‘Heritage’ Flap: Did Al Hunt Just Question IQ Of Non-Asian Immigrants?
Al Hunt prefaced his remark by describing the issue of ethnicity and IQ as a "swamp". But did he then proceed to wade right into it?
Morning Joe today took up the topic of the flap over a report on immigration produced by the Heritage Foundation. The panel's particular focus was a statement by report co-author Jason Richwine contained in his Harvard dissertation that "the average IQ of immigrants is substantially lower than that of native whites." Rather than rejecting the notion out of hand, Bloomberg's Hunt asked "is that true of Asian immigrants? Is that true of all immigrants?" Ruh-roh! Did Al just suggest Richwine might have been on to something regarding the IQ of non-Asian immigrants? View the video after the jump.
Ever So ‘Helpful’ AP Tells Readers That ‘Right to Work’ Name ‘Is Misleading’
Demonstrating his and his employer's pro-union bias, Jeff Karoub at the Associated Press, in compiling a list of "5 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT MICH. RIGHT-TO-WORK BILLS," made "The Name Is Misleading" his first item.
As an AP journalist, Karoub is likely a member of the Occupy Movement-supporting News Media Guild. Earlier this year, his employer's recently departed chairman, acting in an official capacity representing his supposedly objective, values-driven organization, praised President Obama in terms so effusive that Charles Hurt at the Washington Times wrote that it was "more like he proposed to him." In his five-item listing, the third of which has an inchoherent title, Karoub seemed to jump right in where Obama left off in a Monday Michigan speech (bolds and numbers in headings are mine):
AP on Friday: Mich. Right to Work Law an Exercise in ‘Raw Power,’ With No ‘Political Niceties’
There will be plenty of time later to look at how the Associated Press and other wires more than likely fail to report the violence that took place in connection with right-to-work legislative actions in Michigan's legislature today. For now, let's look at the reactions of Associated Press reporters John Flesher and Jeff Karoub on Friday in an item which is no longer at the AP's main national site.
Their dispatch's headline ("Michigan Republicans end part of union tradition") was from all appearances an attempt to make it seem uninteresting. The story itself didn't describe the law involved as "right to work" until its fourth paragraph. Both before and after that, the pair, who are more than likely members of the Occupy Movement-supporting News Media Guild, got bitter (bolds are mine throughout this post):
Politico Disparages Heritage as ‘Uninspiring’ & Discredits DeMint as a ‘Fighter, Not a Thinker’
Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) announced Thursday that he will be trading his Senate seat in January to assume the helm of the Heritage Foundation. Covering the surprising development in its Friday edition, Politico dismissed DeMint as a mediocre politician with an undistinguished record who is moving on to captain a conservative think tank that has become "predictable, uninspiring, and often lacking in influence."
Manu Raju and Scott Wong mocked DeMint's lack of credentials in their front-page story titled, "DeMint Departure Fallout." They described him as a popular senator who has actually "accomplished very little" in Congress because he "wasn't a legislator" and having "no signature laws to his name." Of course, this betrays an inside-the-Beltway way of thinking about success in Congress. Conservatives dedicated to shrinking the size and scope of the federal government are not going to be be known for legislative accomplishments, which more often than not are about expanding the federal government's size and scope, not dismantling old bureaucracies.
AP Pair Lets Obama ‘Distance Himself’ From Soptic Ad, Despite Known Contrary Evidence
Yesterday, James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web had this to say about the title of an Associated Press report ("Obama Defends Tenor of His Campaign, Slams Romney") covering President Obama's four-question "press conference" -- "The writer of this Associated Press headline is either witty or clueless."
The underlying writeup by Jim Kuhnhenn and Charles Babington wasn't witty, and was at least as clueless, especially in letting the howler about how Obama was supposedly able to "distance himself" from the "Mitt Romney caused my wife to die of cancer" meme his own campaign associated itself with earlier this year (verbiage relating to the Todd Akin situation in Missouri is also in the report; I'll defer to others in that matter; bolds and numbered tags are mine):
Why Did AP Do a 1,500-Word Expected Poverty Rate Writeup Months Before Census Bureau’s Report?
In September 2010, the Associated Press prepared an advance report on the expected surge in the Census Bureau's official poverty rate, which rose from 13.2% to a 15-year high of 14.3%. Their stated preoccupation was not with the associated pain, but with "the unfortunate timing for Obama and his party just seven weeks before important elections when Congress is at stake."
Well, this year's official poverty rate will very likely be the highest seen since the mid-1960s, and there's a presidential election coming up. What's the AP, aka the Administration's Press, to do? It looks like the strategy is to get a comprehensive report out on how bad things are in July when few are paying attention, and then to give the official report short shrift when it arrives in mid-September. Here are excerpts from Hope Yen's nearly 1,500-word writeup:
AP Calls HHS’s Gutting of Welfare Reform a ‘Proposal’
On July 12, the Department of Health and Human Services' Administration for Children & Families, the group which administers the entitlement program known to most as "welfare" or "traditional welfare, issued an "Information Memorandum" entitled "Guidance concerning waiver and expenditure authority under Section 1115" (i.e., not "proposed guidance"). After navigating the thicket of bureaucratic babble contained therein, Robert Rector and Kiki Bradley at the Heritage Foundation asserted, with agreement from several other quarters and no meaningful dissent I have detected, that the memo's effect "is the end of welfare reform."
The next day at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, the headline at Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar's related story was: "Administration proposes welfare-to-work waivers."
Ex-Democrat Artur Davis Defends GOP on Fast & Furious Probe, Voter ID
Yesterday former Rep. Artur Davis -- who served in Congress as a Democrat but recently became a Republican out of frustration with the Obama administration -- was a featured guest of the Heritage Foundation's weekly blogger briefing.
Davis briefly discussed the similarities between the upcoming election and the election of 1980. He claimed that Ronald Reagan had to make the American people realize that what the Carter administration was doing was ruining the economy and that Mitt Romney will have to make a similar case regarding President Obama.
Following his remarks, Davis conducted a roughly 10-minute Q&A session. Below are some of his answers on topics ranging from the Fast & Furious scandal to spurious charges by liberal Democrats that requiring photo ID to vote is racist:
- Fast and Furious is something I have a very hard time understanding because I was a junior federal prosecutor in Montgomery, Alabama… We always had a basic principle…don’t let guns and drugs walk… I think the Republicans on the Hill are absolutely right to try to get to the bottom of it.
- This [the Heritage Foundation headquarters] is the only building I’ve been in, in Washington that didn’t ask me for an ID… I’m for photo ID for a very simple reason I think it’s just good common sense… We’re accustomed to presenting ID, I don’t think it bothers anybody, I don’t think it disfranchises anybody I just think its common sense.
- If you’re in the Democratic Party, if you don’t think the same on about five or six or seven issues as the mainstream of your party, you are as much out-to-lunch as any moderate Republican would be and many people can testify to that.