Monday, June 13, 2011

Private Conversations on Display

A reminder: two years ago the CRU (Climate Research Unit) at East Anglea University had a few thousand emails and documents leaked to the public. I write “leaked” instead of “hacked” because almost everyone agrees that some of the documents that were released could not have been obtained by a simple hack. The source code for some of the modeling programs for instance. Indeed, the zip file containing all of the files to be released appeared to be a file being assembled in reply to freedom of information requests. It contained only the emails, documents and other files requested by the very specific freedom of information requests. Hackers are rarely that selective in the material they release.

Anyways: the CRU was responsible for most of the data and research for the United Nations Climate Change reports that many nations (including ours) has based most of their environmental policy and regulations on. Ever hear of the infamous “hockey stick” graph shown in Al Gore’s book and documentary: “An Inconvenient Truth”? That was based completely on CRU data.

These emails showed, quite damningly, that the researchers could not find any real change over the last fifteen years and they thought it was “a real travesty”. It furthermore shows how they had to “fudge” the data to show even a slight increase in temperatures in those same 15 years. They even actively and vigorously collaborated with other scientists and editors of Science Journals to discredit and smear scientists who disagreed with them. The emails seem to indicate that these men worked harder to hide and cover-up their corrupt, falsified science then they did actually “researching”.

A lot of mainstream media outlets, including The New York Times refused to publish the “Climategate” emails. The NYT tried to address the resulting criticisms in an article titled “Private Conversations on Display” in which they stated the emails were supposed to be “private” and that the writers did not realize they would be read by the public in general and therefore, they considered publishing the emails as “immoral”.

Fast forward to last week… and the New York Times seems to have changed their policy on private conversations. Not only do they not have any problem with publishing emails featuring emails not meant for public review, but they also recruited readers to help scour them for any potentially embarrassing conversations.

I am referring to the release of some 24,000 emails belonging to Sarah Palin while she worked as the Governor of Alaska. No doubt the NYT will try to defend this activity by pointing out that Sarah Palin was a government employee, received tax payer dollars and therefore, the emails should be subject to public scrutiny, but this argument is flawed when you consider how many of the scientists implicated in the Climategate emails work for publicly funded universities. Furthermore, I’d wager that the US government has diverted more tax payer dollars to the UN’s climate change panel, the CRU and climate change research in general than the entire state of Alaska, let alone the governor’s office.

This isn’t the first time the NYT has demonstrated such blatant hypocrisy, of course. They published the original Palin email hacking (BEFORE climategate). Those emails were not from government computers, but her private Yahoo account. Furthermore, they had no problem publishing the hacked cables from the Wikileaks website that damaged US foreign relations.

Everyone now knows that the 24,000 emails reveal something about Sarah Palin that the NYT and progressives in general will find alarming. She’s actually a normal, caring and honest person who seems to just want to do the right thing. The most damning email they could find was one in which she contemplates running for Vice President.

Think about that for a minute… how many politicians do you think would be able to say the same thing if they had 24,000 private emails released to the public for all to see. Do you think they would fair as well? Call me a pessimist, but I somehow doubt many would come out smelling like a rose, as Palin did.

I can’t help but wonder how many of the nightly news programs will even mention the 24,000 emails now that the release seems to have backfired? They sure thought the Paul Revere quote was news worthy. The NBC nightly news even dismissed the Weiner story on the same night they trumpeted what they thought was a Palin Faux Pas. They even forgot to mention the fact that according to historians, Palin was actually correct

I personally hope the mainstream media continues their slobbering, visceral, hatred-fueled campaign against Palin. With every attack, they expose themselves as the biased, progressive lapdogs that most people know they are.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Who Watches the Watchers (Revisited)


A full ten days before Rep Anthony Weiner (a married man) admitted to carrying on explicit relationships online with at least six different women, a story broke on Andrew Breitbart’s Biggovernment.com. A tweet had been sent from his twitter account to a woman in Seattle Washington. Weiner denied posting the tweet and claimed his account had been hacked.

Andrew Breitbart did what journalists are supposed to do (though they seem to lose that particular skill when the scandals or stories involve favored Democratic allies). He asked follow up questions. Why are you following all of these young women who aren’t in your district on Twitter? Why haven’t you demanded an FBI or even police investigation into the hacking? Why do you refuse to even answer the question “is that you in the photograph”?

Meanwhile, with few exceptions, the mainstream media collectively yawned and ignored the story. An incredible fact considering the story had everything the mainstream media loves in their stories. Sleaze, politics, social media and hacking. Anyone else remember how they attacked the Sanford story like pit bulls? Some in the mainstream media even tried to explain it away. Others even attacked Breitbart for even running the story in the first place.

For example: not only did Barbara Walters try to defend Weiner… she tried to somehow deflect any controversy by comparing Sarah Palin to Weiner.


Are you kidding me? Why would Palin’s touring in her bus have anything to do with a politician acting like a sleaze ball? How can Barbara Walters pretend to be a champion for women when she defends this slime ball while simultaneously attacking a woman with power for no good reason? Of course… as we all now know, Walters made a fool of her self with this statement. She really owes Sarah Palin an apology.

Anyways, back to the story. Breitbart once again scooped the mainstream media and delivered the truth. Weiner had been lying all along and had not only been acting inappropriately with this one woman, but six others as he finally admitted. 

The real story is not about Weiner’s sleaziness, though. The real story here is about the mainstream media’s ineptitude and outright dereliction. They ignored this story for ten days, despite all indications that it was a huge scandal. One man with a website scooped 3 national networks, 4 cable news networks with 24 hour a day news cycles and thousands of employees, countless syndicated news associations (the AP, Reuters to name a few), countless newspapers and online mudslingers like TMZ and EOnline. This isn’t the first time he’s done it. He’s been doing since the Clinton era.

If you’ve read his book (Righteous Indignation) you know this is what he lives for. He isn’t out to destroy sleazy politicians and corrupt public officials. Outing them is a nice little bonus, but they are small potatoes, none-the-less. He knows that liberal and socialist politicians aren’t the biggest threat to our freedom and liberty. The mainstream media that has almost completely been co-opted by these liberals and socialists is. So he’s out to expose the mainstream media. I would almost bet that he’s had those other photos for a week, just waiting and watching as the mainstream media embarrassed themselves.

He’s right about where the real danger is. The mainstream press has specific protections guaranteed in the bill of rights for a very good reason. They really are like a fourth branch of government. The fourth level of the separation of powers. They are supposed to protect the citizens of America from the potential corruption and tyranny of the government. When all other separations of power fail, the press tells the truth so that we, the people, can address the problems via our elections. Instead, they speculated that maybe he was just taking a picture to show how “much he missed” his wife and a hacker got  hold of it. Yes… that was Barbara Walters’ theory.

Thank God for men like Breitbart and for the internet. If not for them, we wouldn’t know about Clinton's gravegate, we would have never known about ACORN’s corruption, we would have never known about the Monica Lewinski debacle and we wouldn’t know about Weiner’s lies.

Next, we get to witness the very predictable spin and defense of Weiner in the mainstream media. “It’s his private life”. “Why does it matter”? Never mind the fact that they never seem to apply this spin to politicians on the right.

Just as I said Mark Sanford’s indiscretions mattered, Wiener’s matters because men who lie to their wives and constituents without reservation about something as stupid as racy photos will have no qualms about lying about the benefits of massive legislation designed to bail out certain campaign donors at the expense of the taxpayers. Furthermore, men who carry on adulterous, sleazy relationships are infinitely more subject to blackmail and corruption.

That’s why the press is supposed to be the biggest fear of every politician. Does anyone else find it humorous (and enlightening) how Weiner seemed to have no fear of the press? He attacked the few journalists who dared asked tough questions… he even called the police on a certain journalist. He knew the big boys wouldn’t pursue the story. Too bad for him that real journalists like Andrew Breitbart have other avenues to get their stories published, thanks to the internet.


Is it any wonder why these liberals want to “regulate” the internet so badly?