The following is the response of the John McCain campaign to this NY Times hit piece on campaign manager Rick Davis:

Today the New York Times launched its latest attack on this campaign in its capacity as an Obama advocacy organization. Let us be clear about what this story alleges: The New York Times charges that McCain-Palin 2008 campaign manager Rick Davis was paid by Freddie Mac until last month, contrary to previous reporting, as well as statements by this campaign and by Mr. Davis himself.

In fact, the allegation is demonstrably false. As has been previously reported, Mr. Davis separated from his consulting firm, Davis Manafort, in 2006. As has been previously reported, Mr. Davis has seen no income from Davis Manafort since 2006. Zero. Mr. Davis has received no salary or compensation since 2006. Mr. Davis has received no profit or partner distributions from that firm on any basis — weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, semi-annual or annual — since 2006. Again, zero. Neither has Mr. Davis received any equity in the firm based on profits derived since his financial separation from Davis Manafort in 2006.

Further, and missing from the Times’ reporting, Mr. Davis has never — never — been a lobbyist for either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. Mr. Davis has not served as a registered lobbyist since 2005.

Though these facts are a matter of public record, the New York Times, in what can only be explained as a willful disregard of the truth, failed to research this story or present any semblance of a fairminded treatment of the facts closely at hand. The paper did manage to report one interesting but irrelevant fact: Mr. Davis did participate in a roundtable discussion on the political scene with…Paul Begala.

Again, let us be clear: The New York Times — in the absence of any supporting evidence — has insinuated some kind of impropriety on the part of Senator McCain and Rick Davis. But entirely missing from the story is any significant mention of Senator McCain’s long advocacy for, and co-sponsorship of legislation to enact, stricter oversight and regulation of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — dating back to 2006. Please see the attached floor statement on this issue by Senator McCain from 2006.

To the central point our campaign has made in the last 48 hours: The New York Times has never published a single investigative piece, factually correct or otherwise, examining the relationship between Obama campaign chief strategist David Axelrod, his consulting and lobbying clients, and Senator Obama. Likewise, the New York Times never published an investigative report, factually correct or otherwise, examining the relationship between Former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson and Senator Obama, who appointed Johnson head of his VP search committee, until the writing was on the wall and Johnson was under fire following reports from actual news organizations that he had received preferential loans from predatory mortgage lender Countrywide.

Therefore this “report” from the New York Times must be evaluated in the context of its intent and purpose. It is a partisan attack falsely labeled as objective news. And its most serious allegations are based entirely on the claims of anonymous sources, a familiar yet regretful tactic for the paper.

We all understand that partisan attacks are part of the political process in this country. The debate that stems from these grand and sometimes unruly conversations is what makes this country so exceptional. Indeed, our nation has a long and proud tradition of news organizations that are ideological and partisan in nature, the Huffington Post and the New York Times being two such publications. We celebrate their contribution to the political fabric of America. But while the Huffington Post is utterly transparent, the New York Times obscures its true intentions — to undermine the candidacy of John McCain and boost the candidacy of Barack Obama — under the cloak of objective journalism.

The New York Times is trying to fill an ideological niche. It is a business decision, and one made under economic duress, as the New York Times is a failing business. But the paper’s reporting on Senator McCain, his campaign, and his staff should be clearly understood by the American people for what it is: a partisan assault aimed at promoting that paper’s preferred candidate, Barack Obama.

Statement by Senator John McCain, May 25, 2006:

Mr. President, this week Fannie Mae’s regulator reported that the company’s quarterly reports of profit growth over the past few years were “illusions deliberately and systematically created” by the company’s senior management, which resulted in a $10.6 billion accounting scandal.

The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight’s report goes on to say that Fannie Mae employees deliberately and intentionally manipulated financial reports to hit earnings targets in order to trigger bonuses for senior executives. In the case of Franklin Raines, Fannie Mae’s former chief executive officer, OFHEO’s report shows that over half of Mr. Raines’ compensation for the 6 years through 2003 was directly tied to meeting earnings targets. The report of financial misconduct at Fannie Mae echoes the deeply troubling $5 billion profit restatement at Freddie Mac.

The OFHEO report also states that Fannie Mae used its political power to lobby Congress in an effort to interfere with the regulator’s examination of the company’s accounting problems. This report comes some weeks after Freddie Mac paid a record $3.8 million fine in a settlement with the Federal Election Commission and restated lobbying disclosure reports from 2004 to 2005. These are entities that have demonstrated over and over again that they are deeply in need of reform.

For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac–known as Government-sponsored entities or GSEs–and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market. OFHEO’s report this week does nothing to ease these concerns. In fact, the report does quite the contrary. OFHEO’s report solidifies my view that the GSEs need to be reformed without delay.

I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.

I urge my colleagues to support swift action on this GSE reform legislation.

The New York Times has refused to publish an op-ed piece by Sen. John McCain which rebuts an op-ed piece written by Barack Obama and published in the Times the previous week.

ABC’s Rick Klein and Sara Just report: This is not the easiest week for John McCain to get equal time in the media - not with so many journalists in the Middle East to report on Barack Obama’s trip there. And the New York Times op-ed page isn’t making it any easier.

As first reported by The Drudge Report, Sen. John McCain, R-AZ, submitted an opinion piece to the New York Times last week and the paper has rejected it.

A week earlier, the paper published an op-ed by Obama, about the Democrat’s plans for troop draw-down in Iraq. A few days later, the McCain campaign submitted a column rebutting the Obama piece.

According to McCain campaign staffers, the Times rejected the McCain piece and asked for a rewrite to respond directly to some of the claims in the Obama piece, and include an outline of the Republican’s timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops in Iraq and conditions for withdrawal.

According to McCain campaign staffers, the rejection came Friday night from New York Times oped editorial page editor David Shipley via email:

“I’d be very eager to publish the Senator on the oped page. However I’m not going to be able to accept this piece as currently written,” Shipley writes, according to a copy of the message provided to ABC News.

“It would be terrific to have an article from Sen. McCain that mirrors Sen. Obama’s piece. To that end, the article would have to articulate, in concrete terms how Sen. McCain defines victory in Iraq. It would also have to lay out a clear plan for achieving victory — with troop levels, timetables and measures for compelling the Iraqis to cooperate.”

The McCain campaign has refused to rewrite the piece, saying that the Times’ suggestions are tantamount to insisting that he change his position in order to get his opinions published.

“John McCain believes that victory in Iraq must be based on conditions on the ground, not arbitrary timetables. Unlike Barack Obama, that position will not change based on politics or the demands of the New York Times.” said McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds.

The New York Times has not yet responded to requests for comment.

Drudge has published McCain’s piece and I am posting it here:

In January 2007, when General David Petraeus took command in Iraq, he called the situation “hard” but not “hopeless.” Today, 18 months later, violence has fallen by up to 80% to the lowest levels in four years, and Sunni and Shiite terrorists are reeling from a string of defeats. The situation now is full of hope, but considerable hard work remains to consolidate our fragile gains.

Progress has been due primarily to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Senator Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent. “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,” he said on January 10, 2007. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

Now Senator Obama has been forced to acknowledge that “our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence.” But he still denies that any political progress has resulted.

Perhaps he is unaware that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, “Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress.” Even more heartening has been progress that’s not measured by the benchmarks. More than 90,000 Iraqis, many of them Sunnis who once fought against the government, have signed up as Sons of Iraq to fight against the terrorists. Nor do they measure Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s new-found willingness to crack down on Shiite extremists in Basra and Sadr City—actions that have done much to dispel suspicions of sectarianism.

The success of the surge has not changed Senator Obama’s determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale. In a New York Times op-ed and a speech this week, he offered his “plan for Iraq” in advance of his first “fact finding” trip to that country in more than three years. It consisted of the same old proposal to pull all of our troops out within 16 months. In 2007 he wanted to withdraw because he thought the war was lost. If we had taken his advice, it would have been. Now he wants to withdraw because he thinks Iraqis no longer need our assistance.

To make this point, he mangles the evidence. He makes it sound as if Prime Minister Maliki has endorsed the Obama timetable, when all he has said is that he would like a plan for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops at some unspecified point in the future.

Senator Obama is also misleading on the Iraqi military’s readiness. The Iraqi Army will be equipped and trained by the middle of next year, but this does not, as Senator Obama suggests, mean that they will then be ready to secure their country without a good deal of help. The Iraqi Air Force, for one, still lags behind, and no modern army can operate without air cover. The Iraqis are also still learning how to conduct planning, logistics, command and control, communications, and other complicated functions needed to support frontline troops.

No one favors a permanent U.S. presence, as Senator Obama charges. A partial withdrawal has already occurred with the departure of five “surge” brigades, and more withdrawals can take place as the security situation improves. As we draw down in Iraq, we can beef up our presence on other battlefields, such as Afghanistan, without fear of leaving a failed state behind. I have said that I expect to welcome home most of our troops from Iraq by the end of my first term in office, in 2013.

But I have also said that any draw-downs must be based on a realistic assessment of conditions on the ground, not on an artificial timetable crafted for domestic political reasons. This is the crux of my disagreement with Senator Obama.

Senator Obama has said that he would consult our commanders on the ground and Iraqi leaders, but he did no such thing before releasing his “plan for Iraq.” Perhaps that’s because he doesn’t want to hear what they have to say. During the course of eight visits to Iraq, I have heard many times from our troops what Major General Jeffrey Hammond, commander of coalition forces in Baghdad, recently said: that leaving based on a timetable would be “very dangerous.”

The danger is that extremists supported by Al Qaeda and Iran could stage a comeback, as they have in the past when we’ve had too few troops in Iraq. Senator Obama seems to have learned nothing from recent history. I find it ironic that he is emulating the worst mistake of the Bush administration by waving the “Mission Accomplished” banner prematurely.

I am also dismayed that he never talks about winning the war—only of ending it. But if we don’t win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president. Instead I will continue implementing a proven counterinsurgency strategy not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan with the goal of creating stable, secure, self-sustaining democratic allies.

Fairness in the media? When all three major network anchors follow Obama on his foreign campaign trip and treat it as though he were already president? Then McCain can’t even publish his thoughts on the Iraq war? Fairness? What is fairness? Only the media know for sure.

The NYT will not send a representative to the White House Correspondents Dinner this year.

Why is that important you ask? Well, if you are in the mood for a good laugh you will need to read no further than the reason stated for their absence.

“These events can create a false perception that reporters and their sources are pals, and that perception could cloud our credibility,” Spokeswoman Diane McNulty wrote. “It’s not worth it.”

Clouded credibility..maybe that should be their new motto. What a hoot.

HT: American Thinker

I don’t know who Frank Rich hates most in his Sunday editorial in the NYT: Dick Cheney and the mob of neocon dead-enders, crazy Bush or hedging and straddling Hillary Clinton.

These are all adjectives used in his column, most of them in the first paragraph, but of course Hillary’s descriptives come in the middle and at the end as does President Bush’s.

WHEN President Bush started making noises about World War III, he only confirmed what has been a Democratic article of faith all year: Between now and Election Day he and Dick Cheney, cheered on by the mob of neocon dead-enders, are going to bomb Iran.

But what happens if President Bush does not bomb Iran? That is good news for the world, but potentially terrible news for the Democrats. If we do go to war in Iran, the election will indeed be a referendum on the results, which the Republican Party will own no matter whom it nominates for president. But if we don’t, the Democratic standard-bearer will have to take a clear stand on the defining issue of the race. As we saw once again at Tuesday night’s debate, the front-runner, Hillary Clinton, does not have one.

Oh, so the column is about us going or not going to war with Iran. With 14 months to go in the Bush Administration this Neanderthal Man thinks Bush will start a war with Iran and stretch our troops even thinner just so he can hand it off to the next president, who will surely be a Democrat if he does start such war.

And if there is no war with Iran Hillary loses because she has no defining issues of the race. How perceptive he is since her big loss last Tuesday night. Before that she hung the moon and the stars.

If Bush doesn’t start a war with Iran, it will be good news for the world but bad news for the Democrats. Huh?

Have we at last come to the point where we are rooting for a war while at war so the Democratic party can win the White House? Is this the only reason Rich can see for a Democrat to win? Not on the issues dear to most voters’ hearts, but on a war so his favored party can control the White House?

The reason so many Democrats believe war with Iran is inevitable, of course, is that the administration is so flagrantly rerunning the sales campaign that gave us Iraq. The same old scare tactic — a Middle East Hitler plotting a nuclear holocaust — has been recycled with a fresh arsenal of hyped, loosey-goosey intelligence and outright falsehoods that are sometimes regurgitated without corroboration by the press.

Mr. Bush has gone so far as to accuse Iran of shipping arms to its Sunni antagonists in the Taliban, a stretch Newsweek finally slapped down last week.

Anything slapped down by Newsweek or the NYT for that matter is nothing more than a common black fly. The only stretch is them reaching for such fly with the fly-swatter. In other words, if you believe Newsweek and the NYT you are pretty gullible, as they report from their comfy offices in downtown Manhattan. You know the place. It’s where the planes crashed on 9/11 or am I living in a parallel universe with Rich and pals?

And he even states if such a war happens Hillary, the presumed nominee, couldn’t handle it.

In 2007, Kyl-Lieberman passed by 76 to 22. No sooner did Mrs. Clinton cast her vote than she started taking heat in Iowa. Her response was to blur her stand. She abruptly signed on as the sole co- sponsor of a six-month-old (and languishing) bill introduced by the Virginia Democrat Jim Webb forbidding money for military operations in Iran without Congressional approval.

In Tuesday’s debate Mrs. Clinton tried to play down her vote for Kyl-Lieberman again by incessantly repeating her belief in “vigorous diplomacy” as well as the same sound bite she used after her Iraq vote five years ago. “I am not in favor of this rush for war,” she said, “but I’m also not in favor of doing nothing.”

There is one descriptive word I can use for this editorial: BALDERDASH!

If there’s a war with Iran during this president’s term it will be initiated by Iran and not Bush. In the meantime, crazy Bush (who doesn’t live in the real world according to Neanderthal Man) is positioning our troops in case of an attack by Iran—not to attack Iran in his last 14 months as president.

The NYT confirms what many of us already know.

Matt Drudge has the potential to be a driving force in the 2008 Presidential campaign.

Aides in both parties acknowledge working harder than ever to get favorable coverage for their candidates — or unfavorable coverage of competitors — onto the Drudge Report’s home page, knowing that television producers, radio talk show hosts and newspaper reporters view it as a bulletin board for the latest news and gossip.

Because of the sheer number of people who look at it and because of the attention it gets from the media, what appears on Drudge can, for a few minutes or an entire day, drive what appears elsewhere, making it, “a force in the political news cycle for both the press and the campaigns,” said David Chalian, the political director at ABC News.

Nielsen/NetRatings has clocked three million unique visitors to the site over the course of a month, and the Drudge Report said its users clicked onto the site a combined 16 million times in the course of a single day last week. The site’s influence, which is not limited to politics, has survived the proliferation of blogs offering all manner of news, analysis and gossip, as well as the advent of one-stop shopping political sites like Politico, which has a big staff of established political reporters.

What sets Drudge apart as much as anything is its ability to attract well-placed leaks and traffic in the freshest and rawest material — though sometimes including what some have considered smears.

Most of us are no doubt included in those huge numbers of hits which Drudge receives daily. He has become a valuable tool in many instances for those who are “news junkies.” Has he been incorrect in his “reporting” from time to time, sure, but show me any newspaper, news program or radio commentator who has not. I doubt anyone can find one.

Morgan Stanley, the second-largest shareholder in the New York Times has sold its 7% interest in the company.

Hassan Elmasry, managing director of Morgan Stanley Investment Management, unsuccessfully challenged the Sulzberger family’s control of New York Times Co. through super-voting stock that gives them a board majority. Shareholders owning 42 percent of the company, parent of the namesake newspaper and Boston Globe, withheld support for directors at the publisher’s April annual meeting.

“This guy has been speaking for a lot of people who are too discreet to speak up and challenge management,” said Porter Bibb, a managing partner at Mediatech Capital Partners LLC in New York and a former New York Times Co. executive.

New York Times shares slid 43 cents, or 2.3 percent, to $18.48 at 4:04 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading, the lowest since January 1997. The stock has declined 24 percent this year.

I wonder how much money the Sulzberger and Ochs families lost on this deal today. And their fortunes may be slipping further:

If Elmasry has sold the stock, “it’s almost a dead certainty there would be a bailout of other institutional holders,” Bibb said in an interview. “If that happens and there is a sharp drop in the share price, the Sulzbergers have to sit down and decide whether now is not a good time to take the company private.”

T. Rowe Price Group Inc., New York Times’ largest shareholder with a 14 percent stake, had no immediate comment, said spokesman Steve Norwitz. Morgan Stanley held 10.5 million New York Times shares, or a 7.3 percent stake, as of June 30, making the company the second-largest institutional investor.

If the NYT wishes to stack the board of directors so none of the shareholders actually have a say in how the company is run (and rumor has it it’s not run very well under Pinch Sulzberger) then perhaps the best thing is for them to go private.

They are about to get some expected stiff competition from Rupert Murdoch once he closes the deal on the Wall Street Journal.

If that happens it will be nice to see more than just the liberal voice in our newspapers but a little bit of something conservative or at least balanced.

I admit to eagerly awaiting this day so I could read Maureen Dowd and Thomas Friedman of the New York Times for free.

Now my curiosity is satisfied that their knives are still out for President Bush from everything pertaining to Ahmadinejad’s appearance at Columbia to Wal-Mart cutting green house gasses all caused by President Bush in a negative way.

Don’t ask me how they got from point A to point Z because it seemed just a mixture of opinion with GWB thrown in as the bad guy.

One of these days they’ll be longing for the good old days of GWB.

No more need for me to read them again. Ever.

Clark Hoyt, the public editor of the New York Times has an article in today’s edition that states the MoveOn.org ad violated the advertising terms of the Times.

But I think the ad violated The Times’s own written standards, and the paper now says that the advertiser got a price break it was not entitled to….

…The ad infuriated conservatives, dismayed many Democrats and ignited charges that the liberal Times aided its friends at MoveOn.org with a steep discount in the price paid to publish its message, which might amount to an illegal contribution to a political action committee. In more than 4,000 e-mail messages, people around the country raged at The Times with words like “despicable,” “disgrace” and “treason.”

President George W. Bush called the ad “disgusting.” The Senate, controlled by Democrats, voted overwhelmingly to condemn the ad….

… FreedomsWatch.org, a group recently formed to support the war, asked me to investigate because it said it wasn’t offered the same terms for a response ad that MoveOn.org got.

Did MoveOn.org get favored treatment from The Times? And was the ad outside the bounds of acceptable political discourse?

The answer to the first question is that MoveOn.org paid what is known in the newspaper industry as a standby rate of $64,575 that it should not have received under Times policies. The group should have paid $142,083. The Times had maintained for a week that the standby rate was appropriate, but a company spokeswoman told me late Thursday afternoon that an advertising sales representative made a mistake.

The answer to the second question is that the ad appears to fly in the face of an internal advertising acceptability manual that says, “We do not accept opinion advertisements that are attacks of a personal nature.” Steph Jespersen, the executive who approved the ad, said that, while it was “rough,” he regarded it as a comment on a public official’s management of his office and therefore acceptable speech for The Times to print.

By the end of last week the ad appeared to have backfired on both MoveOn.org and fellow opponents of the war in Iraq — and on The Times….

…How did this happen?

Eli Pariser, the executive director of MoveOn.org, told me that his group called The Times on the Friday before Petraeus’s appearance on Capitol Hill and asked for a rush ad in Monday’s paper. He said The Times called back and “told us there was room Monday, and it would cost $65,000.” Pariser said there was no discussion about a standby rate. “We paid this rate before, so we recognized it,” he said. Advertisers who get standby rates aren’t guaranteed what day their ad will appear, only that it will be in the paper within seven days.

Catherine Mathis, vice president of corporate communications for The Times, said, “We made a mistake.” She said the advertising representative failed to make it clear that for that rate The Times could not guarantee the Monday placement but left MoveOn.org with the understanding that the ad would run then. She added, “That was contrary to our policies.”…

…For me, two values collided here: the right of free speech — even if it’s abusive speech — and a strong personal revulsion toward the name-calling and personal attacks that now pass for political dialogue, obscuring rather than illuminating important policy issues. For The Times, there is another value: the protection of its brand as a newspaper that sets a high standard for civility. Were I in Jespersen’s shoes, I’d have demanded changes to eliminate “Betray Us,” a particularly low blow when aimed at a soldier.

Who am I to argue with him on this topic, but what do you want to bet it happens again in the future?

The New York Times has decided to abandon its TimesSelect paid service.

Now we can all read MoDo, Friedman and all the rest of the extreme left-wing media employed by the NYT of charge.

The New York Times will stop charging for access to parts of its Web site, effective at midnight tonight.

The move comes two years to the day after The Times began the subscription program, TimesSelect, which has charged $49.95 a year, or $7.95 a month, for online access to the work of its columnists and to the newspaper’s archives. TimesSelect has been free to print subscribers to The Times and to some students and educators.

In addition to opening the entire site to all readers, The Times will also make available its archives from 1987 to the present without charge, as well as those from 1851 to 1922, which are in the public domain. There will be charges for some material from the period 1923 to 1986, and some will be free.

The Times said the project had met expectations, drawing 227,000 paying subscribers — out of 787,000 over all — and generating about $10 million a year in revenue.

“But our projections for growth on that paid subscriber base were low, compared to the growth of online advertising,” said Vivian L. Schiller, senior vice president and general manager of the site, NYTimes.com.

I used to always get a sleazy feeling after reading MoDo and was happy to not see her in print. I think I’ve broken the MoDo habit for good.

While MoDo made me angry Friedman just made me sleepy.

If they paid me to read the newspaper on a regular basis I would say the price is still too high.

Rudy Giuliani is calling the New York Times’ bluff when they say they don’t consider the political message or affiliation when they discount ads.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) said Thursday that he is asking The New York Times for the “same heavily discounted rate they gave MoveOn.org” for his campaign to run an ad in Friday’s paper.

Giuliani, calling MoveOn.org’s controversial “General Betray Us” ad “abominable,” said his campaign is asking the paper for a comparable rate for an ad to run following President Bush’s speech on Iraq.

The former mayor said his ad “will obviously take the opposite view” from MoveOn.org, which argued in its ad that Gen. David Petraeus is “cooking the books” on Iraq and cherry-picking facts that support his recommendation to keep a large number of troops in Iraq for some time. …

…“It’s time for Americans to really insist that American politicians move beyond character assassination,” Giuliani said. “And this is exactly what they tried to do with Gen. Petraeus. Well, it’s one thing when politicians do it to each other. It’s another thing when it’s done to an American general who has put his life at risk to protect us.”

Let’s see if he gets the same discount Moveon.org got when they tried to ruin the reputation of a General who has more integrity in his small fingernail than Moveon.org has in its entire membership.

The New York Times ran a sleazy ad just before Gen. Petraeus testified to Congress, calling him General Betray Us. Cute huh?

Well, it seems the New York Times was feeling extra generous that day:

WASHINGTON - The New York Times dramatically slashed its normal rates for a full-page advertisement for MoveOn.org’s ad questioning the integrity of Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq.

Headlined “Cooking the Books for the White House,” the ad which ran in Monday’s Times says Petraeus is “a military man constantly at war with the facts” and concluded - even before he testified before Congress - that “General Petraeus is likely to become General Betray Us.”

According to Abbe Serphos, director of public relations for the Times, “the open rate for an ad of that size and type is $181,692.”

A spokesman for MoveOn.org confirmed to The Post that the liberal activist group had paid only $65,000 for the ad - a reduction of more than $116,000 from the stated rate.

A Post reporter who called the Times advertising department yesterday without identifying himself was quoted a price of $167,000 for a full-page black-and-white ad on a Monday.

Serphos declined to confirm the price and refused to offer any inkling for why the paper would give MoveOn.org such a discounted price.

Citing the shared liberal bent of the group and the Times, one Republican aide on Capitol Hill speculated that it was the “family discount.”

Is there any doubt as to the liberal bias of the New York Times now? Not that there was for many of us before.

Hat Tip: Sister Toldjah.

If you haven’t heard about or read the ad go here.

Steven D. Levitt, who writes an opinion column for The New York Times called “Freakonomics” has written a column asking if you were a terrorist how would you attack.

My general view of the world is that simpler is better. My guess is that this thinking applies to terrorism as well. In that spirit, the best terrorist plan I have heard is one that my father thought up after the D.C. snipers created havoc in 2002. The basic idea is to arm 20 terrorists with rifles and cars, and arrange to have them begin shooting randomly at pre-set times all across the country. Big cities, little cities, suburbs, etc. Have them move around a lot. No one will know when and where the next attack will be. The chaos would be unbelievable, especially considering how few resources it would require of the terrorists. It would also be extremely hard to catch these guys. The damage wouldn’t be as extreme as detonating a nuclear bomb in New York City, of course; but it sure would be a lot easier to obtain a handful of guns than a nuclear weapon.
I’m sure many readers have far better ideas. I would love to hear them. Consider that posting them could be a form of public service: I presume that a lot more folks who oppose and fight terror read this blog than actual terrorists. So by getting these ideas out in the open, it gives terror fighters a chance to consider and plan for these scenarios before they occur.

Yeah, we all know the terrorists don’t read the NYT as it only discloses security leaks every chance it gets.

What an idiot!

Unconfirmed and may not be true, but the New York Post is reporting the New York Times is going to do away with its Times Select subscription service.

Oh, goody, now I can read Maureen Dowd again.

August 7, 2007 — The New York Times is poised to stop charging readers for online access to its Op-Ed columnists and other content, The Post has learned.

After much internal debate, Times executives - including publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. - made the decision to end the subscription-only TimesSelect service but have yet to make an official announcement, according to a source briefed on the matter.

The timing of when TimesSelect will shut down hinges on resolving software issues associated with making the switch to a free service, the source said.

Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis would only say in an e-mailed statement, “We continue to evaluate the best approach for NYTimes.com.”

It’s no secret among people who have been following Rupert Murdoch’s bid to purchase Dow Jones which owns The Wall Street Journal that the New York Times has been against the deal and has lost in its effort to stop it.

It’s also no secret among people who are honest with themselves that the New York Times is no lover of the GOP or of Rudy Giuliani.

Therefore, it comes as no surprise to me that, absent the headline on the bridge collapse in Minneapolis, the New York Times would have had its page one headline today be what has been pushed down on the page a bit: “In Fox News, Giuliani Finds a Friendly Stage”.

So WHAT? Is it a crime for someone to appear on a news channel more than someone else? (more…)

It’s time to call a spade a spade in a headline and I’m doing it the best way I can.

I’m going to give you a partial quote from this article, which I haven’t read yet and probably will not:

While Washington is mired in political debate over the future of Iraq, the American command here has prepared a detailed plan that foresees a significant American role for the next two years.

The classified plan, which represents the coordinated strategy of the top American commander and the American ambassador,

Classified plan. How stupid is the Times to not realize a classified plan is not for public consumption? How traitorous is it for the unnamed sources to leak this information to that rag of a paper?

When is the justice department going to investigate who made the leak, find two witnesses (the writer of the Times and the editor should be two) and prosecute the leaker for treason? Since everyone is reading the Times article, finding two witnesses to that shouldn’t be a problem and they should be brought up on treason charges too.

Sure, all the liberals and all the newspapers will cry foul, but when our national secrets are at stake let them cry all they want. The truth of the matter is they have broken laws and betrayed the secrets of the United States so they can sell newspapers and some scumbag is feeding them the information.

A couple of sentences for treason might stop this from happening.