Maybe people will stop asking this bag of snakes to speak all over the place

• via RedState via Michelle Malkin

He makes no sense. His premise doesn't explain the most important ideology of the past decade: that which caused the loss of our nation. Including the life's work of a majority of our citizens. This man-with the media at his feet for the past decade- could have alerted us and stopped: the sub-prime scam, the ascendancy of Goldman Sachs and Soros, the cap and trade disaster (which would not help global warming even if global warming existed), and many other crimes.

Checketts' lack of background work led to Limbaugh media follies

• Dan Rather's defense always was, even if George Bush didn't do what I said he did, he easily could have. The media uses similar logic to explain their attack on Rush Limbaugh.

UK Telegraph: "Which public figure can be quoted as having said something bigoted and disgusting and

• it doesn’t matter whether he did or not because he might have?

Who can Big Media brand a racist without checking the facts? Who has to prove he did not say something racist, rather than the accuser proving he did?

A pat on the back for anyone who guessed the answer: Rush Limbaugh (OK, the blog headline was a clue). From CNN to MSNBC to ABC, it’s been put about that Limbaugh said this:

I mean, let’s face it, we didn’t have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back; I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.

It’s also been spread around that he said this, about the death of the man who assassinated Martin Luther King:

You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honour? James Earl Ray. We miss you, James. Godspeed.

Here’s CNN’s Rick Sanchez baldly stating at the 1.14 point that Limbaugh made the slavery comment:

Trouble is, he didn’t say either of these outrageous things. And it wasn’t difficult to check,

• as protein wisdom shows here. They originated from, er, Wikipedia and Wikiquotes.
  

Both quotes ended up in this book – a hit job that doesn’t cite any sources. They’re also included in this internet list posted a year ago

• and endlessly ripped off ever since.

The irony is, of course, that the people reporting this as fact are the same types who are always

• denouncing bloggers and the internet as forces of evil intent on destroying proper journalism –
  

proper journalism being the kind that involves checking facts.

• In the case of Rush Limbaugh, however, it seems to be enough that the intention (i.e. to show the talk radio host is a racist)
  

• is considered pure.

Even those who have been primary movers in spreading these malicious falsehoods – which would lead to payouts of hundreds of thousands in British libel courts if lawsuits were ever filed there –

• are brazenly unapologetic.

Thus, St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Bryan Burwell pens this column containing the slavery quote and then follows up with another column with a kind-of-sort-of-well-not-really-at-all mea culpa in which he states that the quote seemed “so in character with the many things that Limbaugh has said before that we didn’t verify it beyond the book”.

• OK, so it sounded right and it was on the internet or in a book or something so it was fine to just go ahead and print it as stone-cold fact without any attribution? I wonder which journalism school teaches that?

And Burwell caps it off by implying – nudge, nudge, wink, wink – that Limbaugh’s really lying: “Fine, let’s play along for the time being and take him at his word that he was inaccurately quoted in the Huberman book.” I’m no fan of British libel laws but, again, if that had been printed in the UK it would have led to a hefty payout for aggravated damages.

Limbaugh is, understandably, on the war path because the smear of racism is one is very, very difficult to wipe clean:

When race is brought into it, that you can’t let stand. I mean, if you, if people are trying to destroy your reputation and your credibility, your life, and your career by attacking you as a racist, then you have to stand up and, like that.

Now we are in the process behind the scenes working to get apologies and retractions, with the force of legal action, against every journalist who has published these entirely fabricated quotes about me, slavery, and James Earl Ray.

I never said them. We have tracked them. We know where they came from. We don’t know the identity, but we know where they came from – a single blogger who posted the stuff on my Wikipedia page and Wikiquotes, unsourced.

Wikipedia says, ‘Well, this is in dispute.’ It’s not in dispute. They were never uttered. I never said them. And I’ve even told reporters I never said them.

As Mark Steyn points out, in this instance it’s for Limbaugh to prove the negative – an impossible task. And Dan Calebrese asks why if Limbaugh really is a racist then it takes bogus quotes to “prove” that he is?

• What’s the term for those who are setting about “racist” Rush Limbaugh right now? Ironically, it seems to be “lynch mob”. And they’ve succeeded – word is that Limbaugh’s been dropped from the consortium seeking to buy the St Louis Rams."
  

"The Rush Limbaugh Media Lynch Mob," by Tony Harnden, UK Telegraph, via Drudge Report, 10/14/09

• Sports media show they're even more childish and unprincipled than news media....(framus)
  

Time for McCain and his family to go home--Investors Business Daily

10/9/09, Editorial: "Politics: The top and bottom of last year's Republican ticket represent the recent failed past and future potential of the party. Both are vying for party leadership, but

• the past should get out of the future's way.

Sen. John McCain is, as Politico noted last week, "working behind-the-scenes to reshape the Republican Party in his own center-right image." The loser of last year's run for the White House is recruiting candidates, raising money and campaigning for them, and even taking sides in GOP Senate, House and gubernatorial primaries.

• Some people apparently need a hook to exit the stage.
  

McCain's personal story is one of the most compelling in America, but as a politician, he leaves much to be desired.

The Arizonan won last year's Republican nomination largely on the strength of his valorous military biography; a candidate with a focus on Reaganite principle would have had a chance of actually winning the election.

• The former POW has consistently taken positions that more closely resemble those of liberal Democrats. Employing the worst kind of class warfare rhetoric, he opposed President George W. Bush's tax cuts.

He pushed for amnesty for millions of illegal aliens and, most infamously, joined with liberal Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., to restrict the political speech guaranteed by the First Amendment through his campaign finance law — which the Supreme Court may soon gut in its Citizens United v. FEC case.

In his concession speech McCain said, "I don't know what more we could have done to try to win this election."

• Well, the fact he doesn't know why he lost is the problem —
  
• especially as he spreads the losing ways of his own so-called "maverick" Republicanism.

The McCain campaign does have one positive legacy, however:

• It made Sarah Palin a national figure.

The former Alaska governor, already popular among grass-roots Republicans, is growing in credibility. Her much-criticized decision to resign the governorship is beginning to look like a move that made perfect sense — not just for herself but for Alaskans — in the face of the long knives the Democrats had ready for her as a sitting chief executive.

• Palin is becoming a bold, principled voice on issues ranging from the global war on terror to financial markets. "Now is not the time for cold feet, second thoughts, or indecision," she said regarding White House skittishness on Afghanistan.

She has warned that "we're ignoring the looming crisis caused by our dependence on foreign oil," arguing that America will be at foreign powers' "mercy if they decide to dump the dollar as their trade currency."

• Democrats are apoplectic about her charge that their health care revolution will mean "death panels" — but she touched the nerve of instinctive American distrust of government, which is why Democrats find they can't stop talking about it.

The supposedly unsophisticated Palin is being advised by some impressive heavyweights.

• Randy Scheunemann, for instance, has been a foreign policy and national security adviser to prominent Republicans ranging from McCain to Sen. Bob Dole and former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. He has also represented and advised the pro-free market government of the Republic of Georgia, which is struggling against Russian aggression.

Another sometime adviser to Palin is Ford Motor Co. executive Stephen Biegun, a member of President George W. Bush's National Security Council. Biegun advised former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and was chief of staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee under the late Sen. Jesse Helms.

• Biegun, who helped with Palin's Hong Kong speech last month and was her chief foreign policy aide during last year's campaign, told Investor's Business Daily that the former governor showed "great passion for foreign policy and national security" during the campaign, calling it "an area on which she has great instincts."

She's "free-trade oriented," he says, with "a strong sense of the importance of American leadership in the world."

• That sounds like the kind of candidate McCain is now doing his best to
  
• defeat around the country.
  

• As Palin grows in stature , it would be a good idea for McCain to let some air out of that ego — and
  

• accept the defeat he was handed at the ballot box last year."
  

"McCain vs. Palin for the GOP's Soul" Investors Business Daily

via Lucianne.com

• AND TAKE WITH HIM Ari Fleischer, Pawlenty of ethanol scams, Rick Hi remember me Santorum, Gingrich, Huckster, the GOP, Romney their boy, Jeb Bush, Tom Ridge the registered lobbyist for Albania, and the rest.
  

THE PEOPLE HAVE HAD IT WITH YOU MEANINGLESS WASTES OF HUMANITY. IF NOTHING ELSE YOU SHOULD ALL DO HARD TIME FOR FURTHERING THE SCAM OF CAP AND TRADE. (Or doing nothing to stop it). Along with the sub-prime scandal.

CNN freaks out--can't believe their own Shelly and President Pantywaist were so humiliated

• To the media: YOU FAILED. WAY BEFORE THE OBAMA'S FAILED. YOU PICKED THEM AND YOU PICKED WRONG. (framus) video via Hot Air