Sweet.

...For at least a year, the Homeland Security Department detoured hundreds of requests for federal records to senior political advisers for highly unusual scrutiny, probing for information about the requesters and delaying disclosures deemed too politically sensitive^(*), according to nearly 1,000 pages of internal e-mails obtained by The Associated Press...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 10:12 AM | Comments (138)
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Breitbart gets results, even if by an odd combo off the rail.

In this year of American voter anger and discontent, Andrew Breitbart has found his moment.

"I get to be me right now," he said. "That's the best part of this entire thing. This, to me, is the beginning of the beginning."

And what is beginning is, he hopes, the age of Breitbart.

He's everywhere. On Fox News -- a lot. Hobnobbing with Republican leaders in New Orleans. Rallying the Tea Party faithful in appearances across the country. Launching the websites Big Government, Big Journalism and Big Hollywood.

He's also lobbing grenades of controversy -- like his most recent revelation this week of an old speech by Obama Agriculture Department official Shirley Sherrod, in which she confessed that she once, decades ago, was deeply reluctant to help a white farmer who needed her aid.

"I was struggling with the fact that so many black people had lost their farmland, and here I was faced with helping a white person save their land," Sherrod said in the video.

Sherrod resigned under pressure -- and then it turned out Breitbart had released only a clip of her speech that distorted her real meaning: that she had been wrong and learned from her error.

The controversy continues -- to Breitbart's delight. He says he considers it a victory to have panicked the Obama administration and precipitated a public apology from the White House.

Note how the article implies Breitbart himself cut up the tape without explicitly committing itself to that claim. (Breitbart denies that, and I believe him -- the guy became a conservative watching Clarence Thomas get character-assassinated by the left; I doubt very much he'd set himself up for that).

Another point, which many people pointed out: The left does this sort of thing routinely, and no one bats an eye at it. There is no full-court media press to correct the misleading and/or utterly false charges of racism hurled at the right on a daily basis. Quite suddenly, the media is very interested in correcting false allegations of racism while continuing to allow a large number of previous false allegations to remain on the table.

Isn't that strange.

Link to full article at the link.

Question for the MFM: Light content warning for language.

Why did you turn?!?!
more...

Posted by: Ace at 08:09 AM | Comments (578)
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Democrats in many districts aren't disclosing their polls, which would be the usual practice if there was anything remotely reassuring about the data. Make the contrary inference.

The members who conducted polling are among the GOP's top targets this year. Reps. Mark Schauer (D-MI), Earl Pomeroy (D-ND), Chet Edwards (R-TX)*, Ike Skelton (D-MO), Rick Boucher (D-VA) and Chris Carney (D-PA) were among those who paid for polling.

The campaigns involved largely refused to discuss their internal polling, citing policies against revealing internal strategy. Megan Jacobs, a spokesperson for Edwards' campaign, pointed to a strategy memo arguing Edwards' campaign is far ahead, but the memo doesn't cite poll numbers.

Spokespeople for Schauer, Pomeroy, Skelton, Boucher and Carney, along with a dozen other members of Congress, did not return calls or emails seeking comment about their surveys.

But members and candidates will frequently release polls when doing so would help boost fundraising or drive a favorable narrative about their race. As rumors fly almost daily about another internal survey that shows an incumbent in tenuous position, Dems leaving some surveys unreported makes GOPers believe those polls show bad news.

Common feature of many of the listed Democratic names (Carney, Shauer, Pomeroy, etc.): they initially wavered on ObamaCare, but ultimately voted in favor of the unpopular healthcare overhaul...after Democratic leadership promised that it would help them with reelection. Oops.

Oh, and who could have guessed that Democrats in an election year would make noises from their face flaps that sound like Republicans?

*Commenter Naqamel points out that Chet Edwards is a Democrat. The typo is in the original and I'm sure it's a typo. The immediately preceding sentence identifies what follows as GOP targets. Still, good eye, Naq, I've got some stuff you can edit.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:50 AM | Comments (176)
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Bring us back food, or be food yourself.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:14 AM | Comments (92)
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Good evening and happy Hump Day all

Audio Myths Dispelled

Here's a fascinating video from a session at the 2009 Audio Engineers Society meeting. It's longish but worth watching especially the first 25 minutes.

One of the main points is that audio listening is incredibly subjective. So audiophiles are indeed hearing subtleties that you or I cannot. However what they're hearing is almost certainly coming from within their own heads. Because of this there's an incredible amount of hokery and snake oil in the audio world. And certain well-known cable companies are essentially based on the placebo effect.

The latter half gets more technical but is still worth watching to get an idea of what's important and what's not in recording and playing back music. It's also reassuring to find out that most of what people obsess over is practically meaningless. These are trained professional audio engineers and if they say plain old copper cables and a cheapo sound card are good enough, well then they probably are.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:50 PM | Comments (905)
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Hmmmm...

The Hollywood Reporter has learned that after the disturbing Mel Gibson audio tapes became public earlier this month, Oksana Grigorieva wrote Gibson a text explaining why she'd surreptitiously recorded their conversations.

According to a source familiar with the case, Grigorieva writes in the text that the reason she recorded him was because "you broke your agreement with me."

The source says that there are additional emails that will likely be used by Gibson's attorneys to prove that Grigorieva attempted to use the audio tapes to extort money from Gibson. The source adds that Grigorieva was also upset about the breakup and was looking to reconcile.

The Los Angeles County sheriff's department today confirmed they are investigating Grigorieva.

Based on sealed court documents reviewed by The Hollywood Reporter, it also appears that Grigorieva's family law attorney, Manley Freid, hasn't been helping her cause.

At a June 22 court hearing, the judge sharply criticized Freid's previous conduct in obtaining a temporary restraining order the day before for his client, specifically noting Grigorieva's failure to tell the court about a previous $15 million settlement agreement between herself and Gibson.

"[Her lawyer] did something truly remarkable," notes a source close to the case. "He did not disclose to the court that there was a settlement agreement between Oksana and Mel."

"Manley Freid's strategy accomplished nothing," says a source close to the case. "It's all out there now. They pressed the nuclear button and Gibson is still basically standing. There's zero upside for Grigorieva in terms of money, custody and visitation."

In other words, her whole strategy may have backfired.

Posted by: Ace at 03:43 PM | Comments (343)
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Some good questions.

FEYERICK (on-camera): Why not have a prayer space for Buddhists or Jews or Christians or- why must it be Muslim? It can't just be a business decision.

EL-GAMEL: There are Jewish community centers all over the country. There are Y-

FEYERICK: But the Jews didn't take down two towers.

EL-GAMEL: There are YMCA's all over the country-

FEYERICK: But the Christians didn't take down two towers.

EL-GAMEL: And this is- and this is a need that exists.

FEYERICK: For those who are so- still sensitive and so raw to this, their question- their overriding question is, why here? Why so close? It's two blocks, but it was close enough that landing gear ended up on the roof. Why?

EL-GAMEL: There is a need. It's supply and demand. The community wants it. The politicians are supporting it.

...

FEYERICK (on-camera): Coming out of that hearing, somebody said, 'The Japanese would never have dared to build on Pearl Harbor.' What makes this different?

EL-GAMEL: If you were at that hearing the way that I was at that hearing, you come out understanding that there is a great need for dialogue now.

One trick the media does is to ask the "hard questions," but without challenge or follow-up -- basically inviting the subject, then, to make his best rebuttal to his critics. And the media pats itself on the back for these softballs disguised as "hard questions."

I don't know if that's what this reporter is doing here, though. The interview is cut up into snippets so we don't know how she pushed him on these things.

Posted by: Ace at 01:53 PM | Comments (310)
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That was some 100% USDA Grade A groveling.

A couple of news bits....

Vilsack offered Sherrod a promotion. She's thinking about it. Heh.

Sherrod had information that this was coming out and warned the department leadership in an email. And yet...they still managed to foul it up. They are saying they acted hastily but they had advanced knowledge of the event. Most competent administration EVAH.

White House liaison office knew what was going on but he claims the decision to fire her was his and his alone. Right.

The left spent 8 years telling us how officials need to be held accountable and people fired. So, when is Vilsack getting under the damn bus?

Kind of related: Remember when firing political appointees was a scandal requiring criminal investigation? Yeah, no charges will be filled in the 'case' of the Bush era firing of US Attorneys. Who could have seen that coming?

Posted by: DrewM at 01:11 PM | Comments (158)
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Sherrod, remember, says that the pressure came from the White House. (Indirectly, I think -- the people who called her said the White House wanted her resignation.)

Check out this weird denial:

But three Democratic sources said Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina, singled the White House's initial response to the incident out for praise in the regular 8:30 a.m. staff meeting Tuesday morning. The sources differed on the substance of Messina's praise, but concurred that he had praised the speed of White House communications in response to the flap, which was driven by a misleadingly-edited video posted to Andrew Breitbart's Big Government website.

One source, who is unhappy with the administration's handling of the incident, paraphrased Messina's remarks: "We could have waited all day – we could have had a media circus – but we took decisive action and it’s a good example of how to respond in this atmosphere."

So, like, he says the White House took the action, right?

Now comes the spin. This is so weak:

But two other senior officials present at the meeting, who responded to a call to the White House press office, said the gist of Messina's words had been conveyed to POLITICO inaccurately, and that Messina -- a top political operative and senior manager -- was merely speaking in his capacity as Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and "cheerleader" to boost staffers' morale.

Notice that's not a denial he said these things, it's just claiming, um, what we already knew, that he we giving his staff a "Yay, we done good" thing.

How the hell is that a denial or even a quibbling with the story as reported?

Posted by: Ace at 10:59 AM | Comments (484)
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Justin case you had seen the previous Drudge slug and wondered if it was something worse.

Posted by: Ace at 10:46 AM | Comments (42)
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