http://biggovernment.com/awrhawkins/2011/12/22/the-failed-chevy-volt-a-microcosm-of-obamas-failed-presidency/
AWR Hawkins
The Failed Chevy Volt: A Microcosm of Obama’s Failed Presidency
by AWR Hawkins
If we judge Barack Obama by his own promises, we must conclude that he has failed miserably. After all, it was he—not others in his stead—who spent the 2008 campaign promising to “provide care for the sick and good jobs for the jobless,” blah, blah, blah. It was he who used rhetoric so far removed from reality that some people actually thought Obama’s election would mark the end of every conceivable worry a human could possess. People grounded in reality knew this wasn’t true, but many among us who were already accustomed to living off the mercy of the government were easily fooled.
Think about it this way:
What good has Obama’s stimulus package done? Our national unemployment is ranging between 8.6 & 9.1%, and it only appears that low because those keeping tabs on it stopped counting people who have given up on ever finding jobs. Moreover, because of the Democrat’s tax and spend approach, our national debt is now at $15, 182,756,264,288.80, and Obama’s plan to change this is “more EPA, more NLRB, more Dodd-Frank, and more Obamacare.”
As Larry Kudlow put it: “Obama’s economic policies have failed.”
And if you want a microcosm of Obama’s failed presidency, of his ridiculous approach to economic policy, look no further than the Chevy Volt. The sticker price on a Volt is $40,000, but the cars are so technologically challenged that each one is subsidized to the tune of approximately $250,000. Now that’s Obama-nomics in a nutshell: Brag about your car company’s $40,000 electric car, but never mention that the $40,000 price tag costs tax payers a quarter of a million dollars per car.
To date, Obama has spent approximately $3,000,000,000.00 subsidizing Volts. And what have the American people gotten in return? A car that only a handful of people want and that has a tendency to catch on fire while sitting in the garages of the few purchasers Obama’s been able to scrounge up.
No wonder this guy has our economy in the tank.
And it gets worse. Apart from the asinine price per vehicle, the Chevy Volt is an electric car with a range of 30 miles (and that’s if you’re driving downhill). Actual range is closer to 25 miles or so. What good is a car that goes 30 miles? That’s like hunting with a gun that shoots 2 feet or boarding a cruise ship that never leaves dock. What’s the point? (To be fair, the Volt has a gasoline engine that kicks in once the charge is gone, and on the gas engine it can travel another 300 miles.)
Yet I don’t know about you, but a car that travels 300 miles on gasoline and only 25 miles on electricity sounds more like a fossil fuel vehicle than an electric one to me. And that’s precisely why it’s the perfect microcosm of Obama’s presidency. It’s all show, no substance. It’s sentimental mumbo jumbo about hope and change divorced from any real way to fix economies or create jobs or stop the dollar from imploding.
If GM were honest, their advertisement for the car would feature a photo of a Volt captioned thus:
The Chevy Volt: an electric car that runs on gasoline, proudly brought to you by Barack Obama, a president who knows even less about car manufacturing that he does about economics.
12/15/2011
Quality journalism: MSNBC
A fine example of how MSNBC maintains it lack of integrity, lousy ratings, and being some kind of pathetic joke.
MSNBC Likens Romney To The KKK For Saying "Keep America American"
MSNBC Likens Romney To The KKK For Saying "Keep America American"
12/10/2011
11/16/2011
OWS calling for Molotov cocktail use
“No more talking. They’ve got guns, we’ve got bottles. They’ve got bricks, we’ve got rocks…in a few days you’re going to see what a Molotov cocktail can do to Macy’s.”
OWS Protesters Calling For ‘Day Of Action’ Following Loss Of Camp In Zuccotti Park
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/11/16/ows-protesters-calling-for-day-of-action-following-loss-of-camp-in-zuccotti-park/
OWS Protesters Calling For ‘Day Of Action’ Following Loss Of Camp In Zuccotti Park
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/11/16/ows-protesters-calling-for-day-of-action-following-loss-of-camp-in-zuccotti-park/
11/15/2011
11/14/2011
11/11/2011
More OWS fun...
Occupy Oakland: Man shot to death near camp
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/10/BAAI1LTA0L.DTL#ixzz1dQdrBod4
Future of Occupy Burlington encampment uncertain after police clear City Hall Park to investigate man's death
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20111110/NEWS02/111110019/Breaking-Police-respond-shooting-City-Hall-Park?odyssey=mod|breaking|text|FRONTPAGE
Protesters Coming Down With the "Zuccotti Lung"
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Zuccotti-Lung-Park-Sickness-Demonstrators-Protesters-Illness-133669113.html?dr
Tuberculosis Breaks Out At Occupy Atlanta’s Base
http://atlanta.cbslocal.com/2011/11/10/tuberculosis-breaks-out-at-occupy-atlantas-base/
Man found dead in Pioneer Park, Occupy SLC ordered to leave both camps
http://www.ksl.com/?nid=1070&sid=18042323&title=man-found-dead-in-tent-at-pioneer-park
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/10/BAAI1LTA0L.DTL#ixzz1dQdrBod4
Future of Occupy Burlington encampment uncertain after police clear City Hall Park to investigate man's death
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20111110/NEWS02/111110019/Breaking-Police-respond-shooting-City-Hall-Park?odyssey=mod|breaking|text|FRONTPAGE
Protesters Coming Down With the "Zuccotti Lung"
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Zuccotti-Lung-Park-Sickness-Demonstrators-Protesters-Illness-133669113.html?dr
Tuberculosis Breaks Out At Occupy Atlanta’s Base
http://atlanta.cbslocal.com/2011/11/10/tuberculosis-breaks-out-at-occupy-atlantas-base/
Man found dead in Pioneer Park, Occupy SLC ordered to leave both camps
http://www.ksl.com/?nid=1070&sid=18042323&title=man-found-dead-in-tent-at-pioneer-park
2 deaths at Occupy protests in Calif. and Vermont
By TERRY COLLINS
The Associated Press
10:11 a.m. Friday, November 11, 2011
OAKLAND, Calif. — Police are investigating a fatal shooting just outside the Occupy Oakland encampment in Northern California and the apparent suicide of a military veteran at an Occupy encampment in Vermont's largest city.
The Oakland killing is further straining relations between local officials and anti-Wall Street protesters. A preliminary investigation into the gunfire Thursday that left a man dead suggests it resulted from a fight between two groups of men at or near the camp on a plaza in front of Oakland's City Hall, police Chief Howard Jordan said.
Investigators do not yet know if the men in the fight were associated with Occupy Oakland, but they are looking into reports that some protest participants tried to break up the altercation, Jordan said.
Burlington, Vt., police said preliminary investigations show a 35-year-old military veteran fatally shot himself in the head Thursday at an Occupy Wall Street encampment. The name of the Chittenden County man is being withheld because not all of his family has been notified.
He shot himself inside a tent in City Hall Park. Mike Noble, a spokesman for the Fletcher Allen Health Care hospital in Burlington, confirmed that the man had died. Noble said he could provide no other details.
Deputy Chief Andi Higbee in Burlington told reporters the shooting raised questions about whether the protest would be allowed to continue.
"Our responsibility is to keep the public safe. When there is a discharge of a firearm in a public place like this it's good cause to be concerned, greatly concerned," Higbee said.
That's also the feeling with some people in Oakland.
With opinions about the ongoing demonstration and its effect on the city becoming more divided in recent days, supporters and opponents immediately reacted to the homicide — the city's 101st this year.
Camp organizers said the attack was unrelated to their activities, while city and business leaders cited the death as proof that the camp itself either bred crime or drained law enforcement resources.
Mayor Jean Quan, who has been criticized by residents on both sides for issuing mixed signals about the local government's willingness to tolerate the camp, issued a statement Thursday calling for the camp to shut down.
"Tonight's incident underscores the reason why the encampment must end. The risks are too great," Quan said. "We need to return (police) resources to addressing violence throughout the city. It's time for the encampment to end. Camping is a tactic, not a solution."
For their part, protest leaders said the shooting involved outsiders and was only connected to their ongoing protest of U.S. financial institutions to the extent that poverty breeds violence.
"This one heinous immoral crime should not overshadow all of the good deeds, positive energy and the overall goals that the movement is attempting to establish," Khalid Shakur, 43, who has a tent in the encampment, said.
Before the shooting, protesters were planning to have a party to commemorate the encampment's one-month anniversary with music, dancing, a slide show and donated cakes. Instead, they opened a microphone for participants to talk about where the movement is headed.
"It's not a celebration anymore, but a period of reflection," said Leo Ritz-Barr, a member of Occupy Oakland's events committee.
John Lucas, 52, part of an Occupy Oakland medic team, said a fistfight involving several men preceded the gunfire.
"Several people went after one guy, and the group got larger, and they beat him and he ran," Lucas said. "There were six or seven shots. Everyone starts running ... and there was another shot."
Lucas said he and other medics rushed to the wounded man and tried to tend to him until paramedics arrived.
"He was not breathing and there was no heartbeat," he said. "We started CPR."
Jordan said the victim was hit by one bullet and he was pronounced dead at a hospital.
No suspects have been identified, said Jordan, who asked people participating in the protest who may have taken photographs or video that captured the shooting to contact authorities.
The violence came a day after a group of Oakland city and business leaders held a news conference demanding the removal of the encampment, saying it has hurt downtown businesses and has continued to pose safety concerns.
Councilman Larry Reid said that even if the men involved in the slaying were not regular participants in Occupy Oakland, the large crowds and attention the protest has drawn also has invited weapons and brawls. The camp, which has about 180 tents, sits in the middle of the plaza and is ringed by a transit station and ground-floor shops.
"We did have a shooting (near the plaza) once before, a couple shootings around some nightclubs but not right here in front of City Hall because this is attracting a totally different element to our downtown area," Reid said. "This is a public space, and people have a right to enjoy it."
Shake Anderson, an Occupy Oakland organizer who has slept at the camp since it was erected exactly a month ago, said the man who was shot could not be associated with the protest because he did not recognize him. Just before the shooting, a group of strangers ran into the encampment as if they were looking for someone, Anderson said.
"The person on the ground was not part of the occupation," Anderson said.
The Associated Press
10:11 a.m. Friday, November 11, 2011
OAKLAND, Calif. — Police are investigating a fatal shooting just outside the Occupy Oakland encampment in Northern California and the apparent suicide of a military veteran at an Occupy encampment in Vermont's largest city.
The Oakland killing is further straining relations between local officials and anti-Wall Street protesters. A preliminary investigation into the gunfire Thursday that left a man dead suggests it resulted from a fight between two groups of men at or near the camp on a plaza in front of Oakland's City Hall, police Chief Howard Jordan said.
Investigators do not yet know if the men in the fight were associated with Occupy Oakland, but they are looking into reports that some protest participants tried to break up the altercation, Jordan said.
Burlington, Vt., police said preliminary investigations show a 35-year-old military veteran fatally shot himself in the head Thursday at an Occupy Wall Street encampment. The name of the Chittenden County man is being withheld because not all of his family has been notified.
He shot himself inside a tent in City Hall Park. Mike Noble, a spokesman for the Fletcher Allen Health Care hospital in Burlington, confirmed that the man had died. Noble said he could provide no other details.
Deputy Chief Andi Higbee in Burlington told reporters the shooting raised questions about whether the protest would be allowed to continue.
"Our responsibility is to keep the public safe. When there is a discharge of a firearm in a public place like this it's good cause to be concerned, greatly concerned," Higbee said.
That's also the feeling with some people in Oakland.
With opinions about the ongoing demonstration and its effect on the city becoming more divided in recent days, supporters and opponents immediately reacted to the homicide — the city's 101st this year.
Camp organizers said the attack was unrelated to their activities, while city and business leaders cited the death as proof that the camp itself either bred crime or drained law enforcement resources.
Mayor Jean Quan, who has been criticized by residents on both sides for issuing mixed signals about the local government's willingness to tolerate the camp, issued a statement Thursday calling for the camp to shut down.
"Tonight's incident underscores the reason why the encampment must end. The risks are too great," Quan said. "We need to return (police) resources to addressing violence throughout the city. It's time for the encampment to end. Camping is a tactic, not a solution."
For their part, protest leaders said the shooting involved outsiders and was only connected to their ongoing protest of U.S. financial institutions to the extent that poverty breeds violence.
"This one heinous immoral crime should not overshadow all of the good deeds, positive energy and the overall goals that the movement is attempting to establish," Khalid Shakur, 43, who has a tent in the encampment, said.
Before the shooting, protesters were planning to have a party to commemorate the encampment's one-month anniversary with music, dancing, a slide show and donated cakes. Instead, they opened a microphone for participants to talk about where the movement is headed.
"It's not a celebration anymore, but a period of reflection," said Leo Ritz-Barr, a member of Occupy Oakland's events committee.
John Lucas, 52, part of an Occupy Oakland medic team, said a fistfight involving several men preceded the gunfire.
"Several people went after one guy, and the group got larger, and they beat him and he ran," Lucas said. "There were six or seven shots. Everyone starts running ... and there was another shot."
Lucas said he and other medics rushed to the wounded man and tried to tend to him until paramedics arrived.
"He was not breathing and there was no heartbeat," he said. "We started CPR."
Jordan said the victim was hit by one bullet and he was pronounced dead at a hospital.
No suspects have been identified, said Jordan, who asked people participating in the protest who may have taken photographs or video that captured the shooting to contact authorities.
The violence came a day after a group of Oakland city and business leaders held a news conference demanding the removal of the encampment, saying it has hurt downtown businesses and has continued to pose safety concerns.
Councilman Larry Reid said that even if the men involved in the slaying were not regular participants in Occupy Oakland, the large crowds and attention the protest has drawn also has invited weapons and brawls. The camp, which has about 180 tents, sits in the middle of the plaza and is ringed by a transit station and ground-floor shops.
"We did have a shooting (near the plaza) once before, a couple shootings around some nightclubs but not right here in front of City Hall because this is attracting a totally different element to our downtown area," Reid said. "This is a public space, and people have a right to enjoy it."
Shake Anderson, an Occupy Oakland organizer who has slept at the camp since it was erected exactly a month ago, said the man who was shot could not be associated with the protest because he did not recognize him. Just before the shooting, a group of strangers ran into the encampment as if they were looking for someone, Anderson said.
"The person on the ground was not part of the occupation," Anderson said.
11/09/2011
Occupiers terrorize us: eatery
I think one needs to consider the 2nd amendment right to protect one's self and property.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/occupiers_terrorize_us_eatery_o4dKzxi3n03WyJWAJu4AhO
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/occupiers_terrorize_us_eatery_o4dKzxi3n03WyJWAJu4AhO
11/08/2011
OWS...when they don't get their free stuff...
SoCal Street Cart Vendors Hurting After ‘Occupy’ Group Splatters Blood, Urine
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2011/11/07/socal-street-cart-vendors-hurting-after-occupy-group-splatters-blood-urine
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2011/11/07/socal-street-cart-vendors-hurting-after-occupy-group-splatters-blood-urine
11/03/2011
Peaceful Occupy protests degenerate into chaos
This was always a matter if when, not if.
By TERENCE CHEA, LISA LEFF and TERRY COLLINS
OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) - A day of demonstrations in Oakland that began as a significant step toward expanding the political and economic influence of the Occupy Wall Street movement, ended with police in riot gear arresting dozens of protesters who had marched through downtown to break into a vacant building, shattering windows, spraying graffiti and setting fires along the way.
"We go from having a peaceful movement to now just chaos," said protester Monique Agnew, 40.
The far-flung movement of protesters challenging the world's economic systems and distribution of wealth has gained momentum in recent weeks, capturing the world's attention by shutting down one of the nation's busiest shipping ports toward the end of a daylong "general strike" that prompted solidarity rallies across the U.S.
About 3,000 people converged on the Port of Oakland, the nation's fifth-busiest harbor, in a nearly five-hour protest Wednesday, swarming the area and blocking exits and streets with illegally parked vehicles and hastily-erected, chain-link fences.
Port officials said they were forced to cease maritime operations, citing concerns for workers' safety. They said in a statement they hope to resume operations Thursday "and that Port workers will be allowed to get to their jobs without incident. Continued missed shifts represent economic hardship for maritime workers, truckers, and their families, as well as lost jobs and lost tax revenue for our region."
Supporters in New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and elsewhere staged smaller-scale demonstrations; each group saying its protest was a show of support for the Oakland movement, which became a rallying point when an Iraq War veteran was seriously injured in a clash with police last week.
The larger Occupy movement has yet to coalesce into an organized association and until the port shut down had largely been limited scattershot marches, rallies and tent encampments since it began in September.
Organizers in Oakland had viewed the day as a significant victory. Police said that about 7,000 people participated in demonstrations throughout the day that were peaceful except for a few incidents of vandalism.
One of the protest leaders, Boots Riley, touted the day as a success, saying "we put together an ideological principle that the mainstream media wouldn't talk about two months ago."
His comments came before a group of demonstrators moved to break into the Travelers Aid building in order to, as some shouting protesters put it, "reclaim the building for the people."
Riley, whose anti-capitalist views are well-documented, considered the port shut down particularly significant for organizers who targeted it in an effort to stop the "flow of capital." The port sends goods primarily to Asia, including wine as well as rice, fruits and nuts, and handles imported electronics, apparel and manufacturing equipment, mostly from Asia, as well as cars and parts from Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Hyundai. An accounting of the financial toll from the shutdown was not immediately available.
The potential for the chaos that ultimately erupted was not something Riley wanted to even consider.
"If they do that after all this ..." He paused, then added, "They're smarter than that."
But the peace that abided throughout the day, did not last into the night.
Occupy protesters voicing anger over a budget trim that forced the closure of a homeless aid program converged on the empty building where it had been housed. They blocked off city streets with Dumpsters and other large trash bins, starting bonfires that leapt 15-feet in the air.
City officials released a statement describing the spasm of unrest.
"Oakland Police responded to a late night call that protesters had broken into and occupied a downtown building and set several simultaneous fires," the statement read. "The protesters began hurling rocks, explosives, bottles, and flaming objects at responding officers. Several private and municipal buildings sustained heavy vandalism. Dozens of protesters wielding shields were surrounded and arrested."
Protesters reported running from several rounds of tear gas and bright flashes and deafening pops that some thought were caused by "flash bang" grenades. Fire crews arrived and suppressed the flames.
Meanwhile, protesters and police faced off for the rest of the night in an uneasy standoff.
In Philadelphia, protesters were arrested earlier Wednesday as they held a sit-in at the headquarters of cable giant Comcast
In New York, about 100 military veterans marched in uniform and stopped in front of the New York Stock Exchange, standing in loose formation as police officers on scooters separated them from the entrance. On the other side was a lineup of NYPD horses carrying officers with nightsticks.
"We are marching to express support for our brother, (Iraq war veteran) Scott Olsen, who was injured in Oakland," said Jerry Bordeleau, a former Army specialist who served in Iraq through 2009.
The veterans were also angry that returned from war to find few job prospects.
"Wall Street corporations have played a big role in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Bordeleau, now a college student. He said private contractors have reaped big profits in those countries.
In Boston, college students and union workers marched on Bank of America offices, the Harvard Club and the Statehouse to protest the nation's burgeoning student debt crisis.
They say total outstanding student loans exceed credit card debt, increase by $1 million every six minutes and will reach $1 trillion this year, potentially undermining the economy.
"There are so many students that are trying to get jobs and go on with their lives," said Sarvenaz Asasy of Boston, who joined the march after recently graduating with a master's degree and $60,000 in loan debt. "They've educated themselves and there are no jobs and we're paying tons of student loans. For what?"
And among the other protests in Oakland, parents and their kids, some in strollers, joined in by forming a "children's brigade."
"There's absolutely something wrong with the system," said Jessica Medina, a single mother who attends school part time and works at an Oakland cafe. "We need to change that."
By TERENCE CHEA, LISA LEFF and TERRY COLLINS
OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) - A day of demonstrations in Oakland that began as a significant step toward expanding the political and economic influence of the Occupy Wall Street movement, ended with police in riot gear arresting dozens of protesters who had marched through downtown to break into a vacant building, shattering windows, spraying graffiti and setting fires along the way.
"We go from having a peaceful movement to now just chaos," said protester Monique Agnew, 40.
The far-flung movement of protesters challenging the world's economic systems and distribution of wealth has gained momentum in recent weeks, capturing the world's attention by shutting down one of the nation's busiest shipping ports toward the end of a daylong "general strike" that prompted solidarity rallies across the U.S.
About 3,000 people converged on the Port of Oakland, the nation's fifth-busiest harbor, in a nearly five-hour protest Wednesday, swarming the area and blocking exits and streets with illegally parked vehicles and hastily-erected, chain-link fences.
Port officials said they were forced to cease maritime operations, citing concerns for workers' safety. They said in a statement they hope to resume operations Thursday "and that Port workers will be allowed to get to their jobs without incident. Continued missed shifts represent economic hardship for maritime workers, truckers, and their families, as well as lost jobs and lost tax revenue for our region."
Supporters in New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and elsewhere staged smaller-scale demonstrations; each group saying its protest was a show of support for the Oakland movement, which became a rallying point when an Iraq War veteran was seriously injured in a clash with police last week.
The larger Occupy movement has yet to coalesce into an organized association and until the port shut down had largely been limited scattershot marches, rallies and tent encampments since it began in September.
Organizers in Oakland had viewed the day as a significant victory. Police said that about 7,000 people participated in demonstrations throughout the day that were peaceful except for a few incidents of vandalism.
One of the protest leaders, Boots Riley, touted the day as a success, saying "we put together an ideological principle that the mainstream media wouldn't talk about two months ago."
His comments came before a group of demonstrators moved to break into the Travelers Aid building in order to, as some shouting protesters put it, "reclaim the building for the people."
Riley, whose anti-capitalist views are well-documented, considered the port shut down particularly significant for organizers who targeted it in an effort to stop the "flow of capital." The port sends goods primarily to Asia, including wine as well as rice, fruits and nuts, and handles imported electronics, apparel and manufacturing equipment, mostly from Asia, as well as cars and parts from Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Hyundai. An accounting of the financial toll from the shutdown was not immediately available.
The potential for the chaos that ultimately erupted was not something Riley wanted to even consider.
"If they do that after all this ..." He paused, then added, "They're smarter than that."
But the peace that abided throughout the day, did not last into the night.
Occupy protesters voicing anger over a budget trim that forced the closure of a homeless aid program converged on the empty building where it had been housed. They blocked off city streets with Dumpsters and other large trash bins, starting bonfires that leapt 15-feet in the air.
City officials released a statement describing the spasm of unrest.
"Oakland Police responded to a late night call that protesters had broken into and occupied a downtown building and set several simultaneous fires," the statement read. "The protesters began hurling rocks, explosives, bottles, and flaming objects at responding officers. Several private and municipal buildings sustained heavy vandalism. Dozens of protesters wielding shields were surrounded and arrested."
Protesters reported running from several rounds of tear gas and bright flashes and deafening pops that some thought were caused by "flash bang" grenades. Fire crews arrived and suppressed the flames.
Meanwhile, protesters and police faced off for the rest of the night in an uneasy standoff.
In Philadelphia, protesters were arrested earlier Wednesday as they held a sit-in at the headquarters of cable giant Comcast
In New York, about 100 military veterans marched in uniform and stopped in front of the New York Stock Exchange, standing in loose formation as police officers on scooters separated them from the entrance. On the other side was a lineup of NYPD horses carrying officers with nightsticks.
"We are marching to express support for our brother, (Iraq war veteran) Scott Olsen, who was injured in Oakland," said Jerry Bordeleau, a former Army specialist who served in Iraq through 2009.
The veterans were also angry that returned from war to find few job prospects.
"Wall Street corporations have played a big role in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Bordeleau, now a college student. He said private contractors have reaped big profits in those countries.
In Boston, college students and union workers marched on Bank of America offices, the Harvard Club and the Statehouse to protest the nation's burgeoning student debt crisis.
They say total outstanding student loans exceed credit card debt, increase by $1 million every six minutes and will reach $1 trillion this year, potentially undermining the economy.
"There are so many students that are trying to get jobs and go on with their lives," said Sarvenaz Asasy of Boston, who joined the march after recently graduating with a master's degree and $60,000 in loan debt. "They've educated themselves and there are no jobs and we're paying tons of student loans. For what?"
And among the other protests in Oakland, parents and their kids, some in strollers, joined in by forming a "children's brigade."
"There's absolutely something wrong with the system," said Jessica Medina, a single mother who attends school part time and works at an Oakland cafe. "We need to change that."
11/02/2011
10/30/2011
Hypocritical carpetbagger strikes again
The last piece of dog shit they need to represent their cause.
Filmmaker Michael Moore rallies Occupy Oakland crowd
http://blog.sfgate.com/inoakland/2011/10/28/filmmaker-michael-moore-rallies-occupy-oakland-crowd/
Filmmaker Michael Moore rallies Occupy Oakland crowd
http://blog.sfgate.com/inoakland/2011/10/28/filmmaker-michael-moore-rallies-occupy-oakland-crowd/
10/29/2011
OWS Update
Filmmaker Michael Moore rallies Occupy Oakland crowd
http://blog.sfgate.com/inoakland/2011/10/28/filmmaker-michael-moore-rallies-occupy-oakland-crowd/
'Occupy Madison' loses permit due to public masturbation...
http://www.dailycardinal.com/news/occupy-madison-loses-permit-1.2669111#.TqwJj7LZdBk
Woman charged with pimping teen recruited at Occupy NH rally
http://www.unionleader.com/article/20111028/NEWS03/710289961
Report: Fights erupt among Occupy Wall Street protesters
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011/10/report-fights-erupt-between-occupy-wall-street-protesters/1
http://blog.sfgate.com/inoakland/2011/10/28/filmmaker-michael-moore-rallies-occupy-oakland-crowd/
'Occupy Madison' loses permit due to public masturbation...
http://www.dailycardinal.com/news/occupy-madison-loses-permit-1.2669111#.TqwJj7LZdBk
Woman charged with pimping teen recruited at Occupy NH rally
http://www.unionleader.com/article/20111028/NEWS03/710289961
Report: Fights erupt among Occupy Wall Street protesters
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011/10/report-fights-erupt-between-occupy-wall-street-protesters/1
10/25/2011
10/24/2011
10/21/2011
10/20/2011
Safia Arias of the International Socialist Organization: Occupy, the World!
“We’re here today to protest the last ten years of war and terror and slaughter..." what a loser...
10/19/2011
"Occupy" Figure Is Wanted Man In Bizarre, Oily Case
Wall Street protester skipped town on Indiana criminal raps
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/bizarre/occupy-wall-street-wanted-man-897430
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/bizarre/occupy-wall-street-wanted-man-897430
10/18/2011
10/16/2011
10/14/2011
Police Arrest Protester at Occupy SD
Police Arrest Protester at Occupy SD
http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Police-Arrest-Protesters-at-Occupy-SD-131858208.html
http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Police-Arrest-Protesters-at-Occupy-SD-131858208.html
Police make arrests at Westlake protest
Police make arrests at Westlake protest
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2016498188_laborrally14m.html
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2016498188_laborrally14m.html
Police make 2 dozen arrests, tear down tents at Occupy Denver protest
Police make 2 dozen arrests, tear down tents at Occupy Denver protest
http://www.kdvr.com/news/politics/kdvr-occupy-denver-protests-put-hickenlooper-hancock-in-a-quandry-20111012,0,1965021.story
http://www.kdvr.com/news/politics/kdvr-occupy-denver-protests-put-hickenlooper-hancock-in-a-quandry-20111012,0,1965021.story
Protesters march on Wall St. after park cleanup postponed, get into scuffle with cops
Protesters march on Wall St. after park cleanup postponed, get into scuffle with cops
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/zuccotti_park_cleanup_postponed_7FyMGft7IABwkMxaEW1sYP#ixzz1am3fjeCw
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/zuccotti_park_cleanup_postponed_7FyMGft7IABwkMxaEW1sYP#ixzz1am3fjeCw
Coast Guard member spit on near Occupy Boston tents
Coast Guard member spit on near Occupy Boston tents
http://www.myfoxboston.com/dpp/news/local/occupy-boston-protesters-spit-on-coast-guard-member-20111013#ixzz1am0Y1CQo
http://www.myfoxboston.com/dpp/news/local/occupy-boston-protesters-spit-on-coast-guard-member-20111013#ixzz1am0Y1CQo
10/12/2011
Occupy L.A. Speaker: Violence will be Necessary to Achieve Our Goals
Occupy L.A. Speaker: Violence will be Necessary to Achieve Our Goals
http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/2011/10/11/occupy-l-a-speaker-violence-will-be-necessary-to-achieve-our-goals/
http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/2011/10/11/occupy-l-a-speaker-violence-will-be-necessary-to-achieve-our-goals/
10/11/2011
10/10/2011
10/09/2011
Middle-Aged Wall Street Protester Still Living With His Parents
Middle-Aged Wall Street Protester Still Living With His Parents
http://www.thedailyrash.com/many-middle-aged-wall-street-protesters-still-living-with-their-parents
http://www.thedailyrash.com/many-middle-aged-wall-street-protesters-still-living-with-their-parents
10/07/2011
"Occupy" Protest violence
Occupy Sacramento
No clear message, arrests.
http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2011/10/07/some-%E2%80%98occupy-sacramento%E2%80%99-protesters-lash-out-at-questions/
Violent in NY
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/10/06/ochttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifcupy-wall-street-protesters-plan-rally-across-the-hudson/
RT footage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQy-psNy2L4
US protesters clash with guards at Washington museum
http://news.yahoo.com/us-protesters-clash-guards-washington-museum-225350979.html
Stinking up Wall Street: Protesters accused of living in filth as shocking pictures show one demonstrator defecating on a POLICE CAR
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifarticle-2046586/Occupy-Wall-Street-Shocking-photos-protester-defecating-POLICE-CAR.html
Occupy Atlanta Silences Civil Rights Hero John Lewis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QZlp3eGMNI
*Countdown with Keith ...: Michael Moore on support of Occupy Wall Street protest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrFQs5X-I1Y&feature=related
No clear message, arrests.
http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2011/10/07/some-%E2%80%98occupy-sacramento%E2%80%99-protesters-lash-out-at-questions/
Violent in NY
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/10/06/ochttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifcupy-wall-street-protesters-plan-rally-across-the-hudson/
RT footage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQy-psNy2L4
US protesters clash with guards at Washington museum
http://news.yahoo.com/us-protesters-clash-guards-washington-museum-225350979.html
Stinking up Wall Street: Protesters accused of living in filth as shocking pictures show one demonstrator defecating on a POLICE CAR
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifarticle-2046586/Occupy-Wall-Street-Shocking-photos-protester-defecating-POLICE-CAR.html
Occupy Atlanta Silences Civil Rights Hero John Lewis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QZlp3eGMNI
*Countdown with Keith ...: Michael Moore on support of Occupy Wall Street protest
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrFQs5X-I1Y&feature=related
10/05/2011
10/02/2011
9/11/2011
NY Times, 9/11 Anniversary and means for a partisan snipe
All I can say is wow...this vile little America hating piece of dog shit cannot keep his cowardly liberal opinions to himself. Any other day, just not this one.
The Years of Shame
By Paul Krugman
Is it just me, or are the 9/11 commemorations oddly subdued?
Actually, I don’t think it’s me, and it’s not really that odd.
What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. Te atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.
A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?
The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.
I’m not going to allow comments on this post, for obvious reasons.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/11/the-years-of-shame/?smid=tw-NytimesKrugman&seid=auto
The Years of Shame
By Paul Krugman
Is it just me, or are the 9/11 commemorations oddly subdued?
Actually, I don’t think it’s me, and it’s not really that odd.
What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. Te atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.
A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?
The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.
I’m not going to allow comments on this post, for obvious reasons.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/11/the-years-of-shame/?smid=tw-NytimesKrugman&seid=auto
9/06/2011
Civil Discourse
Hoffa Threatens GOP At Obama Event: "Take These Son Of Bitches Out"
Official response...
FOX & Friends Showdown: Wasserman Schultz Avoids Hoffa Question
Will Barack Obama condemn Joe Biden and Jimmy Hoffa for calling Republicans 'barbarians' and 'son of a bitches'
White House Declines To Comment On Union Leader’s Anti-Tea Party Rhetoric At Labor Day Rally
I would not really be a big deal, but the problem is Dems whine about the tone of civil discourse coming from the tea party.
Official response...
FOX & Friends Showdown: Wasserman Schultz Avoids Hoffa Question
Will Barack Obama condemn Joe Biden and Jimmy Hoffa for calling Republicans 'barbarians' and 'son of a bitches'
White House Declines To Comment On Union Leader’s Anti-Tea Party Rhetoric At Labor Day Rally
I would not really be a big deal, but the problem is Dems whine about the tone of civil discourse coming from the tea party.
8/31/2011
What Happened to Obama? Absolutely Nothing.
Great WSJ write up on what an empty suit Obama is.
What Happened to Obama? Absolutely Nothing.
He is still the same anti-American leftist he was before becoming our president.
By NORMAN PODHORETZ
It's open season on President Obama. Which is to say that the usual suspects on the right (among whom I include myself) are increasingly being joined in attacking him by erstwhile worshipers on the left. Even before the S&P downgrade, there were reports of Democrats lamenting that Hillary Clinton had lost to him in 2008. Some were comparing him not, as most of them originally had, to Lincoln and Roosevelt but to the hapless Jimmy Carter. There was even talk of finding a candidate to stage a primary run against him. But since the downgrade, more and more liberal pundits have been deserting what they clearly fear is a sinking ship.
Here, for example, from the Washington Post, is Richard Cohen: "He is the very personification of cognitive dissonance—the gap between what we (especially liberals) expected of the first serious African American presidential candidate and the man he in fact is." More amazingly yet Mr. Cohen goes on to say of Mr. Obama, who not long ago was almost universally hailed as the greatest orator since Pericles, that he lacks even "the rhetorical qualities of the old-time black politicians." And to compound the amazement, Mr. Cohen tells us that he cannot even "recall a soaring passage from a speech."
Overseas it is the same refrain. Everywhere in the world, we read in Germany's Der Spiegel, not only are the hopes ignited by Mr. Obama being dashed, but his "weakness is a problem for the entire global economy."
In short, the spell that Mr. Obama once cast—a spell so powerful that instead of ridiculing him when he boasted that he would cause "the oceans to stop rising and the planet to heal," all of liberaldom fell into a delirious swoon—has now been broken by its traumatic realization that he is neither the "god" Newsweek in all seriousness declared him to be nor even a messianic deliverer.
Hence the question on every lip is—as the title of a much quoted article in the New York Times by Drew Westen of Emory University puts it— "What Happened to Obama?" Attacking from the left, Mr. Westen charges that President Obama has been conciliatory when he should have been aggressively pounding away at all the evildoers on the right.
Of course, unlike Mr. Westen, we villainous conservatives do not see Mr. Obama as conciliatory or as "a president who either does not know what he believes or is willing to take whatever position he thinks will lead to his re-election." On the contrary, we see him as a president who knows all too well what he believes. Furthermore, what Mr. Westen regards as an opportunistic appeal to the center we interpret as a tactic calculated to obfuscate his unshakable strategic objective, which is to turn this country into a European-style social democracy while diminishing the leading role it has played in the world since the end of World War II. The Democrats have persistently denied that these are Mr. Obama's goals, but they have only been able to do so by ignoring or dismissing what Mr. Obama himself, in a rare moment of candor, promised at the tail end of his run for the presidency: "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America."
This statement, coming on top of his association with radicals like Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright and Rashid Khalidi, definitively revealed to all who were not wilfully blinding themselves that Mr. Obama was a genuine product of the political culture that had its birth among a marginal group of leftists in the early 1960s and that by the end of the decade had spread metastatically to the universities, the mainstream media, the mainline churches, and the entertainment industry. Like their communist ancestors of the 1930s, the leftist radicals of the '60s were convinced that the United States was so rotten that only a revolution could save it.
But whereas the communists had in their delusional vision of the Soviet Union a model of the kind of society that would replace the one they were bent on destroying, the new leftists only knew what they were against: America, or Amerika as they spelled it to suggest its kinship to Nazi Germany. Thanks, however, to the unmasking of the Soviet Union as a totalitarian nightmare, they did not know what they were for. Yet once they had pulled off the incredible feat of taking over the Democratic Party behind the presidential candidacy of George McGovern in 1972, they dropped the vain hope of a revolution, and in the social-democratic system most fully developed in Sweden they found an alternative to American capitalism that had a realistic possibility of being achieved through gradual political reform.
Despite Mr. McGovern's defeat by Richard Nixon in a landslide, the leftists remained a powerful force within the Democratic Party, but for the next three decades the electoral exigencies within which they had chosen to operate prevented them from getting their own man nominated. Thus, not one of the six Democratic presidential candidates who followed Mr. McGovern came out of the party's left wing, and when Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton (the only two of the six who won) tried each in his own way to govern in its spirit, their policies were rejected by the American immune system. It was only with the advent of Barack Obama that the leftists at long last succeeded in nominating one of their own.
To be sure, no white candidate who had close associations with an outspoken hater of America like Jeremiah Wright and an unrepentant terrorist like Bill Ayers would have lasted a single day. But because Mr. Obama was black, and therefore entitled in the eyes of liberaldom to have hung out with protesters against various American injustices, even if they were a bit extreme, he was given a pass. And in any case, what did such ancient history matter when he was also articulate and elegant and (as he himself had said) "non-threatening," all of which gave him a fighting chance to become the first black president and thereby to lay the curse of racism to rest?
And so it came about that a faithful scion of the political culture of the '60s left is now sitting in the White House and doing everything in his power to effect the fundamental transformation of America to which that culture was dedicated and to which he has pledged his own personal allegiance.
I disagree with those of my fellow conservatives who maintain that Mr. Obama is indifferent to "the best interests of the United States" (Thomas Sowell) and is "purposely" out to harm America (Rush Limbaugh). In my opinion, he imagines that he is helping America to repent of its many sins and to become a different and better country.
But I emphatically agree with Messrs. Limbaugh and Sowell about this president's attitude toward America as it exists and as the Founding Fathers intended it. That is why my own answer to the question, "What Happened to Obama?" is that nothing happened to him. He is still the same anti-American leftist he was before becoming our president, and it is this rather than inexperience or incompetence or weakness or stupidity that accounts for the richly deserved failure both at home and abroad of the policies stemming from that reprehensible cast of mind.
What Happened to Obama? Absolutely Nothing.
He is still the same anti-American leftist he was before becoming our president.
By NORMAN PODHORETZ
It's open season on President Obama. Which is to say that the usual suspects on the right (among whom I include myself) are increasingly being joined in attacking him by erstwhile worshipers on the left. Even before the S&P downgrade, there were reports of Democrats lamenting that Hillary Clinton had lost to him in 2008. Some were comparing him not, as most of them originally had, to Lincoln and Roosevelt but to the hapless Jimmy Carter. There was even talk of finding a candidate to stage a primary run against him. But since the downgrade, more and more liberal pundits have been deserting what they clearly fear is a sinking ship.
Here, for example, from the Washington Post, is Richard Cohen: "He is the very personification of cognitive dissonance—the gap between what we (especially liberals) expected of the first serious African American presidential candidate and the man he in fact is." More amazingly yet Mr. Cohen goes on to say of Mr. Obama, who not long ago was almost universally hailed as the greatest orator since Pericles, that he lacks even "the rhetorical qualities of the old-time black politicians." And to compound the amazement, Mr. Cohen tells us that he cannot even "recall a soaring passage from a speech."
Overseas it is the same refrain. Everywhere in the world, we read in Germany's Der Spiegel, not only are the hopes ignited by Mr. Obama being dashed, but his "weakness is a problem for the entire global economy."
In short, the spell that Mr. Obama once cast—a spell so powerful that instead of ridiculing him when he boasted that he would cause "the oceans to stop rising and the planet to heal," all of liberaldom fell into a delirious swoon—has now been broken by its traumatic realization that he is neither the "god" Newsweek in all seriousness declared him to be nor even a messianic deliverer.
Hence the question on every lip is—as the title of a much quoted article in the New York Times by Drew Westen of Emory University puts it— "What Happened to Obama?" Attacking from the left, Mr. Westen charges that President Obama has been conciliatory when he should have been aggressively pounding away at all the evildoers on the right.
Of course, unlike Mr. Westen, we villainous conservatives do not see Mr. Obama as conciliatory or as "a president who either does not know what he believes or is willing to take whatever position he thinks will lead to his re-election." On the contrary, we see him as a president who knows all too well what he believes. Furthermore, what Mr. Westen regards as an opportunistic appeal to the center we interpret as a tactic calculated to obfuscate his unshakable strategic objective, which is to turn this country into a European-style social democracy while diminishing the leading role it has played in the world since the end of World War II. The Democrats have persistently denied that these are Mr. Obama's goals, but they have only been able to do so by ignoring or dismissing what Mr. Obama himself, in a rare moment of candor, promised at the tail end of his run for the presidency: "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America."
This statement, coming on top of his association with radicals like Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright and Rashid Khalidi, definitively revealed to all who were not wilfully blinding themselves that Mr. Obama was a genuine product of the political culture that had its birth among a marginal group of leftists in the early 1960s and that by the end of the decade had spread metastatically to the universities, the mainstream media, the mainline churches, and the entertainment industry. Like their communist ancestors of the 1930s, the leftist radicals of the '60s were convinced that the United States was so rotten that only a revolution could save it.
But whereas the communists had in their delusional vision of the Soviet Union a model of the kind of society that would replace the one they were bent on destroying, the new leftists only knew what they were against: America, or Amerika as they spelled it to suggest its kinship to Nazi Germany. Thanks, however, to the unmasking of the Soviet Union as a totalitarian nightmare, they did not know what they were for. Yet once they had pulled off the incredible feat of taking over the Democratic Party behind the presidential candidacy of George McGovern in 1972, they dropped the vain hope of a revolution, and in the social-democratic system most fully developed in Sweden they found an alternative to American capitalism that had a realistic possibility of being achieved through gradual political reform.
Despite Mr. McGovern's defeat by Richard Nixon in a landslide, the leftists remained a powerful force within the Democratic Party, but for the next three decades the electoral exigencies within which they had chosen to operate prevented them from getting their own man nominated. Thus, not one of the six Democratic presidential candidates who followed Mr. McGovern came out of the party's left wing, and when Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton (the only two of the six who won) tried each in his own way to govern in its spirit, their policies were rejected by the American immune system. It was only with the advent of Barack Obama that the leftists at long last succeeded in nominating one of their own.
To be sure, no white candidate who had close associations with an outspoken hater of America like Jeremiah Wright and an unrepentant terrorist like Bill Ayers would have lasted a single day. But because Mr. Obama was black, and therefore entitled in the eyes of liberaldom to have hung out with protesters against various American injustices, even if they were a bit extreme, he was given a pass. And in any case, what did such ancient history matter when he was also articulate and elegant and (as he himself had said) "non-threatening," all of which gave him a fighting chance to become the first black president and thereby to lay the curse of racism to rest?
And so it came about that a faithful scion of the political culture of the '60s left is now sitting in the White House and doing everything in his power to effect the fundamental transformation of America to which that culture was dedicated and to which he has pledged his own personal allegiance.
I disagree with those of my fellow conservatives who maintain that Mr. Obama is indifferent to "the best interests of the United States" (Thomas Sowell) and is "purposely" out to harm America (Rush Limbaugh). In my opinion, he imagines that he is helping America to repent of its many sins and to become a different and better country.
But I emphatically agree with Messrs. Limbaugh and Sowell about this president's attitude toward America as it exists and as the Founding Fathers intended it. That is why my own answer to the question, "What Happened to Obama?" is that nothing happened to him. He is still the same anti-American leftist he was before becoming our president, and it is this rather than inexperience or incompetence or weakness or stupidity that accounts for the richly deserved failure both at home and abroad of the policies stemming from that reprehensible cast of mind.
8/30/2011
Wolf and Sheep analogy...
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." Benjamin Franklin, 1759
Democracy: Two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
Representative democracy: Two thousand wolves and one thousand sheep electing two wolves and a sheep who vote on what to have for dinner.
Constitutional Republic: Two thousand wolves and one thousand sheep electing two wolves and a sheep who vote on what to have for dinner, but are restricted by a Constitution that says they cannot eat sheep. The Supreme Court then votes 5 wolves to 4 sheep that mutton does not count as sheep.
Liberty: Well-armed sheep contesting the above votes.
Democracy: Two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
Representative democracy: Two thousand wolves and one thousand sheep electing two wolves and a sheep who vote on what to have for dinner.
Constitutional Republic: Two thousand wolves and one thousand sheep electing two wolves and a sheep who vote on what to have for dinner, but are restricted by a Constitution that says they cannot eat sheep. The Supreme Court then votes 5 wolves to 4 sheep that mutton does not count as sheep.
Liberty: Well-armed sheep contesting the above votes.
8/28/2011
Bat $%@! crazy Al Gore
Al Gore is threatened because he has entered the level of mediocrity. Also, one must remember that Al Gore's FATHER...Albert Gore, Sr...was one of the few who voted AGAINST the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Complete hypocritical idiot.
Gore: Global warming skeptics are this generation’s racists
Gore: Global warming skeptics are this generation’s racists
8/16/2011
8/11/2011
Felonious Munk Presents: Stop It B! OBAMA PAY YOUR &*%$#% BILLS
I laughed at this one, so true...so entertaining!
8/06/2011
Tim Geithner: “No risk”
Now tax cheat Geithner can be called lying tax cheat Geithner.
Flashback: “Is there a risk the US could lose its AAA rating?” Tim Geithner: “No risk”
Let's see, here is today's headlines...
S&P downgrades U.S. credit rating
U.S. triple-A debt rating cut by Standard & Poor’s
Flashback: “Is there a risk the US could lose its AAA rating?” Tim Geithner: “No risk”
Let's see, here is today's headlines...
S&P downgrades U.S. credit rating
U.S. triple-A debt rating cut by Standard & Poor’s
8/04/2011
Bias anyone?
US borrowing tops 100% of GDP: Treasury...that's a pretty serious headline. It appears that it's not important to the liberal media because it will make their idol look bad.
Here are the front pages of web sites, showing what they deem important. I'll first show Fox News, at least they are reporting it.
Here are the front pages of the websites of media sources that are liberal friendly. I see no mention of the debt to GDP announcement.
To quote the original Yahoo News story.
"The last time US debt topped the size of its annual economy was in 1947 just after World War II. By 1981 it had fallen to 32.5 percent.
Ratings agencies have warned the country to reduce its debt-to-GDP ratio quickly or facing losing its coveted AAA debt rating.
Moody's said Tuesday that the government needed to stabilize the ratio at 73 percent by 2015 "to ensure that the long-run fiscal trajectory remains compatible with a AAA rating."
I would consider this pretty serious, but it would also blemish the Obama administration. The bias of choosing to not report something like this is pretty serious cause for concern. It makes me appreciate the internet even more.
Here are the front pages of web sites, showing what they deem important. I'll first show Fox News, at least they are reporting it.
Here are the front pages of the websites of media sources that are liberal friendly. I see no mention of the debt to GDP announcement.
To quote the original Yahoo News story.
"The last time US debt topped the size of its annual economy was in 1947 just after World War II. By 1981 it had fallen to 32.5 percent.
Ratings agencies have warned the country to reduce its debt-to-GDP ratio quickly or facing losing its coveted AAA debt rating.
Moody's said Tuesday that the government needed to stabilize the ratio at 73 percent by 2015 "to ensure that the long-run fiscal trajectory remains compatible with a AAA rating."
I would consider this pretty serious, but it would also blemish the Obama administration. The bias of choosing to not report something like this is pretty serious cause for concern. It makes me appreciate the internet even more.
8/02/2011
The spending-cut myth
An excellent write up on the whole "debt crisis"...
The spending-cut myth
Posted By Robert Ringer On August 2, 2011 @ 12:01 am In Conservative Politics,Government,Personal Liberty Articles | 192 Comments
As we move toward a business-as-usual finish to the phony debt-ceiling drama playing out in Washington, history will record that no one — not even the Tea Party members of Congress — ever got around to talking about specific, major spending cuts (other than defense spending). Isn’t that weird?
Everyone involved claims to be in agreement that the U.S. has to cut spending, but not one Congressperson has been willing to name a specific program or bureaucracy that should be completely eliminated. Even if Republicans had gotten their Cut, Cap and Balance proposal accepted, it wouldn’t have mattered, because “cut, cap, and balance” are nothing more than hollow words.
Cut and cap what? Which programs and agencies are you going to cut and cap, and by how much? In any event, the purported major cuts are always years down the road, while increasing the debt ceiling is immediate — meaning that out-of-control government spending continues on.
And, of course, balance simply guarantees American taxpayers that if Congress doesn’t make the necessary cuts — which it never does, and never will — their taxes will be raised in order to “balance the budget.” In fact, a cynic might say that balancing the budget is just a euphemism for raising taxes.
Again, back to my original point: No one in Congress wants to talk about making specific cuts. After all, when you cut a program or agency, you’re going to make the beneficiaries of that program or agency very angry. And since the main objective of the vast majority of Congresspersons is to get reelected, mad is bad. Thus, the reality is that cutting any program or government agency is unthinkable.
For example, as the debt ceiling circus has worn on, I’ve repeatedly heard media pundits say things like, “What happens to the guy who’s planned a camping trip to Yellowstone National Park with his son, only to find that the park has been closed because Congress failed to raise the debt ceiling?” The answer you never hear is: He takes his son somewhere else!
I don’t know how much you and I pay to keep Yellowstone National Park operating, but I do know that neither I nor any of my family or immediate circle of friends has ever visited Yellowstone National Park, nor do any of us have any plans to do so.
That being the case, why are we required to pay for the guy who wants to take his son camping? Is he willing to pay for my family’s outing to an Orioles or Redskins game? These are private corporations that charge customers enough to cover their overhead and, hopefully, make a profit. Government doesn’t have to worry about such mundane matters.
Just like all the other land it lays claim to, the United States government should sell Yellowstone National Park to a company like Disney or Universal Studios and use the proceeds to pay down the national debt. I’m talking about principle, not interest. Ditto all of the other national parks, which would cut billions from our bread-and-circus budget.
Speaking of Yellowstone National Park, what about the Department of the Interior? Do we really need it? On its website, it proudly states:
Our Mission: Protecting America’s Great Outdoors and Powering Our Future
Question: Why does a bankrupt nation need a bunch of bureaucrats to protect its “great outdoors?” The government is supposed to protect people and private property, not the “outdoors.” I won’t even comment on “powering our future,” since it has no discernable meaning.
Beneath the Department of the Interior’s mission statement are the words:
The U.S. Department of the Interior protects America’s natural resources and heritage, honors our cultures and tribal communities, and supplies the energy to power our future.
Again I ask, why does a bankrupt nation need a bunch of bureaucrats to protect its “natural resources and heritage?” How in the world does the government protect our heritage? Again, no discernable meaning.
“Honors our cultures and tribal communities?” Why does a bankrupt nation need to honor American cultures and tribal communities? Sounds like an interesting thing to do if you’re rich. But we aren’t. Psst… we’re broke!
Finally, “supplies the energy to power our future?” Government doesn’t know beans about supplying energy. In fact, it does everything within its power to prevent the U.S. from using its energy resources.
A bankrupt nation that fails at everything it attempts to do should get out of the way so private industry can exploit our natural resources, beginning with oil, natural gas and coal deposits. The government has never produced a drop of oil, a cubic foot of natural gas or a single chunk of coal — and never will.
Trees, of course, are a natural resource that present no problem whatsoever, because, thanks to capitalistic forestry corporations, we have more trees today than we had 50 years ago.
You can go right down the list of government agencies and draw the same conclusion: They should be shut down!
Do we really need a National Labor Relations Board to prevent Boeing from creating 1,000 jobs in South Carolina?
Do we really need a Securities and Exchange Commission to give a guy like Bernie Madoff a stamp of approval for 25 years while he bilks gullible investors out of billions of dollars?
Do we really need an Environmental Protection Agency to stifle economic growth in America and create ever-increasing unemployment? Closing down the EPA not only would save billions of dollars a year in operating costs, but would explode the economy and send the Dow Jones industrial average soaring. Who knows, we might even be able to compete with China someday.
The Department of Labor, the Commerce Department, Amtrak, the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, the Department of Health and Human Services (which runs 400 separate subsidy programs!)… the list is endless.
Message to the government: Stop protecting our resources, stop redistributing our hard-earned income and start focusing on protecting, not stealing from, the people you work for.
The truth is that no one — whether Democrat or Republican — will propose legislation to reduce, let alone close down, any of these government agencies. They will keep growing until their employees are paid in worthless dollars — or not paid at all. And there is a 100 percent certainty that when government employees don’t get paid, it will lead to protests… followed by “civil unrest”… followed by violence… followed by a government crackdown on civil liberties.
As everyone now knows, the government has plenty of money coming in each month to pay interest on the national debt, Social Security, Medicare and our current military obligations (all of which total about 70 percent of current revenues). It’s the other 30 percent or so of “scheduled expenditures” that need to be “prioritized” — meaning that some of them have to be cut.
But when you ask a politician which ones he would cut, he unfailingly skirts the question. That’s why the debt ceiling will continue to be raised — again and again and again (75 times since 1962!) — and the U.S. debt will continue to spin out of control until the only thing left of the U.S. economy is a (hopefully) thriving black market.
Russian historians can tell you all about the phenomenon of the black market when the government shuts down the free market. It’s the only thing that kept even more people from starving to death in the Soviet Union during the heyday of communism.
Of course, if you’re the adventuresome type, you’ve got to be excited thinking about what living in a runaway-inflation society might be like. Hint: Sieg Heil!
–Robert Ringer
The spending-cut myth
Posted By Robert Ringer On August 2, 2011 @ 12:01 am In Conservative Politics,Government,Personal Liberty Articles | 192 Comments
As we move toward a business-as-usual finish to the phony debt-ceiling drama playing out in Washington, history will record that no one — not even the Tea Party members of Congress — ever got around to talking about specific, major spending cuts (other than defense spending). Isn’t that weird?
Everyone involved claims to be in agreement that the U.S. has to cut spending, but not one Congressperson has been willing to name a specific program or bureaucracy that should be completely eliminated. Even if Republicans had gotten their Cut, Cap and Balance proposal accepted, it wouldn’t have mattered, because “cut, cap, and balance” are nothing more than hollow words.
Cut and cap what? Which programs and agencies are you going to cut and cap, and by how much? In any event, the purported major cuts are always years down the road, while increasing the debt ceiling is immediate — meaning that out-of-control government spending continues on.
And, of course, balance simply guarantees American taxpayers that if Congress doesn’t make the necessary cuts — which it never does, and never will — their taxes will be raised in order to “balance the budget.” In fact, a cynic might say that balancing the budget is just a euphemism for raising taxes.
Again, back to my original point: No one in Congress wants to talk about making specific cuts. After all, when you cut a program or agency, you’re going to make the beneficiaries of that program or agency very angry. And since the main objective of the vast majority of Congresspersons is to get reelected, mad is bad. Thus, the reality is that cutting any program or government agency is unthinkable.
For example, as the debt ceiling circus has worn on, I’ve repeatedly heard media pundits say things like, “What happens to the guy who’s planned a camping trip to Yellowstone National Park with his son, only to find that the park has been closed because Congress failed to raise the debt ceiling?” The answer you never hear is: He takes his son somewhere else!
I don’t know how much you and I pay to keep Yellowstone National Park operating, but I do know that neither I nor any of my family or immediate circle of friends has ever visited Yellowstone National Park, nor do any of us have any plans to do so.
That being the case, why are we required to pay for the guy who wants to take his son camping? Is he willing to pay for my family’s outing to an Orioles or Redskins game? These are private corporations that charge customers enough to cover their overhead and, hopefully, make a profit. Government doesn’t have to worry about such mundane matters.
Just like all the other land it lays claim to, the United States government should sell Yellowstone National Park to a company like Disney or Universal Studios and use the proceeds to pay down the national debt. I’m talking about principle, not interest. Ditto all of the other national parks, which would cut billions from our bread-and-circus budget.
Speaking of Yellowstone National Park, what about the Department of the Interior? Do we really need it? On its website, it proudly states:
Our Mission: Protecting America’s Great Outdoors and Powering Our Future
Question: Why does a bankrupt nation need a bunch of bureaucrats to protect its “great outdoors?” The government is supposed to protect people and private property, not the “outdoors.” I won’t even comment on “powering our future,” since it has no discernable meaning.
Beneath the Department of the Interior’s mission statement are the words:
The U.S. Department of the Interior protects America’s natural resources and heritage, honors our cultures and tribal communities, and supplies the energy to power our future.
Again I ask, why does a bankrupt nation need a bunch of bureaucrats to protect its “natural resources and heritage?” How in the world does the government protect our heritage? Again, no discernable meaning.
“Honors our cultures and tribal communities?” Why does a bankrupt nation need to honor American cultures and tribal communities? Sounds like an interesting thing to do if you’re rich. But we aren’t. Psst… we’re broke!
Finally, “supplies the energy to power our future?” Government doesn’t know beans about supplying energy. In fact, it does everything within its power to prevent the U.S. from using its energy resources.
A bankrupt nation that fails at everything it attempts to do should get out of the way so private industry can exploit our natural resources, beginning with oil, natural gas and coal deposits. The government has never produced a drop of oil, a cubic foot of natural gas or a single chunk of coal — and never will.
Trees, of course, are a natural resource that present no problem whatsoever, because, thanks to capitalistic forestry corporations, we have more trees today than we had 50 years ago.
You can go right down the list of government agencies and draw the same conclusion: They should be shut down!
Do we really need a National Labor Relations Board to prevent Boeing from creating 1,000 jobs in South Carolina?
Do we really need a Securities and Exchange Commission to give a guy like Bernie Madoff a stamp of approval for 25 years while he bilks gullible investors out of billions of dollars?
Do we really need an Environmental Protection Agency to stifle economic growth in America and create ever-increasing unemployment? Closing down the EPA not only would save billions of dollars a year in operating costs, but would explode the economy and send the Dow Jones industrial average soaring. Who knows, we might even be able to compete with China someday.
The Department of Labor, the Commerce Department, Amtrak, the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, the Department of Health and Human Services (which runs 400 separate subsidy programs!)… the list is endless.
Message to the government: Stop protecting our resources, stop redistributing our hard-earned income and start focusing on protecting, not stealing from, the people you work for.
The truth is that no one — whether Democrat or Republican — will propose legislation to reduce, let alone close down, any of these government agencies. They will keep growing until their employees are paid in worthless dollars — or not paid at all. And there is a 100 percent certainty that when government employees don’t get paid, it will lead to protests… followed by “civil unrest”… followed by violence… followed by a government crackdown on civil liberties.
As everyone now knows, the government has plenty of money coming in each month to pay interest on the national debt, Social Security, Medicare and our current military obligations (all of which total about 70 percent of current revenues). It’s the other 30 percent or so of “scheduled expenditures” that need to be “prioritized” — meaning that some of them have to be cut.
But when you ask a politician which ones he would cut, he unfailingly skirts the question. That’s why the debt ceiling will continue to be raised — again and again and again (75 times since 1962!) — and the U.S. debt will continue to spin out of control until the only thing left of the U.S. economy is a (hopefully) thriving black market.
Russian historians can tell you all about the phenomenon of the black market when the government shuts down the free market. It’s the only thing that kept even more people from starving to death in the Soviet Union during the heyday of communism.
Of course, if you’re the adventuresome type, you’ve got to be excited thinking about what living in a runaway-inflation society might be like. Hint: Sieg Heil!
–Robert Ringer
7/29/2011
Democrats say Obama should invoke 14th Amendment
First, read this story...
Democrats say Obama should invoke 14th Amendment
http://news.yahoo.com/house-democrats-obama-invoke-14th-amendment-152323569.html
WASHINGTON (AP) — House Democrats said Wednesday that President Barack Obama should invoke a little-known constitutional provision to prevent the nation from going into default if Congress fails to come up with a plan to raise the debt ceiling.
Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, a member of the Democratic leadership, said he told fellow Democrats that Obama should both veto any House GOP plan for a short-term extension of the debt ceiling and invoke the 14th amendment, which says that the validity of the nation's public debt "shall not be questioned."
The White House has rejected resorting to this tactic to keep the nation from defaulting, questioning its legality, but Rep. John Larson of Connecticut, who chairs the Democratic caucus, said "we're getting down to decision time" and "we have to have a failsafe mechanism and we believe that failsafe mechanism is the 14th Amendment and the president of the United States."
Larson said Clyburn's proposal on the 14th Amendment was met with applause by other Democrats at their meeting.
White House spokesman Jay Carney, asked about Clyburn's proposal, said only Congress has the authority to extend the government's borrowing authority. "The president does not have authority to raise the debt ceiling. It's not a plausible way to address this problem and we do not think it is an option," he said.
The Democratic leaders said the vast majority in their party still support a plan for raising the debt ceiling and cutting spending put forth by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. But they said the inability of the government to pay its debts could drive up interest rates and affect millions of Americans forced to pay higher mortgages and higher interest on student loans.
Rep. Xavier Becerra of California, the assistant caucus chair, said Democrats are telling Obama, "Mr. President, Republicans through their failure have given you license to do whatever it takes to not let the American family go down into that abyss with House Republicans."
The post-Civil War 14th Amendment guaranteeing citizenship to all people born or naturalized in the United States contains a provision that "the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned."
Some legal scholars have said the president can invoke that clause to keep the nation from defaulting on the debt, although there is no legal precedent for such an action.
Now here is the full text of Section 4, then Section 5...
Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Because Section 5 is SO OBVIOUS in covering section 4, it shows that Rep. James Clyburn, Rep. John Larson, Rep. Xavier Becerra, and "Some legal scholars" are complete idiots. The problem with liberal democrats is that they interpret the constitution for what it CAN SAY, where a conservative interprets the constitution for what it SAYS.
I don't think it can be stated any more clearly that the 14th Amendment gives Congress this power, not the President.
If the President did what was in the article, he would be in violation of the constitution, and there is justification to seek impeachment because he violated his oath of office.
Democrats say Obama should invoke 14th Amendment
http://news.yahoo.com/house-democrats-obama-invoke-14th-amendment-152323569.html
WASHINGTON (AP) — House Democrats said Wednesday that President Barack Obama should invoke a little-known constitutional provision to prevent the nation from going into default if Congress fails to come up with a plan to raise the debt ceiling.
Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, a member of the Democratic leadership, said he told fellow Democrats that Obama should both veto any House GOP plan for a short-term extension of the debt ceiling and invoke the 14th amendment, which says that the validity of the nation's public debt "shall not be questioned."
The White House has rejected resorting to this tactic to keep the nation from defaulting, questioning its legality, but Rep. John Larson of Connecticut, who chairs the Democratic caucus, said "we're getting down to decision time" and "we have to have a failsafe mechanism and we believe that failsafe mechanism is the 14th Amendment and the president of the United States."
Larson said Clyburn's proposal on the 14th Amendment was met with applause by other Democrats at their meeting.
White House spokesman Jay Carney, asked about Clyburn's proposal, said only Congress has the authority to extend the government's borrowing authority. "The president does not have authority to raise the debt ceiling. It's not a plausible way to address this problem and we do not think it is an option," he said.
The Democratic leaders said the vast majority in their party still support a plan for raising the debt ceiling and cutting spending put forth by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. But they said the inability of the government to pay its debts could drive up interest rates and affect millions of Americans forced to pay higher mortgages and higher interest on student loans.
Rep. Xavier Becerra of California, the assistant caucus chair, said Democrats are telling Obama, "Mr. President, Republicans through their failure have given you license to do whatever it takes to not let the American family go down into that abyss with House Republicans."
The post-Civil War 14th Amendment guaranteeing citizenship to all people born or naturalized in the United States contains a provision that "the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned."
Some legal scholars have said the president can invoke that clause to keep the nation from defaulting on the debt, although there is no legal precedent for such an action.
Now here is the full text of Section 4, then Section 5...
Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Because Section 5 is SO OBVIOUS in covering section 4, it shows that Rep. James Clyburn, Rep. John Larson, Rep. Xavier Becerra, and "Some legal scholars" are complete idiots. The problem with liberal democrats is that they interpret the constitution for what it CAN SAY, where a conservative interprets the constitution for what it SAYS.
I don't think it can be stated any more clearly that the 14th Amendment gives Congress this power, not the President.
If the President did what was in the article, he would be in violation of the constitution, and there is justification to seek impeachment because he violated his oath of office.
7/28/2011
MSNBC idiot reporter
Notice that at 44 seconds into the video Contessa Brewer, calling Congressman Mo Brooks remarks simplification on the subject matter. Seeing how huffy she is, she falls back on her bias that is well defined in "The Wilkow Guide to Media Perception."
If you went to college:
Conservative…your academic pedigree is scrutinized.
Liberal…your degree speaks for itself.
A 30 second check on wikipedia reveals "He graduated from Duke University in three years with a double major in political science and economics (highest honors in economics)."
Overall, this shows the quality of journalist MSNBC hires. Contessa Brewer could not be bothered to do a quick search on Congressman Mo Brooks. Instead, she chose to be the partisan liberal media hack that she is.
7/20/2011
Chris Matthews’s interview with GOP Rep. Joe Walsh
Chris Matthew's gets bitch slapped, it's awesome!
7/03/2011
Harvard: July 4th Parades Are Right-Wing
By Paul Bedard
Posted: June 30, 2011
Democratic political candidates can skip this weekend's July 4th parades. A new Harvard University study finds that July 4th parades energize only Republicans, turn kids into Republicans, and help to boost the GOP turnout of adults on Election Day.
"Fourth of July celebrations in the United States shape the nation's political landscape by forming beliefs and increasing participation, primarily in favor of the Republican Party," said the report from Harvard. [See political cartoons about the 2012 GOP field.]
"The political right has been more successful in appropriating American patriotism and its symbols during the 20th century. Survey evidence also confirms that Republicans consider themselves more patriotic than Democrats. According to this interpretation, there is a political congruence between the patriotism promoted on Fourth of July and the values associated with the Republican party. Fourth of July celebrations in Republican dominated counties may thus be more politically biased events that socialize children into Republicans," write Harvard Kennedy School Assistant Professor David Yanagizawa-Drott and Bocconi University Assistant Professor Andreas Madestam. [Enjoy political cartoons about President Obama.]
Their findings also suggest that Democrats gain nothing from July 4th parades, likely a shocking result for all the Democratic politicians who march in them. [Check out editorial cartoons about the Democrats.]
"There is no evidence of an increased likelihood of identifying as a Democrat, indicating that Fourth of July shifts preferences to the right rather than increasing political polarization," the two wrote.
The three key findings of those attending July 4th celebrations:
When done before the age of 18, it increases the likelihood of a youth identifying as a Republican by at least 2 percent.
It raises the likelihood that parade watchers will vote for a Republican candidate by 4 percent.
It boosts the likelihood a reveler will vote by about 1 percent and increases the chances they'll make a political contribution by 3 percent.
What's more, the impact isn't fleeting. "Surprisingly, the estimates show that the impact on political preferences is permanent, with no evidence of the effects depreciating as individuals become older,"said the Harvard report.
Finally, the report suggests that if people are looking for a super-patriotic July 4th, though should head to Republican towns. "Republican adults celebrate Fourth of July more intensively in the first place."
http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2011/06/30/harvard-july-4th-parades-are-right-wing_print.html
Posted: June 30, 2011
Democratic political candidates can skip this weekend's July 4th parades. A new Harvard University study finds that July 4th parades energize only Republicans, turn kids into Republicans, and help to boost the GOP turnout of adults on Election Day.
"Fourth of July celebrations in the United States shape the nation's political landscape by forming beliefs and increasing participation, primarily in favor of the Republican Party," said the report from Harvard. [See political cartoons about the 2012 GOP field.]
"The political right has been more successful in appropriating American patriotism and its symbols during the 20th century. Survey evidence also confirms that Republicans consider themselves more patriotic than Democrats. According to this interpretation, there is a political congruence between the patriotism promoted on Fourth of July and the values associated with the Republican party. Fourth of July celebrations in Republican dominated counties may thus be more politically biased events that socialize children into Republicans," write Harvard Kennedy School Assistant Professor David Yanagizawa-Drott and Bocconi University Assistant Professor Andreas Madestam. [Enjoy political cartoons about President Obama.]
Their findings also suggest that Democrats gain nothing from July 4th parades, likely a shocking result for all the Democratic politicians who march in them. [Check out editorial cartoons about the Democrats.]
"There is no evidence of an increased likelihood of identifying as a Democrat, indicating that Fourth of July shifts preferences to the right rather than increasing political polarization," the two wrote.
The three key findings of those attending July 4th celebrations:
When done before the age of 18, it increases the likelihood of a youth identifying as a Republican by at least 2 percent.
It raises the likelihood that parade watchers will vote for a Republican candidate by 4 percent.
It boosts the likelihood a reveler will vote by about 1 percent and increases the chances they'll make a political contribution by 3 percent.
What's more, the impact isn't fleeting. "Surprisingly, the estimates show that the impact on political preferences is permanent, with no evidence of the effects depreciating as individuals become older,"said the Harvard report.
Finally, the report suggests that if people are looking for a super-patriotic July 4th, though should head to Republican towns. "Republican adults celebrate Fourth of July more intensively in the first place."
http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2011/06/30/harvard-july-4th-parades-are-right-wing_print.html
6/22/2011
Is Newspaper Coverage of Economic Events Politically Biased?
Who would have figured?
John R. Lott Jr.
University of Maryland Foundation, University of Maryland
Kevin A. Hassett
American Enterprise Institute (AEI)
October 19, 2004
Abstract:
Accusations of political bias in the media are often made by members of both political parties, yet there have been few systematic studies of such bias to date. This paper develops an econometric technique to test for political bias in news reports that controls for the underlying character of the news reported. Our results suggest that American newspapers tend to give more positive news coverage to the same economic news when Democrats are in the Presidency than for Republicans. When all types of news are pooled into a single analysis, our results are highly significant. However, the results vary greatly depending upon which economic numbers are being reported. When GDP growth is reported, Republicans received between 16 and 24 percentage point fewer positive stories for the same economic numbers than Democrats. For durable goods for all newspapers, Republicans received between 15 and 25 percentage points fewer positive news stories than Democrats. For unemployment, the difference was between zero and 21 percentage points. Retail sales showed no difference. Among the Associated Press and the top 10 papers, the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Associated Press, and New York Times tend to be the least likely to report positive news during Republican administrations, while the Houston Chronicle slightly favors Republicans. Only one newspaper treated one Republican administration significantly more positively than the Clinton administration: the Los Angeles Times' headlines were most favorable to the Reagan administration, but it still favored Clinton over either Bush administration. We also find that the media coverage affects people's perceptions of the economy. Contrary to the typical impression that bad news sells, we find that good economic news generates more news coverage and that it is usually covered more prominently. We also present some evidence that media treats parties differently when they control both the presidency and the congress.
John R. Lott Jr.
University of Maryland Foundation, University of Maryland
Kevin A. Hassett
American Enterprise Institute (AEI)
October 19, 2004
Abstract:
Accusations of political bias in the media are often made by members of both political parties, yet there have been few systematic studies of such bias to date. This paper develops an econometric technique to test for political bias in news reports that controls for the underlying character of the news reported. Our results suggest that American newspapers tend to give more positive news coverage to the same economic news when Democrats are in the Presidency than for Republicans. When all types of news are pooled into a single analysis, our results are highly significant. However, the results vary greatly depending upon which economic numbers are being reported. When GDP growth is reported, Republicans received between 16 and 24 percentage point fewer positive stories for the same economic numbers than Democrats. For durable goods for all newspapers, Republicans received between 15 and 25 percentage points fewer positive news stories than Democrats. For unemployment, the difference was between zero and 21 percentage points. Retail sales showed no difference. Among the Associated Press and the top 10 papers, the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Associated Press, and New York Times tend to be the least likely to report positive news during Republican administrations, while the Houston Chronicle slightly favors Republicans. Only one newspaper treated one Republican administration significantly more positively than the Clinton administration: the Los Angeles Times' headlines were most favorable to the Reagan administration, but it still favored Clinton over either Bush administration. We also find that the media coverage affects people's perceptions of the economy. Contrary to the typical impression that bad news sells, we find that good economic news generates more news coverage and that it is usually covered more prominently. We also present some evidence that media treats parties differently when they control both the presidency and the congress.
6/17/2011
The author of this opinion piece is a "union activist and political consultant." One thing the author should include is "delusional idiot."
Why Democrats need Weiner
By: Victor Kamber
June 15, 2011 06:30 AM EDT
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
Americans counting on this Congress to stabilize our reeling economy should ask Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) not to resign his House seat.
Weiner may have deplorable personal flaws — but he’s awfully good at what his constituents elected him for: to serve their and the country’s interests as a skilled legislator.
This makes him a rare bird indeed. Even as national problems demand laser-like professional expertise from our elected leaders, this looks like the most unfocused, dysfunctional Congress ever.
Actually the unfocused and dysfunctional congress was booted out in 2010. The Democratic majority headed up by Pelosi was replaced. Even with a majority in all branches, they failed to pass any kind of balanced budget during their tenure. They chose to just kick the can down the road.
Politics may be the only profession where it is more important to be likable than competent. An electable politician is one we’d like to have a beer with. As for the tea party members in Congress: If you’re angry enough and have simplistic answers to tough problems, you can get elected.
It's comments above that have caused me to give up on liberals, and just treat them like spoiled infants.
The United States now faces the huge problem of reducing a horrendous deficit while battling high unemployment. This requires cutting spending and increasing revenues. Unfortunately, 98 percent of Republicans in the House are wearing blinders and can only see half of the solution. The blinders are a pledge not to raise taxes — a pledge made not to the American people, but to Grover Norquist.
Again, the US has faced this issue for years. It's not "now," to imply this is new. This horrendous deficit is a result of failed Democratic policy of not focusing on the budget in the past, worsened by Obama's deficit spending during his tenure, and no confidence from the market. If taxes are raised, how does that free up capital for business to invest in new jobs?
Now, Weiner may not be wearing pants on Twitter, but in his day job he isn’t wearing blinders either.
Weiner’s tweets are embarrassing. But they didn’t cost taxpayers a dime.
Maybe, maybe not...that is still being looked into.
It is because Weiner has been such an effective opponent of GOP attacks on Social Security and Medicare that Republicans, and even some Democrats, want him to resign. Republicans can’t respond to his withering rebuttals that leave their “talking points” in ashes.
I can’t help but feel that some Democrats now urging Weiner to go feel a bit guilty they aren’t standing up for their party’s ideals the way he does.
I love how the author states that they are losing some great orator, leader, and winner of all arguments.
Some pundits liken Weiner’s scandal to former New York Republican Rep. Chris Lee, who posed shirtless for an ad on Craigslist and quickly resigned.
Lee who? Comparing Lee and his legislative “career” to Weiner is like comparing a Hagerstown utility infielder to Albert Pujols.
Actually they were both politicians caught in a scandal. Just because one is more popular than another, it doesn't give Weiner any merit over Lee. In addition, Lee immediately resigned. Weiner tried to keep his job, lie to everyone to cover up his mess, and denied it was him initially. Remember his "hacked account" statements?
The census and redistricting may make the whole matter moot. New York loses two congressional districts, and that could include Weiner’s seat.
Some suggest that Weiner’s fate should be left up to his constituents. I’m for that. Though I don’t live in his district, I would contribute to that campaign.
Liberals deserve representation too — even if it’s from other states.
Victor Kamber is a union activist and political consultant.
Liberals don't deserve representation as a tea party activist does not deserve representation. People do not get elected into office because they "deserve" it. It's the choice of the voters if that person is deserves the job, which is done by an individual casting a vote. No politician is deserving of a job just because that politician has a certain view, be it popular or unpopular.
Victor Kamber would probably afford some time to commit to a more thoughtful article, but apparently he spends way too much time in Weiner's automobile with his head bobbing up and down.
Why Democrats need Weiner
By: Victor Kamber
June 15, 2011 06:30 AM EDT
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
Americans counting on this Congress to stabilize our reeling economy should ask Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) not to resign his House seat.
Weiner may have deplorable personal flaws — but he’s awfully good at what his constituents elected him for: to serve their and the country’s interests as a skilled legislator.
This makes him a rare bird indeed. Even as national problems demand laser-like professional expertise from our elected leaders, this looks like the most unfocused, dysfunctional Congress ever.
Actually the unfocused and dysfunctional congress was booted out in 2010. The Democratic majority headed up by Pelosi was replaced. Even with a majority in all branches, they failed to pass any kind of balanced budget during their tenure. They chose to just kick the can down the road.
Politics may be the only profession where it is more important to be likable than competent. An electable politician is one we’d like to have a beer with. As for the tea party members in Congress: If you’re angry enough and have simplistic answers to tough problems, you can get elected.
It's comments above that have caused me to give up on liberals, and just treat them like spoiled infants.
The United States now faces the huge problem of reducing a horrendous deficit while battling high unemployment. This requires cutting spending and increasing revenues. Unfortunately, 98 percent of Republicans in the House are wearing blinders and can only see half of the solution. The blinders are a pledge not to raise taxes — a pledge made not to the American people, but to Grover Norquist.
Again, the US has faced this issue for years. It's not "now," to imply this is new. This horrendous deficit is a result of failed Democratic policy of not focusing on the budget in the past, worsened by Obama's deficit spending during his tenure, and no confidence from the market. If taxes are raised, how does that free up capital for business to invest in new jobs?
Now, Weiner may not be wearing pants on Twitter, but in his day job he isn’t wearing blinders either.
Weiner’s tweets are embarrassing. But they didn’t cost taxpayers a dime.
Maybe, maybe not...that is still being looked into.
It is because Weiner has been such an effective opponent of GOP attacks on Social Security and Medicare that Republicans, and even some Democrats, want him to resign. Republicans can’t respond to his withering rebuttals that leave their “talking points” in ashes.
I can’t help but feel that some Democrats now urging Weiner to go feel a bit guilty they aren’t standing up for their party’s ideals the way he does.
I love how the author states that they are losing some great orator, leader, and winner of all arguments.
Some pundits liken Weiner’s scandal to former New York Republican Rep. Chris Lee, who posed shirtless for an ad on Craigslist and quickly resigned.
Lee who? Comparing Lee and his legislative “career” to Weiner is like comparing a Hagerstown utility infielder to Albert Pujols.
Actually they were both politicians caught in a scandal. Just because one is more popular than another, it doesn't give Weiner any merit over Lee. In addition, Lee immediately resigned. Weiner tried to keep his job, lie to everyone to cover up his mess, and denied it was him initially. Remember his "hacked account" statements?
The census and redistricting may make the whole matter moot. New York loses two congressional districts, and that could include Weiner’s seat.
Some suggest that Weiner’s fate should be left up to his constituents. I’m for that. Though I don’t live in his district, I would contribute to that campaign.
Liberals deserve representation too — even if it’s from other states.
Victor Kamber is a union activist and political consultant.
Liberals don't deserve representation as a tea party activist does not deserve representation. People do not get elected into office because they "deserve" it. It's the choice of the voters if that person is deserves the job, which is done by an individual casting a vote. No politician is deserving of a job just because that politician has a certain view, be it popular or unpopular.
Victor Kamber would probably afford some time to commit to a more thoughtful article, but apparently he spends way too much time in Weiner's automobile with his head bobbing up and down.
6/02/2011
TV Executives Admit in Taped Interviews That Hollywood Pushes a Liberal Agenda (Exclusive Video)
Go figure, interesting videos are at the bottom of the story.
TV Executives Admit in Taped Interviews That Hollywood Pushes a Liberal Agenda (Exclusive Video)http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
TV Executives Admit in Taped Interviews That Hollywood Pushes a Liberal Agenda (Exclusive Video)http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
5/23/2011
5/17/2011
Eating their own...
RISE OF THE OBAMABOTS
By Ted Rall Mon May 16, 5:03 pm ET
Stifling Liberal Dissent Under Obama
NEW YORK--After they called the presidency for Obama, emails poured in. "You must be relieved now that the Democrats are taking over," an old college buddy told me. "There will be less pressure on you."
That would have been nice.
In the late 1990s my cartoons ran in Time, Fortune and Bloomberg Personal magazines and over 100 daily and alternative weekly newspapers. I was a staff writer for two major magazines.
Then Bush came in. And 9/11 happened.
The media gorged on an orgy of psychotic right-wing rhetoric. Flags everywhere. Torture suddenly OK. In a nation where mainstream political discourse was redefined between Dick Cheney on the right and libertarian Bill Maher on the not-as-right, there wasn't any room in the paper for a left-of-center cartoonist. My business was savaged. Income plunged.
My editor at Time called me on September 13, 2001. "We're discontinuing all cartoons," she told me. I was one of four cartoonists at the newsweekly. "Humor is dead." I snorted. They never brought back cartoons.
McCarthyism--blackballing--made a big comeback. I had been drawing a monthly comic strip, "The Testosterone Diaries," for Men's Health. No politics. It was about guy stuff: dating, job insecurity, prostate tests, that sort of thing. They fired me. Not because of anything I drew for them. It was because of my syndicated editorial cartoons, which attacked Bush and his policies. The publisher worried about pissing off right-wingers during a period of nationalism on steroids.
Desperate and going broke, I called an editor who'd given me lots of work at the magazines he ran during the 1990s. "Sorry, dude, I can't help," he replied. "You're radioactive."
It was tempting, when Obama's Democrats swept into office in 2008, to think that the bad old days were coming to an end. I wasn't looking for any favors, just a swing of the political pendulum back to the Clinton years when it was still OK to be a liberal.
This, you have no doubt correctly guessed, is the part where I tell you I was wrong.
I didn't count on the cult of personality around Barack Obama.
In the 1990s it was OK to attack Clinton from the left. I went after the Man From Hope and his centrist, "triangulation"-obsessed Democratic Leadership Council for selling out progressive principles. Along with like-minded political cartoonists including Tom Tomorrow and Lloyd Dangle, my cartoons and columns took Clinton's militant moderates to the woodshed for NAFTA, the WTO and welfare reform. A pal who worked in the White House informed me that the President, known for his short temper, stormed into his office and slammed a copy of that morning's Washington Post down on the desk with my cartoon showing. "How dare your friend compare me to Bush?" he shouted. (The first Bush.)
It was better than winning a Pulitzer.
It feels a little weird to write this, like I'm telling tales out of school and ratting out the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy. But it's true: there's less room for a leftie during the Age of Obama than there was under Bush.
I didn't realize how besotted progressives were by Mr. Hopey Changey.
Obama lost me before Inauguration Day, when he announced cabinet appointments that didn't include a single liberal.
It got worse after that: Obama extended and expanded Bush's TARP giveaway to the banks; continued Bush's spying on our phone calls; ignored the foreclosure crisis; refused to investigate, much less prosecute, Bush's torturers; his healthcare plan was a sellout to Big Pharma; he kept Gitmo open; expanded the war against Afghanistan; dispatched more drone bombers; used weasel words to redefine the troops in Iraq as "non-combat"; extended the Bush tax cuts for the rich; claiming the right to assassinate U.S. citizens; most recently, there was the forced nudity torture of PFC Bradley Manning and expanding oil drilling offshore and on national lands.
I was merciless to Obama. I was cruel in my criticisms of Obama's sellouts to the right. In my writings and drawings I tried to tell it as it was, or anyway, as I saw it. I thought--still think--that's my job. I'm a critic, not a suck-up. The Obama Administration doesn't need journalists or pundits to carry its water. That's what press secretaries and PR flacks are for.
Does Obama ever do anything right? Not often, but sure. And when he does, I shut up about it. Cartoonists and columnists who promote government policy are an embarrassment.
But that's what "liberal" media outlets want in the age of Obama.
I can't prove it in every case. (That's how blackballing works.) The Nation and Mother Jones and Harper's, liberal magazines that gave me freelance work under Clinton and Bush, now ignore my queries. Even when I offered them first-person, unembedded war reporting from Afghanistan. Hey, maybe they're too busy to answer email or voicemail. You never know.
Other censors are brazen.
There's been a push among political cartoonists to get our work into the big editorial blogs and online magazines that seem poised to displace traditional print political magazines like The Progressive. In the past, editorial rejections had numerous causes: low budgets, lack of space, an editor who simply preferred another creator's work over yours.
Now there' s a new cause for refusal: Too tough on the president.
I've heard that from enough "liberal" websites and print publications to consider it a significant trend.
A sample of recent rejections, each from editors at different left-of-center media outlets:
· "I am familiar with and enjoy your cartoons. However the readers of our site would not be comfortable with your (admittedly on point) criticism of Obama."
· "Don't be such a hater on O and we could use your stuff. Can't you focus more on the GOP?"
· "Our first African-American president deserves a chance to clean up Bush's mess without being attacked by us."
I have many more like that.
What's weird is that these cultish attitudes come from editors and publishers whose politics line up neatly with mine. They oppose the bailouts. They want us out of Afghanistan and Iraq. They disapprove of Obama's new war against Libya. They want Obama to renounce torture and Guantánamo.
Obama is the one they ought to be blackballing. He has been a terrible disappointment to the American left. He has forsaken liberals at every turn. Yet they continue to stand by him. Which means that, in effect, they are not liberals at all. They are militant Democrats. They are Obamabots.
As long as Democrats win elections, they are happy. Nevermind that their policies are the same as, or to the right of, the Republicans.
"So what should I think about [the war in Libya]?," asks Kevin Drum in Mother Jones. "If it had been my call, I wouldn't have gone into Libya. But the reason I voted for Obama in 2008 is because I trust his judgment. And not in any merely abstract way, either: I mean that if he and I were in a room and disagreed about some issue on which I had any doubt at all, I'd literally trust his judgment over my own. I think he's smarter than me, better informed, better able to understand the consequences of his actions, and more farsighted."
Mr. Drum, call your office. Someone found your brain in the break room.
Barack Obama and the Democrats have made it perfectly clear that they don't care about the issues and concerns that I care about. Unlike Kevin Drum, I think--I know--I'm smarter than Barack Obama. I wouldn't have made half the mistakes he has.
So I don't care about Obama. Or the Democrats. I care about America and the world and the people who live in them.
Hey, Obamabots: when the man you support betrays your principles, he has to go--not your principles.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucru/20110516/cm_ucru/riseoftheobamabots/print
By Ted Rall Mon May 16, 5:03 pm ET
Stifling Liberal Dissent Under Obama
NEW YORK--After they called the presidency for Obama, emails poured in. "You must be relieved now that the Democrats are taking over," an old college buddy told me. "There will be less pressure on you."
That would have been nice.
In the late 1990s my cartoons ran in Time, Fortune and Bloomberg Personal magazines and over 100 daily and alternative weekly newspapers. I was a staff writer for two major magazines.
Then Bush came in. And 9/11 happened.
The media gorged on an orgy of psychotic right-wing rhetoric. Flags everywhere. Torture suddenly OK. In a nation where mainstream political discourse was redefined between Dick Cheney on the right and libertarian Bill Maher on the not-as-right, there wasn't any room in the paper for a left-of-center cartoonist. My business was savaged. Income plunged.
My editor at Time called me on September 13, 2001. "We're discontinuing all cartoons," she told me. I was one of four cartoonists at the newsweekly. "Humor is dead." I snorted. They never brought back cartoons.
McCarthyism--blackballing--made a big comeback. I had been drawing a monthly comic strip, "The Testosterone Diaries," for Men's Health. No politics. It was about guy stuff: dating, job insecurity, prostate tests, that sort of thing. They fired me. Not because of anything I drew for them. It was because of my syndicated editorial cartoons, which attacked Bush and his policies. The publisher worried about pissing off right-wingers during a period of nationalism on steroids.
Desperate and going broke, I called an editor who'd given me lots of work at the magazines he ran during the 1990s. "Sorry, dude, I can't help," he replied. "You're radioactive."
It was tempting, when Obama's Democrats swept into office in 2008, to think that the bad old days were coming to an end. I wasn't looking for any favors, just a swing of the political pendulum back to the Clinton years when it was still OK to be a liberal.
This, you have no doubt correctly guessed, is the part where I tell you I was wrong.
I didn't count on the cult of personality around Barack Obama.
In the 1990s it was OK to attack Clinton from the left. I went after the Man From Hope and his centrist, "triangulation"-obsessed Democratic Leadership Council for selling out progressive principles. Along with like-minded political cartoonists including Tom Tomorrow and Lloyd Dangle, my cartoons and columns took Clinton's militant moderates to the woodshed for NAFTA, the WTO and welfare reform. A pal who worked in the White House informed me that the President, known for his short temper, stormed into his office and slammed a copy of that morning's Washington Post down on the desk with my cartoon showing. "How dare your friend compare me to Bush?" he shouted. (The first Bush.)
It was better than winning a Pulitzer.
It feels a little weird to write this, like I'm telling tales out of school and ratting out the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy. But it's true: there's less room for a leftie during the Age of Obama than there was under Bush.
I didn't realize how besotted progressives were by Mr. Hopey Changey.
Obama lost me before Inauguration Day, when he announced cabinet appointments that didn't include a single liberal.
It got worse after that: Obama extended and expanded Bush's TARP giveaway to the banks; continued Bush's spying on our phone calls; ignored the foreclosure crisis; refused to investigate, much less prosecute, Bush's torturers; his healthcare plan was a sellout to Big Pharma; he kept Gitmo open; expanded the war against Afghanistan; dispatched more drone bombers; used weasel words to redefine the troops in Iraq as "non-combat"; extended the Bush tax cuts for the rich; claiming the right to assassinate U.S. citizens; most recently, there was the forced nudity torture of PFC Bradley Manning and expanding oil drilling offshore and on national lands.
I was merciless to Obama. I was cruel in my criticisms of Obama's sellouts to the right. In my writings and drawings I tried to tell it as it was, or anyway, as I saw it. I thought--still think--that's my job. I'm a critic, not a suck-up. The Obama Administration doesn't need journalists or pundits to carry its water. That's what press secretaries and PR flacks are for.
Does Obama ever do anything right? Not often, but sure. And when he does, I shut up about it. Cartoonists and columnists who promote government policy are an embarrassment.
But that's what "liberal" media outlets want in the age of Obama.
I can't prove it in every case. (That's how blackballing works.) The Nation and Mother Jones and Harper's, liberal magazines that gave me freelance work under Clinton and Bush, now ignore my queries. Even when I offered them first-person, unembedded war reporting from Afghanistan. Hey, maybe they're too busy to answer email or voicemail. You never know.
Other censors are brazen.
There's been a push among political cartoonists to get our work into the big editorial blogs and online magazines that seem poised to displace traditional print political magazines like The Progressive. In the past, editorial rejections had numerous causes: low budgets, lack of space, an editor who simply preferred another creator's work over yours.
Now there' s a new cause for refusal: Too tough on the president.
I've heard that from enough "liberal" websites and print publications to consider it a significant trend.
A sample of recent rejections, each from editors at different left-of-center media outlets:
· "I am familiar with and enjoy your cartoons. However the readers of our site would not be comfortable with your (admittedly on point) criticism of Obama."
· "Don't be such a hater on O and we could use your stuff. Can't you focus more on the GOP?"
· "Our first African-American president deserves a chance to clean up Bush's mess without being attacked by us."
I have many more like that.
What's weird is that these cultish attitudes come from editors and publishers whose politics line up neatly with mine. They oppose the bailouts. They want us out of Afghanistan and Iraq. They disapprove of Obama's new war against Libya. They want Obama to renounce torture and Guantánamo.
Obama is the one they ought to be blackballing. He has been a terrible disappointment to the American left. He has forsaken liberals at every turn. Yet they continue to stand by him. Which means that, in effect, they are not liberals at all. They are militant Democrats. They are Obamabots.
As long as Democrats win elections, they are happy. Nevermind that their policies are the same as, or to the right of, the Republicans.
"So what should I think about [the war in Libya]?," asks Kevin Drum in Mother Jones. "If it had been my call, I wouldn't have gone into Libya. But the reason I voted for Obama in 2008 is because I trust his judgment. And not in any merely abstract way, either: I mean that if he and I were in a room and disagreed about some issue on which I had any doubt at all, I'd literally trust his judgment over my own. I think he's smarter than me, better informed, better able to understand the consequences of his actions, and more farsighted."
Mr. Drum, call your office. Someone found your brain in the break room.
Barack Obama and the Democrats have made it perfectly clear that they don't care about the issues and concerns that I care about. Unlike Kevin Drum, I think--I know--I'm smarter than Barack Obama. I wouldn't have made half the mistakes he has.
So I don't care about Obama. Or the Democrats. I care about America and the world and the people who live in them.
Hey, Obamabots: when the man you support betrays your principles, he has to go--not your principles.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucru/20110516/cm_ucru/riseoftheobamabots/print
4/21/2011
Then and now
“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies…
Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that “the buck stops here.” Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”
- Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), March 20, 2006
Highlights of Obama's interview with AP 4/16/2011:
Expressed confidence that Congress will vote to raise the limit on the nation's debt but acknowledged that he'll have to agree to additional spending cuts. Said that to "play chicken with this thing" and not raise the ceiling before the U.S. hits its $14.3 trillion limit on borrowing in mid-May could have dire consequences, including another global recession.
Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that “the buck stops here.” Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”
- Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), March 20, 2006
Highlights of Obama's interview with AP 4/16/2011:
Expressed confidence that Congress will vote to raise the limit on the nation's debt but acknowledged that he'll have to agree to additional spending cuts. Said that to "play chicken with this thing" and not raise the ceiling before the U.S. hits its $14.3 trillion limit on borrowing in mid-May could have dire consequences, including another global recession.
4/01/2011
Wisconsin Labor Protests and International Socialism
Right around 3 minutes in, hilarity commences. These people are so stupid.
3/29/2011
Obama’s Close Personal Friends Ayers and Dohrn Say Any Country With a US Military Base Should Be Able to Vote in American Presidential Elections…
Just listen to what these idiots are saying...
Is Being Pro-States Rights Racist? Al Sharpton Says the Tea Party Is Anti-Civil Rights by Default
The professional race-baiters are trying soooo damn hard to stay relevant in the age of Obama.
3/14/2011
Charles Krauthammer: If NPR Is Superior, Why Must It ‘Live On The Tit Of The State?’
Charles Krauthammer: If NPR Is Superior, Why Must It ‘Live On The Tit Of The State?’
Krauthammer really points out the issue very well.
Krauthammer really points out the issue very well.
3/08/2011
3/05/2011
Wisconsin Unions vs. The Tea Party: A Classic Double Standard
Wisconsin Unions vs. The Tea Party: A Classic Double Standard
By RICH NOYES AND SCOTT WHITLOCK
From the Media Research Center
Loud protests by Wisconsin public employee unions against a budget reform proposal from new Governor Scott Walker have drawn considerable national network news attention since Thursday, the day Democratic state senators fled the state in a last-ditch gambit to prevent the bill from becoming law. A story-by-story analysis by the Media Research Center shows the Wisconsin protests are a perfect case study in the media's longstanding double standard favoring left-wing causes while demonstrating much more hostility to the Tea Party and conservative protests.
Last March, as thousands protested on Capitol Hill in the days before the passage of ObamaCare, CBS's Nancy Cordes slammed it as "a weekend filled with incivility," while World News anchor Diane Sawyer painted the Tea Party as a violent gang, with "protesters roaming Washington, some of them increasingly emotional, yelling slurs and epithets." In August 2009, ABC anchor Charles Gibson complained how "protesters brought pictures of President Obama with a Hitler-style mustache to a town hall meeting," failing to mention that the signs were produced by Lyndon LaRouche's wacky fringe movement, not the Tea Party or conservatives.
Over the past several days, the liberal demonstrations in Wisconsin (bolstered by the national Democratic Party and President Obama's Organizing for America group) have included signs just as inflammatory as the ones that bothered the networks during the health care debate, including several showing Governor Scott Walker as Adolph Hitler. Others have likened Walker to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin ("Scott Stalin") and recently deposed Egyptian autocrat Hosni Mubarak ("Walker = Mubarak").
Another protest sign drew a cross-hairs over a picture of Governor Walker's head, with the caption "Don't Retreat, Reload; Repeal Walker" — an obvious parallel to a Facebook map posted by Sarah Palin last year, although that much-criticized graphic placed the target sights on maps of congressional districts, not any politician's face.
Yet none of these signs in the hands of liberal protesters have drawn the slightest complaint from network journalists. MRC analysts examined all 53 ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news stories, segments and anchor briefs on the Wisconsin protests from Thursday, February 17 (when they first drew major national coverage) through Monday, February 21. While eight of the 53 stories (15%) visually displayed one or more of the signs described above, none elicited a single remark from the network correspondents.
Instead, network journalists actually suggested the "Walker = Mubarak" theme of some of the more inflammatory signs. On Sunday's This Week, for example, ABC's Christiane Amanpour linked Wisconsin to the uprisings against oppressive dictatorships: "Populist frustration is boiling over this week, as we've said, not just in the Middle East, but in the middle of this country as well." So did NBC's Brian Williams on Friday's Nightly News: "From the Mideast to the American Midwest tonight, people are rising up. Citizens' uprisings are changing the world." NBC's on-screen caption: "The Uprising at Home."
ABC's Diane Sawyer opened Thursday's World News by empathizing with the protesters:
Today, we saw America's money trouble meet a reality, a human reality, as teachers, nurses, tens of thousands of state workers took to the streets in this country, protesting cuts by the governors, saying to these governors, a promise is a promise. One lawmaker looked out at the crowds gathered in the Wisconsin capital today said it's like Cairo moved to Madison.
The only time network journalists fretted about the Wisconsin protests getting out of hand was when their favorite bogeyman, the Tea Party, became involved — as ABC's Barbara Pinto did on Saturday's Good Morning America: "Today, those demonstrations are expected to get more intense and more polarizing — we're watching police officers arrive here this morning. And that is because the Tea Party is staging a counter-demonstration of its own today."
As of Monday night, none of the networks had shown the sign placing Walker's face in the crosshairs. But last March, when the graphic first appeared on Palin's Facebook page, those same networks howled almost instantly. CBS's Nancy Cordes, on the March 24, 2010 Evening News, was typical: "Democrats complain Sarah Palin is also using violent words and imagery. On Twitter, she urges conservatives: 'Don't retreat. Instead, reload.' And the Web site of her political action committee posts bull's-eyes on districts of vulnerable Democrats."
After Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot and severely wounded in January by a psychotic man unconnected to the Tea Party or any other political cause, the networks highlighted Palin's map in 24 stories in just the first six days. "That map Sarah Palin put up on Facebook last year, targeting Congresswoman Gifford's seat, made Gifford nervous, even then," NBC's Lee Cowan scolded on Today back on January 10.
Even the most timeworn chants seemed to outrage journalists when it came to the Tea Party. Back in March, CBS's Bob Schieffer was appalled by, among other things, anti-ObamaCare protesters chanting "kill the bill." He lectured on the March 21, 2010 Face the Nation: "A year-long debate that's been rancorous and mean from the start turned even nastier yesterday. Demonstrators protesting the bill poured into the halls of Congress shouting 'kill the bill' and 'made in the USSR.'"
This weekend in Wisconsin, protesters also chanted "kill the bill" (CBS's The Early Show ran a clip on Friday) but on this Sunday's Face the Nation, Schieffer had no negative words for these protesters as he set up a discussion of the issue: "Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets again in Madison, Wisconsin as they marched to protest major cuts in state spending. The question is, will the protests spread to other states where similar proposals to cut spending are also being contemplated?"
When it comes to the Tea Party, network correspondents seem to enjoy playing "civility cop," emphasizing a few radical and inflammatory signs in ways that imply that the entire cause is extreme. Radical and inflammatory signs were easily found at the Wisconsin protests, but the networks uttered not one peep of disapproval — overwhelming evidence of a double standard that should embarrass any network journalist who still purports to be fair and balanced.
Mr. Noyes is the MRC's Research Director. Mr. Whitlock is a news analyst at the Media Research Center.
By RICH NOYES AND SCOTT WHITLOCK
From the Media Research Center
Loud protests by Wisconsin public employee unions against a budget reform proposal from new Governor Scott Walker have drawn considerable national network news attention since Thursday, the day Democratic state senators fled the state in a last-ditch gambit to prevent the bill from becoming law. A story-by-story analysis by the Media Research Center shows the Wisconsin protests are a perfect case study in the media's longstanding double standard favoring left-wing causes while demonstrating much more hostility to the Tea Party and conservative protests.
Last March, as thousands protested on Capitol Hill in the days before the passage of ObamaCare, CBS's Nancy Cordes slammed it as "a weekend filled with incivility," while World News anchor Diane Sawyer painted the Tea Party as a violent gang, with "protesters roaming Washington, some of them increasingly emotional, yelling slurs and epithets." In August 2009, ABC anchor Charles Gibson complained how "protesters brought pictures of President Obama with a Hitler-style mustache to a town hall meeting," failing to mention that the signs were produced by Lyndon LaRouche's wacky fringe movement, not the Tea Party or conservatives.
Over the past several days, the liberal demonstrations in Wisconsin (bolstered by the national Democratic Party and President Obama's Organizing for America group) have included signs just as inflammatory as the ones that bothered the networks during the health care debate, including several showing Governor Scott Walker as Adolph Hitler. Others have likened Walker to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin ("Scott Stalin") and recently deposed Egyptian autocrat Hosni Mubarak ("Walker = Mubarak").
Another protest sign drew a cross-hairs over a picture of Governor Walker's head, with the caption "Don't Retreat, Reload; Repeal Walker" — an obvious parallel to a Facebook map posted by Sarah Palin last year, although that much-criticized graphic placed the target sights on maps of congressional districts, not any politician's face.
Yet none of these signs in the hands of liberal protesters have drawn the slightest complaint from network journalists. MRC analysts examined all 53 ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news stories, segments and anchor briefs on the Wisconsin protests from Thursday, February 17 (when they first drew major national coverage) through Monday, February 21. While eight of the 53 stories (15%) visually displayed one or more of the signs described above, none elicited a single remark from the network correspondents.
Instead, network journalists actually suggested the "Walker = Mubarak" theme of some of the more inflammatory signs. On Sunday's This Week, for example, ABC's Christiane Amanpour linked Wisconsin to the uprisings against oppressive dictatorships: "Populist frustration is boiling over this week, as we've said, not just in the Middle East, but in the middle of this country as well." So did NBC's Brian Williams on Friday's Nightly News: "From the Mideast to the American Midwest tonight, people are rising up. Citizens' uprisings are changing the world." NBC's on-screen caption: "The Uprising at Home."
ABC's Diane Sawyer opened Thursday's World News by empathizing with the protesters:
Today, we saw America's money trouble meet a reality, a human reality, as teachers, nurses, tens of thousands of state workers took to the streets in this country, protesting cuts by the governors, saying to these governors, a promise is a promise. One lawmaker looked out at the crowds gathered in the Wisconsin capital today said it's like Cairo moved to Madison.
The only time network journalists fretted about the Wisconsin protests getting out of hand was when their favorite bogeyman, the Tea Party, became involved — as ABC's Barbara Pinto did on Saturday's Good Morning America: "Today, those demonstrations are expected to get more intense and more polarizing — we're watching police officers arrive here this morning. And that is because the Tea Party is staging a counter-demonstration of its own today."
As of Monday night, none of the networks had shown the sign placing Walker's face in the crosshairs. But last March, when the graphic first appeared on Palin's Facebook page, those same networks howled almost instantly. CBS's Nancy Cordes, on the March 24, 2010 Evening News, was typical: "Democrats complain Sarah Palin is also using violent words and imagery. On Twitter, she urges conservatives: 'Don't retreat. Instead, reload.' And the Web site of her political action committee posts bull's-eyes on districts of vulnerable Democrats."
After Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot and severely wounded in January by a psychotic man unconnected to the Tea Party or any other political cause, the networks highlighted Palin's map in 24 stories in just the first six days. "That map Sarah Palin put up on Facebook last year, targeting Congresswoman Gifford's seat, made Gifford nervous, even then," NBC's Lee Cowan scolded on Today back on January 10.
Even the most timeworn chants seemed to outrage journalists when it came to the Tea Party. Back in March, CBS's Bob Schieffer was appalled by, among other things, anti-ObamaCare protesters chanting "kill the bill." He lectured on the March 21, 2010 Face the Nation: "A year-long debate that's been rancorous and mean from the start turned even nastier yesterday. Demonstrators protesting the bill poured into the halls of Congress shouting 'kill the bill' and 'made in the USSR.'"
This weekend in Wisconsin, protesters also chanted "kill the bill" (CBS's The Early Show ran a clip on Friday) but on this Sunday's Face the Nation, Schieffer had no negative words for these protesters as he set up a discussion of the issue: "Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets again in Madison, Wisconsin as they marched to protest major cuts in state spending. The question is, will the protests spread to other states where similar proposals to cut spending are also being contemplated?"
When it comes to the Tea Party, network correspondents seem to enjoy playing "civility cop," emphasizing a few radical and inflammatory signs in ways that imply that the entire cause is extreme. Radical and inflammatory signs were easily found at the Wisconsin protests, but the networks uttered not one peep of disapproval — overwhelming evidence of a double standard that should embarrass any network journalist who still purports to be fair and balanced.
Mr. Noyes is the MRC's Research Director. Mr. Whitlock is a news analyst at the Media Research Center.
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