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CONTRA COSTA TIMES WATCH IS BACK - AND WE'RE PISSED!

Hot Lanes To Hell - A CC Times Vote For Gestapo Traffic Restrictions?

July 24, 2008 - San Francisco, CA - CC Times Watch - In an above the fold, front page story, "HOT lanes expected to curb traffic" published on the 23rd, CC Times reporter Denis Cuff [an affable guy, as many local reporters are] writes rhapsodically about a proposed 800 mile network of toll roads, designed to force consumers into car pooling.

The plan is simple, and insidious.

Either jump into a car full of strangers or pay the price monetarily - 20 to 60 cents per mile [at first of course] for the privilege of using the roads your taxes have ALREADY paid for.

Quoting various spokespeople from Bay Area governmental traffic agencies - yeah the imbeciles who have brought you crappy, crowded pockmarked freeways and dumbass HOV lanes which further congest traffic because no one uses them, among other things - Mr. Cuff's piece paints a rosy picture of this being the future of transportation in the East Bay.

The article reads as a press release from the agencies involved, no dissenting views, no realization that freedom of mobility is elemental in this society and that expanding it rather than contracting and restricting it seems far more in keeping with our founding principles.

There are many subtexts here, among them:

1. Why are these types of governmental plans, which are obviously calculated to hamper freedom accepted so often by local media as being desirable?

2. Why are such far reaching decisions being made by faceless bureaucrats who are completely insulated from the repercussion of their actions, beyond the recall of citizens?

3. Where is the equity in citizens being charged to use roads for which they have already paid?

Our feeling about these related issues is that media types come out of the same mold - trust me we have talked to hundreds of these people over the years, from the New York Times to small podunk enterprises with mini circulations - and generally they believe that government is the solution to most problems. Given that attitude, restricting traffic is just another tool along with restricting urban growth, green zones, mitigation with private land holders to allow them to partially develop their property and a thousand other methods of turning communities of free citizens into ant farms.

There, we said it - ANT FARMS.

That is what your government has in store for you if you don't take action, if you don't stop the green nazis from incrementally restricting your freedoms [choose the area, remember that a few weeks ago nearly half the Supreme Court voted to deny that the Second Amendment even exists] until one day, you or most likely your children will live in a gray world which will make Orwell's 1984 seem like a Jamaican holiday.

Seriously...what is needed here? [The list is waaay too long, but here are a few observations]

Who the hell edits the CC Times? [Yes we know whose names are associated with those titles] do they confer with their writers at all or are they simply cut out of the same mold and serve mainly as human spell checkers rather than actively trying to produce a balanced perspective which might step on the toes of schmoes like the Metro Transportation Commission?

FACT: Publications like the CC Times are merely news aggregators, with the exception of their local stories, the quality of which has just been demonstrated, they are amalgams of similarly motivated op-ed pieces disguised as reportage from the big boys of the industry [NYT, Washpost, the LA Times and AP].

As a start it might be nice to at least admit that there is a problem in balance and then devise a method of dealing with it long term. Perhaps hiring a non-liberal [GASP]to help the editing process might help? Hell just having a conservative as a copy editor would spare us the glaringly ridiculous headlines which add nothing to the story and often present a skewed summation of what the piece is actually is about.

The next suggestion might be to inject a degree of openness into the newsroom and the editorial process. How about some public meeting where key newspaper employees actually meet with the public? These same folks DEMAND openness and sunshine laws in government, why not in their own professions? [yeah we know the answer to this and it will NEVER happen]

Ok this segment is getting long, don't want to tap out the bile, stay tuned, we are just warming up...

CONTRA COSTA TIMES WATCH IS BACK...AND WE'RE PISSED!

You Have Seen This, Right? - Obama VP Finalist - Little Johny Edwards - Busted In LA With Mistress And Love Child

July 22, 2008 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - John Edwards, former Democrat presidential candidate and currently on Obama's "short list" for VP was this morning busted by the National Enquirer in the Beverly Hilton hotel with his mistress Rielle Hunter,and their love child.

Confronted by the Enquirer's phalanx of reporters and photographers Edward's reportedly ran and hid in a bathroom for 15 minutes before being escorted past the reporters by hotel security personnel.

What does this mean aside from another Democrat being outed as a seamy, lying scumbag?

Consider this the Clinton's first salvo in the destruction of Obama a massive shot across the bow, stealing the spotlight from the freshman Senator as he prances across the Mideast and Europe as he sows whatever it is that he sows.

It may be news to some, but of course not to us, that the Clinton's have controlled both the National Enquirer and Star Magazine since 1999, when their former Treasury Secty, Roger C. Altman - through his company Evercore Capital Partners LLC - bought both tabloids for $294 million, acquiring them from American Media Inc. [source, New York Times, Investment Group Buys The National Enquirer and Star Magazine, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9804E3D8113AF934A25751C0A96F958260]

Obama, be afraid, be VERY afraid....

---

Ok, Edwards is a Democrat and a scumbag...surprising huh? So what's the CC Times angle on this?

Well it's more a media angle in general than one that applies solely to this flea-bitten news aggregator masquerading as a newspaper.

Does anyone really believe that if this story featured a conservative GOP type rather than a flaming leftie ambulance chasing lawyer with a bad hairdo that it wouldn't have been plastered everywhere the fossil media treads?

Just on a lark we did a Google News search for Edwards a few hours ago and guess what?

Not a single substantive story ANYWHERE in the MSM. Right no newspaper, no networks, no cable outlets.

None.

Is this surprising?

Again, no.

Final comment:

Some have said that those on the extreme left are certifiable victims of mental illness and we believe it.

To these folks leftism is their secular religion and under no circumstances will they reject it. This was really driven home earlier today when the NY Times released its second quarter profit figures which were down a whopping 82%.

Now the mavens who run the Times must know why this is happening, they must realize that when they play this fast and loose with the truth that even casual observers take notice. So either they are insane OR they are addicts, they will cling to a failed business model of skewed news reportage to the point that their companies will go into the toilet, rather than deviate.

We callED all the sage heads at the CCTimes this afternoon, the Publisher, Editor and both Associate Editors asking for an explanation of why the Edwards story is of no concern to them. We aren't holding our breath on a reply.

You would think that given the fact that even MSM stalwarts like Andrea Mitchell [whom the left wants to eviscerate now because of her observations regarding media bias] are noting the bizarre spectacle in which nearly every American anchor is pursuing Obama in the Mideast and Europe as if he is the Second Coming that some of these clowns would at least pay lip service to the proposition that they should at least feign a modicum of fairness...but

Truly disgusting

Stay tuned, we are just warming up...

CONTRA COSTA TIMES WATCH IS BACK - AND WE'RE PISSED!

Phony Case Against Haditha Marines In Shambles, Charges Against Lt. Col Jeffrey Chessani Dropped

June 17, 2008 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - The concocted, politically driven case against 8 U.S. Marines charged with atrocities as a result of a November 2005 fire fight in Haditha, Iraq, suffered what is most likely a mortal blow today when charges against Lt. Col Jeffrey Chessani were dropped by Judge Colonel Steven Folsom because the case had been compromised by the appearance of improper influence.

With charges now dropped against 7 of the 8 defendants, the status of the charges against the last of the charged, Sgt. Frank Wuterich seem to rest on extremely shaky turf, though that case is still scheduled to proceed as of this writing.

A political case from the outset, defense attorneys for the defendants have alleged that prosecutor General James Mattis was acting at the behest of anti-war politicians such as bin-Laden stooge John Murtha [D-PA] who at one point made public accusations that the Marines were guilty of cold-blooded murder, absent fact in a blatant attempt to influence the trial.

"It's much worse than was reported in Time magazine...There was no firefight...they [the Marines] killed innocent civilians in cold blood...they actually went into the houses and killed women and children." [and later to ABC] "I will not excuse murder and that what's happened."

The way this case was handled and dealt with by Democrat politicians and their 5th column allies, the nancy-boys in the media is seminal to understanding the two main causes of America's cultural identity crisis.

The outrageous behavior that the MSM has displayed throughout this case, the sensationalism and gleeful malice towards 8 Marines and the military in general, the gruesome images and screaming 72 point above the fold headlines is emblematic of just how traitorous these two forces have become.

In a year long media bias study conducted by PipeLineNews and available at Contra Costa Times Watch, we proved the [then Knight Ridder owned]that East San Francisco Bay Area California Newspaper the Contra Costa Times displayed the same virulent facts-be-damned anti-war stance as did the majority of the MSM.

In a June 12, 2006 piece, Don't Expect Fairness In Bay Area News Coverage Of Haditha we wrote:

"As we have demonstrated over a period of nine months [in our side project Contra Costa Times Watch] the San Francisco Bay Area's Contra Costa Times is impossibly biased towards the left [to the extent that it might as well be printed in the basement of Howard Dean's DNC] consistently siding with Democrat and international critics of the administration on both domestic and foreign policy issues including the war on terror and in that matter, diminishing - or more often than not simply not covering - the very real accomplishments being made by coalition forces.

In the case of the Haditha controversy the Times engages in showboat, conjecture-based journalism of the worst kind.

Sunday's edition carries several stories that either directly or indirectly touch on the "massacre" allegedly perpetrated by U.S. Marines in that godforsaken Iraqi town - at times a Taliban like Sunni terrorist stronghold, where videotaped beheadings, limb amputations and sundry mutilations were the order of the day well into 2005.

Anti-American zealots like band-aid warrior John Murtha [D-PA...Pennsylvania folks, not the Palestinian Authority], George Soros' bought and paid for phony "human right's" groups and the leftist media have embraced this story with a glee borne of the realization that, as Greg Mitchell the current editor of E&P Magazine, the bible of the publishing industry states:

"At this critical moment, it's time for newspapers -- many of which helped get us into this war -- to use their editorial pages as platforms to help get us out of it. So far, few have done much more than wring their hands. Now, it's literally do-or-die time."

It is this animus which simply permeates - with very few exceptions - the newspaper publishing industry in the wake of the Judith Miller affair.

Since June 5th the Times has carried at least 14 stories which touch on this issue, none of which present the story from the side of the Marines involved, all are at best critical and at worst examples of a lefty media lynch mob..."

We are looking forward, not with any hope of real change or effort to display fairness, to tomorrow's coverage by the CC Times regarding that matter. For additional information regarding this matter, please refer to Questions Arise About Haditha Doctor - Wahid al-Obeidi - Central Figure In "Massacre" Case and Questions Arise About Time "Massacre" Reporter, The Terror Friendly Aparisim Ghosh

© 1999-2008 PipeLineNews.org LLC, Contra Costa Times Watch. All rights reserved.

CC Times Stoops To New Low - Crocodile Tear Eulogy For Miguel Terrazas


Mr. Lopez have you no shame?

The Monday story on Miguel Terrazas is an affront to journalism - a very bad PR joke - and you should be ashamed for being a party to this false display of patriotism.

The events in Iraq in general and Haditha in particular have been the subject of constant misreporting by your newspaper and because of that we find this article an offensive and transparent effort to create in the minds of your readers a false impression - that you are somehow supportive of our armed forces, something that couldn't be further from the truth.

The position of the Times on the war on terror is indistinguishable from that of the Islamists, an honest newspaper wouldn't hide behind dead Marines who gave their lives so that people like you had the right to use their deaths to paper over the Times' anti-Americanism.

Doggen Hannah's article is a disservice to the memory of these fine young men and a cruel affront to their grieving families, you - Mr. Lopez - should be ashamed for having cooked this up.

Don't Expect Fairness In Bay Area News Coverage Of Haditha

June 12, 2006 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - As we have demonstrated over a period of nine months, the San Francisco Bay Area's Contra Costa Times is impossibly biased towards the left [to the extent that it might as well be printed in the basement of Howard Dean's DNC] consistently siding with Democrat and international critics of the administration on both domestic and foreign policy issues including the war on terror and in that matter, diminishing - or more often than not simply not covering - the very real accomplishments being made by coalition forces.

In the case of the Haditha controversy the Times engages in showboat, conjecture-based journalism of the worst kind.

Sunday's edition carries several stories that either directly or indirectly touch on the "massacre" allegedly perpetrated by U.S. Marines in that godforsaken Iraqi town - at times a Taliban like Sunni terrorist stronghold, where videotaped beheadings, limb amputations and sundry mutilations were the order of the day well into 2005.

Anti-American zealots like band-aid warrior John Murtha [D-PA...Pennsylvania folks, not the Palestinian Authority], George Soros' bought and paid for phony "human right's" groups and the leftist media have embraced this story with a glee borne of the realization that, as Greg Mitchell the current editor of E&P Magazine, the bible of the publishing industry states:

"At this critical moment, it's time for newspapers -- many of which helped get us into this war -- to use their editorial pages as platforms to help get us out of it. So far, few have done much more than wring their hands. Now, it's literally do-or-die time."

It is this animus which simply permeates - with very few exceptions - the newspaper publishing industry in the wake of the Judith Miller affair.

Since June 5th the Times has carried at least 14 stories which touch on this issue, none of which present the story from the side of the Marines involved, all are at best critical and at worst examples of a lefty media lynch mob.

The same newspaper which scrupulously pursues a farcical sense multicultural "fairness" in cases involving sadistic murders, rapes and the like simply can't bring itself - under the much tarnished leadership of Chris Lopez and Dan "Jack Daniels" Hatfield - to grant the very members of the armed forces who are dying to guarantee the Times' First Amendment rights, the presumption of "innocent until proven guilty."

Today's case in point.

The Sunday edition of the Times featured prominent quotes in its Haditha misinformation dump - such as the below lead, above the fold in the "Perspective" section:

"You could tell that someone was killed by the gunfire, and then the wailing and screaming of women seconds after the Americans left the house," a statement attributed to Thaer Hadithi an alleged Iraqi "human rights activist."

For a bit of perspective, much needed to understand the subterfuge in which the Times engages; Thaer Hadithi, more properly Thaer Thabit al-Hadithi is none of the things that Time Magazine described him as when it originally published One Morning in Haditha on March 27.

Time originally claimed that the video tape which started the investigation came from a young journalism student.

"A day after the incident, a Haditha journalism student videotaped the scene at the local morgue and at the homes where the killings had occurred. The video was obtained by the Hammurabi Human Rights Group, which cooperates with the internationally respected Human Rights Watch."

There was no young journalism student and the tape did not sift through George Soros' Human Rights Watch, as suspect as that association might have been.

No, the tape that initiated this latest instance of leftist history reinvention was delivered by the pudgy 43 year old Thaer Hadithi himself, who worked for Dr. Walid al-Obeidi who received and processed those killed in the Haditha firefight.

Hammurabi is a fraudulent organization, comprised of only one other person in addition to Hadithi.

Time magazine has corrected, of course after the fact and with absolutely no fanfare, the facts of the origin of the tape, to a certain extent:

"In the original version of this story, TIME reported that "a day after the incident, a Haditha journalism student videotaped the scene at the local morgue and at the homes where the killings had occurred. The video was obtained by the Hammurabi Human Rights Group, which cooperates with the internationally respected Human Rights Watch, and has been shared with TIME." In fact, Human Rights Watch has no ties or association with the Hammurabi Human Rights Group. TIME regrets the error."

One of our sources, one intimately familiar with Iraqi politics stated to us:

"...no independent organization can operate in Haditha - with ample freedom to film - without being a front. Even in 2003 and early 2004, when the rest of Iraq was calm, Haditha was a no-go area. If an independent Human Rights group tried to operate, they would be greeted with a bullet to the back of the neck. I wouldn’t be surprised if the same cameras which filmed this tape also filmed beheadings of hostages.

The purpose of this piece is not to detail the sham case which the media has made against the actions of U.S. Marines in Haditha and we have made our own contributions to detail the weakness of this case [Questions Arise About Haditha Doctor - Wahid al-Obeidi - Central Figure In "Massacre" Case & Questions Arise About Time "Massacre" Reporter, The Terror Friendly Aparisim Ghosh] however it is necessary to lay some fundamental groundwork establishing the fact that the story is extremely suspect and infused with misstatements, second party innuendo and actors - Islamist and Democrat liars - who have an axe to grind with the U.S. policy in Iraq.

With that as background it only stands to reason that reasonable and fair journalism would dictate telling the story of Haditha from the perspective of those who were actually involved, the Marines.

Such was made available to the Contra Costa Times, for its Sunday edition from at least two major sources; one in the form of a front page lead article from the Washington Post - Marine Says Rules Were Followed - Sergeant Describes Hunt for Insurgents in Haditha, Denies Coverup in which Neal A. Puckett, defense attorney for one of the defendants in the case - Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich - states:

"It will forever be his position that everything they did that day was following their rules of engagement and to protect the lives of Marines," said Neal A. Puckett, who represents Wuterich in the ongoing investigations into the incident. "He's really upset that people believe that he and his Marines are even capable of intentionally killing innocent civilians."

And two, in the form of an AP synopsis of the Washington Post article Lawyer: Marine Denies Haditha Massacre

No one who has the barest inkling of how the newspaper publishing industry operates or how these decisions are made could possibly be unaware of the existence of either of these pieces, the first main stream media expositions of the Haditha story told from the perspective of one of the accused.

Thus, the CC Times has intentionally denied the Marines their day in the court of public opinion. [Late development, both the CC Times' and the Mercury news' websites finally posted the AP version of this story - probably in direct response to complaints - at approximately 2:30 PM Sunday - nearly 24 hours after the story became available at AP. The CC Times posting does not, as of this writing even appear on the website's front page but must be accessed by additional steps finding it then hidden under California news and even then it's the sixth item down under the heading - Dodgers 6, Rockies 5, Firefighters gain ground against Big Bear blaze, King Felix pitches 4-hitter against Angels, Marlins SS hurt during tumble into stands, Zito in control as A's sweep Yankees, News briefs from around California...and finally...Lawyers for Marines say military rules were followed]

As we has stated in the past, the media is skilled in skewing the news and the power to distort, misreport and simply carry fable as fact often pales in comparison to their ability to obfuscate - to refuse to cover stories inconvenient to a news organization's political agenda - such is the case with the Contra Costa Times.

For the record neither the Sunday print versions of the San Francisco Chronicle or the San Jose Mercury News carried the piece either, making the leftist stranglehold on the Bay Area complete.

©1999-2006 PipeLineNews.org/Contra Costa Times Watch, all rights reserved.

Rob Reiner Busted In $23M Conflict Of Interest Scheme - Using Children's Funds To Further His Personal Agenda

March 30, 2006 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - Caught in a $23 million scandal, Hollywood leftist Rob Reiner was forced to resign today from the First 5 California Children and Families Commission which he chaired for seven years.

Reiner a former sit-com actor was responsible for narrowly passing a 1998 California initiative which increased cigarette taxes through which "First 5" was eventually funded.

His resignation stems from the use of those monies to promote a $23 million advertising campaign for early childhood education at a time when Reiner was also seeking to pass a new initiative which would add a 1.7-percentage-point income-tax surcharge on high income Californians to force a - [Democrat fat cat] California Teacher's Association & Union supported - universal pre-school education program on the state.

As the Sacramento Bee's Dan Walters said of Reiner's conflict of interest:

"...Reiner personally sponsored the initiative that raised cigarette taxes to finance children's programs, then began pushing another measure to create a universal program of preschool education in California. The massive propaganda campaign, financed with cigarette tax revenue from the first measure, was launched last year just as Reiner began promoting the new measure that would tax high-income Californians about $2.4 billion a year to underwrite preschool...As more details of the public relations and advertising contracts totaling $230 million seep out, their nexus with the initiative drive becomes increasingly obvious. Polling apparently had found little voter support for ramping up preschool education, so the ads would be aimed at changing voters' minds."

Governor Schwarzenegger, increasingly becoming an embarrassment to the state's GOP - a difficult thing to accomplish - heaped praise on the now disgraced Reiner:

"Because of Rob's efforts, California has become a national leader in providing early childhood health and education services for our youngest children and their families."

The state legislature has asked for a complete audit of expenses associated with Reiner's stewardship - specifically advertising and consulting contracts and California's Attorney General Lockyer has referred the matter to the Sacramento County DA.

©1999-2006 PipeLineNews.org, all rights reserved

Knight Ridder & Contra Costa Times Team Up To Savage Bush Press Conference

March 22, 2006 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - Consigned to page A12 in Knight Ridder's - marked for fire-sale - Contra Costa Times, this tawdry piece - "Bush Won't Pull Troops Out Of Iraq" - is just another indicator of left-wing media arrogance and faux reporting.

The headline is instructive, the handiwork of - hopefully soon to be departing - Contra Costa Times editor Chris Lopez's staff. Note how the headline drips with a sense of media pique at what it must deem the President's outrageous refusal to take the Fourth Estate's advice...to run in the face of Islamist terror.

The piece, nominally authored by William Douglas but bearing the unmistakable mark of the heavy hand of KR's legend in his own mind - Joe Galloway - is long on opinion and conjecture, but almost bereft of an account of what the President actually said, containing only two abbreviated quotes by Mr. Bush in a presentation that lasted nearly an hour and which spanned over 9,500 words.

The majority of the piece is spent in an adversarial refutation of the President's answers, especially regarding his use of the battle for the Iraqi town of Tal Afar as a metaphor for what is going right in Iraq and how policy and a winning strategy is evolving.

In making the case that Tal Afar is not like other Iraqi cities and therefore can't be useful as a template, Knight Ridder falls back on the media's standard operating method of using undisclosed sources - the elocution in this case being "some military experts" - to refute the President's contention.

The piece is a hatchet job from beginning to end and further punctuates why companies like Knight Ridder and the CC Times are failures both as profit making entities and as news organizations.