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The Empire State Building's Disgusting Kowtow to China
Tweet Share on Facebook September 30, 2009 Comment (77)By Doug Heye, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
I'll never forget driving into Manhattan the evening of December 12, 1995. It was Frank Sinatra's 80th birthday. A huge Sinatra fan, I had the radio tuned to WQEW-AM, a New York station in the middle of a multi-day Sinatra A-Z broadcast. As the skyline came into view, I noticed the Empire State Building bathed in blue to honor Ol' Blue Eyes.
The floodlights atop to Empire State Building, of course, often use different colors—red and green for Christmas; red, white, and blue on Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, and Bastille Day; green for St. Patrick's Day, to name, but a few.
The lights are often used, as one would imagine, for commercial purposes—special colors for the launch of Microsoft's Windows95, the video release of The Simpsons Movie, and last year's three-day celebration of the accomplishments (whatever they may be) of Mariah Carey.
Tonight the Empire State Building will be awash in red and yellow. But instead of honoring a singer intrinsically linked to the city, holidays, or something crassly commercial, the Empire State Building, as reported by the Agence France Presse, will "honor the 60th Anniversary of communist China."
What specifically has the Empire State Building decided to honor?
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ACORN Story Shows How Internet Reporting Is Beating the New York Times
Tweet Share on Facebook September 28, 2009 Comment (41)By Doug Heye, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
In a meeting of New York conservative activists earlier this month, Andrew Breitbart received a raucous standing ovation for doing something many conservatives never dreamed possible. He beat The New York Times.
As video upon video were released showing ACORN employees eagerly helping two conservatives (Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe) set up prostitution as a legitimate business, file false tax statements, and engage in the trafficking of underage illegal immigrants, much of the major media remained silent.
For conservatives, the rationale was simple: The major media were uninterested in exposing an organization linked with President Barack Obama.
There may have been something else at play—snobbery. Large media organizations look down upon opinion news sites and blogs that are not their own, painting most conservative sites and talk shows with a broad brush as amateurish and full of crazy people with crazier ideas (read: dangerous). To an august newspaper as The New York Times, some You Tube videos on BigGovernment.com were not newsworthy and certainly not credible.
Thus the Times remained silent as the evidence of ACORN corruption continued to grow. Fifteen years ago, that would have been the end of the ACORN story. Smoking gun video, or not, if major media outlets ignored a story, it never happened.
Things have changed.
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Dem Transparency Promises Are Transparently False
Tweet Share on Facebook September 24, 2009 Comment (9)By Doug Heye, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Barack Obama campaigned on making government more open and transparent. With an electorate soured on the Bush administration and concerned that administration policies were not transparent, it was a message that resonated with the American people.
Obama and the Democrats have not, however, governed as they campaigned. Openness and transparency exist in theory and talking points, not in practice.
We saw another example Wednesday afternoon, as Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee almost unanimously voted to defeat an amendment offered by retiring G.O.P. Kentucky Republican Sen. Jim Bunning to require that the exact language of any healthcare legislation—and the bill's cost estimate—be placed on the committee's website 72 hours before a final vote in committee.
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Washington Post's Coverage of Virginia Governor’s Race is a 2006 Anti-GOP Repeat
Tweet Share on Facebook September 23, 2009 Comment (7)By Doug Heye, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The latest twist in the Washington Post's unending coverage of the college thesis written by Virginia GOP Gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell involved focus groups.
After convening two focus groups, each consisting of approximately a dozen women from Fairfax County, the Post informed us that "Two Groups of Women Help Put Race Into Focus."
The first thing we learn from the story is that many women are troubled by McDonnell's now famous college thesis.
"It's just too scary, what he would do," the Post reports one participant saying.
"I think he's scary and he's anti-female," said another.
How did McDonnell supporters respond? "McDonnell may be a tad more extreme than I would like," a likely McDonnell supporter said. For the Post, even McDonnell's supporters shouldn't like him.
Much like in the campaign itself, we don't learn much about where Democratic nominee Creigh "Endorsed by the Washington Post" Deeds stands on issues, but we do learn, courtesy of a focus group respondent, "He has a good heart."
The take away for Post readers: Bob McDonnell—scary, Creigh Deeds—good heart.
If the Post's coverage sounds familiar, it should. It's a replay of the 2006 Virginia Senate campaign.
