It is no surprise that the left doesn’t know the Constitution. After all they spend so much time trying to ignore it, subvert it and get around it. Maddow has whopping flubs pretty regularly (1, 2, 3) and when we we started to look at her statements we realized that correcting and making fun of her ignorance would become a full time job. Nonetheless this flub is pretty entertaining.
RACHEL MADDOW, HOST: Congressman Akin was not alone in stumbling over a little basic U.S. history. He had some good company in the top Republican in the House, Minority Leader John Boehner.
(VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN BOEHNER (R-OHIO.): This is my copy of the Constitution. And I’m gonna stand here with our Founding Fathers who wrote in the Preamble, “We hold these truths to be self-evident…”
(END VIDEOTAPE):
MADDOW (waving hands): Nnn, Constitution doesn’t have a Preamble. Not. Nope. Stop it. That would be the Declaration of Independence. Ooh.
Actually, Rach, the Constitution DOES have a Preamble, and I doth quote:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
As you liberals so love Wikipedia, in its section titled “Preamble to the United States Constitution”
I was very sick while this went on, but it is worth noting that the same people that fact checked a Saturday Night Live skit teasing President Obama, put vile and totally invented quotes on the air to smear Limbaugh to prevent his consortium from buying the St. Louis Rams.
MSNBC says that Limbaugh would love to say that he owns a plantation full of black men – LINK.
MSNBC Admits: ‘Unable to Verify’ False Limbaugh Quote; No Retraction or Apology- LINK.
Since the fictional Limbaugh quotes were exposed, the networks spent only 47 seconds discussing it – LINK.
Huffington Post Pulls Bogus Limbaugh Quotes after not being able to substantiate them – LINK.
CNN Reads Limbaugh’s Denial of Alleged Slavery Quote, Doesn’t Retract Use. Says there are “Other Quotes” and couldn’t substantiate those either – LINK.
So Called ‘Journalists’ Claiming Limbaugh Praised MLK’s Assassin Offer No Proof – LINK.
ANC Claims “Limbaugh has a history of making racially offensive comments” but offers no quotes and no proof – LINK.
Video: MSNBC’s Matthews muses on killing Rush Limbaugh – LINK.
Roger Goodell from the NFL, a known Obama supporter, made disparaging comments about Limbaugh and got chewed out for it during a Congressioanl hearing by Represetative Steve King. You can watch Goodell squirm. He very much deserved this public humiliation.
My critics would have you believe no conservative meets NFL ’standards.’
David Checketts, an investor and owner of sports teams, approached me in late May about investing in the St. Louis Rams football franchise. As a football fan, I was intrigued. I invited him to my home where we discussed it further. Even after informing him that some people might try to make an issue of my participation, Mr. Checketts said he didn’t much care. I accepted his offer.
It didn’t take long before my name was selectively leaked to the media as part of the Checketts investment group. Shortly thereafter, the media elicited comments from the likes of Al Sharpton. In 1998 Mr. Sharpton was found guilty of defamation and ordered to pay $65,000 for falsely accusing a New York prosecutor of rape in the 1987 Tawana Brawley case. He also played a leading role in the 1991 Crown Heights riot (he called neighborhood Jews “diamond merchants”) and 1995 Freddie’s Fashion Mart riot.
Not to be outdone, Jesse Jackson, whose history includes anti-Semitic speech (in 1984 he referred to Jews as “Hymies” and to New York City as “Hymietown” in a Washington Post interview) chimed in. He found me unfit to be associated with the NFL. I was too divisive and worse. I was accused of once supporting slavery and having praised Martin Luther King Jr.’s murderer, James Earl Ray.
Next came writers in the sports world, like the Washington Post’s Michael Wilbon. He wrote this gem earlier this week: “I’m not going to try and give specific examples of things Limbaugh has said over the years because I screwed up already doing that, repeating a quote attributed to Limbaugh (about slavery) which he has told me he simply did not say and does not reflect his feelings. I take him at his word. . . . “
Mr. Wilbon wasn’t alone. Numerous sportswriters, CNN, MSNBC, among others, falsely attributed to me statements I had never made. Their sources, as best I can tell, were Wikipedia and each other. But the Wikipedia post was based on a fabrication printed in a book that also lacked any citation to an actual source.
I never said I supported slavery and I never praised James Earl Ray. How sick would that be? Just as sick as those who would use such outrageous slanders against me or anyone else who never even thought such things. Mr. Wilbon refuses to take responsibility for his poison pen, writing instead that he will take my word that I did not make these statements; others, like Rick Sanchez of CNN, essentially used the same sleight-of-hand.
The sports media elicited comments from a handful of players, none of whom I can recall ever meeting. Among other things, at least one said he would never play for a team I was involved in given my racial views. My racial views? You mean, my belief in a colorblind society where every individual is treated as a precious human being without regard to his race? Where football players should earn as much as they can and keep as much as they can, regardless of race? Those controversial racial views?
The NFL players union boss, DeMaurice Smith, jumped in. A Washington criminal defense lawyer, Democratic Party supporter and Barack Obama donor, he sent a much publicized email to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell saying that it was important for the league to reject discrimination and hatred.
When Mr. Goodell was asked about me, he suggested that my 2003 comment criticizing the media’s coverage of Donovan McNabb—in which I said the media was cheerleading Mr. McNabb because they wanted a successful black quarterback—fell short of the NFL’s “high standard.” High standard? Half a decade later, the media would behave the same way about the presidential candidacy of Mr. Obama.
Having brought me into his group, Mr. Checketts now wanted a way out. He asked me to resign. I told him no way. I had done nothing wrong. I had not uttered the words these people were putting in my mouth. And I would not bow to their libels and pressure. He would have to drop me from the group. A few days later, he did.
As I explained on my radio show, this spectacle is bigger than I am on several levels. There is a contempt in the news business, including the sportswriter community, for conservatives that reflects the blind hatred espoused by Messrs. Sharpton and Jackson. “Racism” is too often their sledgehammer. And it is being used to try to keep citizens who don’t share the left’s agenda from participating in the full array of opportunities this nation otherwise affords each of us. It was on display many years ago in an effort to smear Clarence Thomas with racist stereotypes and keep him off the Supreme Court. More recently, it was employed against patriotic citizens who attended town-hall meetings and tea-party protests.
These intimidation tactics are working and spreading, and they are a cancer on our society.
BRZEZINSKI: — but we’re all liberals and Democrats.
SCARBOROUGH: You know that everyone you worked for, they were all liberals, they were all pro-choice, they were all pro-gun control, they were all, I mean, let me ask you this question: when did you work at CBS?
BRZEZINSKI: Collectively, over a course of 10 years.
SCARBOROUGH: Give me years.
BRZEZINSKI: ‘90, 2001 to 2007.
SCARBOROUGH: OK, how many people that you worked for at CBS do you think voted for George W. Bush? Of all the thousands you worked for, how many people at CBS do you think voted for George W. Bush?
BRZEZINSKI: A very small percentage.
SCARBOROUGH: Maybe 1%?
BRZEZINSKI: I don’t know.
SCARBOROUGH: Can you think–seriously–you don’t have, just use your insight, your inside head voice here, can you think seriously of one correspondent, of one producer, of one anchor, that was a George W. Bush fan?
The rub so far, in spite of the fact that Hasan screamed the often heard ”Alluha Akbar” while shooting, had a bumper sticker on his car saying “Allah is love”, had made blog postings praising the bravery of homicide bombers, and had voiced his views about how muslims should rise up against Americans to fellow doctors, as the links above are reporting, MSNBC and the L.A. Times and other news outlets are scrubbing the islamic domestic terror connection from their coverage. Two abortionists have been shot in US history and the elite media often equates Christians with the Taliban (2). But after a long, long , long list of just these kinds of terrorist attacks around the world… nope it is just another individual.
The FBI says that there is no domestic terror connection. How many times do you have to scream “Alluha Akbar” before if becomes a domestic terror incident?
RWN Reports:
And when Jake Tapper just asked Robert Gibbs when an attack becomes a terrorist attack, the response, according to David Almacy also reporting on Twitter was this:
In an answer to @jaketapper, Robert Gibbs just said that he doesn’t have the theoretical background to define “terrorist attack.” Wow.
I am not surprised to find out that the Army knew about Hasan and did nothing. Having served in the military I can tell you that, especially under Democrat administrations, the fear for everyone because of political correctness is very real. Getting reported to “social actions” can be a career ending experience.
In my experience and opinion if Hasan were not a muslim and had similar problems he would have been gone. There are double standards.
If the government or the chain of command went in to do something about Hasan he likely would have screamed “profiling” and “muslim racial discrimination” (in spite of the fact that islam is a set of ideas, not a race). The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a well connected radical islamic apologist group who are experts at exploiting political correctness, would have been all over the elite media news outlets screaming about it.
As history has shown us on too many occasions, political correctness kills.
NPR Reports: Hasan said that if you’re a nonbeliever the Koran says you should have your head cut off, you should have oil poured down your throat, you should be set on fire.
NPR: Co-workers at Walter Reed Medical Medical Center pondered if he would become a terrorist. Co-workers at Walter Reed told not to talk to the FBI in fear that they could be accused of missing the obvious.
He gave a Grand Rounds presentation. . . You take turns giving a lecture on, you know, the correct treatment of schizophrenia, the right drugs to prescribe for personality disorder, you know, that sort of thing. But instead of giving an academic paper, he gave a lecture on the Koran, and they said it didn’t seem to be just an informational lecture, but it seemed to be his own beliefs. That’s what a lot of people thought.
He talked about how if you’re a nonbeliever the Koran says you should have your head cut off, you should have oil poured down your throat, you should be set on fire. And I said well couldn’t this just be his educating you? And the psychiatrist said yes, but one of the Muslims in the audience, another psychiatrist, raised his hand and was quite disturbed and he said you know, a lot of us don’t believe these things you’re saying, and that there was no place where Hasan couched it as this is what the Koran teaches but you know I don’t believe it. And people actually talked in the hallway afterwards about ‘is he one of these people that’s going to freak out and shoot people someday?’
UPDATE II – A common question being asked is how a man could go on a shooting ramnpage on an Army based filled with armed people. The Answer: Like schools, military bases are easy targets.
Military posts are like gun free school zones. Unless you have to use a gun in your official duties all guns must be stored in the armory or locked in your apartment (with permission) if you have the rank to get base housing instead of being stuck in the dorm.
Like gun free school zones the rules are easy to subvert if you have criminal intent, but if you are otherwise a law abiding good citizen getting caught with a firearm in the gun free school zone means trouble and it is exactly the same way on most military bases. The simple truth is that the rules they have on base make them soft, easy targets.
Another thing that is not well known, is that there are many young officers and enlisted men in the military who have no business being around a firearm and their role in the military doesn’t require it. Many young people join the military to run away from home and other problems. This is the main reason why the rules for guns on base are as strict as they are. One way to get around this problem is to allow military personnel of the rank of E6 and O5 and higher the option of always having a personal side arm.
Hasan knew it would be a while before Post Police could respond to him and likely believed that he would be the only armed man in the immediate area. Hasan was right, as he was able to inflict 51 casualties before he was engaged by an armed opponent.
UPDATE III – Hasan went to same mosque as 911 hijackers. UK Daily Telegraph:
Hasan, the sole suspect in the massacre of 13 fellow US soldiers in Texas, attended the controversial Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Great Falls, Virginia, in 2001 at the same time as two of the September 11 terrorists, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt. His mother’s funeral was held there in May that year.
The preacher at the time was Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Yemeni scholar who was banned from addressing a meeting in London by video link in August because he is accused of supporting attacks on British troops and backing terrorist organisations.
Hasan’s eyes “lit up” when he mentioned his deep respect for al-Awlaki’s teachings, according to a fellow Muslim officer at the Fort Hood base in Texas, the scene of Thursday’s horrific shooting spree.
UPDATE IV – ABC News – Intelligence Agenciues Knew Hasan Saught to Contact Al-Qaeda:
U.S. intelligence agencies were aware months ago that Army Major Nidal Hasan was attempting to make contact with people associated with al Qaeda, two American officials briefed on classified material in the case told ABC News.
Congresslady extraordinaire Michelle Bachmann asked for citizens to come to the capital one week ago and wow did they come.
Michelle Bachmann
Our friends at FactReal.com put together a fabulous post with all of the pictures, videos and other goodies for you to view - LINK. So be sure to pay them a visit. FactReal also put together the following list of links to help get educated on the latest version of Pelosi/ObamaCare:
This post has been stickied to the top of the page. Please scroll down for the latest posts & updates - Editor
UPDATE: SHOCK! Speaker Pelosi’s Government-Run Health Plan Will Require a Monthly Abortion Premium – LINK.
Obama Advisor and former Labor Sec. Robert Reich. Listen for yourself:
We are going to let the old die because its to expensive and we are going to make the drug companies poor so they cant innovate new drugs so you young people likely will not live much longer than your parents. We have to make the young pay more.
And the Democrats called Sarah Palin a liar ……
.. The Roundup:
Democrats Lied About Choice: Health Care Bill Targets Most New Private Health Insurance Policies. Watch the videos to listen to their own words - LINK
Ten questions to ask your Congressman about ObamaCare – LINK.
Obama health care advisors say: Very old and very young will get less care – LINK.
Oregon State health Service tells 64 year old woman: We wont pay for the drug to save your life, but we will pay for Euthanasia – LINK.
IBD Poll: 45% Of Doctors Would Consider Quitting If Congress Passes Obama/Pelosi Health Care Overhaul – LINK.
Answering far left talking points on US health care – LINK.
Congressional Committee confirms: Buy Insurance, Pay ObamaCare Penalty, or Go to Jail! – LINK.
Cornell Law Professor: Palin is right about “Death Panels” for ObamaCare – LINK.
European Member of Parliament – National Health Service has made us iller” – LINK.
CBO says that ObamaCare will result in benefit cuts. AARP stands to make millions from ObamaCare – LINK.
ABC 20/20 Takes on Government Health Care:
The Case Against Nationalized Healthcare in 3 minutes 42 seconds:
GOP Health Care Alternative Bill Online. First Step in Moving Towards Consortium Based Health Pools & Away from Mandates Forced On Citizens by Employers, Union Bosses, and the State - LINK.
You can examine all of our health care coverage HERE.
Obama special advisor Valerie Jerrett said on a talk show that the GOP is driving moderates like Dede Scozzafava out of the party….oh and she seemed sooooo concerned (sarcasm). This is the talking point that you hear repeated by the Democratic leadership and the elite media over and over and over again.
So this begs the question is Dede Scozzafava a moderate?
Let us examine her two claims to fame.
1 – She got the support of some union leadership because she supports a policy called “card check”
2 – She is the recipient of the Margaret Sanger Award.
Card check is a very simple proposal that the unions have been fighting to get enacted into law. It strips employees of the right to a secret ballot in workplace elections and subjects them to pressure from union thugs coercing, threatening or worse into signing a card for union membership as was the case here in Indiana (LINK).
Is there anything moderate about stripping people of basic freedoms and subjecting them to coercion and violence? There are only two ways to describe such a policy and be academically honest about it. Such a policy is undemocratic and evil. I use the word evil and not a word like unfair because evil is the right word to use. Unfair is when a soda machine steals your change; this goes way, way beyond that.
Margaret Sanger was a eugenics enthusiast (LINK) who believed that those who are born should be centrally planned. Sanger believed that blacks were inferior and that society would be served by seeing to it that as many black babies were destroyed in abortion mills as possible. It is not a coincidence that so many Planned Parenthood mills are located in or near minority inner city areas. If one were to swap out “blacks” for “Jews” in such an ideal who would it remind you of?
This is the key question and answer that everyone but the Republican Party Leadership was able to understand; there is nothing even remotely close to moderate about such positions. It is true that the Republican Party is and should be a “big tent ” party, but never forget there is a tent and such views should not only be rejected by the GOP but by good people everywhere. Some may claim that gleefully accepting an award with Sanger’s name is in no way an endorsement of Sanger’s views; perhaps no more than accepting a “Joseph Goebbels Award for Excellence in Political Communications” would be. Anyone with more than a residue of humanity and good sense would find such an award to be repulsive at best. Rudy Giuliani, who like many in the GOP believe that abortion should be legal in some circumstances, would find such an award offered to him to be insulting.
So the foolish GOP leadership spent almost a million dollars on Dede Scozzafava, who pulled off her GOP face mask the day after Halloween and endorsed the Democrat, which was utterly predictable by everyone but the GOP leadership.
If one were to wonder why so many rank and file voters are more hesitant to donate to the GOP, all they need to do is take a look at how nearly a million dollars of their hard earned money was wasted.
ATTENTION GOP LEADERSHIP
This should be a big wake up call. The Republican’s best spokesmen like Newt Gingrich can no longer rail on about how the Democratic leadership has abandoned its former principles and is now in a relentless pursuit of power to only abandon principle when it means pursuing power by supporting the NT 23 picked candidate even though she holds views that are truly repulsive to most Americans. Gingrich’s stated view on this race is too convenient and the voters are now wise to it.
The party machine and the party exists to advance a cause, but what is important is the cause, not the mechanism. When the GOP forgets this simple truth they lose elections and deserve to.
There is one more lesson the GOP leadership needs to learn. Republicans must stop accepting Democrat and elite media premises about elections and policy; in fact, they should aggressively rebuke them. The NY23 GOP leadership believed that if they hand picked a “Democrat lite” candidate that they could not lose; after all, the Democrats, the elite media types like David Frum tell them to do just that. Any political strategist who examines recent history knows that this so called “conventional wisdom” wrong.
When President George H. W. Bush agreed with Democrats in signing a tax increase that resulted in a short recession it cost him the election. At the time of the signing Democrats praised the Republican president, only to have Bill Clinton’s campaign call out Bush for breaking his “read my lips” pledge and campaign to the right of him on key issues. Clinton campaigned to the right of Bob Dole as well.
Look at the strategy that former DCCC chair Rahm Emanuel used in the 2006 and 2008 congressional elections. Emanuel put together a list of “blue dog” Democrats who ran as pro-life, pro-gun and anti-illegal immigration candidates. As Democrats they campaigned to the right and swept the congress.
John McCain is the poster child “moderate republican”. Barack Obama ran as a pro-gun Democrat who couched his rhetoric in “Reaganspeak” and lambasted President Bush for not standing up to the growth of the federal government.
Of course the Democrats have governed to the far left and are working to grow government, spending and taxes at a furious pace. Where are the endless comments from the elite media about how the Democrats have driven traditionalist proven winners out of their party such as Joe Lieberman and Zell Miller? Where are the comments from the elite media calling Dede Scozzafava out as a traitor to the party when she endorsed the Democrat? Silence.
Republicans win big when there is a clear difference between the Democrat and the Republican so long as the Republicans stick to their principles and the Democrat leadership knows it. When will the Republican leadership figure it out?
I saw the headline on the CBS web site “Statisticians: “Global Cooling” a Myth – Claims about Last 10 Years Are Deceptive; Temperatures Rise and Fall, But Overall Trend Is Higher”. Rest assured what is deceptive is this article that misrepresents what is already a bad study that stands in direct contradiction to a previous data set from the NCDC from January.
I was hoping that the Obama Administration had not politicized the National Climactic Data Center (NCDC) as they had the EPA when they suppressed a report showing how global warming skeptics are correct (LINK – LINK).
Have you heard that the world is now cooling instead of warming? You may have seen some news reports on the Internet or heard about it from a provocative new book.
Only one problem: It’s not true, according to an analysis of the numbers done by several independent statisticians for The Associated Press.
Ok time to stop right there, as has been documented by us (one example we reported LINK) and others such as the Media Research Center (example LINK, LINK, LINK and I could fill a page of links with examples of this problem), that almost always, the people the elite media portray as “independent” are people who are known to the reporter or news organization, with a known point of view, who will say what the reporter wants to report. The same few “random experts” appear in the elite media over and over and over again. It is a main component of how the elite media editorializes the news and hide the fact that in reality it is the news organizations editorial point of view they are presenting.
Why is IPCC author Dr. John Christy not a common talking head in the elite media?
CBS/AP continues:
In a blind test, the AP gave temperature data to four independent statisticians and asked them to look for trends, without telling them what the numbers represented. The experts found no true temperature declines over time.
“If you look at the data and sort of cherry-pick a micro-trend within a bigger trend, that technique is particularly suspect,” said John Grego, a professor of statistics at the University of South Carolina.
Yet the idea that things are cooling has been repeated in opinion columns, a BBC news story posted on the Drudge Report and in a new book by the authors of the best-seller “Freakonomics.” Last week, a poll by the Pew Research Center found that only 57 percent of Americans now believe there is strong scientific evidence for global warming, down from 77 percent in 2006.
Global warming skeptics base their claims on an unusually hot year in 1998. Since then, they say, temperatures have dropped – thus, a cooling trend. But it’s not that simple.
Since 1998, temperatures have dipped, soared, fallen again and are now rising once more. Records kept by the British meteorological office and satellite data used by climate skeptics still show 1998 as the hottest year. However, data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA show 2005 has topped 1998. Published peer-reviewed scientific research generally cites temperatures measured by ground sensors, which are from NOAA, NASA and the British, more than the satellite data.
The recent Internet chatter about cooling led NOAA’s climate data center to re-examine its temperature data. It found no cooling trend.
[Oh wait, could they mean this, UK Telegraph: 2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved – UPDATED!. This was one of our little posts that went viral on the internet and got my little IUSB Vision Web Log pronounced the second most reviled web site on global warming by the Huffington Post. I really should buy Arianna a nice lunch for the publicity she gave me on that one - Chuck Norton]
Notice how they said that the study relies on ground sensors and pay special attention to the quote “recent Internet chatter about cooling led NOAA’s climate data center to re-examine its temperature data” …under NOOOOOO political pressure from the new administration I’m sure…
So I headed over to the WUWT blog to see if they had found the data that I was suspecting and sure enough. The data the story relies on comes from NOAA ground sensors and ignores the oceanic data sets and other important data sets. The NOAA ground censors have been discredited as controlled data because in a great many cases the NOAA censors are placed on or near asphalt, stone, heat vents, parking lots, surrounded by black tires in junk yards etc. all of which absorb heat during the day and release it at night. Also notice how the article states that they did not rely on satellite data that tends to show cooling and that presents another problem. According to alarmist global warming theory more warmth is trapped under the “greenhouse layer” of the atmosphere causing temperatures globally to rise. This layer of the atmosphere can be read by satellites and weather balloons (the John Christy method). So if you are to measure greenhouse warming according to the theory, that is the place to do it. However, measuring it that way does not give global warming alarmists the measurements they want.
This [AP] article, however, (which is not a true independent assessment if the study was completed by NOAA scientists) is not based on the much more robust metric assessment of global warming as diagnosed by upper ocean heat content. Nor does it consider the warm bias issues with respect to surface land temperatures that we have raised in our peer reviewed papers; e.g. see and see.
So as Pielke points out at WUWT, the “study” and the AP article doesn’t even address oceanic data sets. Nor does it address other data sets. It gets worse, would you like to see examples of NOAA ground sensors??
WUWT is up to part 91 of its “How not to measure temperature” series on these NOAA ground sensors.
Oh Look! Its a NOAA sensor in a junk yard with black tires.
Oh Look! Its a NOAA sensor next to that concrete porch and look to the left, its a grill. It has no cover so I guess it has been used pretty frequently.
Oh look! Its a NOAA sensor in a parking lot of asphalt. Would you like to walk barefoot on that on a warm summer day? I wonder how much heat the cars that park right next to it give off when the people who live in those apartments come home. Hey what is that a few yards behind the sensor? It's the heat pump for a home air conditioner!
But worry not scientific community and global warming alarmists, WUWT reports in “How not to measure temperature: Part 87” that NOAA “adjusts” for these types of anomalies….yup they adjust the temperatures DOWN in the PAST thus increasing the “current statistical warming trend”!! There are 91 of these ground sensors that WUWT has catalogued so far and they all seem to have one thing in common. They are placed in areas that will artificially make them read higher temperatures.
As we stated above, the new NCDC “study” ignored other data sets such as ITS OWN North American Temperature Data Set updated just last January… hmmm now what has happened between January and today….oh yes we have a new political administration that has already demonstrated that it has no problem trying to shut scientists up (LINK – LINK) who dare tell the truth about global warming.
Yet ANOTHER dataset showing the cooling of the last 10 years.
NCDC now has December 2008 in the database. Annual North American temperature since 1998 (11 years of data) is falling over the period at a rate of 0.78(F)/decade or 7.8(F)per century. At this rate we will be in an ice age within 5 decades. If you can get the graphic, the heavy black line is the average over the century 1901 to 2000.
This data set is a collection of this continent only, but it shows the same cooling trend that other global data sets have shown. Since 1998 the Earth is cooling and it happens to coincide with a similar period of unusually low solar activity.
Of course we realize that to many people, including many radicalized professors, global warming alarmism is almost like a religion. No data set or series of data sets is going to put a dent in those people. Fortunately there are still plenty of people who are not zealots who can appreciate the information. Thanks to the famed WUWT Blog for the heads up.
Maybe this article can get the Huffington Post to rank me the number one most reviled global warming columnist on the internet. Being number two just seems so second best.
Some have seen the original list of 26, but I felt compelled to few to add to my own to 46 and lets see if we can come up with a few more. I invite you to come up with some we missed in the comments section.
1. Offended the Queen of England.
2. Offended British PM By snubbing him and offering trade gifts that were a joke (25 DVD’s that wont play in England).
3. Offended the British People by returning a bust of Winston Churchill that they gave the United States (its like sending the Statue of Liberty back to France).
4. Offended the President of France by snubbing him multiple times.
5. Bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia.
6. Praised the Marxist Daniel Ortega.
7. Kissed Socialist Hugo Chavez on the cheek.
8. Endorsed the Socialist Evo Morales of Bolivia.
9. Sided with Hugo Chavez and Communist Fidel Castro against Honduras.
10. Announced we would meet with Iranians with no pre-conditions while they’re building their nuclear weapons.
11. Reneged on a missile shield agreement with Eastern Europe almost ending all relations with Poland and the Czech Republic.
12. Left the country of Georgia in the cold after the Russian invasion.
13. Gave away billions to AIG also without pre-conditions.
14. Expanded the bailouts.
15. Insulted everyone who has ever loved a Special Olympian.
16. Doubled our national debt.
17. Announced the termination of our new missile defense system the day after North Korea launched an ICBM.
18. Released information on U.S. Intelligence gathering despite urgings of his own CIA director and the prior four CIA directors.
19. Accepted without comment that five of his cabinet members cheated on their taxes and two other nominees withdrew after they couldn’t take the heat.
20. Appointed a Homeland Security Chief who identified military veterans and abortion opponents as “dangers to the nation.”
21. Ordered that the word “terrorism” no longer be used and instead refers to such acts as “man made disasters.”
23. Circled the globe to publicly apologize for America’s world leadership.
24. Told the Mexican president that the violence in their country was because of us.
25. Politicized the census by moving it into the White House from the Department of Commerce.
26. Appointed as Attorney General the man who orchestrated the forced removal and expulsion to Cuba of a 9-year-old whose mother died trying to bring him to freedom in the United States.
27. Salutes as heroes three Navy SEALS who took down three terrorists who threatened one American life and the next day announces members of the Bush administration may stand trial for “torturing” three 9/11 terrorists by pouring water up their noses.
28. Low altitude photo shoot of Air Force One over New York City that frightened thousands of New Yorkers.
29. Sent his National Defense Advisor to Europe to assure them that the US will no longer treat Israel in a special manner and they might be on their own with the Muslims.
30. Praised Jimmy Carter’s trip to Gaza where he sided with terrorist Hamas against Israel.
31. Nationalized General Motors and Chrysler while turning shareholder control over to the unions and freezing out retired investors who owned their bonds. Committed unlimited taxpayer billions in the process.
31. Passed a huge energy tax in the House that will make American industry even less competitive while costing homeowners thousands per year.
32. Quietly ended the Washington DC school voucher program dooming promising children to one of the worst school districts in the nation.
33. Reversed himself on his transparency pledges multiple times.
34. After promising lobbying reform he had a financial responsibility summit that ended up being a lobbyist meet up with government. He also signed an order relaxing the lobbyist rules.
35. Allowed multiple lobbyists in the administration after promising not to.
36. After promising a new era of bi-partisanship his party locks Republicans out of bill negotiations.
37. Helped protect the bonuses at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
38. Signed a bill containing over 9,000 pork earmarks after promising earmark reform.
39. Instead of using the TARP bailout funds to buy peoples mortgages and renegotiate them with citizens as promised he used the money to buy up/nationalize banks and leave citizens in the cold.
40. Committed multiple violations of the Hatch Act (see HHS.GOV).
41. Declared War on Fox News.
42. Declared War on the Chamber of Commerce.
43. Suppressed an EPA Report showing that global warming skeptics are largely correct.
44. Participating in the dismantling of the Dollar as the world reserve currency.
45. Signed into law the reversal of Bill Clinton & Newt Gingrich’s very successful and hugely popular bi-partisan welfare reform (which was the main plank of Bill Clinton’s legacy).
46. Announced nationalized health care “reform” that will strip seniors of their Medicare, cut pay of physicians, increase taxes yet another $1 trillion, and put everyone on rationed care with government bureaucrats deciding who gets care and who doesn’t. Bloomberg: Daschle says, “Health care reform will not be pain free. Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them,” while former Colorado Governor Dick Lamm says seniors have “a duty to die.” If this does not sufficiently raise your ire, just remember that the President, Senators and Congressmen have their own special gold plated health care plan which is guaranteed the remainder of their lives and they are not subject to this new law if they pass it.
CEI releases global warming study censored by Obama’s EPA
Natural forces as opposed to human activity are largely responsible for temperature fluctuations, according to a new study the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) released today as Congress prepares to vote on global warming legislation.
Internal email messages show the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) suppressed the report and silenced the author because the scientific evidence did not square with the Obama administration’s agenda of regulating carbon dioxide, CEI claims. The EPA has become overly reliant upon outdated information from the United Nations and has ignored major new scientific developments, the censored study concludes.
“While we hoped that the EPA would release the final report, we’re tired of waiting for this agency to become transparent, even though its administrator has been talking transparency, since she took office,” said CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman.
New scientific data highlighted in the report shows that ocean cycles and solar cycles are probably the most important factors behind temperature fluctuations. Moreover, satellite information now indicates there is little chance of endangerment from greenhouse gases, according to the report.
Some of the major developments overlooked by EPA official include a continued decline in global temperatures, an emerging consensus that hurricanes will not be more frequent or intense and new studies that demonstrate water vapor will have a moderating influence on temperature.
The report was exposed by hard work from the Competitive Enterprise Institute. See the entire EPA Report HERE.
This is a key page in the report (Hat Tip Dwight Schultz):
This report has other gems like this one. The EPA and the UN have reports that they tried to hide from you that tell this simple truth. As we have said repeatedly in IUSB Vision coverage. The evidence is clear that there has been global cooling for over a decade and the WUWT Blog has published hundreds of articles and data sets demonstrating this. The bulk of global warming and cooling cycles is the result of solar activity. CO2 is a minor greenhouse gas and man’s contribution to that is minor. Water vapor is the chief greenhouse gas.
Most “peer reviewed” global warming studies are based on computer models. The problem is that when actual recorded data from the past is entered into such models they cannot even accurately predict climate from yesterday or last year.
The CEI unveils the evidence that the EPA ordered people to shut up about the findings and you can see the report with ALL of the emails HERE . Here are just two of the emails reveled (Via Powerline):
Here, the two scientists’ superior declines to make their report public because “the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment.” Click to enlarge:
Here, Carlin and Davidson are ordered not to communicate to the public their conclusion that the global warming alarmist theory is wrong:
Powerline sums up this scandalous behavior with a devastating analogy:
Global warming zealots are a bit like Iran’s mullahs. They are fanatically devoted to a series of false propositions. Unable to win an open scientific debate, they consistently resort to bullying and brute force to suppress their opposition. Once again, we see the Obama administration taking the lead in this regard, putting political ideology above scientific truth and demanding that all others do likewise.
UPDATE: Newsbusters notes the almost complete media blackout of this story, and contrasts it with the news media’s treatment of the Bush administration.
This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.
But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.
And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.
So what on Earth is going on?
Climate change sceptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man’s influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming.
They argue that there are natural cycles, over which we have no control, that dictate how warm the planet is.
Jack Abramoff. Remember him? The former Republican lobbyist who was sentenced to five years for unlawful campaign fundraising and influence peddling crimes. The elite media had him on the TV and front pages for months. The New York Times published 235 stories on Jack Abramoff and of course it was a page 1 story from the beginning.
So here we have Norman Hsu, ….well lets have Associated Press tell the story:
NEW YORK – Former Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu was sentenced Tuesday to more than 24 years in prison by a judge who accused him of funding his fraud by manipulating the political process in a way that “strikes at the very core of our democracy.”
U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero sentenced the 58-year-old Hsu, who raised money for Hillary Rodham Clinton and others, to 20 years in prison for his guilty plea to fraud charges and another four years and four months in prison for his conviction at trial for breaking campaign finance laws.
In a lengthy criticism of Hsu’s fraud, the judge said the former fundraiser used political contributions to win respect and impress investors as he committed campaign finance fraud.
“Mr. Hsu’s disgraceful use of political campaigns to perpetuate his Ponzi schemes, as well as his acts of campaign finance fraud, strikes at the very core of our democracy,” Marrero said.
The judge said Hsu stole more than $50 million from hundreds of investors in a 10-year Ponzi scheme by winning their confidence with his pristine reputation and friendly nature, a two-faced quality the judge noted was common among certain white collar criminals.
Norman Hsu with Hillary
The government said at trial that Hsu used clients of his fraudulent investment business, including actors and other political novices, as straw donors to make thousands of dollars in campaign donations. The scheme bypassed rules limiting what any individual or group can donate.
During the May trial, prosecutors played a voicemail recording of Clinton, then a senator, effusively praising Hsu for his support.
“I’ve never seen anybody who has been more loyal and more effective and really just having greater success supporting someone than you,” she told him. “Everywhere I go, you’re there. If you’re not, you’re sending people to be part of my events. You know, we’re going to win this campaign, Norman, because you single-handedly are going to make that happen.”
Hmm…. so why hasn’t anyone heard of this guy? I went on Google and what did I discover? Well a 50 million dollar scandal at the highest levels of government should be big page 1 news right? After all, Abramoff only got got five years in prison and Hsu got 24. Oh I almost forgot, these are Democrats so thats ‘different’. The New York Times published all of 19 stories on Norman Hsu, none of which indicate that they were on page 1.
So I decided to do some searching on the other big fundraising scandals since 1990. Maria Hsia, another name you likely never heard, who was funneling bundled checks of illegal money of which the reported source was the Chinese Government and other Chinese interests to the Democrats, saw 22 stories in the New York Times and even managed a single page 1 mention upon her conviction.
Of course the two biggest names in illegal fundraising from Chinese interests to the Democrats are John Huang and Charlie Yah Lin Trie. Once again, unless you listened to the few talk hosts who covered this story like Quinn & Rose these are names you have likely never heard of. They raised funds for Democrats and Governor Clinton and on into his presidency. The group operated for nearly a decade.
The story was made more egregious by the fact that there were a number of policy changes that happened from Interior to Commerce that benefited the Chinese/Indonesian group including Trie and Huang. Huang was even named a Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Commerce Department. While plead down to just a few counts, Huang and Trie’s group raised over a million dollars for the DNC and the Clinton Legal Defense Fund alone. The New York Times published 97 articles on Huang and 50 on Trie.
For more details on the depth of this corruption the Senate Report on this scandal is published HERE and published a short bio on Maria Hsia HERE.
This is a valuable lesson about what stories the elite media gives a prominent position and which ones they do not. It is one of the most effective ways they assert their own ideological bias.
Here is most the news I wanted to talk about in the last three weeks while I have been sick. Of course this resulted in falling behind on school work which didn’t help either. Keep checking back as News Roundup Part II is on the way. – Editor
ACORN has asked an “Independent Panel” to do an investigation of the organization.
Well ok come to find out it is not so independent after all.
In a press release, ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis says, that as “a result of the indefensible action of a handful of our employees,” the group will immediately stop accepting anyone into ACORN office for service programs, will conduct in-service training of staff, and begin an audit “to review all of the systems and processes called into question by the videos,” to be conducted by the group’s Independent Advisory Council.
The Council includes many prominent Democrats, including the man who helped President Obama Transition Team, John Podesta, President and CEO of the Center for American Progress; former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend; Andrew Stern, International President of the Service Employees International Union; and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros.
Hotair.com’s new blogger Karl has a few interesting details:
Cisneros, whoworked regularly with ACORNas HUD Secretary, would laterplead guilty to lying to the FBIto cover up a political embarrassment.Perfect choice. Townsend is so inependent that she called the stories of ACORN’s frequent involvement in voter fraud a“desperate smokescreen maneuver”masking an extensive coast-to-coast GOP push to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters in 2008.No bias there. Stern heads SEIU, which hasa very cozy relationship with ACORN. How cozy? ACORN controls or significantly dominates several SEIU chapters. And Stern hand-picked ACORN’s Wade Rathke to direct SEIU’s nationwide organizing projects.He could not be more independent. And Podesta runs the Soros-funded Center for American Progress, which has beencoordinating the public defense of ACORN this summer.He might be even more independent than Andy Stern.
Results from a national Sacred Heart University survey released today reveal that many news consumers believe the media played a significant role in electing President Barack Obama and that the media continue to promote his presidency.
“A large majority, 89.3 percent, suggested the national media played a very or somewhat strong role in helping to elect President Obama,” according to a summary of the findings. “Just 10.0 percent suggested the national media played little or no role. Further, 69.9 percent agreed the national news media are intent on promoting the Obama presidency while 26.5 percent disagreed. Some, 3.6 percent, were unsure.”
And 86.6 percent said they believe the news media try to influence public opinion and that they have their own public policy and political positions. This compares to 87.6 percent in 2008 and 70.3 percent in 2003.
The survey, the third Sacred Heart survey of its kind, was conducted from Sept. 8-11. I am still seeking demographic information about the people who took the survey, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percent at the 95 percent confidence level.
Of those surveyed, 70.4 percent said they believe the national news media are not responsive to “consumer preferences and market desires.”
Congressional Research Service: Obama Wrong, Honduras Correct to Remove Zelaya
Another shocker and it is just like we told you HERE and HERE. The CRS Report is HERE.
The legal arguments made in the report, which was prepared by Senior Foreign Law Specialist Norma Gutierrez, are quite intricate and based in Honduran law. But the bottom line is this:
The Honduran Congress appears to have acted properly in deposing President Manuel Zelaya. Unlike in the United States, the Honduran Congress has the last word when it comes to interpreting the Constitution. Although there is no provision in Honduras’s Constitution for impeachment as such, the body does have powers to disapprove of the president’s official acts, and to replace him in the event that he is incapable of performing his duties. Most importantly, the Congress also has the authority to interpret exactly what that means.
The Supreme Court was legally entitled to ask the military to arrest Zelaya. The high court, which is the constitutional venue for trials of the president and other high-ranking officials, also recognized the Congress’s ouster of Zelaya when it referred his case back down to a lower court afterward, on the grounds that he was “no longer a high-ranking government official.”
The military did not act properly in forcibly expatriating Zelaya. According to the CRS report and other news stories, Honduran authorities are investigating their decision, which the military justified at the time as a means of preventing bloodshed. In fact, Zelaya should have been given a trial, and if convicted of seeking reelection, he would have lost his citizenship. But he is still a citizen now, and the Constitution forbids the expatriation of Honduran citizens by their government.
The proper line of succession was followed after Zelaya’s ouster. Because there was no Vice President in office when Zelaya was removed (he had resigned to run for president), Micheletti was the proper successor, as he had been president of the Congress.
“The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service concluded the removal of former President Zelaya was Constitutional, and we must respect that,” Rep. Aaron Schock said today. “It’s unconscionable the administration would attempt to force Honduras to violate its own Constitution by cutting of foreign aid.”
By the way Zelaya’s thugs trashed part of the capital of Honduras, but since the elite media is in the tank for Obama there was zero coverage of it. Gateway Pundit has the DETAILS.
Our ambassador is the only person I met there who thinks there was a ‘coup.’ Let’s release the State Department legal analysis.
In the last three months, much has been made of a supposed military “coup” that whisked former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya from power and the supposed chaos it has created.
After visiting Tegucigalpa last week and meeting with a cross section of leaders from Honduras’s government, business community, and civil society, I can report there is no chaos there. There is, however, chaos to spare in the Obama administration’s policy toward our poor and loyal allies in Honduras.
That policy was set in a snap decision the day Mr. Zelaya was removed from office, without a full assessment of either the facts or reliable legal analysis of the constitutional provisions at issue. Three months later, it remains in force, despite mounting evidence of its moral and legal incoherence.
While in Honduras, I spoke to dozens of Hondurans, from nonpartisan members of civil society to former Zelaya political allies, from Supreme Court judges to presidential candidates and even personal friends of Mr. Zelaya. Each relayed stories of a man changed and corrupted by power. The evidence of Mr. Zelaya’s abuses of presidential power—and his illegal attempts to rewrite the Honduran Constitution, a la Hugo Chávez—is not only overwhelming but uncontroverted.
As all strong democracies do after cleansing themselves of usurpers, Honduras has moved on.
The presidential election is on schedule for Nov. 29. Under Honduras’s one-term-limit, Mr. Zelaya could not have sought re-election anyway. Current President Roberto Micheletti—who was installed after Mr. Zelaya’s removal, per the Honduran Constitution—is not on the ballot either. The presidential candidates were nominated in primary elections almost a year ago, and all of them—including Mr. Zelaya’s former vice president—expect the elections to be free, fair and transparent, as has every Honduran election for a generation.
Indeed, the desire to move beyond the Zelaya era was almost universal in our meetings. Almost.
In a day packed with meetings, we met only one person in Honduras who opposed Mr. Zelaya’s ouster, who wishes his return, and who mystifyingly rejects the legitimacy of the November elections: U.S. Ambassador Hugo Llorens.
When I asked Ambassador Llorens why the U.S. government insists on labeling what appears to the entire country to be the constitutional removal of Mr. Zelaya a “coup,” he urged me to read the legal opinion drafted by the State Department’s top lawyer, Harold Koh. As it happens, I have asked to see Mr. Koh’s report before and since my trip, but all requests to publicly disclose it have been denied.
On the other hand, the only thorough examination of the facts to date—conducted by a senior analyst at the Law Library of Congress—confirms the legality and constitutionality of Mr. Zelaya’s ouster. (It’s on the Internet here .)
Unlike the Obama administration’s snap decision after June 28, the Law Library report is grounded in the facts of the case and the intricacies of Honduran constitutional law. So persuasive is the report that after its release, the New Republic’s James Kirchick concluded in an Oct. 3 article that President Obama’s hastily decided Honduras policy is now “a mistake in search of a rationale.”
Police association contractor charged with snooping on ‘Joe the Plumber’
Now lets have the government have all of our medical records and tax records tied together with Obamacare….
A former contractor for the Ohio Association of Chiefs of Police has been charged with rummaging through state computers to retrieve confidential information about “Joe the Plumber.”
Brett A. Gerke, 52, of 2329 Woodcreek Place on the Far North Side, is charged with attempted unauthorized use of property.
The Toledo-area resident was popularized as “Joe the Plumber” by Republican John McCain in a presidential debate the night before with Democrat Barack Obama.
Gerke was project manager in the development of the Ohio Local Law Enforcement Information Sharing Network, working on the project between 2004 and 2008 as a contractor for the police chiefs’ association.
Gerke used a test account and password he received to work on the project to search for information on Wurzelbacher and others, authorities say.
He was working as a contractor for the Ohio Department of Insurance at the time of the computer checks. Gerke’s lawyer, Joseph Scott of Columbus, would not comment on the case.
The Dispatch revealed several questionable checks of state computer systems for confidential information about Wurzelbacher after the presidential debate.
Helen Jones-Kelley, then director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, authorized several computer checks on Wurzelbacher that the state inspector general concluded had no legal purpose.
Jones-Kelley, who was suspended by Gov. Ted Strickland after The Dispatch also revealed that she used her state e-mail account to raise campaign funds for Obama, later resigned. Two of her top aides also lost their jobs.
Government Blew Up GI Bill Program for Veterans Too
It’s not just cash for Clunkers, Medicare, Social Security, etc etc…
The U.S. government failed to send promised college tuition checks to tens of thousands of veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars before they returned to school this fall, even after being warned that it was inadequately staffed for the job.
The Veterans Affairs Department blamed a backlog of claims filed for GI Bill education benefits that has left veterans who counted on the money for tuition and books scrambling to make ends meet.
Veterans like American University student John Kamin, who received a letter Wednesday from the Army. He was hoping it contained news that his overdue GI Bill college tuition money would soon arrive. Instead, the Iraq war veteran was informed that he may be called back into active duty.
“It felt like salt in the wound,” said the 24-year-old from New York City. He is depleting his savings account and borrowing money from his parents to make up for thousands of dollars the government promised him to complete his political science degree.
“That was really disheartening,” Mr. Kamin said.
He isn’t alone. Out of more than 277,000 veterans who have filed for the college tuition benefits this semester, more than 200,000 claims have been processed and approved, but fewer than 11 percent of the veterans have received the funding, according to the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA).
The late-payments episode is the latest in a string of embarrassing cases of VA failures for the nation’s veterans.
Earlier this year, it was discovered that three VA medical centers failed to properly sterilize endoscopes, exposing 10,000 patients to infections including the HIV virus.
Last month, the agency sent letters to 600 veterans erroneously telling them they had been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Last year, the VA was embroiled in numerous scandals involving tests and medical experiments on veterans in which officials failed to follow certain standards.
For Obama American Decline is a Deliberate Choice
Charles Krauthammer’s brilliance on display once again. By the way he has a medical degree, degrees in political science and economics and is a board certified psychiatrist.
This is yet another of a very long list of sexist attacks against Sarah Palin from the elite media and the far left.
The news-Miner published an apology to Gov. Palin for calling her a broad HERE. Hotair.com rightly asks, “but an explanation of how editors signed off on the caption is also in order — and someone should be out looking for a new job”.
Journalism is it used to be is dead. Now you get more truth from some of the partisan press and at least they are honest enough to tell you that they have a point of view. We here at IUSB have an agenda to, to focus upon and highlight exactly what the elite media culture does not. Only that way can you be more fully informed.
The Power and Importance of New Media
CBS forged documents against president Bush, Monica Lewinski, Kathleeen Willey, Juanita Broaderick, Van Jones, ACORN , whats really in that House health care bill anyways; most of the big stories of our time are not broke by the elite media. They are broken by talk radio, blogs, Matt Drudge, and Fox News.
On Meet the Press this past Sunday, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman railed against internet news sources, referring to them as an “open sewer of untreated, unfiltered information.” He continued to mock new media, suggesting that the American public is incapable of deciphering between facts, fiction and opinion, when he said that modems should have a warning label from the surgeon general that reads “judgment not included.” What Mr. Friedman cannot understand is that web-based information sources like blogs, wikis and vlogs (video blogs) are the new beat reporters and investigative journalists of our time.
~snip
In a June 18, 2009, article in Forbes magazine, pollster John Zogby noted that over twice as many Americans trust internet news sources more than television, newspapers and radio. That poll came just eighteen months after a Harris Poll showed that 54 percent of Americans, in general, do not trust the press.
Veteran journalists such as Mr. Friedman want you to distrust new media. But it’s clear that the American people no longer trust the old press corps. Mainstream media’s complete disregard for the Van Jones controversy has highlighted the need for a new breed of watchdog – citizen’s journalists, as well as internet based professional news organizations that can bring back the investigative journalism prowess and objectivity that is lacking in the traditional Fourth Estate.
By the way, he is wrong about the “wikis”. Wikis claim to be public information but the truth is that ideological zealots, PR pros and law firms have managed to get in as “official” editors in the wiki’s to act as “watch dogs”. Wiki’s have become nothing but PR nonsense much of which is just plain inaccurate, but we know AT means well.
ACORN Took Tax and Charity $$$ for Poor and Transfered it to Themselves, Political Allies.
Documents released by a Senate Republican on Thursday show that leaders of the ACORN community organizing network transferred several million dollars in charitable and government money meant for the poor to arms of the group that have political and sometimes profit-making missions.
ACORN’s tax-exempt groups and allied organizations [~snip] used more than half their charitable and public money in 2006 to pay other ACORN affiliates, according to an analysis by the tax staff of Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa).
On Thursday, Grassley called the transactions a “big shell game” and said ACORN donors may be surprised by how the liberal group known for helping the poor obtain housing and health care was spending their money. He urged the Internal Revenue Service to take a closer look.
According to the Grassley report, charities “are being used to raise monies which are then funneled to other charities or to other organizations for purposes other than what the donor may have intended. . . . Dollars raised for charitable [purposes] appear to be used for impermissible lobbing and political activity.”
Fearful that they’re losing ground on immigration and health care, a group of House Democrats is pushing back and arguing that any health care bill should extend to all legal immigrants and allow illegal immigrants some access.
The Democrats, trying to stiffen their party’s spines on the contentious issue, say it’s unfair to bar illegal immigrants from paying their own way in a government-sponsored exchange. Legal immigrants, they say, regardless of how long they’ve been in the United States, should be able to get government-subsidized health care if they meet the other eligibility requirements.
State of Michigan to Mom: Stop Babysitting Neighbors Kids
IRVING TOWNSHIP, Mich. – Each day before the school bus comes to pick up the neighborhood’s children, Lisa Snyder did a favor for three of her fellow moms, welcoming their children into her home for about an hour before they left for school.
Regulators who oversee child care, however, don’t see it as charity. Days after the start of the new school year, Snyder received a letter from the Michigan Department of Human Services warning her that if she continued, she’d be violating a law aimed at the operators of unlicensed day care centers.
“I was freaked out. I was blown away,” she said. “I got on the phone immediately, called my husband, then I called all the girls” — that is, the mothers whose kids she watches — “every one of them.”
Snyder’s predicament has led to a debate in Michigan about whether a law that says no one may care for unrelated children in their home for more than four weeks each calendar year unless they are licensed day-care providers needs to be changed. It also has irked parents who say they depend on such friendly offers to help them balance work and family.
On Tuesday, agency Director Ismael Ahmed said good neighbors should be allowed to help each other ensure their children are safe. Gov. Jennifer Granholm instructed Ahmed to work with the state Legislature to change the law, he said.
Of course the problem is that a nameless, faceless, idiot bureaucrat had to sign off on this action. This is yet another example of how extremists, idiots and others who have no place wielding any power at all are attracted to government and education jobs.
One day after the Herald reported some surprised Bay State inmates – including murderers and rapists – were cashing in $250 stimulus checks, federal officials revealed the same behind-bars bonus was mailed to nearly 4,000 cons nationwide.
A federal watchdog is now probing how the cons were cut the checks. The same cash also may have been sent to fugitive felons, people kicked out of the country and even individuals now deceased.
All we heard from the far left during the Iraq war while they were notr just questioning it anc challenging the policy, but were actively undermining and investing in our defeat all we heard from them is “Are You Challenging My Patriotism!” and “Oh if I merely disagree with you I am Unamerican” and such rhetoric with one design. To silence their critics.
Our friend and blogging partner at Poligazette Michael van der Galien has a very good post titled “Leftists Demonize Critics” which is certainlty worth taking the time to read.
UPDATE – More leftist invective:
Included is a tny sample of the recent invective from the far left:
Bill Press, syndicated columnist and former CNN host: “There’s only one thing left: to rename the party for what it really stands for. It’s no longer the Republican Party; it’s the Hate America Party.”
Eugene Robinson, Washington Post columnist: “Why, oh why, do conservatives hate America so?…As Republican leaders — except RNC Chairman Michael Steele — are beginning to realize, “I’m With the Taliban Against America” is not likely to be a winning slogan.”
CNN Headline News host Joy Behar: Guest Richard Belzer: “We see, you know, they`re cheering when we don`t get the Olympics and – and demeaning the Nobel Prize…Joy Behar: Right, which is so un-American.
MSNBC’s host Ed Schultz: “This attack on President Obama trying to get the Olympics is about the most un-American thing I think I’ve ever seen.”
Radio host Cynthia Hardy on MSNBC’s Hardball: “So [with the case of Rep. Joe Wilson] what you get is this blatant disregard for the office of the presidency, which is extremely un-American.”
MSNBC’s host Ed Schultz: “Rush must have been popping a few too many pills that particular day. Turning a hopeful message about the resiliency of Americans into a partisan attack. That’s un-American ‘Psycho Talk,’ which is par for the course.”
Blogger Steve Clemons, appearing on MSNBC: “Jesse Helms of North Carolina was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for many years. And many of these folks that have come into their own today, particularly in the Bush administration, were essentially tutored by Helms to bring, you know, somewhat of a ‘Fortress America’ attitude to the comments, which are, I think, quite unpatriotic.”
CNN Headline News host Joy Behar: “Now why don`t you figure that this is a little unpatriotic for [Palin] to go to Hong Kong and badmouth the president of the United States? At the very least it’s disrespectful.”
Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter, appearing on MSNBC: “But they’re trying to delegitimize him in any way they can, be as disrespectful, not just to him but to the office as they can. And to my mind, to be actually, what I would call unpatriotic in their approach.”
MSNBC host Keith Olbermann: “How are Democrats, anything but at best — I`ll use this combination — irresponsible at worst, unpatriotic for giving that party more say than utterly necessary than what they have already in many amendments of this bill in health care reform.”
HERE is a terrific analysis of New York Times economist/columnist Paul Krugman’s recent piece “How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?”. Krugman’s regular analysis have shown to be almost consistently wrong for years. Economics is a subject that is near and dear to my heart. The simple truth is that while economists can quote you terms and fancy sounding numbers, 80% of them lack the ability to connect patterns of dots and indicators to apply the knowledge with even rudimentary directional accuracy. Only 20% of economists saw recent the bubble and collapse coming in spite of the fact that Dr. Friederich Hayak won the Nobel for Economics in part for his work on economic bubbles.
Even as an undergrad (albeit told a gifted one) I have debated PhD.’s in economics and defeated them with relative ease. The simple truth is that economists, especially Marxist economists, are not even held to a weatherman’s standard for accuracy and accountability. The government told us that without the special interest written (see Apollo Alliance) stimulus bill we would see unemployment in the country reach 8%. The predictable result is that with the stimulus bill we are skyrocketing towards the 10.5% unemployment rate which would even still be understated by the vast number of discouraged workers that have stopped looking for gainful employment. Where is the accountability for these Harvard and Berkeley trained pinheads?
Most government economists routinely understate the value of classic neo-liberal economic policy such as the increases in revenue often generated by tax cuts (Laffer Curve), they also greatly underestimate the damage of tax increases to the economy (game theory) and also greatly underestimate the cost of government programs (in the case of Medicare the government underestimated the cost of the program in the first 20 years by a factor of 10).
The reason that real economists such as Dr. Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Larry Laffer and John Lott have been ignored by the elite media is precisely because their economic analysis is proved right more often than it is proved wrong. They just don’t happen to be leftists.
WASHINGTON – Congress’ chief budget officer on Tuesday contradicted President Barack Obama’s oft-stated claim that seniors wouldn’t see their Medicare benefits cut under a health care overhaul.
The head of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Elmendorf, told senators that seniors in Medicare’s managed care plans could see reduced benefits under a bill in the Finance Committee.
The bill would cut payments to the Medicare Advantage plans by more than $100 billion over 10 years.
Elmendorf said the changes “would reduce the extra benefits that would be made available to beneficiaries through Medicare Advantage plans.”
This is the key AARP angle. The number one seller of AARP medicare Advantage gap insurance is the AARP. AARP will have to raise rates to make up for the gap and more people will have to buy gap insurance due to the cut in benefits. AARP will make millions. Now you know why AARP is all for the latest health care proposals.
Hotair.com is reporting that the Senate Finance Committee Staff is saying the same thing:
SHAWN BISHOP, SENATE FINANCE COMMITTEE PROFESSIONAL STAFF MEMBER: “The $113 billion dollars is a reduction in the extra benefits, the added, additional benefits that Medicare Advantage enrollees have available to them. And those benefits come in the form of vision, dental, reduced hospital deductible. It’s unstatutory, it’s unlawful for any Medicare Advantage plan to reduce the AB covered benefit that they provide. That’s by statute. They have to provide that. They are going to have a reduction in the added benefits that they have in Medicare Advantage. So there’s a reduction in benefits but its additional extra benefits that they have above what they’re entitled to by law on the fee for service side.” (Finance Committee, U.S. Senate, Hearing, 9/22/09)
Ed Morrissey comments:
Only an idiot would conclude that $500 billion in cuts to Medicare over 10 years would mean no reduction in benefits. Webudgeted $413 billionfor this year, which makes a $50 billion “savings” target about 12% of its budget. Obama keeps talking about how efficient Medicare is compared to private health insurance, but how efficient can it be if he can slice 12% out of the budget without affecting benefits? In comparison, private health insurers spend 96.7% of all income on care and administrative costs, with only a 3.3% average profit margin.
Elmendorf is speaking not just from hard data but also common sense. Any attempt to get that level of “savings” from Medicare will necessarily cut the benefits going to its recipients. Trying to cast that as a myth is either an indication of mathematical incompetence, political dishonesty, or both. It’s also worth noting that when previous administrations attempted to cut Medicare spending by much lower amounts, Democrats would scream from the rafters about Republicans trying to steal Medicare away from seniors. In this case, the CBO confirms that Democrats have engaged inprojection.
And what happens in the media when the CBO exposes the President as a mythmaker, not a mythbuster? Well, it’s like the proverbial tree in the forest. None of the major newspapers covered the story that ObamaCare means cuts in Medicare benefits. Notone.
UPDATE (10/20/2009) – While googling about I see that Michelle Malkin has a post on the AARP rip off angle as well. I should have known that Malkin would be all over this story. As always Michelle, nice work.
From the College Politico with absolute video proof. It proves beyond reasonable doubt that the Obama as Hitler signs are at tea parties are clearly from LaRouche Democrats and not traditionalists, libertarians or conservatives. The elite media such as NBC, ABC, CNN, and MSNBC have been showing these signs and presenting them as if they are typical of people at the protests when they are not.
Since any close-up of the sign or interview of people carrying them makes it clear they they are from LaRouche it is next to imnpossible to believe that the elite media did not know who these signs were really from. They made a choice to slander you.
UPDATE: Rachel Maddow at MSNBC uses the LaRouche Democrats Obama=Hitler sign to smear tea party protesters.
This is a screen shot of Maddow’s show that appeared on Newsbusters.
Paul Williams has a video showing the glaring hypocrisy of the left on this matter. This is a must see if there ever was one.
President Obama’s diversity czar at the Federal Communications Commission has spoken publicly of getting white media executives to “step down” in favor of minorities, prescribed policies to make liberal talk radio more successful, and described Hugo Chavez’s rise to power in Venezuela “an incredible revolution.”
Mark Lloyd’s provocative comments – most made during a tenure at the liberal Center for American Progress think tank – are giving fodder to critics who say Mr. Obama has appointed too many “czars” to government positions that don’t require congressional approval. They are also worrying to some conservatives who fear the FCC might use its powers to remove their competitive advantage on talk radio and television.
Many of the remarks have been unearthed by conservative-leaning writers and bloggers and discussed on cable television amid a broader critique of Mr. Obama’s penchant for czars that exploded with the ouster this month of “green jobs czar” Van Jones.
In one of his more eye-opening comments, Mr. Lloyd praised Mr. Chavez during a June 2008 conference on media reform, saying the authoritarian Venezuelan president had led “really an incredible revolution – a democratic revolution.”
~
At another conference, Mr. Lloyd spoke about the need to remove white people from powerful positions in the media to give minorities a fairer chance.
“There’s nothing more difficult than this because we have really truly, good, white people in important positions, and the fact of the matter is that there are a limited number of those positions,” he said.
“And unless we are conscious of the need to have more people of color, gays, other people in those positions, we will not change the problem. But we’re in a position where you have to say who is going to step down so someone else can have power.”
He added: “There are few things, I think, more frightening in the American mind than dark-skinned black men. Here I am.”
Andrew Breitbart published the audio of the conference on his Breitbart.com Web site on Monday. Mr. Breitbart said the recording was made during a conference on media reform and racial justice in May 2005.
David Horowitz is a former marxist radical and turned conservative civil rights activist. He has written so many books that I have lost count. David Horowitz is a man who knows where the “bodies are buried” as it were and knows how leftist organizations help each other launder tax and charity money for political purposes. Horowitz has a site where he tracks the organizations and the people who run them on his site called “Discover the Networks”.
[Editor's Note - for the "if you oppose leftist policy you must be a racist" crowd. David Horowitz marched with Dr. Martin Luther King and faced the dogs and fire hoses when standing up for equal rights under the law wasn't considered cool.]
Horowitz has partnered with Beck and together they have proved to be the most effective at exposing the most extreme (and I mean really far out extreme that even leaves most partisan democrats scratching their heads) elements of the administration.
The pattern with Beck has been the following; Beck announces that he has learned something new, it could be Van Jones or ACORN or Tides Foundation, he is ridiculed by the elite media and the left as a nutty conspiracy theorist, then Beck is proved correct and Van Jones resigns or the Senate pulls ACORN’s funding etc and the circle starts all over again.
Rarely do we quote an entire article, but in this case we made a rare exception for the following reasons:
1. This information is SO important and so educational that it merits bringing it all to you IU South Bend readers and the nearly 40,000 others who come to us for news analysis.
2. You will notice that the text is filled with links to evidence/information that you can check and see for yourself. It really shows off the degree of intelligence gathering that has been done by the Horowitz organization.
3. If one were to read this article and its associated links the education conferred would be better than two semesters of political science classes.
Poligazette Editor Michael van der Galien comments at Hotair.com:
John convinced me today that Beck should not merely be tolerated by conservatives but publicly celebrated.
Although there is more in John’s post – much more even – the main point can be summarized in one short sentence: without Beck, the Obama administration would not have had to deal with any controversies.
Without Beck the far left would not have been exposed.
Many would undoubtedly have liked it to be different but the FrontPageMag editor is right. Beck is the only national figure willing to take on the extreme left and to prove that Obama has ties to them and may even be one of them.
That’s it; it is time for conservatives to stop criticizing Beck and to give him credit for helping the conservative movement take on the most progressive individuals ever to be in charge of the most powerful country on earth.
John Perazzo posted this awesome piece at David Horiwitz’ blog site and it is taking the blogosphere by storm:
In recent weeks, Glenn Beck has elevated political/news television to an entirely new level. Without fealty to any particular party, he is shining a light into the dark corners of a political cesspool that has been hidden for too long. He is taking the esoteric and making it accessible; taking the complex and making it simple. The result: Millions of Americans are waking up and beginning to understand, often for the first time, exactly what the left is all about. At the David Horowitz Freedom Center, we’re honored that one of the most vital resources from which Beck draws information that is presented on his program is our online encyclopedia of the left at www.DiscoverTheNetworks.org. It was our hope that by putting the networks, funders and covert agendas of the left up on the Web, we would awaken Americans to the internal threat to their freedoms from the legions of what is misnamed the “progressive” left. (In fact they are reactionaries and closet totalitarians who want to re-run the discredited socialist scripts of the past.) Since we launched DiscoverTheNetworks in February 2005, more than 20 million people have visited the site. But Glenn Beck is reaching over half that number of Americans every single day.
A thorough researcher who does plenty of homework in preparation for his program, Beck has perhaps done more than any other broadcaster to make Americans keenly aware of so many vital facts that few others in the media have ever even mentioned. For instance, he has stressed the immense significance of Saul Alinsky, the late godfather of radical “community organizing” — and probably the single most formative tactical influence on Barack Obama during his years as a political neophyte.
Beck also has done a magnificent job of bringing to light the vitally important, though not widely understood, Cloward-Piven strategy — a key tactic of the left.
First proposed in 1966 and named after Columbia University sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, this strategy seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands. Though undertaken ostensibly to protect the “rights” of the “poor” and the “working-class,” the strategy’s ultimate objective is to thrust society into a political and financial crisis that will cause people to lose all faith in the existing system (capitalism), and to follow the lead of a self-assured, charismatic “community organizer” to a socialist alternative. Again, DiscoverTheNetworks has proved to be a vital resource for Beck; no source, anywhere, has laid bare the principles of Cloward-Piven with greater clarity than DiscoverTheNetworks.
[IUSB Vision Editor's Note: I have taken the time to examine some of Francis Fox Piven's lectures and writings. It was rather disturbing to explore the mind of one who I can only describe and genuinely evil. Piven takes leftist hate and envy to a level higher than I am used to experiencing among leftist academics.]
Cloward-Piven, of course, dovetails seamlessly with ACORN, an Alinskyite organization with a long history of attempting to stress American institutions to their breaking point. In its early days, ACORN members invaded welfare offices across the United States — often violently — bullying social workers and loudly demanding every last cent to which the law ostensibly “entitled” them – all in an effort to overwhelm the welfare system and spark an economic crisis. More recently, ACORN’s malign ambitions have focused on trying to overwhelm our electoral system by means of a voter-fraud campaign of unprecedented magnitude. And, on yet another front, ACORN worked long and hard, and with much success, to help bring about the collapse of the housing market — by aggressively pushing banks to extend credit to undercapitalized, high-risk borrowers in low-income, mostly-minority areas. Beck and DiscoverTheNetworks have been pointing this out for a long time.
Through it all, DiscoverTheNetworks has been a vital resource upon which Beck has drawn. His recognition of the value of the information in DiscoverTheNetworks, coupled with his unwavering commitment to truth – wherever it may lead – will go a long way toward waking up the American people to the corrosive agendas of the left.
You can view the actual document HERE at Andrew Brietbarts web site.
This should not surprise anyone. Especially when we examine at large the quality of journalism majors we have seen and especially when we see the dismal quality of some professors at the IU Bloomington J School (LINK). Forunately, Ken Klimek, who teaches many of the journalism classes here at IUSB, has a pretty strong emphasis on media ethics.
Apparently NBC “Dateline” producer Jane Stone or someone else who has access to her Blackberry has a problem with groups that oppose ACORN and with an ethnocultural minority.
When Stone received an email urging Congress to defund ACORN from Alex Rosenwald, director of media outreach for Americans for Limited Government, the following sentence came back to Rosenwald from Stone’s account: “Bite me, Jew Boy!”
As editor, I also subscribe to the Columbia Journalism Review. It is completely ideological and might as well be written by the Democratic National Committee.
And I am proud to say that the United States has done more to promote clean energy and reduce carbon pollution in the last eight months than at any other time in our history. – B. Obama
The problem is that this statement is just not true.
In the first place, we succeeded through partnership with the private sector where Europe and Kyoto did not in 2006, when we grew our economy and reduced our carbon emissions by 1.3%:
U.S. carbon dioxide emissions dropped slightly last year even as the economy grew, according to an initial estimate released yesterday by the Energy Information Administration.
The 1.3 percent drop in CO{-2} emissions marks the first time that U.S. pollution linked to global warming has declined in absolute terms since 2001 and the first time it has gone down since 1990 while the economy was thriving. Carbon dioxide emissions declined in both 2001 and 1991, in large part because of economic slowdowns during those years.
In 2006 the U.S. economy grew 3.3 percent, a fact President Bush touted yesterday as he hailed the government’s “flash estimate” that the country’s carbon dioxide emissions dropped by 78 million metric tons last year.
In a surprise move that caught Europe’s smug moralists and the environmental movement’s noisy extremists flatfooted, the United States announced in Vientiane, Laos, last week that it was joining five other nations – China, India, Japan, South Korea and Australia — in a new pact that offers a refreshing and effective alternative route to tackling the problem of climate change.
While given short shrift by the puzzled media, this is a big deal, in many ways.
First, it breaks the climate-change deadlock. This is the agreement that responsible scientists and public officials have been seeking since the failure of the Kyoto Protocol became evident at the global warming conclave in Delhi two years ago. Call it “Beyond Kyoto” – Way Beyond Kyoto.
Second, the new deal was negotiated and settled without the involvement of the United Nations or the European Union – a clear message from the United States that multilateralism does not have a single definition. In fact, according to The Guardian newspaper, the agreement – called the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate — was kept secret by President Bush from British Prime Minister Tony Blair, an uncompromising champion of Kyoto, during last month’s G8 meeting” in Scotland.
The net result of these policies? Instead of imposing a $1700 cost burden per American household and costing the US 3.5% of its GDP by 2050, Bush grew the economy — and increased tax revenues as a result:
An unexpectedly steep rise in tax revenues from corporations and the wealthy is driving down the projected budget deficit this year, even though spending has climbed sharply because of the war in Iraq and the cost of hurricane relief.
On Tuesday, White House officials are expected to announce that the tax receipts will be about $250 billion above last year’s levels and that the deficit will be about $100 billion less than what they projected six months ago. The rising tide in tax payments has been building for months, but the increased scale is surprising even seasoned budget analysts and making it easier for both the administration and Congress to finesse the big run-up in spending over the past year.
Tax revenues are climbing twice as fast as the administration predicted in February, so fast that the budget deficit could actually decline this year.
Tax cuts and pro-growth policies actually increased the economy while reducing carbon emissions, something that Europe has yet to match. Perhaps that success should be the model of future programs for curbing emissions, although the need for it becomes less and less certain every year.
Yet another “capitalism & America is evil” video shown to students.
There has also been concern about school teachers doing things like taking songs about Jesus and replacing Jesus with Obama and teaching the kids to sing them in public schools and other outrageous acts of propaganda as has been done HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.
UPDATE: Lou Dobbs on this indoctrination video called “The Story of Stuff”
“How The World Works” Took this video apart piece by piece.
Indeed, that is what he told George Stephanopoulos LINK . After what happened (LINK) maybe we can’t blame a politician for lying.
Update – Hotair.com reports that ACORN is trying to hide its ties with teachers unions like NEA and AFT (LINK). Brietbart News has even more detail and documents HERE.
So Glenn Beck introduces us to the ACORN Advisory Board and it ends up being a who’s who of Obama’s life and administration. Why do these politicians keep lying to us so brazenly. …Hmm maybe it is because the elite media has abandoned its responsibility to the public.
By the way for those of you who didn’t get it. The assault weapon ban had nothing to do with machine guns and never did and semi-automatics he refers to aren’t machine guns either. They shoot one bullet with each pull of the trigger like most guns built since 1900.
If you think that this is not typical or was rigged, there is empirical evidence to support this right HERE.
The elite media calls the people at tea parties violent and racist (LINK), yet at every known event of violence has been committed by ACORN/SEIU thugs. There was violence at several anti-war protests, at the GOP convention and at this event, the G20 summit in Pittsburgh with 60 arrested, 6 hospitalized and businesses vandalized.
Why is CNN not featuring the nuttiest sign they can find at this protest like they do at a Tea Party, why are their reporters not getting in the face of a protestor to challenge, harass, name call and mock them like they do at Tea Parties (LINK) ….where is Susan Roesgen now? [By the way, here is how Roesgen and CNN portrayed left wing protestors wielding Hitler/Bush signs - LINK]
The National Park Service confirmed that the 9/12 protest called by Glenn Beck was the largest event in DC history and there was not one arrest…not one.
For Example.
CNN reporting on Left Wing protestors:
Notice how they do not zoom in on the nuttiest sign and present it as typical. They do not get in a protestors face to challenge them, mock them, ask them a question and don’t let them answer it, they don’t call them sexual names like “tea baggers”. It’s all just hunky dory… but…
CNN reporting on Tea Parties:
So let us take a close look at the signs at the anti-war protests and ask the protestors a few questions. Since NO ONE in the elite media would do this with any fair, we rely on film maker Evan Coyne Maloney:
Yet it is the Tea Party people who are nutty, violent, racists…. yea right.
UPDATE – The B-Cast TV program does a special on CNN’s insulting coverage of the Tea Party protests and how they spun the Fox News ad – LINK.
[Editor's Note - So what the Democrats and this professor is saying is that if Joe Biden were president the Tea Parties would not be protesting the wasteful spending, the corrupt pork earmarks for corporate lobbying clients, the porkulus bills, the broken promises, the government take over of health care and the banks etc? So I ask, was it racist when they opposed HillaryCare in 1994?
By that standard anyone who criticizes Michael Steele (a black American) the head of the Republican Party a racist. So by his own standard is the entire DNC racist and the professor below a race traitor? Yup thats it, anyone who criticizes any Republican is a racist because they just can't take it that the leader of the Republican Party is a black man. What is good for the goose is good for the gander.]
This man is a professor of law. He speaks in these brad brush strokes and avoids specifics on policy.
I would LOVE to debate this guy Lincoln/Douglas style. I also like how he says that he is not a leftist and then spouts every far left talking point right down the line including these baseless attacks on Glenn Beck. This guy was so transparent and phony that most thinking Americans could see right through this guy. Unfortunately this guy is representative of a great deal of college professors and administrators.
I also found it interesting how he portrayed what the National Park Service has called the largest DC event in US history; the 9/12 protest called by Glenn Beck. About 1.7 million people participated and he focussed in on the few nuts that showed up to attempt to mainstream themselves with any political movement. We also reported how plants from ACORN have been showing up to some Tea Party events with racist signs of high production value to attempt to get in front of a camera (LINK). No one who did any genuine reporting of the event said that those types of signs were even close to representative to the crowd.
So while the elite media and this professor show contempt (more contempt) for tea party protesters, I wonder where all these people were when left wing nuts took to the streets in droves with plenty of hate to spread around ….and yet they got glowing coverage from the elite media…. well as a reminder I have the video…. Watch each in total…especially the endings.
Or maybe they think the constant antisemitism that is so common at far left protests isn’t racist at all…..
UPDATE- Gary Bauer speaks on the issue (Via The Anchoress):
Bauer noted that when Obama was inaugurated, he had an approval rating of 75 percent. Yet, today, his approval rating is in the neighborhood of 50 percent. If racism is the explanation, Bauer wondered aloud, are we to believe that the quarter of the electorate that seems to have abandoned President Obama just discovered that he is black?
As Bauer made his argument, it was obvious that he was speaking directly to the reporters present. He went further by asking the crowd the question (and this is from memory so it may not be exact), “If a party were to run a candidate who was black, Asian, or hispanic and who was pro-life, in favor of free markets, traditional morality, and strong national defense, would you support that candidate?” The crowd erupted in massive, enthusiastic applause. Bauer joked with the crowd and the reporters present, “I can’t wait to run home and see that positive reaction from the crowd toward racial diversity played on CBS, NBC, and ABC!” Of course, the enthusiastic reaction in favor of a candidate of color who is also a conservative doesn’t fit the press narrative and the audience reaction would never be played on the news. Bauer knew that. The crowd knew that. And so did the press.
Andrew Brietbart is a the head of a new media empire. When it comes to online news it is almost guaranteed that you have ran across one of his many news and information web sites.
Brietbart News played an important role in exposing the corruption at ACORN.
His main news site is http://www.breitbart.com/ and it contains links to news from all over the world.
Much of his news and links are imbedded in other web sites, so if you have not been to these sites yourself, it is almost guaranteed that you have seen Brietbart News content imbedded in another web site.
Of course the “in the tank” elite media will cover Obama on this one. Most of them didn’t cover the scandal or just reported it once so they can say that they reported it.
Now before the far left starts to object in comments let me remind you that the left and the elite media covered the Jack Abramoff story constantly. Abromoff was a corrupt lobbyist who donated money to politicians, most of whom were Republican. Most of these politicians had nothing to so with Abramoff save for just accepting political donations like most politicians do.
So let me see. Barack Obama was a community organizer for ACORN. Then he took a job training their people how to organize others. Obama came back and acted as a Lawyer and worked with ACORN to file CRA lawsuits against banks to get them to lower mortgage loan standards and make more high risk loans. Obama’s campaign than pays ACORN $800,000. The Obama Administration tells ACORN that they will be in the White House with him. ACORN and SEIU share offices and SEIU people are at the top levels of the Obama Administration. ACORN is invited to work the census and other federal tasks.
UPDATE – In this video Glenn Beck plays clips of President Obama telling how he has a long history with ACORN/SEIU and knows them well. Even if you don’t care for Beck you can still hear Obama’s own words to see for yourself.
George Stephanopoulos
Is it just me or are the ties between Obama and ACORN much closer than Abramoff and the Republicans he donated campaign funds to?
The one who at least asked a question about ACORN was George Stephanopoulos. Obama said that he didn’t know much about the scandal, which George didn’t seem to believe and is hardly believable since ACORN has always been so near and dear to Obama’s heart and life.
Only one of the five television networks that interviewed President Obama for their Sunday shows bothered to ask him about Acorn, the left-wing community organizing group whose federal funding was cut off last week by an overwhelming vote in Congress.
“Frankly, it’s not something I’ve followed closely,” Mr. Obama claimed, adding he wasn’t even aware the group had been the recipient of significant federal funding. “This is not the biggest issue facing the country. It’s not something I’m paying a lot of attention to,” he said.
Mr. Obama added that an investigation of Acorn was appropriate after an amateur hidden-camera investigation had found Acorn offices willing to abet prostitution, but he carefully declined to say whether he would approve a federal cutoff of funds to the group.
Mr. Obama took great pains to act as if he barely knew about Acorn. In fact, his association goes back almost 20 years. In 1991, he took time off from his law firm to run a voter-registration drive for Project Vote, an Acorn partner that was soon fully absorbed under the Acorn umbrella. The drive registered 135,000 voters and was considered a major factor in the upset victory of Democrat Carol Moseley Braun over incumbent Democratic Senator Alan Dixon in the 1992 Democratic Senate primary.
Mr. Obama’s success made him a hot commodity on the community organizing circuit. He became a top trainer at Acorn’s Chicago conferences. In 1995, he became Acorn’s attorney, participating in a landmark case to force the state of Illinois to implement the federal Motor Voter Law. That law’s loose voter registration requirements would later be exploited by Acorn employees in an effort to flood voter rolls with fake names.
In 1996, Mr. Obama filled out a questionnaire listing key supporters for his campaign for the Illinois Senate. He put Acorn first (it was not an alphabetical list). In the U.S. Senate, Mr. Obama became the leading critic of Voter ID laws, whose overturn was a top Acorn priority. In 2007, in a speech to Acorn’s leaders prior to their political arm’s endorsement of his presidential campaign, Mr. Obama was effusive: “I’ve been fighting alongside of Acorn on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote in Illinois, Acorn was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work.”
But the Obama campaign didn’t appear eager to discuss the candidate’s ties to Acorn. Its press operation vividly denied Mr. Obama had been an Acorn trainer until the New York Times uncovered records demonstrating that he had been. The Obama campaign also gave Citizens Consulting, Inc., an Acorn subsidiary, $832,000 for get-out-the-vote activities in key primary states. In filings with the Federal Election Commission, the Obama campaign listed the payments as “staging, sound, lighting,” only correcting the filings after the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review revealed their true nature.
Given his longstanding ties with Acorn, President Obama’s protestations of ignorance or disinterest in the group’s latest scandal seem preposterous. Here’s hoping White House reporters will press the president to clarify just how much he really knows about Acorn and when he knew it.
UPDATE II – Obama doesn’t know much about ACORN any more he says…. hmm than why are so many members of the ACORN Advisory Board all over his White House LINK ?
Yes, so I imagined. While Glenn Greenwald, for example, was accusing those on the right of being “chickenhawks” for not serving in Iraq, he was never quite able to explain why he wasn’t accumulating Congressional Medals of Honor and Taliban tooth-necklaces in the war he supposedly supported, Afghanistan.
And no, this isn’t just about some seedy, nasty liberal bloggers.
It’s about our lying POS POTUS, too.
Escalation is a bad idea. The Democrats backed themselves into defending the idea of Afghanistan being The Good War because they felt they needed to prove their macho bonafides they called for withdrawal from Iraq. Nobody asked too many questions sat the time, including me. But none of us should forget that it was a political strategy, not a serious foreign policy. There have been many campaign promises “adjusted” since the election. There is no reason that the administration should feel any more bound to what they said about this than all the other committments [sic] it has blithely turned aside in the interest of “pragmatism.”
But none of us should forget that it was a political strategy, not a serious foreign policy.
You claimed to support a war in which American soldiers were fighting and dying, leaving friends and limbs on the battlefield, as a cynical political strategy?
You… um… voiced support of a real serious-as-death war to cadge votes out of a duped public?
We won’t forget, champ. And we won’t let you forget, either.
Again we see a leftist projecting his pathological darkness on to others. They accused Bush of fighting wars for this very reason. And now, when it’s safe to say so (they think), they concede: We supported a war for the reason we accused Bush of doing so for 8 years.
They are calling it the Community Reinvestment Modernization Act (CMRA). The Old Community Reinvestment Act played an important role in lowering mortgage standards and creating so many of these high risk loans that broke the system. While the CRA was just one layer of a multi layered problem created by government that culminated in the largest economic collapse since the Great Depression, it was still an important layer, so naturally the far left wants to do it AGAIN.
As we have reported before and have taken a lead in reporting on, the original CRA was intended to make it illegal to stop “redlining”; the practice of not giving loans to people based on race. But CRA was used by the Clinton Justice Department to make it an affirmative action program for loans, forcing banks to give mortgages to people who had no business getting a home loan simply because it was very unlikely that they could pay the loan back. They say it was about giving loans to poor minorities, when it fact it was about getting loans to Democrat constituent groups.
The rub is, that giving out high risk loans did not do them any favors. Many thousands of people in high risk loans defaulted, they lost their homes, their credit was destroyed and mortgage securities based on those loans brought down AIG, Lehman Brothers and dozens of banks.
Of course ACORN was at the heart of this problems as they filed CRA lawsuits to force banks to make high risk loans, under the faux guise of “fighting racism”.
We reported on this activity extensively HERE and HERE.
ACORN and SEIU have already created an atroturf support group to help get it passed – LINK.
The CRMA takes the old CRA one step further and mandates that loans be given to minorities regardless of income. Is giving a home loan to anyone regardless of income a wise move?
Dems push expanded Community Reinvestment Act; deny Act’s role in mortgage meltdown; GOP cites ACORN connection
By: BYRON YORK
Chief Political Correspondent
09/16/09 4:13 PM EDT
A number of experts believe that aggressive enforcement of the 1970s-era Community Reinvestment Act contributed to the mortgage meltdown, and thus to the greater financial crisis, by requiring financial institutions to lend to unqualified borrowers. Now, the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives is responding to that situation by proposing to expand the scope and power of the Community Reinvestment Act.
This morning House Financial Services Committee chairman Rep. Barney Frank held a hearing on H.R. 1479, the “Community Reinvestment Modernization Act of 2009.” The bill’s purpose is “to close the wealth gap in the United States” by increasing “home ownership and small business ownership for low- and moderate-income borrowers and persons of color.” It would extend CRA’s strict lending requirements to non-bank institutions like credit unions, insurance companies, and mortgage lenders. It would also make CRA more explicitly race-based by requiring CRA standards to be applied to minorities, regardless of income, going beyond earlier requirements that applied solely to low- and moderate-income areas.
Republicans on the committee strongly oppose the plan. “Instead of looking to expand the number of institutions that must abide by Community Investment Act regulations,” California Rep. Ed Royce said in prepared opening remarks at today’s hearing, “I think we should reassess the role this and other government mandates played in the financial collapse and consider scaling it back.”
In private conversation, other Republicans were more emphatic. “There is clearly arguable evidence that the CRA is at the root of this financial meltdown,” says one GOP committee member. “So what do they do? They try to expand CRA.”
But Democrats, led by H.R. 1479 sponsor Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, claimed that expansion of CRA is much-needed. “Congress has passed a number of laws designed to combat redlining and eliminate housing discrimination,” Johnson said at the hearing. “Unfortunately, we all know that redlining still occurs.”
Then there is the ACORN angle. Republican critics point out that the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now has used the CRA to pressure banks to pour money into ACORN and its affiliates, allowing ACORN to facilitate loans to clearly unqualified borrowers. Now, with ACORN under fire after a series of undercover videos showing ACORN workers in Baltimore, Washington DC, New York, and California openly encouraging prostitution, tax evasion, and other crimes, Republicans on the committee are citing the CRA-ACORN connection as yet another reason the Act should not be expanded.
Johnson’s bill has 51 co-sponsors, including some of the most liberal members of the House, like Reps. Dennis Kucinich, John Conyers, Bobby Rush, Steve Cohen, and Barbara Lee. Given the Democrats’ tremendous numerical superiority in the House, if the majority wants to expand CRA, Republicans will be unable to stop it.
UPDATE – Byrom York gives an analysis of the CRA that is spot on and tells the same story we told when the collapse took place. Well done Byron.
Democrats on path to repeat housing disaster
By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
September 22, 2009
With all the attention paid to the health care battle, ACORN, and the president’s “Full Ginsburg” appearances on five Sunday talk shows, few people noticed a hearing with an exceedingly boring title — “Proposals to Enhance the Community Reinvestment Act” — held last week in the House Financial Services Committee. But the session marked a key moment in the ongoing battle between Republicans and Democrats over what caused our current financial woes — and how we might best avoid getting into the same trouble again.
At the hearing, and in others across Capitol Hill, Democratic majorities are pressing hard to expand some of the very policies that led to the reckless home lending that in turn helped lead to the great financial meltdown. If Chairman Barney Frank and his fellow Democrats have their way, we’ll do it all again — and more.
At issue last week was H.R. 1479, the Community Reinvestment Modernization Act of 2009, sponsored by Democratic Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson. It would expand and strengthen the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act, which required banks to make loans in low-income areas that many lenders had traditionally shunned.
After the meltdown, some conservatives blamed the CRA for almost solely causing the crisis by requiring banks to make risky loans to unqualified borrowers. It was an unfair charge. “CRA had at best an incremental role in the U.S. housing debacle,” says J.D. Foster, an economist at the Heritage Foundation. But CRA did help create the conditions in which disaster could occur.
The problems began in the 1990s, when Congress made it harder for lenders to do business if they had not passed the CRA “exam” — that is, if they had not met the government-imposed standards for loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers.
“From 1995 on, there was an incredible push by the Clinton and Bush administrations in every way they could — CRA, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and other ways — to increase the homeownership rate,” says Russell Roberts, a professor of economics at George Mason University. “What that did was to push up the price of housing, and that made it imaginable to lend money to people you never would have lent money to, on terms you wouldn’t have done before.”
In particular, Fannie Mae began to aggressively promote homeownership using the Community Reinvestment Act to give loans to people who couldn’t afford them. Fannie went to bankers and said, make as many CRA loans as you can; we’ll buy them and take them off your hands. “Our approach to our lenders is ‘CRA Your Way,’ ” top Fannie executive Jamie Gorelick told the Mortgage Bankers Association in 2001. “Fannie Mae will buy CRA loans from lenders’ portfolios; we’ll package them into securities; we’ll purchase CRA mortgages at the point of origination. …”
Fannie promised to buy billions and billions of dollars worth of CRA loans because it was under pressure to do so from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which in turn was under pressure from Congress, which set ambitious quotas for low- and moderate-income loans.
The policy ended in a lot of people losing their homes. Now, Johnson’s bill would ensure more of that by applying CRA’s lending requirements not just to banks but to non-bank institutions like credit unions, insurance companies, and mortgage lenders. It would also make CRA explicitly race-based by, in Johnson’s words, “requiring CRA exams to explicitly consider lending and services to minorities in addition to low- and moderate-income communities.”
Republicans on the Financial Services Committee strongly oppose the plan. “Instead of looking to expand the number of institutions that must abide by CRA regulations, I think we should reassess the role this and other government mandates played in the financial collapse and consider scaling it back,” California Rep. Ed Royce said at the hearing.
In private conversation, other Republicans were more emphatic. “There is clearly arguable evidence that the CRA is at the root of this financial meltdown,” said one GOP committee member. “So what do they do? They try to expand CRA.”
That’s an overstatement of CRA’s role in the housing mess, but it’s right about the Democratic plan. Denying that CRA, Fannie and other institutions played any role in setting the stage for disaster, they’re proposing more of what helped get us into trouble in the first place. It’s no way to fix the problem.
Listen to Limbaugh very carefully. As he reads the NYT article on the ACORN scandal he points out the information and important details that the article leaves out. Then Limbaugh does a brilliant job of expressing the attitude and tone of the article which is filled with buzz words (words that evoke an emotional response or narrative) designed to invoke an attitude in the reader. I did a 40 page paper on this very type of propaganda. it is called “Attitude Change Propaganda Theory”. With this type of propaganda you are given only some of the pertinent information and that information is delivered with an attitude that can include a false narrative.
This type of propaganda is taught in journalism schools so it is unlikely that the NYT isn’t perfectly aware of what this piece is really all about.
