NPR stood for is non-racist, non-bigoted, straightforward telling of the news and our feeling is that if a person expresses his or her opinion, which anyone is entitled to do in a free society, they are compromised as a journalist,” he said. “They can no longer fairly report.”

With that, Schiller once again directly contradicted NPR’s public statements. At her Monday press conference, Vivian Schiller apologized for the way it handled the Williams matter. “We handled the situation badly,” she said. “We acted too hastily and we made some mistakes. I made some mistakes.”

In case you missed it..

Rush had an excellent segment yesterday on the MSM and their rush to judgement.  The full transcript is here.  A few excerpts:

Their first objective and first priority was to try to make an association between this nut and Sarah Palin. What? That's absolutely... You talk about insane? This guy doesn't know Sarah Palin.  She doesn't know him.  The really weak, flimsy, balsa wood-type attempts to link this guy to Sarah Palin?  The difference is that a majority of the American people don't buy it.  The difference today and 15, 20 years ago is these people on the left are now seen by a majority of Americans for who they are and what they are.  They can't sell what they have to sell.  Real question: Who are the parents of this kid?  What kind of a job did they do raising this kid?  Are the parents derelicts?  So what?  This guy spends time on the Web surfing and so forth.  

Really?  If people on the right and Sarah Palin and so forth are responsible for all of this and this "vitriol" and "rhetoric" is so pitched, how come this isn't happening every day?  Why is it the vast exception to the rule?  There's no logic in any of the assertions that they're making.  None.  But they couldn't wait. They were chartering the plane, scrambling to get out to Arizona on Saturday for the Sunday shows to maybe connections that don't exist; making utter fools of themselves, embarrassingly so.  To watch people who we're told are the biggest names in news today making absolute fools of themselves and unnecessarily stirring the country up in ways that they probably don't even mind.

...

The president himself after Fort Hood said: Don't rush to any conclusions here.  Be very careful! We don't want to make any unfair allegations or associations here.

He was talking of Major Hasan on his shooting spree at Fort Hood.  Now the same politicians and reporters are bending over backwards to try and link this shooting to me, to Sarah Palin, to an entire industry: talk radio.  Only in these instances is something that is said in the media said to influence public behavior.  Go out and try to tell these same people that one of their top grossing movies has influenced abject perversion or radical behavior and they will attack you left and right, saying, "That's entertainment. It stands alone. People know the difference."  You go out and accuse them of engaging in work, their art, such as crucifixions in jars of urine or whatever other acts of perversion they engage in that they call "art" -- their movies, their music -- and you go try to tell them that their music is responsible for criminal behavior. Look at the reaction you get from that.  You are considered to be a numskull, old-fashioned, out, and not with the times.  

...

How come it took the media so long to discover that there is an altar in the Loughner backyard?  This kid was into the occult.  Was there God in this guy's life?  The kid was evil.  He was insane.  Was God in his life? You can't ask that, I guess.  A media army has been camped out in Arizona for two solid days.  They didn't want to report that there is an altar with a skull devoted to all kinds of occult, odd things in this kid's backyard because that would undercut their message that this was a Tea Party-type guy. So they can't report some things here that be absolutely true, so hell-bent are they on perpetuating a fraud.  It really is embarrassing.  It's even beneath them. 

 

 

 

What should she have done? +++UPDATED+++

So I'm in SoCal today, driving around to do some client visits.  Needless to say, the Meg Whitman/illegal housekeeper story dominated the airwaves on local talk radio.  I was "treated" to 45 minutes of Gloria Allred talking to two local guys about the whole affair. 

Despite Allred saying it wasn't political, of course that is what this is all about.  The one question I had that was never answered is a simple one: What should Meg have done?

The letter they received back in 2003 is pretty clear on this point:

This letter does not imply that you or your employee intentionally provided incorrect information about the employees name or SSN.  It is not a basis, in and of itself, for you to take any adverse action against the employee, such as laying off, suspending, or firing, or discriminating against the individual.  Any employer that uses the information in this letter to justify taking adverse action against an employee may violate state or federal law and be subject to legal consequences.  Moreover, this letter makes no statement about your employee's immigration status.

So what should Whitman and her husband have done?  If they fired her because they suspected she was illegal, they are in trouble from the Feds.  We learned today (as ICE says they won't prosecute/investigate the self-admitted illegal housekeeper - they have bigger, more pressing issues to work on than identity thieves.  Curious, because she confessed to her crimes, kinda seems like low-hanging fruit, and a slam dunk to me..) that even if Whitman had called ICE to report her, they probably wouldn't have done anything.  The housekeeper came to them from an employment agency (clearly they have some culpability here as well?), and Whitman and her husband have photocopies of the housekeeper's drivers license and SS card (well, someone's SS card, anyway). 

What more could they have done?

It wasn't until after she admitted to being in the Country illegally that they fired her. 

Personally, I think they knew she was possibly illegal, but she had the paperwork to at least provide the appearance that things were in order.  She also came from an employment agency, whom one would assume would also have the necessary documentation in order.

Here's the other thing that jumps out at me: When the first letter came, if they were truly worried they might be breaking the law, why write the note to the housekeeper at all?  Wouldn't it have been easier to throw the letter away, fire her, and move on?  Maybe contact the employment agency, and tell them they got a letter, and to please send a replacement that checks out? 

The other thing no one really addressed today is the other victim.  The person who had their SSN number stolen by the housekeeper.  Who is looking out for that person's best interests?  Who will represent that Citizen, and help them to unravel the mess this lawbreaking housekeeper has created?

So to my friends on the Left, with all the benefits of hindsight, what should Whitman have done when she got the letter back in 2003?

In closing, I do have to note that it's good to see that of all the issues California is dealing with, from being bankrupt, to having to issue IOU's, to having a porous border to the South, to high unemployment, to seeing housing values tank, to not having enough money for schools and infrastructure, that an "issues" such as this is dominating the shape of the election.

Because the action/inaction of a candidate on an issue that the very letter creating the issue says not to take any action based on the letter causing the issue in the first place, is clearly the most important issue facing Californians in this cycle.

I hope the "issue" does turn the election in Brown's direction.  The voters of California deserve the outcome if this "issue" is the deciding reason voters pull the lever for Brown instead of Whitman.

+++UPDATE+++

Professor Jacobson makes an interesting point over on his blog:

Allred may be right that the employer (in this case Whitman and her husband) should not have left it up to the housekeeper to clear up the problem, and should have been more suspicious.  Had Whitman or her husband followed up, the housekeeper would have been fired several years ago.

Call Allred a strict constructionist when it comes to the immigration laws, just like the people who are excoriated by the left as racists for seeking enforcement of federal immigration laws. 

The message Allred is sending is that if you are going to hire an immigrant, not only must you dot every federal immigration law  "i" and cross every federal immigration law "t", you also must not trust the immigrant if a problem arises.  At least not if you want to run for public office.

So why isn't the left excoriating Allred?  Why isn't Allred being called the most vile names usually reserved for Tea Party supporters or Republicans?

I wonder how much harm Allred is doing away from the bright lights of the stage.  How many people in California are reviewing the documents of the people they employ, and making difficult decisions?  How many illegals that Allred claims to be the voice of will disappear intop the shadows?

Unintended consequences, people.