Today, New York Post reporters delivered a bombshell story addressing why New York City's snow cleanup performance has been so poor:

Sanitation Department's slow snow cleanup was a budget protest

 

Selfish Sanitation Department bosses from the snow-slammed outer boroughs ordered their drivers to snarl the blizzard cleanup to protest budget cuts — a disastrous move that turned streets into a minefield for emergency-services vehicles, The Post has learned.

 

Miles of roads stretching from as north as Whitestone, Queens, to the south shore of Staten Island still remained treacherously unplowed last night because of the shameless job action, several sources and a city lawmaker said, which was over a raft of demotions, attrition and budget cuts.

In response to this outrage, the New York Times has swung into frantic action — by scolding Gotham residents for expecting perfection, portraying the mayor as getting a handle on things, and criticizing private snow removal contractors who didn't drop everything when a late-to-the-problem city called them for help. Meanwhile the Times will only acknowledge that the city will "look into" the slowdown allegations.

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 While it is unusual for the mainstream media to give attention to armed citizens who use guns to defend themselves against criminals before police can arrive, on Thursday’s CBS Evening News, anchor Harry Smith highlighted a smoke shop owner in Texas who fought back when he was the victim of two armed robbers, as he shot and apparently wounded one of them.

Smith related to viewers:

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Newsweek's year-end Interview Issue included a brief interview with Lori Berenson — but never provided the reader any context besides the title "Freed Peruvian Prisoner." That might give the wrong impression: Berenson is an American communist who traveled to Peru and allied herself with the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), and rented a house in Lima they could use as a headquarters and used press credentials as a cover to scrutinize the halls of Congress and facilitate an eventual attack to hold the entire Peruvian congress hostage. She was imprisoned in 1995 and released in May. None of this context was included for the reader:

What’s it like being labeled a terrorist?

I don’t consider myself a terrorist. I think saying someone is a criminal is enough. It’s not helpful to look for ways of qualifying our enemies in drastic terms instead of trying to figure out exactly what we’re faced with.

What’s your take—are the things you did good or bad?

There are things I could have done differently, but that’s part of my history, and I have to assume the consequences. I don’t regret what I’ve done, because I don’t think my intentions were bad. My intentions were positive, whatever that’s worth.

Do Peruvians have the wrong impression of you?

Oh, I think most of them don’t know me at all, because they think I’m associated with bombs and horrendous attacks. I’ve never killed anyone, never harmed anyone, never done anything to cause physical damage to anyone. And I’m sorry that I am seen as a person who would do that.

What will you tell your son about your past?

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Someone finally — finally! — has drawn the obvious correlation between NFL quarterback Michael Vick's killing of animals in an illegal dog-fighting ring and the monstrous injustices committed against blacks during slavery and the civil rights movement.

What's hardly surprising is who's making the connection — Princeton professor Melissa Harris-Perry, MSNBC's go-to gal for all things racial, appearing last night on "The Rachel Maddow Show" with guest host Bill Wolff to discuss President Obama praising the Philadelphia Eagles for giving Vick a second chance after serving time in prison and Tucker Carlson saying on Fox News that Vick should have been executed.

Harris-Perry, as is her wont, sought to put matters in historical perspective (video after page break) –

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 Appearing as a guest in a pre-recorded interview on Wednesday’s Parker-Spitzer on CNN to promote his film The Social Network, television and film producer Aaron Sorkin trashed Sarah Palin as an "idiot" and a "mean woman." Sorkin: "Sarah Palin's an idiot. Come on, this is a remarkably, this is a remarkably, stunningly, jaw-droppingly incompetent and mean woman."

After the former producer of the television series The West Wing complained that the religious right had attacked the show as "anti-God," he also went after the GOP as the segment neared its end. Sorkin: "But the Democrats may have moved into the center, but the Republicans have moved into a mental institution. Okay? So I'll take the Democrats."

As co-host Eliot Spitzer started the interview by asking Sorkin about his views about the Obama administration, the liberal producer seemed to admit to having gotten a "goose bump experience" from President Obama in the past as he evaluated Obama’s current performance: "I think what a lot of people feel like they're missing is the goose bump experience that he gave us during the campaign."

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In her @katiecouric Web show analyzing the trends of 2010, the CBS Evening News anchor made a serious speech (in her serious, deep-thinker glasses) against the deep "seething hatred" against Muslims in America:

I also think sort of the chasm, between, or the bigotry expressed against Muslims in this country has been one of the most disturbing stories to surface this year. Of course, a lot of noise was made about the Islamic Center, mosque, down near the World Trade Center, but I think there wasn't enough sort of careful analysis and evaluation of where this bigotry toward 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide, and how this seething hatred many people feel for all Muslims, which I think is so misdirected, and so wrong — and so disappointing.

She really winced on that last word. When comedian Mo Rocca said he went to "really fancy schools" and "I cannot tell you five things about Islam," Couric shot back "Maybe we need a Muslim version of The Cosby Show." She continued:

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Today's starter topic: Sanitation workers in New York City deliberately slowed down snow removal operations  there in protest of cuts made to their budgets:

Miles of roads stretching from as north as Whitestone, Queens, to the south shore of Staten Island still remained treacherously unplowed last night because of the shameless job action, several sources and a city lawmaker said, which was over a raft of demotions, attrition and budget cuts.

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No matter how long I analyze liberal media thinking, it never ceases to amaze me.

Consider if you will the following paragraph from E.J. Dionne's column in Thursday's Washington Post:

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The Washington Post's Ezra Klein appeared on MSNBC's Daily Rundown, Thursday, to mock the incoming Republicans for their stated fixation on the Constitution, asserting that the document is rather old and "confusing." MSNBC's Norah O'Donnell dismissed the GOP effort as "lip service" and wondered if it was a "gimmick."

After playing clips of Republicans claiming they would reject legislation that couldn't be justified constitutionally, Klein complained, "The issue of the Constitution is that the text is confusing because it was written more than 100 years ago and what people believe it says differs from person to person and differs depending on what they want to get done."

(It was actually written 223 years ago, which is a slightly "more than 100.") Klein didn't expound on which parts "confuse" him the most.

[MP3 audio here. See video below.]

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President Obama made a set of recess appointments to get around Senate confirmation yesterday, including a new ambassador to Syria, reversing the Bush administration's decision to withdraw an ambassador after the assassination of Lebanese president Rafik Hariri. Obama also went around the Senate to give Attorney General Eric Holder a deputy, a number-two named James Cole. Who is James Cole? The networks never reported on Cole's nomination in 2010 — this Justice Department isn't the least bit newsworthy, compared to the complete pounding the networks gave Alberto Gonzales and John Ashcroft in the Bush years.On Fox, Sean Hannity warned about his views back on June 16:

All right, this president sure knows how to pick them. The Anointed One's nominee to be the number two at the Department of Justice thinks that 9/11 is similar to any other domestic crime. In a 2002 article James Cole wrote, quote, "Our country has faced many forms of devastating crime including countless acts of rape, child abuse and murder. The acts of September 11th were horrible, but so are these other things."

I can hardly wait for this guy to get to the Department of Justice.

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