Brian Ries of The Daily Beast Masterminded Gov. Palin's Facebook Deletion

By Adrienne Ross - www.motivationtruth.com

Earlier today, Governor Palin tweeted that she had reposted her Facebook note expressing disapproval about the building of a Ground Zero mosque. She ended that post with a note that said the original one was "somehow unintentionally deleted by mistake or technical glitch."

It was not a mistake, and it was no glitch. It was another collaborated effort to silence the most feared threat to the radical leftist agenda. Earlier today, the story emerged exposing the lamestream media's decision to go after Palin in order to get Obama elected. I covered that controversy here, and C4P covered it here and here. This Facebook situation is simply more of the same anti-Palin tactics.

So let's take a closer look at who was behind this attack on free speech.

Brian Ries, a writer for The Daily Beast, led the campaign to censor the Governor because he didn't like her viewpoint that a mosque built on "hallowed ground" would be "a stab in the heart of the families of the victims" of 9-11. So instead of dealing with the issue itself, he did what all far Left yahoos do: he sought to shut her up by putting the "racist" label on her. Perhaps he picked up this antiquated antic from members of the Journolist group. (Just a thought.) He rallied the troops on his blog with the title, "Let's Report Sarah Palin's Facebook Rant for Being Hate Speech, Yes?" He went on to write:

Some insane woman from Alaska is ranting on Facebook about how an Islamic community center built near Ground Zero would be a “stab in the heart of the families of the victims.”

Quite frankly, she’s being a racist loon.

Go report her post on Facebook for being “Racist/Hate Speech” to the admins. Let’s see if Mark Zuckerberg has any balls left.

See his full rally cry here.

As a journalist, Mr. Ries should be committed to the expression of free speech, not the snuffing out of it. There is nothing hateful or racist in Governor Palin's Facebook note. The idea that the multitudes of people who remember the pain of Ground Zero and oppose the building of a mosque there are responding out of anything other than the purest of motives is both dangerous and diabolical. Thinking of this nut, I am reminded of the Governor's words as reported today by Jonathan Strong:

There are some pretty sick puppies in the industry today. They really need help.

I think Ries qualifies.

Apparently at least one reporter has questioned Mr. Ries' actions, for he posted here:

This is not really about ‘refudiating’ Sarah Palin. It was a social experiment to explore the boundaries of Facebook’s government-like Terms and Conditions and the power of the Tumblr community.

Free speech on the internet is still a work-in-progress.

And yes, I started it. But Tumblr launched it.

— My response to a reporter asking, “Were you gaming Faacebook to suppress free speech? Or was this really hate speech that shouldn’t be allowed on there?”

We, the people, are tired of these clowns using Governor Palin as their "social experiment." And this was the wrong day for yet another media yahoo to mess with her. We level-headed, truth-seeking, honest-working Americans are fed up with these loons' inability to even feign decency regarding the Governor. We're not going to let this stuff go. We're finding the hatred where it is, and we're dragging it front and center--even more vehemently than before.

* You can find Brian Ries on Twitter and read what he's been saying about this here. In case you want to check him out over at The Daily Beast, click here.

Facebook has since apologized for the deletion of Governor Palin's Facebook note. CNN reports:

Social networking site Facebook issued a bit of a mea culpa Thursday after a post by former GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin was deleted from the massive site.

In a statement given to CNN, Facebook said a "note" by Palin about her opposition to building a mosque near New York City's Ground Zero had been deleted by an automated system.

"The note in question did not violate our content standards but was removed by an automated system," Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said in the statement. "We're always working to improve our processes and we apologize for any inconvenience this caused."

After the original post was deleted, Palin re-posted the note Thursday morning.

(h/t C4P)

Come To Think Of It ... Sarah Palin IS Kind of Shakespearean

By Gary P Jackson

A few days ago Sarah Palin caused a quite stir in a couple of ways. One, she came out hard against the Cordoba House, the proposed mosque that radical Islamists want build at Ground Zero in New York City, which you can read about here.

Sarah also created a stir when she asked the peaceful Muslims world wide to "refudiate" this mosque, thus creating a new word. Most people thought little of it, as they knew what she was talking about. Many of us figured she had simply combined a couple of words to create a cool new one. After all, Sarah is very good at coining phrases that become part of the lexicon, see "death panels," and "Mama Grizzlies" so why not words too. Intelligent people are able to do this a lot.

Anyhow, as usual, the left lost it’s collective mind! "Refudiate" was one of the top searches on Google!!

It’s funny, the left never blinked when Obama talked about visiting "57 states" or talked about "Navy Corpse-men" (over and over and over) or any of the other silly things we chronicled here.

Anyhow, we all know Sarah Palin. She’s got a good sense of humor, and absolutely never backs down when these nimrods start in. Nope, she pulled out her trusty BOTUS (Blackberry of the United States) and tweeted:

"Refudiate," "misunderestimate," "wee-wee'd up." English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!

The left was livid! Talk about cheap entertainment. Watching them get all wee-wee’ed up was just precious.

With that said, David Hirschman over at Big Think wonders if Sarah isn’t on to something:

Will Palin's "Refudiate" Last as Long As Shakespeare's "Champion?"

In a series of tweets Sunday, Sarah Palin first "invented" the word "refudiate" (while, perhaps, trying to come up with "repudiate"), and then defended her word choice in another tweet suggesting a certain similarity between herself and a certain Bard of Avon: "'Refudiate,' 'misunderestimate,' 'wee-wee'd up.' English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!"

"Misunderestimate," of course, was an invention of President George W. Bush, while "wee-wee'd up" belongs to President Obama. But Palin's suggestion that English is a living, evolving language is pretty salient.

Words get created all the time, and once such a word is created, it sometimes enters common usage—and the AP stylebook—forever. After all, a good many of the more than 3000 words that Shakespeare invented are now used frequently by all of us. Some of the more common ones include: "addiction," "advertising," "blanket," "champion," "elbow," "excitement," "fashionable," "gossip," "impede," "lackluster," "outbreak," "submerge," "summit," "torture" and "worthless."

So will "refudiate" hold up over the next, say, 400 years? Big Think asked Dr. Allan Metcalf, a professor at MacMurray College and executive secretary of the American Dialect Society, what causes a word to be adopted into the lexicon.

"What makes a word stick is its naturalness, its unobtrusiveness," said Metcalf. "Consciously invented words, especially clever ones, are treated as jokes, and perhaps appreciated as such but not used by others." Metcalf said that if a word is "a deliberate conspicuous coinage," it will likely sink out of sight. But, on the other hand, "if it was a slip of the tongue, it's a natural blend of two established words and might just stick. I bet she's not the first to use it."

Just to set the record straight, "wee-we’ed up" is not a word Obama invented, though he did seemingly redefine it. In fact it’s seventies drug slang for acting silly or dopey after smoking too much marijuana, i.e., smoking too much "weed," and ending up "acting stupidly." (another phrase Obama has popularized)

One of my favorite words left out of all of this is "strategery." This was coined by actor Will Ferrell on Saturday Night Live, while he was doing an impression of President George W Bush. It’s become a part of our language, and I promise you I use the word every single day of my life!


More and more, I am convinced Sarah Palin is an absolute genius. I have no idea if she accidently hit the "F" key rather than the "P" or actually meant to coin a new word. Either way, while the left was going crazy over that, and her follow up tweet, they were also exposing people to the serious issue of the Ground Zero mosque, and all of the pain it’s causing. Many of these people had never even heard of the issue before. Either way, she played the media like a Stradivarius, as usual.

The meme on the left is Sarah is "crazy." Yeah, crazy like an Arctic Fox!

BTW, just who thought up the word "tweet"?

The Day Journalism Died

By Gary P Jackson

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment I U.S. Constitution, ratified December 15, 1791

We are blessed as a nation. Our founders recognized that all men we born with certain unalienable rights. Rights granted to us by Nature’s God, our Creator. The purpose of the United States Constitution is to protect the citizens of our Republic from a government that would restrict or try to take away our rights. We all know the Marxist-progressive movement, now headed by Barack Obama, has been trying to usurp our Constitution, and enslave the people, for decades, but that’s another discussion for another time.

Along with freedom of speech, freedom to worship as we please, and the freedom to assemble, a free and honest press is one of our most sacred rights. In fact, a free and honest press is essential for this Republic to survive. Without it, people can’t trust the information they receive and can never trust their government. 

Moreover, a free and honest press should serve as a watchdog. Our media should keep an eye on our government, no matter who is in charge, and hold them accountable when they run astray. They should not be cheerleaders for one side or the other. Just the facts.

This is not to say there isn’t a place for opinion journalism. In fact, part of a free press is it’s ability to have a robust debate of ideas. The problems occur when opinion media, and just plain old yellow journalism, mix with so-called "straight" reporting.

The first time most of us heard of Journolist was when someone anonymously outed Dave Weigel, a supposed reporter who worked for the Washington Post. Weigel, whose job was to cover Conservatives for the paper, was best know to our readers for siding with Sarah Palin’s deranged stalker, Joe McGinnis, and trashing Sarah for not being happy she had a freak of nature living next door to her.

What we learned was Journolist was a formal e-mail list where many of the nation’s prominent "journalists" collaborated on stories, strategized against Conservatives, and shot the bull.

Someone, evidently angered by something Weigel had done, outed him, and many of the incredibly nasty e-mails he had written. This painted Weigel as a really hateful Marxist-progressive, who obviously was incapable of covering Conservatives properly because of his incredible hatred of them. In the end, WaPo showed Weigel the door.

By outing Weigel though, the first rule of Journolist was broken: Never talk about Journolist!

You ask any Conservative on the street and they will tell you there is massive bias in what Sarah Palin calls the "Lamestream Media." Anyone who paid attention during 2008 saw that the media covered up absolutely every negative thing about Barack Obama, often times refusing to even report some incredibly serious defects in the man.You can credit the media for helping Obama become President.

At the same time, the media went into overdrive trying to absolutely destroy Sarah Palin. This unprecedented effort is still underway today. Our readers are well aware of the part Obama played in this, as he had his closest advisers recruit bloggers, who were then given access to the media, to spread hate and lies at warp speed. We also know Obama’s people recruited a bunch of nerdowells to continually harass her as Governor, filing dozens of bogus ethics complaints. This is well documented, and you can read more here.

There’s one more thing though, that hasn’t gotten as much play. Remember the heavily edited Katie Couric interviews. The ones that were edited to make Sarah Palin look as stupid as possible? Well, creative editing isn’t the only thing that went on there.

Before The Perky One interviewed Sarah, she sat down with long time Marxist-democrat Sam Nunn, and was heavily coached on just the right "gotcha" questions to ask. This is noteworthy because Nunn was reportedly on Obama’s shortlist to be Vice President, and became part of Obama’s transition team after the election.

Can you imagine if  Sean Hannity spent some quality time with say, Sarah Palin, working on the strategery of how to play "gotcha" with candidate Barack Obama? The outrage would be palpable, and yet, few if anyone bothered to report on the fact that Couric sat down with a member of Team Obama in order to craft an interview that would hurt their opponent’s chances!

That’s sort of big news, don’t you think? You can read more here.

Anyone paying attention knew that not only was the media biased toward the Marxist-progressive agenda, but in many cases were actually working with the Obama regime to advance that agenda. In many instances, members of the media have become little more than stenographers for Obama and the rest of the Marxists.

Ed Shultz even claims that the White House is constantly in e-mail contact with the MSNBC show, Morning Joe! We also know that several top anchors for the networks participate in daily conference calls with the White House communication’s staff.

Still, as much as one could just feel it in their bones that all of these people coordinated their efforts, there was no real proof until Journolist was outed.

It just so happens Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller has secured an incredible amount of information about Journolist, including e-mails that are being gone through, and released to the public.

The first revelation, was the amount of effort Obama’s media partners went through to kill the story of Reverend Jeremiah "God Damn America" Wright, Obama’s racist, anti-American preacher of 20 years. Wright was one of Obama’s closer mentors, and the one who married him and Michelle. Obama even had his second ghost written book named for one of Wright’s infamous rants.

So inflammatory was Wright, the media knew they had to make sure America never saw this person. EVER.

From The Daily Caller:

Documents show media plotting to kill stories about Rev. Jeremiah Wright

It was the moment of greatest peril for then-Sen. Barack Obama’s political career. In the heat of the presidential campaign, videos surfaced of Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, angrily denouncing whites, the U.S. government and America itself. Obama had once bragged of his closeness to Wright. Now the black nationalist preacher’s rhetoric was threatening to torpedo Obama’s campaign.

The crisis reached a howling pitch in mid-April, 2008, at an ABC News debate moderated by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. Gibson asked Obama why it had taken him so long – nearly a year since Wright’s remarks became public – to dissociate himself from them. Stephanopoulos asked, "Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?"

Watching this all at home were members of Journolist, a listserv comprised of several hundred liberal journalists, as well as like-minded professors and activists. The tough questioning from the ABC anchors left many of them outraged. "George [Stephanopoulos]," fumed Richard Kim of the Nation, is "being a disgusting little rat snake."

Others went further. According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.

In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, "Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists."

Those are some big names in that pile. Notice how fast these Marxist-progressives rushed to play the race card, when no racism existed? This is straight out of Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals, and we all know these people worship Alinsky! They are doing the same thing now as they seek to paint all Tea Party Patriots as racists. It’s rather sad and pathetic. It’s also a disservice to every victim of real racism.

There’s more:

Michael Tomasky, a writer for the Guardian, also tried to rally his fellow members of Journolist: "Listen folks–in my opinion, we all have to do what we can to kill ABC and this idiocy in whatever venues we have. This isn’t about defending Obama. This is about how the [mainstream media] kills any chance of discourse that actually serves the people."

"Richard Kim got this right above: ‘a horrible glimpse of general election press strategy.’ He’s dead on," Tomasky continued. "We need to throw chairs now, try as hard as we can to get the call next time. Otherwise the questions in October will be exactly like this. This is just a disease."

(In an interview Monday, Tomasky defended his position, calling the ABC debate an example of shoddy journalism.)

Thomas Schaller, a columnist for the Baltimore Sun as well as a political science professor, upped the ante from there. In a post with the subject header, "why don’t we use the power of this list to do something about the debate?" Schaller proposed coordinating a "smart statement expressing disgust" at the questions Gibson and Stephanopoulos had posed to Obama.

"It would create quite a stir, I bet, and be a warning against future behavior of the sort," Schaller wrote.

Tomasky approved. "YES. A thousand times yes," he exclaimed.

The members began collaborating on their open letter. Jonathan Stein of Mother Jones rejected an early draft, saying, "I’d say too short. In my opinion, it doesn’t go far enough in highlighting the inanity of some of [Gibson's] and [Stephanopoulos’s] questions. And it doesn’t point out their factual inaccuracies …Our friends at Media Matters probably have tons of experience with this sort of thing, if we want their input."

This is pretty shocking. These people actually wanted to make other journalists afraid to ask the tough questions, lest they be ostracized by their peers. This is rather evil. BTW, for those that don’t know, Media Matters was founded and is funded by Barack Obama’s boss, George Soros. Readers know all about George Soros and Crime Inc.!

Jared Bernstein, who would go on to be Vice President Joe Biden’s top economist when Obama took office, helped, too. The letter should be "Short, punchy and solely focused on vapidity of gotcha," Bernstein wrote.

In the midst of this collaborative enterprise, Holly Yeager, now of the Columbia Journalism Review, dropped into the conversation to say "be sure to read" a column in that day’s Washington Post that attacked the debate.

Columnist Joe Conason weighed in with suggestions. So did Slate contributor David Greenberg, and David Roberts of the website Grist. Todd Gitlin, a professor of journalism at Columbia University, helped too.

Journolist members signed the statement and released it April 18, calling the debate "a revolting descent into tabloid journalism and a gross disservice to Americans concerned about the great issues facing the nation and the world."

The letter caused a brief splash and won the attention of the New York Times. But only a week later, Obama – and the journalists who were helping him – were on the defensive once again.

Jeremiah Wright was back in the news after making a series of media appearances. At the National Press Club, Wright claimed Obama had only repudiated his beliefs for "political reasons." Wright also reiterated his charge that the U.S. federal government had created AIDS as a means of committing genocide against African Americans.

It was another crisis, and members of Journolist again rose to help Obama.

There is a lot more to this piece, and believe me, it will make your skin crawl. These are some sick puppies, truly hate filled losers. You can read the rest here.

Andrew Breitbart, who is creating a new gold standard for investigative journalism, had this to say:

Reporters at Pravda weren’t this insufferable

Journalists love whistleblowers. Just not when the whistle is blown on them. Journalists love transparency. As long as they’re not the ones being exposed.

No journalistic steadfast rule is unbendable when it comes to justifying and protecting the racket that is modern journalism, specifically, political journalism in the United States today. The ends justify the means for the Democrat Media Complex. They lie when they claim to be objective. They lie when they claim to be unbiased, because these so called "truth seekers" are guilty of engaging in open political warfare. And when the whistle is blown, they simply double down. "Journolist" — like Media Matters, but more insidious, if that’s possible — is an attempt to put the genie back in the bottle.

Talk radio and the Internet have allowed outsiders the ability to challenge a multiple generational shift from journalism being about the story, to journalism being crafted toward a partisan end. From Newsweek killing the Lewinsky story to the Swift Boat veterans (until the undermedia pressure got too big) to the Dan Rather implosion to the open attempt to keep the Al Gore masseuse story under wraps to the John Edwards/Rielle Hunter debacle to the Van Jones admission of missing the story to the networks ignoring the ACORN video footage to the media playing up trumped up charges of racism in the Tea Party — while ignoring exculpatory evidence to the mother of all media-as-political weaponry: the non-vetting of candidate Obama, the mainstream media has shown that it is in an ideological death spiral. And the ground is right here.

Read more here.

Sarah Palin has weighed in:

It’s encouraging for commonsense conservatives who are frustrated with media cover-ups and biases to see truth revealed.

Remember the infamous "JournoList" – the listserv chat group of hundreds of "prominent" mainstream media personalities? It seems The Daily Caller obtained copies of the JournoList email exchanges from the 2008 campaign having to do with the media’s coverage of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, then candidate Obama’s pastor of 20 years. It’s everything you may have suspected.

Read more here.

Glenn Beck also weighed in. His discussion about Journolist starts at 5 minutes 30 seconds into the video.






Glenn Continues:





So where do we go from here? It’s obvious that you can’t trust the "Lamestream Media" any longer. You can’t trust the newspapers, you can’t trust the network news, or outlets like CNN and MSNBC. That leaves us with Fox, and the new media. And frankly, one should trust, but verify what you see there!.

I find myself reading international news more and more, as certain media in Great Britain, Canada, and even Russia have become more reliably honest than our own news sources. If you are reading this, it means you have a computer. Do what we do, if something doesn’t smell right to you, go and do some research. Bing is your best friend!

The one thing I try to do is research past the known left wing websites, and such, and try to get as close to the original source as possible. It’s even better if one can find things in their original text, or hear people’s own words.

We are blessed to live in an era where, if we work hard, we can find the actual truth, but we must be actively engaged. We can no longer lazily consume and digest the news. We must actively seek to separate the truth from the lies, and make our decisions based on the truth.

As I write this in the early morning hours, The Daily Caller has just published a second installment of what will almost assuredly be a series of articles based on the thousands of e-mails between those on the Journolist. We can’t wait to see what they have on these people regarding Sarah Palin!

Liberal journalists suggest government shut down Fox News

If you were in the presence of a man having a heart attack, how would you respond? As he clutched his chest in desperation and pain, would you call 911? Would you try to save him from dying? Of course you would.

But if that man was Rush Limbaugh, and you were Sarah Spitz, a producer for National Public Radio, that isn’t what you’d do at all.

In a post to the list-serv Journolist, an online meeting place for liberal journalists, Spitz wrote that she would "Laugh loudly like a maniac and watch his eyes bug out" as Limbaugh writhed in torment.

In boasting that she would gleefully watch a man die in front of her eyes, Spitz seemed to shock even herself. "I never knew I had this much hate in me," she wrote. "But he deserves it."

Spitz’s hatred for Limbaugh seems intemperate, even imbalanced. On Journolist, where conservatives are regarded not as opponents but as enemies, it barely raised an eyebrow.

In the summer of 2009, agitated citizens from across the country flocked to town hall meetings to berate lawmakers who had declared support for President Obama’s health care bill. For most people, the protests seemed like an exercise in participatory democracy, rowdy as some of them became.

On Journolist, the question was whether the protestors were garden-variety fascists or actual Nazis.

"You know, at the risk of violating Godwin’s law, is anyone starting to see parallels here between the teabaggers and their tactics and the rise of the Brownshirts?" asked Bloomberg’s Ryan Donmoyer. "Esp. Now that it’s getting violent? Reminds me of the Beer Hall fracases of the 1920s."

We must note that at this point the only violence that had occurred was when a bunch of purple shirted union thugs from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), acting on Obama's instructions to "punch back twice as hard," brutally attacked Kenneth Gladney, a black man, who they beat unconscious, while calling him a ni**ger. But of course, who cares about details when you are a bunch of dishonest swine like those who inhabited Journolist.

Richard Yeselson, a researcher for an organized labor group who also writes for liberal magazines, agreed. "They want a deficit driven militarist/heterosexist/herrenvolk state," Yeselson wrote. "This is core of the Bush/Cheney base transmorgrified into an even more explicitly racialized/anti-cosmopolitan constituency. Why? Um, because the president is a black guy named Barack Hussein Obama. But it’s all the same old nuts in the same old bins with some new labels: the gun nuts, the anti tax nuts, the religious nuts, the homophobes, the anti-feminists, the anti-abortion lunatics, the racist/confederate crackpots, the anti-immigration whackos (who feel Bush betrayed them) the pathological government haters (which subsumes some of the othercategories, like the gun nuts and the anti-tax nuts)."

Read more about these amazingly deranged hatemongers here.

It’s amazing to visualize the amount of hatred the left spews. It’s their nourishment. Their very oxygen. It also boggles the mind to hear this bunch of Marxists compare the American people to Nazis! Kind of funny when you consider that the word Nazi comes from Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or National Socialist German Workers' Party. Now who is it again that sides with the labor unions against American businesses and the American people?

It's doublely ironic that this bunch can call the American people Nazis, while at the same time plotting ways to convince the government to crush free speech, and shut down Fox News!

One doesn’t have look real hard into the early Nazi movement to see some serious parallels with the modern day Marxist-progressives and the Obama regime. We’ve went over this many times, and Thomas Sowell makes the comparisons quite nicely, which you can read here.

This leads one to more commentary, and a question. We know Marxist-progressives and their agenda are downright evil. Are these so-called "mainstream journalists" who make up the Journolist just as evil, or are they simply what the communists used to call "useful idiots"?

We may never know.

Gary Sinise, An American Hero

By Gary P Jackson

If all there was to say about Gary Sinise was that he was a great and versatile actor, that wouldn’t be a bad legacy, nor would saying he’s a great musician, but there is much more to the man.

Gary has a solid movie career, and has played some memorable characters, and has a hit television series as well. For many that would be good enough, but not for Sinise. When he’s not busy filming, Gary goes around the country, and around the world, playing with his band, the Lt. Dan Band, named for his character in Forrest Gump.

Sinise and his band use their talent to not only raise money for the troops, and other charities, they also go and play for our brave men and women overseas, following in footsteps of other patriotic American entertainers who have given back to those who keep us free and safe.

The video above shows the band letting off a little steam, as they entertain the cast and crew of Gary’s hit CBS show CSI-NY, and also talks about one of charities Gary helped create: Operation International Children.

From their website:

Operation International Children (formerly Operation Iraqi Children) is a grass-roots program founded in early 2004 by actor Gary Sinise (Forrest Gump, Apollo 13, CSI: NY) and author Laura Hillenbrand (Seabiscuit: An American Legend) and joined in partnership with People to People International and its President and CEO, Mary Eisenhower, granddaughter of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Sinise and Hillenbrand created OIC to give concerned Americans a way to reach out to the war-stricken children of Iraq by supporting our troops in their efforts to assist them. Working directly with troops, OIC has delivered well over a quarter of a million school supply kits, along with more than half a million toys and thousands of blankets, backpacks, pairs of shoes, Arabic-language books, and sets of sports equipment, all of which have been distributed to children.

While we remain committed to our work in Iraq, OIC has expanded its mission, sending school supplies to Afghanistan and other nations, where American troops are distributing them to children in need. In the future, we will continue to broaden our efforts across the world.

This is a wonderful project, something that will help these kids learn and become more productive. You can learn more and get involved with Operation International Children here.

For more info on the Lt. Dan Band, concert dates, and various ways to help Gary support the troops, check out their website here.

All of the crew over at CSI-NY are headed back to work, and one of our favorite actors Sela Ward will be joining the cast. We can't wait!

Pamela Geller: You Bet’Cha! Sarah Palin Joins The Fight Against The Ground Zero Mosque

Pamela Geller (Atlas Shrugs) is one of the leading voices in America when it comes to speaking out against radical Islam, and the dangers this ideology poses world wide. Pamela has been fighting tirelessly against the proposed mosque the radicals want to build near Ground Zero, the hallowed ground where over 3000 people were slaughtered by radical Islamists.

Sarah Palin has weighed in on the issue as well, calling on peaceful Muslims world wide to refute the radical ideology, as well as this mosque. She also called on peaceful New yorkers to do the same:

From Pamela, via World Net Daily:

G-d, I love this woman! Palin nailed it. Here's an issue no politician will touch, even though polls show that most Americans oppose the construction of this Islamic supremacist mega-mosque at Ground Zero. The politicians – Mayor Bloomberg, Rep. Nadler, Andrew Cuomo and the rest of them – are so fearful of being labeled "bigots," they will throw their own people under a bus.

But Palin won't. When she resigned as governor of Alaska, I predicted that she would soon be leading a new revolution of American patriots. And she is doing so. She is not afraid of the jackals, hyenas and vultures who troll her home, her garbage cans and her most prized possession, her children. She is unbowed. She has spine, character, ethics, integrity and above all, true grit.

I am proud to be a National Advisory Board member of Jewish Americans for Sarah Palin. If she runs for president, I'll be right behind her.

Palin has sided with Americans and American interests. Palin, once again, does the right right. And it's wildly refreshing. The Left is twisted in knots. That's what she does. She twists up the morally bankrupt liberals. The Islamic supremacist mega-mosque that liberal politicians support is a stab in the eye of every American. The question is, why there? Why did the terror-tied Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the leader of the initiative to build the mega-mosque at Ground Zero, spend nearly $5 million in cash to buy the property for a triumphal mosque a mere 600 feet from the site of the largest attack – an Islamic attack – on American soil in our history?

There have been 15,644 Islamic attacks across the world since Sept. 11, 2001. Each one had the imprimatur of an Islamic cleric. What is being done to expunge the Quran of the violent texts that inspire jihad? If Rauf is really a moderate, why isn't he spending his time working on that instead of trying to build this mega-mosque?

Rauf's wife, Daisy Khan, responded to Palin's statement with soothing words:

"We agree with Ms. Palin that it is time to heal from the wounds of the tragic events of 9/11. We peace-loving Muslims have a responsibility to lead the effort of rebuilding Lower Manhattan. We envision a community center for multi-faith collaboration that is focused on promoting integration, tolerance of difference and community cohesion. We welcome the opportunity to discuss with Ms. Palin how Muslim Americans have an added responsibility to create a counter-momentum against extremism by building institutions like this center, that will amplify the voices of the mainstream peace-loving Muslims."

Yet there is a great deal of evidence that Daisy Khan is not being honest: Rauf himself has been patently dishonest. Bloomberg and the rest should take note. They haven't. Yet Rauf dissembled about whether his 13-story "community center for multi-faith collaboration" at Ground Zero would contain a mosque at all.

While Daisy Khan speaks about "promoting integration, tolerance of difference and community cohesion," and Rauf has told American reporters that the mosque should encourage religious dialogue, he has told the Arabic media that he doesn't believe in religious dialogue. He told American media that the mosque would be funded only by Muslims in America, but he told the Arabic press that it was getting funding from Muslim countries worldwide. He portrays himself as a moderate, but openly supports Shariah (Islamic law) and recently refused to denounce Hamas.

Nonetheless, his response and the response of other mosque organizers to the overwhelming pain this mosque has caused has been ad hominem attacks. The opponents of the mosque are smeared as "racists," "bigots" and "Islamophobes."

I find the Cordoba Initiative's callousness toward the grief it is causing radically intolerant. But only Sarah Palin among high-profile politicians has dared to say so.

And even though Bloomberg and all the other New York establishment politicians have lined up in favor of the mega-mosque, the game is not over by a long shot. New Yorkers have witnessed how a tiny fish stalled and effectively killed a wonderful project for the rotting West Side Highway and wharfs. We have seen the city impose draconian smoking regulations, automobile and traffic regulations and even restaurant food bans (transfats). But this mosque is getting unprecedented rapid-fire action: cooperation from city officials who hadn't moved in 15 years before they started moving on this. There is more grease on these wheels than in the Gulf.

By contrast, Palin restates the obvious. She is unafraid, and so she just gets better and better – and she was brilliant to begin with. And Palin is onto Obama, and has consistently taken him on, again unafraid. It is no wonder that the post-American president and his left-wing thugs are scared to death of her.

This is what the leader of the free world should sound like. The woman is singular. She takes on all comers in defense of liberty and America's founding principles. She has more testicular fortitude than all of the GOP. The Left quakes at the mere mention of her name. No matter how the destroyers come at her, she never backs down, never gives up, never gives in. Is it any wonder that the New York Times ran a front-page story on Palin's emergence as the most influential figure in Republican politics? If the Times is admitting it, pigs are flying.

Obama's hatred of the good for being the good manifests itself in his contempt for Sarah Palin. His contempt is a badge of honor.

Palin is everything Obama isn't: quintessentially American, proud, patriotic, decent and good. Sarah has something Obama can only dream of – heart and soul. Her courageous opposition to this mega-mosque, while the politically correct flock to endorse it, shows that once again.

My organization, Stop Islamization Of America, is holding another peaceful protest against the Ground Zero mega mosque on Sept. 11. Be there.

It's now or never. This is a game-changer.

Pamela has more about this at her website here.

In case you are wondering, 52 percent of New Yorkers agree with Pamela and Sarah on this deal.

Pamela Geller is a true Patriot, and a defender of Liberty and Freedom. A real inspiration to the rest of us. Pamela’s lead in this fight is exemplary.We must all stand with her, just as Sarah is.

Pamela mentions the Cordoba Initiative in her writings. People need to understand the significance, to radical Islam, of placing a mosque on the site where so many people were slaughtered by their Muslim brothers on 911.

The Cordoba Initiative is named for the city of Cordoba in Spain. In 711 Cordoba was captured by Muslims armies. It became the capitol of the Caliphate of Córdoba. The Muslims ruled until 1031, when infighting caused the whole thing to collapse. To Muslims, the conquest of Cordoba was a great victory over the infidels. You can read more here and here.

Symbols are very important in the Muslim world, and to radical Islam, the Cordoba House, which is the official name for this Ground Zero Mosque and Islamic Center, will stand as a symbol of victory over the Great Satan, the United States. To radical Muslims world wide, having this mosque, built on the site of the worst attack on American soil, is the ultimate symbol of conquest.

It’s been nine years since those brutal attacks on our nation. It’s a real disgrace that we don’t already have a new World Trade Center: bigger, shinier, and defiant, constructed and filled with busy workers at Ground Zero. The fact that there isn’t, speaks volumes about the poor leadership in New York, but the fact that this same "leadership" is willing to allow this insult to all Americans to move forward is simply appalling and unacceptable.

God Bless Pamela Geller for what she is doing, and God Bless Sarah Palin for stepping up as well. There are some things that are so outrageous one simply must stand up and be counted.

One another note, Pamela has a great new book out, The Post American Presidency, a must read which is available from Amazon.com. Pick up your copy today!

Exposed Emails: The Media's Plot to Destroy Palin to Elect Obama

By Adrienne Ross - www.motivationtruth.com

The Daily Caller has been shaking things up all week. Jonathan Strong's articles exposing the evil acts of mainstream media members, who went by the name of Journolist, have been both eye-opening and a confirmation of what many people already knew. This week has shed light on their commitment to playing the race card, their desire to oppose free speech and silence Fox News, and the latest, their coordinated effort to destroy John McCain's 2008 VP pick.

If anyone has seen John Ziegler's Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin was Targeted, he has already seen evidence of the media's plot to affect the election. If anyone has heard this audio (via C4P), she's already heard of said plot. And if anyone has a heart and an ounce of decency, he has already felt the disgust that comes when witnessing the media's obvious disdain for Governor Palin.

2008 has been coined "the year journalism died." The exposed emails do nothing to belie that fact, and apparently the coffin was picked out the very day Senator McCain announced Governor Palin as his runningmate. Jonathan Strong writes:

But in many other exchanges, the Journolisters clearly had another, more partisan goal in mind: to formulate the most effective talking points in order to defeat Palin and McCain and help elect Barack Obama president. The tone was more campaign headquarters than newsroom.

The conversation began with a debate over how best to attack Sarah Palin.

[...]

Daniel Levy of the Century Foundation noted that Obama’s “non-official campaign” would need to work hard to discredit Palin. “This seems to me like an occasion when the non-official campaign has a big role to play in defining Palin, shaping the terms of the conversation and saying things that the official [Obama] campaign shouldn’t say – very hard-hitting stuff...

The media, therefore, so important in our free society to report the news, took it upon themselves to figure out how to shape the news so as to shape the outcome of an election. Yet they whine about being called lamestream.

Despite their relentless insistence to this day that Governor Palin poses no threat to their left-wing agenda, these emails tell the truth. Clearly, she was a problem who had to be done away with. This called for a plan:

As the morning wore on into the afternoon, some on Journolist came to believe the Palin pick had been shrewd. Palin was coming off as appealing and a maverick, they worried.

“Okay, let’s get deadly serious, folks. Grating voice or not, ‘inexperienced’ or not, Sarah Palin’s just been introduced to the country as a brave, above-party, oil-company-bashing, pork-hating maverick ‘outsider’,” Kilgore said, “What we can do is to expose her ideology.”

So we've established Governor Palin was deemed a threat. And in their campaign to destroy the threat that she was to the real inexperienced candidate--the community organizer--nothing was off-limits, not even dragging her youngest child into the picture:

“Her decision to keep the Down’s baby is going to be a hugely emotional story that appeals to a vast swath of America, I think,” Donmoyer wrote.

Politico reporter Ben Adler, now an editor at Newsweek, replied, “but doesn’t leaving sad baby without its mother while she campaigns weaken that family values argument? Or will everyone be too afraid to make that point?”

Of course, this was followed by Trig Trutherism, which exists to this day--yahoos contacting the Governor's doctor to demand proof that she actually gave birth to Trig, blogs that run several stories a day with before and after pictures of her belly, and gullible sheeple nodding, salivating, and saying, "Yeah...yeah..."

The Daily Caller is calling attention to the behind-the-scenes workings of Obama's "non-official campaign." I can't say for sure, but I believe that the President, as smart as he is, had to be aware of what was going on. My goodness, anybody with one eye could see it, one ear could hear it, and one nostril could smell it. But now that it's out there via these personal emails, I'd love to hear our Commander-in-Chief speak on it.

The actions of those who are supposed to represent our 1st Amendment rights are not to be obsessively partisan, not prejudiced, and certainly not election-deciders. They are to be honorable. Our society depends on it. What they did/do is inexcusable. If you're thinking, "Well, this doesn't seem so bad," first, you're a yahoo, and second, let me point you to the last sentence of Mr. Strong's article:

That was all on the day of the announcement.

In other words, that was just the beginning. Day 1. A portion of Governor Palin's Facebook note when the first email story emerged is ringing prophetic:

It really says it all – though more will no doubt be revealed in the future, no doubt covering the lamestream media’s coverage of other issues and people. May the light keep shining!

Stay tuned, and in the meantime, read the full Strong article here.

So what has Governor Palin said about all this? The Daily Caller reports on her exclusive remarks:

From a remote location on an island off Alaska’s coast, former Governor Sarah Palin is blasting what she describes as the “sick puppies” in the media who immediately and ruthlessly attacked her when Sen. John McCain picked her as his running mate during the 2008 presidential campaign.

In exclusive remarks to The Daily Caller, Palin described “hordes of Obama’s opposition researchers-slash ‘reporters’” descending upon Alaska in the days after she was picked by McCain.

She said the media became a key reason she decided not to finish out her term as governor and faults, in part, the McCain campaign for failing to vigorously defend her.

Palin chose to be a public figure at the highest level, as a candidate in a presidential campaign, arguably inviting the most intense scrutiny imaginable.

Yet TheDC revealed posts from Jounolist that show liberal journalists coordinating attack lines against Palin from the moment McCain picked her, suggesting she may have had the deck stacked against her.

Palin said she sensed the vitriol coming from campaign reporters at the time.

“It was too obvious to me, my family, my administration and anyone else who knew me (and my record) that we were in a defenseless position the minute I gave my acceptance speech and the hordes of Obama’s opposition researchers-slash ‘reporters’ had descended upon Alaska,” Palin told The DC.

Palin, whose conflicts with key McCain campaign staffers are infamous, said the campaign could have stood by her more firmly.

“To not have had the McCain campaign staff defend my record was an insurmountable challenge, because once a bell is rung, it’s impossible to un-ring,” Palin said.

Regarding a television interview with Katie Couric widely seen at the time as a turning point in the public’s perception of Palin, which critics argued illustrated Palin’s inexperience, Palin said the interview was selectively edited.

“It didn’t help, either, that the hours and hours of interviews with the likes of Katie Couric resulted in a few minutes here and there of selected snippets of my annoyed answers. (I naively had not believed at the time of some of the badgering questions [for example, questioning my pro-life position] that the editing process would fulfill their biased purpose),” Palin said.

Palin says the feeding frenzy culture of the media galvanized her political opponents in Alaska. “The media incentivized political opponents to file false ethics charges and expensive, wasteful, frivolous lawsuits against me, my family and my staff, in an obvious attempt to destroy us,” Palin said.

When those lawsuits — which Palin said she won, but the media didn’t cover — caused legal costs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, Palin had finally had it, she said.

“I said, ‘Enough. Political adversaries and their political friends in the media will not destroy my State, my administration, nor my family. Enough.’ I knew if I didn’t play their game any longer, they could not win. I would not retreat, I would instead reload, and I would fight for what is right from a different plane.”

[...]

“The lamestream media is no longer a cornerstone of democracy in America. They need help. They need to regain their credibility and some respect. There are some pretty sick puppies in the industry today. They really need help,” Palin said.

[...]

“I have lost all respect for the ‘mainstream’ media because they lied; and still lie. And they abuse America’s freedom of the press — because with freedom comes responsibility. My son chose to put his life on the line to defend that freedom, and I feel like his, and every good soldier’s, efforts are thrown in their faces when the press takes advantage of their sacrifices instead of respecting the freedoms they’re willing to die for,” Palin said.

Read the full article, "Sarah Palin strikes back at Journolist’s ’sick puppies,’" here.

Below is the video of Jonathan Strong talking about this on Fox and Friends this morning.


(h/t C4P)

Let the Light Shine!

-from Liberty's Lamp

Yesterday Sarah Palin tweeted Mark Levin and the Daily to thank them for doing what we in the Palinosphere have been working tirelessly to do for over a year and a half.

Thanks Levin, & thanks Daily Caller; let the light shine! RT http://fb.me/FczQhlKr

And so the light shines. Tucker Carlson is a hero to Sarah Palin fans everywhere after blowing the lid wide open on the media bias that slanted the information the public was getting during the 2008 campaign toward Obama and away from Palin.

There was, as we have all been saying here amongst ourselves, a concerted effort on the part of the mainstream media to destroy Sarah Palin. The facts are on the table. The argument is over. We are right.

God bless Tucker Carlson and Jonathan Strong for bringing liberty loving Americans the day we have so long yearned for since the trashing of Sarah Palin during the 2008 election.

Sarah Palin takes everything I have been saying, everything I have been feeling and everything that I have been fighting for and gives it a voice that shouts from the rooftops through the loudest of megaphones. "“I have lost all respect for the ‘mainstream’ media because they lied; and still lie. And they abuse America’s freedom of the press — because with freedom comes responsibility.

THE MEDIA LIED; AND STILL LIE

God bless you, Sarah Palin. God bless America.

Sarah Palin has been vindicated today. While it will still take time to undo some of the damage the media has done to her, today has undone a lot.

The American people get a new Sarah now, a new Sarah who will have the opportunity to re-introduce herself to a country that knows nothing about her except for the lies. Now that they know they are lies, they will have no choice but to step back and give her a second look.

God bless America. God bless those who took on the challenge to fight for what's right. God bless those who have pulled the string on a quickly unravelling media sweater that once covered their vicious agenda and their destructive intentions for America.

I could go running in the streets fist pumping, yelling "yeahhhhhhhhhhh!" at the top of my lungs.

Tucker did it! Tucker did it! Tucker did it!

This is a monumental day in our journey home.


Read more here.

Exclusive interview with AK’s Lt. Gov GOP candidate Eddie Burke

Manhattan-based conservative columnist and commentator Jedediah Bilah conducted an exclusive interview with Eddie Burke, she reported today. Bilah admires Burke's down-to-earth nature, a quality not often seen in politicians from the Northeast. Eddie Burke is a Reagan Conservative running for Lieutenant Governor of Alaska and major Sarah Palin supporter. He is pro individual freedom and liberty, pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, has a keen understanding of "peace through strength," the Tenth Amendment, and state sovereignty.

Retrieved from: An exclusive interview with Alaska’s Lt. Gov GOP candidate Eddie Burke | The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment.