Intent Revealed

Dan Kennedy — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 21:02:00 GMT

On CNN's Sunday show "State of the Union," host Candy Crowley asked Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley (D) how much damage President Obama may have done to his relationship with Catholic voters by forcing Catholic organizations to violate Catholic beliefs in complying with ObamaCare.

At issue is the administration's rule that hospitals, universities and other Cahtolic-affiliated institutions provide health insurance to employees that includes free birth control and even "morning after" pills. The governor said the outraged backlash against the rule was unreasonable. He founded his defense on the fact that the Italian government imposes the same requirement in a country loaded with Catholics (and containing the Vatican). If it's good enough for the Italians, why shouldn't it be good enough here?

I don't know if O'Malley's assertion about Italy is correct, I do know that he gave a clear illustration of what Obama and his allies intend for America; to transform it into a European socialist nation.

What escapes O'Malley is the reason Caholics and non-Catholics strenuously object to government directly interfering in a religion's rights and, broader, to mandate employers and consumers purchase a product built to the government's specifications: namely, we are not Europe. And most of us don't want to be. We are supposed to be a free America, governed by the U.S. Constitution, not by a centralized, dictatorial government, complete with czars. But O'Malley clearly revealed his membership in the European Wanna-Be Club.

Which brings me to the Thief-in-Chief. The present occupant of the White House consistently demonstrates zero respect for the rights of private citizens, employers or states, not respect for the right to private property and not respect for the Constitution. But at least he's consistent.

His philosophical disposition and his European intent leads him to steal from citizens with impunity. In the GM-bailout, now heralded as a grand success, he circumvented federal bankruptcy law, tossed aside the legal rights of GM's shareholders, stole their stock and gifted it to the unions. He subsequently engineered the theft of franchises from

A huge number of GM dealers, many of which were profitable businesses providing good jobs and supporting local communities.

The president's position was simple: None of those people have rights. Anyone who can't see the danger in that is a fool who deserves all the pain that's coming to him when the president gets around to telling him he has no rights either.

In the past week, Obama has announced new confiscatory and dictatorial plans that will reveal to more people that they have no rights he is bound to respect. His College Affordability Plan threatens price controls not just on public but also private universities. His new enforcement weapon is centralized federal control of nearly all college loans. Thus, he can tell any institution that won't work from his price list (or, for that matter, curriculum) that it won't be allowed to enroll students getting federally provided or backed loans.

This mimics the chief scheme within ObamaCare: being able to impose price (and wage) controls by virtue of a centralization of all payments for health care. If you own (supposedly) your own business or even if you are a religion, you will issue only the health insurance Obama dictates.

If you're the Catholic church and you find aspects of that insurance morally reprehensible, too bad. If you donate to Catholic Charities, your money will pay for its employees' health insurance, which pays for options-turned-mandates that you find morally reprehensible.

If you own stock in any company, the GM case demonstrated that your shares can be stolen from you at the president's direction at any time. If you operate a university, you will do as the president says. No business owner, employer, church or donor has any rights to do otherwise.

These are but a few of Obama's schemes. Others are fait acompli, still other pending. They all have the same purpose: the elimination of indivicual rights.

This is the evil of his striving for another four years in office. Maybe it isn't seen as evil in Italy, as Gov. O'Malley asserted Sunday. Maybe elsewhere in Europe it's accepted. But here, in America, individuals who understand that what has set America apart from the world is a system in which the rights of individuals outrank the government, it is evil.

Whoever winds up as the alternative to King Obama needs to clearly see it, reveal it and describe it at that, as evil. Nothing less. President Bush courageously pointed to the Axis of Evil threatening our world. Our presidential candidate needs to point to the evil threatening us here at home. It's enthroned in the White House.

Drill There, Build Here, Now!

Dan Gainor — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:41:00 GMT

Four years ago, global tensions were rising and gas was on its way to a mid-July peak of $4.11 per gallon. Conservative leaders called for a nationwide push to access our energy resources - long denied by the eco-nuts. The campaign to "Drill Here, Drill Now," was a rallying cry throughout 2008. Even martial arts tough guy Chuck Norris urged voters to "tell Congress we're the bosses and they're not."

Today circumstances are much the same. Iran is destabilizing the Mideast again and Egypt, Libya, Syria and other nations are in chaos. Gas is at $3.45 a gallon and CNN's Josh Levs is saying a new record high is likely. In late January, he said, "we have analysts telling us to get ready for a [?] national average around $4.25. That's spring. Summer, that's when it could go higher, $5 could happen in some cities."

In these four years, the American energy situation hasn't gotten better. It's actually gotten worse. For that, you can first credit President Barack Obama, who has led the most anti-energy administration America has seen since President Sweater - Jimmy Carter.

Obama has continued the crazy lefty polices of his party and refused to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He has curtailed drilling off the coast. And his actions have contributed to the chaos in the Mideast as even long-friendly Egypt teeters ever closer to Islamist insanity.

But he capped his anti-energy term with such blatant hypocrisy that media lefties should be screaming. First, he fought GOP efforts to take action on the Keystone pipeline. Finally, when his hand was forced, he shut down plans to move tar sands energy via pipeline from Canada to Texas.

He then followed that blatantly political and amazingly cynical move with a State of the Union speech claiming he believed in power to the people - mentioning the word "energy" nearly two dozen times. "This country needs an all-out, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy a strategy that's cleaner, cheaper, and full of new jobs," he lied to the American public.

Picture the media reaction if George Bush had said, "This country needs an all-out, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy." To say they would have been skeptical is putting it mildly. But journalists swallowed Obama's propaganda like the lapdogs they are. Somehow, three years of an anti-energy policy can be spun into a pro-energy presidency.

Keystone is especially insane. It provides jobs that the infrastructure-obsessed Obama administration (and its Big-Labor muscle) would ordinarily like. It provides more trade with an ally, a friend and one of the most stable nations on earth - Canada. And it helps provide energy security, meaning more oil would be available to the United States if we needed it in a time of emergency, assuming another oil embargo or similar oil interruption.

Even The New York Times recognizes that Keystone makes a good strategy for the GOP, calling it "the party's preferred truncheon against President Obama."

Yet, the Times responded to Obama's State of the Union lies by … believing them. The paper editorialized defending the president's bogus energy policy by calling Keystone "environmentally risky." "Mr. Obama agreed that a comprehensive strategy must include fossil fuels, and he pledged to promote natural gas and open up the outer continental shelf for oil exploration - both in an environmentally safe manner," it continued. Apparently, only in New York do they believe this.

The Times argues "the White House is betting that Americans will ignore the Keystone issue." Certainly, the media are doing their best to help by twisting the Keystone debate. Before Obama's atrocious, job-killing announcement, 40 percent of the broadcast network stories called Keystone "controversial." That's journo-speak for saying they oppose the project.

Then, after Obama's decision, two-thirds of the stories mentioned environmental opposition to the project. Not one story discussed how Obama had ignored the recommendation from his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness: "to expeditiously, though cautiously, move forward on projects that can support hundreds of thousands of jobs."

That's right. Just the day before he killed Keystone, Obama's own council recommended he go forward with energy projects. He ignored it, preferring to squash both jobs and national security. It's an astonishing act of contempt for voters. You can certainly tell it's been years since Obama actually paid for a tank of gas. Maybe then he'd realize just how hard his policies are on ordinary Americans.

But Obama isn't alone in this assault. The media deserve a huge chunk of blame for their anti-oil and anti-energy indoctrination. There are examples of it almost every day - from insane claims that the oil industry was adjusting the price of gasoline to get Republicans elected, to Hollywood attacking the industry through the Muppets.

But as gas prices rise this year, possibly to all-time highs, even the professional spinmasters of the old school media won't be able to convince Americans that Obama is a pro-energy president.

Dan Gainor is the Boone Pickens Fellow and the Media Research Center's Vice President for Business and Culture. His column appears each week on The Fox Forum. He can also be contacted on Facebook and Twitter as dangainor.

Defaults? Depend on it.

Dan Kennedy — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 20:13:00 GMT

The lead financial story January 20^th's USA Today was headlined "Are corporate defaults set to rise?"

My answer, before reading, was: of course. As are government defaults - directly, at municipal and possibly state levels, by currency devaluation via printing money at the federal level. As are personal defaults, via rising numbers of home mortgage walk-aways and bankruptcies.

But since it's private sector business that creates real jobs, let's narrow the consideration here to the subject of the article, corporate defaults.

Five U.S. companies and six globally have already defaulted on their debt in 2012, suggesting a pace of more than 60 to come this year vs. the 39 in 2011. While Chapter 11 reorganization filings have been dropping since a peak in 2009, outright defaults have risen and are now, according to the experts quoted in this article, likely to leap. Why? And what does it say about a bigger picture?

The experts pointed to endless borrowing, unmanageable debt and rising debt service and borrowing costs for the weakest. I would also point to a broad surrender to recession by many businesses in every consumer sector, reflected in their price cutting, discounting, limited time special offers and the related sacrifice of profitability for activity. And I would point to the costs and feared costs of Obamacare and other fast expanding government regulatory interference and compliance costs. There is also the giant sucking sound emanating from your I-pad, smart-phones and laptops, where entire businesses and massive quantities of jobs are disappearing - Borders' and Kodak's bankruptcies are good examples.

There are adverse marketplace forces, oppressive regulatory interferences and burdens, this administration's dramatic reduction in available consumer dollars, all converging. Any business on thin ice, essentially operating on debt and constant borrowing rather than profit and living within its means will prove unable to defend itself against these converging forces.

So, yes, it seems to me that a rise in big corporations' bankruptcies and debt defaults and shareholder wipe-outs is inevitable.

Less reported on, less easily seen, the even bigger number of small businesses defaulting on their debts, closing their doors, sending proprietors and employees alike to the unemployment rolls. This is a story told in scattered fashion, mostly by local news outlets covering the demise of some local shop or small manufacturer, and never put together as a national media story. When a Kodak dies, it is national news. But when a mom n' pop camera store in Boise shuts down after three generations, and a handful lose jobs, that's not going to make The Wall Street Journal or CNN. But a few hundreds of those do add up. This is what's going on.

A survey reported January 23^rd on Fox, Fox Business and other outlets has two-thirds of businesses forecasting no new job creation and no new hiring for at least the first half of 2012. Analysts ruefully said that none are hiring ahead of demand. And they won't.

But demand is staying in doldrums. The Obama approach has methodically drained consumer spending capability from the economy in many ways. Retirees, seniors and other fixed income investors have been locked in at, essentially, zero yield on their savings for years, thus they have less to spend. Every family with an unemployed member has less to spend. Every small business owner with less revenue (or that is sacrificing profit for revenue) has less to spend as someone else's customer. Every person getting tossed out of health care coverage to go it alone thanks to Obamacare faces large leaps in insurance premiums or deductibles, and thus has less to spend.

Space permitting, I could go on. The lifeblood of the economy is being drained from it through many wounds. And Obama is busy doing exactly what Woody Allen once accused his financial advisor of doing - "My money manager managed my money until there was no money left to manage."

Every sane person knows, if anybody from the government arrives 'to help you,' it's best to pile furniture against the door to block his entry. This week, expressed in pronouncements in his state of the union address, the president is purportedly turning his energies to helping the shrinking middle class. They should fear his help. He has been of no help to anybody but a few cronies and puppet-masters so far - why should the middle class trust in different treatment?

Unless and until government is withdrawn to great extent from meddling, managing, and interfering with this economy, it's going to stay sick and get sicker.

2012 Is Just a Peak at Super Bowl Between Red and Blue

Dan Gainor — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 14:33:00 GMT

It Super Bowl time and 308 million people are poised for the battle between … left and right. That insignificant contest between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots will be over Sunday Feb. 5. But the battle between red and blue has taken on epic proportions.

It hasn't always been that way. For decades, America was called the great melting pot. One trip up and down through your cable offerings and you know that's no longer true. We've been sliced and diced, segmented and marketed. We are no longer one nation under God. Heck, one segment doesn't even believe in God and another hates any public display of faith.

America's great melting pot has been replaced. We're now a buffet - with lines forming on the left and right. We don't live in the same places, go to the same churches (or any churches), watch the same TV shows or listen to the same music. Instead, everyone on both sides has donned a jersey.

In just a few short years, we've gone from a mass market America to a house a divided. And this election year things are worse than they've been for a long time. (No, not worse than ever. Sixty seconds of Googling "bleeding Kansas" or the "Civil War" should make that obvious.)

We don't even watch the same TV shows anymore. In the Prehistoric era of the 1970s, Americans watched all of the same shows. The liberal "All in the Family" headed a line-up that ended with the family friendly "Carol Burnett Show." Everything in between from the African-American themed "Jeffersons" to the lunatics of "Bob Newhart" was part of the common experience of many Americans.

Now left and right self-select out of each other's TV lives. According to Experian Simmons, ideology impacts what we watch on the tube. "In the findings, 'sarcastic' media-savvy comedies and morally murky antiheroes tend to draw Dems. While serious work-centered shows (both reality shows and stylized scripted procedurals), along with reality competitions, tend to draw conservatives," wrote EW.com.

Lefties love "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report," since both help write the liberal playbook. Throw in "The View," which shows they have a high tolerance for stupid, and then toss in the mandatory pro-gay shows of "Glee" and "Modern Family."

On the right, there are "gritty documentary-style work-related reality shows" like "Swamp Loggers" and "Top Shot," which is an amazing program. Throw in happy endings programs like "The Bachelor" and "The Biggest Loser" along with non-lefty crime dramas "Hawaii Five-O" and "NCIS."

The same is said for movies. Conservatives flocked to see the Narnia movies and celebrated Christian values of "The Blind Side" or "Soul Surfer." Liberals, who control almost all of Hollywood, have a huge selection - from arty Sundance movies to the bogus Hoover biopic "J Edgar," Michael Moore swill and an endless stream of movies highlighting sex, bashing business and portraying America or Americans as villains.

Conservatives cheer Tim Tebow and celebrate both his victories and his faith by praying. Their faith teaches them everyone is flawed and they need to forgive. They believe in American exceptionalism and expect everyone to obey the law - whether it's Occupy Wall Street rioters or illegal immigrants. And they know that building an ever-larger welfare state on the backs of the 53 percent who pay federal taxes is doomed to failure.

Liberals hate Tebow, his faith and violent sports and mock them by "Tebowing" at Hollywood events. They are more than willing to forgive, but do so selectively, if they agree with a person. They despise or apologize for America and believe we need to make penance for our success and embrace the revolution against The Man. And they want us all to pay far higher taxes. Just don't ask them to donate as much as conservatives do because charity is somehow wrong.

Both groups overlook the failings of their own team and highlight those of the other side. That's how NOW and other women's groups still managed to embrace Bill Clinton and overlook his role as Sex-Harasser-in-Chief. And it's the same way conservatives thrilled to George W. Bush's Supreme Court appointments and ignored his incredible overspending.

And all of it is seen through the eyes of self-selected news outlets - the home sports pages of politics. The Washington Post led off primary day in South Carolina with a story detailing how traditional news outlets are losing their status. "Polarized news market has altered the political process," the paper stated. The story cited a 2009 Stanford/UCLA report saying readers are rejecting sources they don't agree with.

As the Post explained it, Americans are relying on outlets that support their teams for their news. "The audience is so polarized that even when consumers look for more entertaining sorts of news, such as travel or sports stories, they tend to choose sources that match their political leanings - conservatives to Fox News and liberals to National Public Radio, for example," wrote Marc Fisher.

He went on to describe a liberal voter who got his news from sites such as "MSNBC, Huffington Post, Mother Jones and CNN." That was followed by a conservative who relied on "Commentary magazine's site and Breitbart.tv," as well as newsmax.com, Vision to America, teapartynation.com, and The Washington Times.

That's the environment for Newt Gingrich's resurgence. Conservatives have watched as the media moved systematically through the Republican field - destroying Herman Cain and targeting every other possible candidate from Sarah Palin to Rick Santorum with claims of affairs and attacks on children and wives.

Gingrich has been at his most effective when fighting back against that media onslaught - serving as the culture quarterback desperately sought by conservatives. The bomb he threw leveled CNN's John King during last week's debate, but it was just the latest play in long-running game.

Gingrich is legitimately angry that journalists are trying to choose the president by doing timely hit jobs on GOP candidates. He's also savvy and knows not just his own audience but the American public. A recent poll by "Public Policy Polling, a Democratic polling company based in Raleigh, N.C.," showed 77 percent of likely South Carolina Republican primary voters had an unfavorable view of the media. Just 14 percent said they had a favorable view.

That's because the vast majority of that media - news and entertainment - has chosen the liberal team for decades. In 2012, they are finding Americans no longer see the media as referees. Journalists, especially, are wearing the uniform of the blue team and that makes them targets as much as any candidate. Maybe more.

For the Defense: Mitt Romney

Dan Kennedy — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 19:43:00 GMT

If it must be Gov. Romney, let him defend himself and his career forcefully. We are already seeing how Romney is being demonized because he is rich and successful and owns multiple homes and eliminated some jobs in the course of saving, fixing and strengthening companies. If he gets defensive about this, he loses. If he shies from it, he loses. Here is how I think he should start every speech:

"I'm Mitt Romney. I'm rich. In case you haven't gotten the message from my GOP opponents, and from President Obama and his minions, I am rich.

President Obama thinks I should pay more taxes, and he thinks my being rich should disqualify me from replacing him - even though thanks to a book advance for the autobiography of a man without accomplishment, and thanks to Chicago political connections, he and his wife aren't exactly hurting. But replace him is exactly what I want to do - replace him and begin fixing the messes he's made or made worse. It's President Obama, not me, that is now threatening our economy and keeping millions from good-paying jobs.

So I want to spend just three minutes on me being rich, then set that aside, and talk about solutions to what ails us.

I am rich. Unlike the president, I've had a long career of accomplishment, in the private sector as well as in government. I am rich and I have earned it. He or his spokespersons will try telling America that I've gotten rich as a Wall Street paper jockey, buying companies and then destroying jobs and throwing people out onto the street to roam about hungry, living in cardboard boxes. Actually, the work I did with Bain Capital in buying, fixing and building dozens of different companies is a mixed bag when you narrow it down just to jobs eliminated and jobs created. Sometimes a company is sick, in part, because it is fat and bloated and has too much expense and, frankly, too many employees. For that company to be saved - for anybody associated with it to keep their jobs, and for shareholders (including pension funds representing hard-working people) not to lose their money - jobs must be eliminated. Sometimes they must even be - here's a dirty word - out-sourced. That is sometimes a fact.

Mr. Obama, after all, took over General Motors and wiped out hundreds of local dealerships and thousands of jobs with the stroke of a pen. His friend and the Chair of this "Council on Jobs and Competitiveness," GE's Jeff Immelt, has outsourced jobs as fast as possible. Another jobs council member, Kodak CEO Antonio Perez, will soon be wiping out jobs through bankruptcy.

We now have a federal government that is way too big, meddling in way too many things and doing most of them badly, spending and borrowing like mad, that must be reigned in, reorganized and right-sized. And along the way, some government jobs may be eliminated. Entire bureaucratic departments may be eliminated. In doing so, we can get burdens off business' back, including small businesses, so new jobs can be created.

The facts about me are: I created jobs. I grew companies, brought new stores into communities, and created job opportunities for as many as 100,000 people. The president can't deny the fact that he has never created even one job. He has never met a payroll. He has never run a business. He has never made the tough decisions that businesspeople must make. In fact, he has barely held a job. He went to school. He was a community organizer - by his own admission, in his book, a rather unsuccessful one. His very brief tenure in the U.S. Senate consisted of a lot of "present" votes.

Voting "present" isn't an option when you run a business, when your own money and that of your friends, coworkers and shareholders is on the line. But dodging decisions and avoiding creating any kind of a record sure helps when you want to be president.

That worked in 2008. But now he has a record. Every measurable aspect of the U.S. economy has worsened during his first four years, so it is impossible for him to make a case for being re-hired. His slogan is: "It Could Have Been Worse," an assertion for which he has no proof.

The president's only option is to attack me, and to distort my record and who I am, or simply try to reduce it to a comic book, with me a villain because I am rich. Do not be fooled. I have a track record that proves my ability to take companies and organizations and state governments with financial problems and fix them. I haven't given speeches about imaginary scenarios. I've done it. I have experience. I have maturity.

I have been trusted with the capital of investors large and small and have managed it well - unlike former Senator and Governor Corzine, a big Obama fundraiser who claims he misplaced $1 billion of his investors' money. Unlike the folks the president anointed as the shining future of green technology at Solyndra. Unlike many others - the list of incompetents and, possibly, thieves with ties to the president is long.

But we can give the president himself the benefit of doubt. He did inherit a difficult situation. He loves that word - inherit - as if the economy was a baby in a basket left on his doorstep. We can credit him with good intentions. With ideas. But his ideas have failed. I am a man of experience. I do not under-estimate the problems. I am prepared - prepared by real life experience - to fix them.

My speeches may not make people swoon. You may not like the fact that I am rich, though I remind you, I earned it. You may be a Conservative worried that I'm too moderate for you on certain few issues. You may be a Democrat - at another time of crisis, large numbers of good Democrats crossed party lines and defied their union bosses to support Ronald Reagan, ushering in an economic boom.

But in 2012, you can't afford to make this about ideology or ideas or hope. You're not voting. You are tasked to hire someone to fix a huge, dangerous, fast-growing mess that threatens you, your family, your future, your livelihood, your way of life. You are going to make a vital hiring decision.

The question is, having only two job applicants to choose from, who will you put in charge to clean up this mess? An earnest but inexperienced guy, who has had four years to turn things around and - for whatever reasons - has simply not been able to do so. Who has not been able to work with congress to solve problems. Who's burned through billions in stimulus money but been unable to ignite job growth. Hire him for another four years?

Or hire me, with my experience actually fixing financial messes, turning around troubled companies, creating jobs - and yes, even creating wealth, for many, and for myself. Compare our resumes and think about this responsibly, as a hiring decision.

So, yes, I am rich. If you don't admire that, it's okay. But don't let anybody use it to cloud your mind and goad you into hiring the wrong guy to fix the mess. That's your task now. It's simple. Hire the right man for this job at this time.

Now, enough about that. Let's talk about my plans to end the decline of America and re-start a society of opportunity for all …"

Google, News Outlets Embrace Vile Attack on Santorum

Dan Gainor — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 18:27:00 GMT

When Rick Santorum essentially tied in Iowa, he gave his campaign new life. He also guaranteed America would finally learn just how disgusting, vile and despicable the left is in this country. And how major news outlets and one of the most well-known businesses in the world - Google - are complicit in trying to destroy Santorum because he opposes gay marriage.

Santorum is the victim of what Reuters partner The Wrap and many other organizations call a "Google problem." That's quite the understatement. He was attacked with a Google bomb from the vomitous Dan Savage, a gay advocate and sex columnist who hates straight people who don't agree with him. He also thinks they should be silenced, bullied and blackmailed. That's exactly how he's treated Santorum.

Savage, in an attempt to destroy Santorum on the Internet for all time, held a contest in 2003 and asked readers for the most foul thing they could say to create a new definition for "Santorum." The dictionary calls that a neologism and readers gave him 3,000 suggestions. In practice, what Savage has done is the lowest form of hate speech. What he picked as a winner is so vile you don't want to read it or see it or hear it.

But you have to. It's the top Google search term for Santorum, thanks to an extensive lefty campaign to discredit opponents of gay marriage. To ignore it is to ignore a major issue that is impacting the presidential campaign. It's like hiding your eyes in the face of danger.

Savage has been trying to destroy Santorum and Google is helping him do it by refusing to adjust the search. The result leads to the website spreadingSantorum.com, Savage has the following foul definition:

santorum (san-TOR-um) n. 1. The frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.

That 16 word definition says more about the left, Google and the major media than any other words ever written. First, Google, the most dominant search engine on the planet, is a super tech company worth about $215 billion. Just one share of Google goes for roughly $666. (Yes, it really does.) One of the company's guidelines is "You can make money without doing evil." You can. They don't.

Google famously has a complex algorithm set up to search sites and determine what the most popular hit is for everything. So Santorum contacted Google and asked for their help. They gave him the back of their hand and refused to do anything. In repsonse to questions from left-leaning Politico, a Google "spokesperson said that Google does not 'remove content from our search results, except in very limited cases such as illegal content and violations of our webmaster guidelines.'" In other words, they do it whenever they feel like.

"I suspect if something was up there like that about Joe Biden, they'd get rid of it," Santorum told Politico. "If you're a responsible business, you don't let things like that happen in your business that have an impact on the country."

The link to the foul Santorum page is there, but no explanation, apology, nothing. However, when a hate site showed up prominently as readers searched for "Jew," Google was quick to respond by adding a disclaimer. That reads in part: "If you recently used Google to search for the word 'Jew,' you may have seen results that were very disturbing. We assure you that the views expressed by the sites in your results are not in any way endorsed by Google."

And Google, which won't reveal how it does its search, is always being manipulated as techies try to figure out how best to play the Google game. To them, this is just someone playing that game.

But Google isn't alone in aiding the attack on Santorum. ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC and CNN have all given cover to Savage's monstrous activities. ABC has been the worst, with "Nightline" doing a nearly six-minute puff piece

Correspondent Yunji de Nies said of Savage "he's not always nice." That's about as understated as saying de Nies isn't always a good journalist. In her piece, she mentioned how "Savage doesn't hide his politics" and that "he famously went after Republican Rick Santorum." But she lacked the courage to explain what Savage did in detail. That would have damaged Savage's credibility as an anti-bullying advocate.

That's right. Much of her piece, and news stories at other outlets, focused on how Savage and his male "partner" have led the "It Gets Better" campaign to discourage bullying of "lesbian, gay, bi, trans and other bullied teens." Celebrities and even President Obama have done videos for the project. None of the reports noted that Savage, who says he was bullied when he was young, has turned into the personification of what he claims to hate.

In other words, the anti-bullying advocate so hailed by the media is also a hypocrite. He disagrees with the very pledge he claims to support, that "everyone deserves to be respected for who they are." Everyone, that is, except Rick Santorum or anyone else who opposes Savage's gay agenda.

But he remains a media darling. The New York Times magazine devoted more than 5,000 words in June to depicting Savage as "old fashioned" and saying, "Savage's sex advice puts me in mind of a smart, tough old grandmother, randy yet stern."

His fellow lefties embrace Savage, impressed at how witty he is when he tells HBO's Bill Maher that he wishes Republicans "were all f-king dead." Or how he thinks "about f-king the s-t out of Rick Santorum." Maher's crowd laughed and applauded at that.

And they think his defining attack on Santorum hilarious, even when he resorts to open blackmail. Savage told George Soros-funded Mother Jones that he might take it down for enough cash. "If Rick Santorum wants to make a $5 million donation to [the gay marriage group] Freedom to Marry, I will take it down. Interest starts accruing now." And Mother Jones moron Stephanie Mencimer had to add a joke. "Santorum may want to consider Savage's offer. Otherwise, he's kinda screwed."

This putrid attack isn't the defining battle of the 2012 election, but it does show you where different organizations stand. If Google continues to allow it, it shows it can't be trusted with the massive power it has achieved. And no network that embraces Savage as a commentator or promotes his hypocritical charity can be taken seriously.

It's awful to see bullying - especially when news outlets and Google lend a hand.

Dan Gainor is the Boone Pickens Fellow and the Media Research Center's Vice President for Business and Culture. His column appears each week on The Fox Forum. He can also be contacted on Facebook and Twitter as dangainor.

Propaganda.com: Huffington Post Has a Party and Its Democratic

Dan Gainor — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 11:45:00 GMT

The post-Christmas headline reads: ''THE MOLOTOV PARTY,'' and it's not talking about a fiery New Year's Eve bash. Naturally, it refers to the GOP and accompanies a photo of the top candidates, with every single letter of the headline capitalized for emphasis. Within a few hours, it morphs into ''THEY ♥ MANDATES,'' an attack this time on Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.

Political junkies would recognize that level of anti-Republican vitriol and readily identify the perpetrator - Huffington Post. HuffPo, as it is sometimes called, has evolved from a simple news aggregator into one of the most sophisticated propaganda operations the world has ever seen.

The site was started by political chameleon Arianna Huffington, who used to be conservative before she discovered it was far more lucrative to be liberal. The zeros that entrepreneur Huffington paid bloggers for their content came back to her as $20 million to $30 million or more, along with $4 million a year. That was part of the $315 million sale to AOL that turned Huffington into a media mogul and the most powerful propagandist since a guy named Goebbels.

Internet denizens might say that last comment violated Godwin 's Law, as reich references often do. And it would, except it's true. Huffington heads up a 'news' team whose two aims are to drive traffic and to drive conservatives and the GOP into the ground. The HuffPo team is good at both.

Everywhere you look on the site, Republicans and conservatives are doing something bad. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has a 'harsh plan.' Former ''Saturday Night Live'' star Victoria Jackson is now making ''wild Islamophobic claims.'' Even so-called ''star'' actor Benjamin Walker (appearing as Lincoln in the upcoming ''Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter'') gets covered for sending out an anti-GOP Christmas card. Actor Steven Weber sums up this attitude with a call for trials for conservatives. ''The scale of Right Wing sociopolitical sabotage necessitates a Nuremberg-scale trial,'' he wrote, frothing all the way.

The GOP presidential candidates are particular targets. There's a ''Perry shocker.'' Or, is Iowa ''Bachmann's Last Stand?'' What was the Perry shocker? Who knows? The headline just goes to the HuffPo politics page which is so filled with anti-GOP material that it's hard to differentiate.

And there are no depths to which the HuffPo team won't delve. One story even went into the bathroom to stalk libertarian Rep. Ron Paul and accuse him of being a homophobe (the ultimate crime in lefty 'journalism.') 'Ron Paul Reportedly Refused To Use Gay Man 's Bathroom,' it read. If a GOP candidate hung a roll of toilet paper the wrong way, a Huffington Post 'reporter' would come crawling through the gutter to write about it.

The Politics section is a prime example. It holds more than 60 headlines, nearly all of which attack the GOP in some way. ''OOPS : The Biggest Gaffes Of 2011'' has three GOP photos attached - Sarah Palin, Herman Cain and Rick Perry. Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner, who resigned Congress in disgrace for, well, you know, is nowhere to be found.

In fact, not one of the headlines says anything bad about a Democrat whatsoever. The few stories that mention Democrats at all are such puff pieces that most journalists would be embarrassed to be associated with them. One shows a baby putting his hand in Obama's mouth: ''Obama Gets A Mouthful,'' readers are told in this thoroughly silly story. Another goes: ''Bill Clinton Makes Bold Pledge,'' and is coupled with a smiling picture of the former president.

To read the site is to think the Republican Party is the most incompetent, corrupt operation in history, which is exactly what Huffington is paid to make you think. The rare times Democratic scandals can't be avoided, the word ''Democrat'' is avoided, at least in the headline.

MF Global, a Democratic scandal involving former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine has this innocuous headline: ''MF Global Fallout Fueling Calls For Drastic Reform.'' Notice the lack of name or party? Yeah, so did HuffPo. Some little Dem bot probably got a bonus for that bit of fraud. Only the occasional DINO gets negative HuffPo attention, such as Sen. Ben Nelson who was called a ''human impediment to progress '' when he said he was retiring.

The site's masthead lists more than 300 people, 30 of those in the Politics section. In reality, the other 270 are in the politics section whenever possible. That doesn't come close to counting the purported 20,000 bloggers. The site itself now has special departments devoted to eight different cities in the United States - from New York to Los Angeles. Huffington Post has expanded internationally with sister operations in Canada and the UK, with France and Spain on deck. But politics is the center ring, whether it's in D.C. or London.

Couple that with specialty sections for every liberal target group you can imagine - African-Americans, Latinos and gays, for starters. When the site isn't blatantly propagandizing against the GOP, it is putting forth claims of struggle for some left-wing concern. On any given day at HuffPo you can find attacks on religion, life, patriotism and pretty much any traditional value held by Americans.

Of course, they don't write it all themselves. The HuffPo staff is masterful at combing the internet for stories and digging through them for one nugget that makes their point. They write a couple graphs about the nugget, package it with a sometimes huge headline and a stock photo and, voila, their work is done. All of that teams with AOL and numerous other related properties including the once-promising local news operation Patch.com.

But the site doesn't work if it doesn't generate traffic. After all, Americans aren't forced to read Arianna's propaganda. So it's filled with sex, more sex, comedy and enough other trash to keep people visiting. (The masthead actually includes four separate comedy editors. Perhaps they are the ones doing the front page.) The Internet term for much of it is 'link bait.'

One page holds several pictures of a breasty Katy Perry picture in a bikini, another an article on sexbots and how eventually marriage to them will be allowed. And there's always lots of alternative lifestyle fun, like the ''23 Naughtiest Lesbian Scandals of 2011.'' Want comedy? Try a quick video of a dog wearing pants. Just be sure to follow it to one of HuffPo's lefty bloggers or another video of a ''Little Girl Furious Of Gender Stereotypes In Toy Store .'' If technology allowed for carnival barkers to grab you as you went by in cyberspace, Arianna would do it.

Add it all up and Huffington Post is the most popular and up-to-date propaganda tool around. It's light years ahead of the pro-war posters of WWI or Tokyo Rose of WWII and puts communist state propaganda to shame. Soviet propagandists used to delete people from photos to make them disappear. HuffPo controls the message and just never includes anything bad they did in the first place - unless they're Republicans.

Add it all up and it's working. In June, HuffPo outdid The New York Times for web traffic, according to comScore. But, more importantly, the site is popular with political reporters. Every day it sets the anti-GOP agenda among the already anti-GOP press. It's also unmatched on the right. Every step of election 2012 is being spun and Queen Bee Arianna Huffington is one of the most powerful figures deciding who gets to be your president. Only Huffington Post claims it's ''journalism.''