New AP Article on “Global Cooling Myth” Spins a Bad Study

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).

CBS/AP:

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.

Pielke Senior via WUWT:

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.

As we reported January 10, 2009:

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.

Sorry for lack of updates this week.

There is an illness going around town and I have been sick for a week. Fortunately this has been a slow news week, I will be updating everyone on things shortly.

- Editor

Obama Will Spend More on Welfare in the Next Year Than Bush Spent on Entire Iraq War, Study Reveals

Keep in mind that the pork laden Stimulus Bill reversed the hugely popular and successful Welfare Reform Bill that President Clinton and the Republican Congress worked so hard to get passed. Welfare Reform was President Clinton’s greatest legacy and Obama/Pelosi took it away from him. If rank and file Democrats were aware of this they would be outraged and rightly so.  Republicans should pound this story, but as usual their communications machine isn’t up to par.

CNS News:

As a candidate for president, Barack Obama decried the financial toll that the Iraq war was taking on the economy, but Obama’s proposed spending on welfare through 2010 will eclipse Bush’s war spending by more than $260 billion.

“Because of the Bush-McCain policies, our debt has ballooned,” then-Sen. Barack Obama told a Charleston, W.V., crowd in March 2008. “This is creating problems in our fragile economy. And that kind of debt also places an unfair burden on our children and grandchildren, who will have to repay it.”During the entire administration of George W. Bush, the Iraq war cost a total of $622 billion, according to the Congressional Research Service.
 
President Obama’s welfare spending will reach $888 billion in a single fiscal year–2010–more than the Bush administration spent on war in Iraq from the first “shock and awe” attack in 2003 until Bush left office in January. 

Obama’s spending proposals call for the largest increases in welfare benefits in U.S. history, according to a report by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. This will lead to a spending total of $10.3 trillion over the next decade on various welfare programs. These include cash payments, food, housing, Medicaid and various social services for low-income Americans and those at 200 percent of the poverty level, or $44,000 for a family of four. Among that total, $7.5 trillion will be federal money and $2.8 trillion will be federally mandated state expenditures.
 
In that same West Virginia speech last year, Obama said, “When Iraq is costing each household about $100 a month, you’re paying a price for this war.”
 
The Heritage study says, “Applying that same standard to means-tested welfare spending reveals that welfare will cost each household $560 per month in 2009 and $638 per month in 2010.”

U.S. Marine to Congressman: If Nancy Pelosi wants to find a swastika the first place she needs to look is the sleeve on her own arm.

WOW!

Thanks to hotairpundit for the video link!

UPDATE: Marine appears on Fox & Friends

Video: Pelosi used to love town hall protestors and disruptors….when Bush was president.

Via Brietbart News:

Coolest Stunt Ever!

Obama-Cambridge Police. How Glenn Beck and David Horowitz got it wrong. – UPDATED!

First of all I want to make it clear that I have the utmost respect for David Horowitz and Glenn Beck, but even IF everything that they said here is an absolute reality they are still wrong so please allow me to explain why.

Massachusetts law makes it clear that disorderly conduct is illegal disruptive behavior IN PUBLIC and with the intent of causing illegal disruptive and violent behavior of others. The professor was on his own property (NOT OUT IN PUBLIC) and this happened after the professor showed legal ID proving that he was in his own residence. The officer asked the professor to step outside for the purpose of arresting him.

The bottom line is this, there is nothing illegal about acting like a fool, or calling a police officer a racist while on your own property.

A good police officer, who behaves as a servant to the people, de-escalates a situation. As soon as he saw the ID and saw the professor was legit he should have just turned and left the premises. A bad police officer who has an attitude as if he is the people’s master and/or wears a cloak of infallibility (and there are lots of these out there I have seen first hand) is someone who escalates a situation.

I do not believe that this was about race, I believe that this was an escalation attitude by the police who simply did not follow the law. Once Prof. Gates showed his ID it should have been over no matter what foolish things Gates may or may not have been saying. Prof. Gates was arrested because of what he was saying to a police officer. One does not win an argument with a pair of hand cuffs. The arrest was illegal because the legal definition of disorderly conduct was not met which is why the charges were dropped almost immediately.

If I were Prof. Gates, I would sue the Cambridge PD not because the officer was a racist, but because they made an illegal arrest for the wrong reasons.

I know that some of you may be shocked, but I am siding with the professor on this one for all the right legal reasons.

Also I am not at all convinced that the police report is accurate. We have catalogued many cases of police brutality and misconduct where police did not tell the whole truth [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10] and most of these incidents of bad police behavior are generated by law enforcement who seem to have convinced themselves that they can do no wrong. I am not saying that the police officer is a liar, but what I am saying is that just because something is in a police report doesn’t mean it is the whole truth.

The link below tells the story of a police officer with a cloak of infallibility whose attitude resulted in some rather grim consequences for his victim and himself.  -  http://iusbvision.wordpress.com/2009/03/27/officer-holds-pro-football-player-for-over-20-minutes-while-his-mother-dies/

UPDATE- Just because all parties in this event acted stupidly doesn’t mean that Prof. Gates is not a nutty very far left black liberation theology conspiracy theorist with hate issues, because he most certainly is judging by the video clip that Glenn Beck found of gates giving a speech. Beck also asks, if the president is not a racist, how come he surrounded himself with overt racists like Farrahkan, Kahlidi, Rev. Wright, and the other overt anti-semites that he has brought into the administration as we have outlined in our “Israel” category? 

Keep in mind that Gates is considered a MODERATE among far left black studies professors… and THAT says something important as well.

UPDATE II- Legendary writer Chris Hitchens has the same take we have on this story; Gates’ arrest was wrong and illegal.  Hitchens:

A Man’s Home Is His Constitutional Castle

Henry Louis Gates Jr. should have taken his stand on the Bill of Rights, not on his epidermis or that of the arresting officer.

Moreover, whatever he said to the cop was in the privacy of his own home. It is monstrous in the extreme that he should in that home be handcuffed, and then taken downtown, after it had been plainly established that he was indeed the householder.

Absolutely a must read article, especially for college students who by and large are constitutionally inept due to the state of public education today.

CBS shows us how to rig a poll and make news…

Last week Gallup had a poll sponsored by USA Today that said 43% of Americans said that they would be likely to vote for her for president.

CBS did a poll saying that 65% of Americans believe that Sarah Palin is not prepared to be president.

So how do we determine who is right?

There are several tricks that can be used to skew a poll to the left side of exit polls and other actual results. The most common way to make a poll result move further to the left is to poll “registered voters” instead of “likely voters”. Almost anyone who gets a license is registered to vote. Most of them do not vote and don’t pay attention to politics and just parrot the far left views of the elite media.

Another common way to skew a poll to the left is to conduct the poll on a weekend. Another way to skew a poll to the left is to include cell phone numbers in the poll. People who have a cell phone as opposed to a land line are people who are highly mobile. Those who are highly mobile and have no land line are less likely to vote and less likely to pay attention to politics; thus are more likely to simply parrot the view of the elite media.

The final way to rig a poll is in the way that you ask the question. For example “Do taxpayers spend too much money on the medical bills of illegal aliens” vs. “should the children of immigrants be denied all access to hospitals and schools”.

So I examined the PDF with the weakly detailed “internals” of the poll (LINK):

This poll was conducted among a random sample of 944 adults nationwide, interviewed by telephone July 9-12, 2009. Phone numbers were dialed from samples of both standard land-line and cell phones.

Upon examining the polls, both used “registered voters instead of likely voters, so both are skewed to the left. Both include cell phone numbers. But the Gallup poll was taken on a Monday and the CBS poll is a weekend poll; hence the CBS poll will be more skewed to the left than the Gallup poll and the numbers reflect that.

Awesome: Palin made legislators come to her office to justify the pet projects they tried to tack onto spending bills

Tammy Bruce interview with Palin insider Rebbecca Mansour

Palin made legislators come to her office to explain to her and justify the pet projects they tried to tack onto spending bills. That is a great way to fight cronyism and corruption. It is also a great way to royally piss off slimy politicians.

Via C4P Blog and Tammy Bruce:

Big Government Republicans Still Trashing Palin – They are Right to Fear Her. UPDATED!

How Steve Schmidt blew up the McCain campaign and is attacking Sarah Palin to keep the heat off of himself.

Is Sarah Palin is the biggest threat to the corrupt, big government, crony capitalist kickback establishment culture in modern political memory? But what about Ronald Reagan…- While eventually Ronald Reagan was able to create a massive power-base from the ground up with massive popular support, he never went after the media or after bad apples in the GOP.

With lobbying, corruption, and crony favors in Washington now at an all time high the Democrats have become the party of Wall Street, corrupt crony capitalist, big government “A”; and while there are still some honest hold outs (Bachmann, DeMint, Paul, Sauder, Pence, etc) much of the GOP leadership is still the party of big, corrupt, crony capitalist government “B”. The exit polls in the last election showed this very clearly when voters said that the Republican Party used to stand for something but had lost their way.

Voters had learned that most Republicans in Congress circa 2008 were not the same stock that took over Congress in 1994 and worked so well with President Clinton in 1996 and 1998 to balance the budget, reign in spending, cut taxes and pass the hugely successful (and popular) welfare reform package that helped so many people get back to work. It is no secret that John Kasich, the GOP House Budget Chairman who was the architect of that success has been none too pleased with the House Republicans’ lack of leadership and financial discipline since 2004.

After taking devastating electoral defeats in 2006 and 2008, some wings of the Republican Party still have not learned their lesson. For example: Eight Republicans voted for the 1300 page, corporate favor and pork lined energy tax bill that amounts to the largest tax increase in U.S. history. A bill that almost no one had read when they voted for it.

Members of that big government wing of the Republican Party talk about small, common sense government at election time, but history has proved beyond doubt that they do not govern that way. While not at election time the big government wing bashes the more Reaganite and fiscally responsible wing of the GOP in the media. Of course, the elite media being very hostile to conservatives, goes along with such bashing gleefully. John McCain was the elite media’s favorite Republican because he was happy to be used as a tool to bash people in his own party. John McCain used to say that the elite media was his constituency. McCain learned just how far that gets you when you run against a far left Democrat. McCain was praised by the elite media until the primary battle was over and hours after McCain had the nomination secured the NY Times (in an article that got them sued for libel) printed a baseless and unsourced thinly veiled allegation that McCain was having an affair with a 40 year old lobbyist. That was just the beginning (LINK).

Did the big government wing of the GOP learn it’s lesson in the face of two stark defeats in recent election history? The big government wing seems desperate to stop another 1994 like “Republican Revolution” and is back to currying favor with the elite media by bashing conservatives. The target of targets for months has been Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

Vanity Fair published an unsourced, half truth filled attack piece on Palin (LINK) by Todd Purdum that has been refuted/exposed reasonably well by National Review (LINK) and the Weekly Standard (LINK). Todd Purdum wrote a similarly unsourced nasty hit piece on the Clintons late in the last primary (LINK) [when you follow the link also be sure to compare the Obama picture with the Clinton picture which presents a narrative all it's own - Editor].

Here is what Bill Clinton had to say about Purdum and about some of the elite media’s biased coverage (LINK with audio):

“[He's] sleazy,” he said referring to Purdum. “He’s a really dishonest reporter. And one of our guys talked to him . . . And I haven’t read [the article]. There’s just five or six blatant lies in there. But he’s a real slimy guy,” the former President said.

When I reminded him that Purdum was married to his former press spokesperson Myers, Clinton was undeterred.

“That’s all right– he’s still a scumbag,” Clinton said…

“You know he didn’t use a single name, cite a single source in all those things he said.. It’s just slimy.

It’s part of the national media’s attempt to nail Hillary for Obama. It’s the most biased press coverage in history. It’s another way of helping Obama. They had all these people standing up in this church cheering, calling Hillary a white racist, and he didn’t do anything about it. The first day he said ‘Ah, ah, ah well.’ Because that’s what they do– he gets other people to slime her. So then they saw the movie they thought this is a great ad for John McCain–maybe I better quit the church. It’s all politics. It’s all about the bias of the media for Obama. Don’t think anything about it.”

“But I’m telling ya, all it’s doing is driving her supporters further and further away– because they know exactly what it is– this has been the most rigged coverage in modern history– and the guy ought to be ashamed of himself. But he has no shame. It isn’t the first dishonest piece he’s written about me or her.”

Clinton goes on to say exactly how a piece like this gets generated. A writer decides that they want to write a hit piece, talk to a few political enemies of that person and report every allegation against them as fact with no attempt to present some objective truth. In fairness, while the Clinton’s do not always tell the truth, he is spot on in these comments. When Hillary Clinton’s communications advisor Howard Wolfson says repeatedly that they have to come on Fox News to get a fair shake, when Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity are going after NBC News for their bias against Hillary, well you know it’s bad. Hillbuzz and PUMApac, both sites of those who supported Clinton in the campaign, have done a meticulous job of reporting on the outrageous media bias against Hillary and Governor Palin.

Enter Steve Schmidt

When asked by NBC news about his “sources” Purdum said , “I don’t want to get into sources and methods”. Of course he doesn’t. Politico.com was able to track down some of the unsourced comments back to former McCain chief campaign strategist Steve Schmidt (LINK).

Politico:

The vitriol also suggests the degree to which Palin remains a Rorschach test not simply to Republicans nationally but within a tight circle of elite operatives and commentators, many of whom seem ready to carry their arguments in 2012. Was Palin a fresh talent whose debut was mishandled by self-serving campaign insiders, or an eccentric “diva” who had no business on the national stage?

Politico’s instincts are spot on, and it is very likely Steve Schmidt who is fueling the “hate Palin” flames behind the scenes in the elite media.

So why would Schmidt and a handful of other big government Republican’s want to keep attacking Sarah Palin? There is a long list of reasons, but let’s start with Schmidt.

Schmidt was on the verge of winning the election for his candidate until McCain suspended his campaign to help pass the TARP crap sandwich bailout bill. Up until that weekend McCain/Palin’s numbers were on the rise in spite of being outspent by the Obama campaign. Sarah Palin gave the most effective political speech at a convention in 30 years, and John McCain said at the convention that he was going to name names, the corrupt and the pork spenders were going to be outed by name and he promised that we would “know who they are”. McCain wasn’t serious. When McCain voted for that bailout bill with hundreds of pork amendments on it, it was if he took a stake and drove it through the very heart of his own brand. The “maverick” fight the corrupt spending brand for the McCain ticket was destroyed. All credibility was lost. The emperor had no clothes.

The number one rule of any campaign is to never, ever, ever violate your own brand and the McCain campaign did just that with Steve Schmidt at the helm. Schmidt either created a campaign brand that wasn’t honest, or he failed to keep his candidate from sabotaging the campaign brand, both of which means that Schmidt should never run a campaign again. If McCain was dead set on sabotaging the campaign brand Schmidt should have resigned to help save his career.

This writer believes that suspending the campaign and the decision for McCain to support the bailout was supported by Schmidt and he didn’t make the connection that he was about to trash his own brand. We would know if Schmidt had fought hard with McCain to keep him from those actions because it would have been leaked [by the way what is stopping McCain from naming names now, the corruption and corporate favors from Congress now are off the chart, where is the outrage? - editor]

Schmidt is trying to keep the focus off of his failure by keeping the ball on Palin and he hopes that by continuing to trash her in Washington circles that he can get a job with one of the other 2012 presidential candidates.

Schmidt has an ideological axe to grind against Palin as he has made it very clear that he very much opposes religious  and social conservatives (LINK). Schmidt supported McCain when he was the poster child for the so called “moderate lets get along and play nice with Democrats that we know full well are corrupt” Republican. The type of Republican that voters have tossed out of office for two elections in a row.

Palin is anything but that type of Republican.

Sarah Palin outed and very publicly tore down corporate corruption ring that owned much of the Republican Party machine in Alaska. Much of the Republican machine in Alaska still hates her for that (LINK, 2). While some Republicans talk about “naming names” Palin fights corrupt people in her own party fearlessly and ruthlessly. If Governor Palin is ever President Palin you can expect to see some Republicans and Democrats being carted off in handcuffs.

Palin used her overwhelming popular support to force very tough new ethics laws in Alaska and she made real cuts to state government spending. Palin cut off the money train for plenty of the corrupt in Alaska, especially in the so called competitive bidding process that lent itself to cronyism before the reforms (like why it is she stopped that bridge project in Ketchikan – LINK). These are not the kind of reforms a big government wing of the GOP would like to see implemented, because they have gotten wealthy just talking about them and doing the opposite. The prospect of a Palin presidency is bad for them because she means business.

Schmidt, as the Politico article link above makes clear, is very hostile to Bill Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard. The Weekly Standard is a very influential conservative publication that holds Republicans who talk one way and govern another to account. The Weekly Standard was quite favorable towards Governor Palin’s record in Alaska.

It is not enough that Sarah Palin is the embodiment of everything the corrupt, big government wing of the GOP opposes, because there are some in the GOP who are very dedicated to those ideals as well. They fear her because Palin has demonstrated the ability to generate larger crowds than Obama has on campaign events and has also proved that she is a fund raising machine the likes of which the Republican Party has never seen. They have to destroy her now, if they can, because if Sarah Palin hits the stump in earnest she will be able to outspend her opponents by real margins and that is what the smear campaign against her is all about.

By the way, notice how her detractors never talk about her accomplishments as Mayor and Governor? They never get into policy that she has pushed for and executed. Think about it.

UPDATE – Former McCain staffer Patrick Hynes comments:

And what did the lovely Governor of Alaska do to deserve this morning thrashing?  Um … she had the gall to be the subject of a Vanity Fair hit piece by Todd Purdum.

That’ll learn her.

Look, I worked on the McCain campaign. Palin had her shortcomings, but she also brought some incredible strengths to the campaign. And perhaps the McCain staffers who continue to trash the governor are deflecting attention away from how remarkably screwed up and dysfunctional the operation was even before the Palin pick. What I don’t understand is this: Why would anyone hire a bunch of campaign staffers after watching how viciously they are attacking their former employer?

UPDATE II – National Review concludes it was Schmidt too – LINK.

UPDATE III – Tammy Bruce commentary –

UPDATE IV – Glenn Beck commentary –

Democrat Conyers Pleads Guilty to Feds for Taking Bribes.

Monica Conyers is the wife of House member John Conyers, who ironically overseas the committee that is charged with rooting out corruption in Congress. The same congressman who just stopped the House investigation of the ACORN fraud with your tax dollars.

Detroit Free Press:

Detroit City Council President Pro Tem Monica Conyers pleaded guilty this morning to conspiring to commit bribery and is free on personal bond.

U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn said, “The defendant now stands convicted.”

The one count of conspiring to commit bribery is punishable by up to five years in prison.

No sentencing date has been set.

In court, Conyers’ combative demeanor was gone, replaced by soft-spoken resignation as the judge and his staff several times asked her to speak up.

Conyers, the wife of powerful Democratic congressman U.S. Rep. John Conyers, appeared before Cohn to answer charges in connection with the wide-ranging probe of wrongdoing at Detroit city hall.

Download the charging document and plea agreement.

Read the waiver of indictment.

She has long been under suspicion in the Synagro Technologies bribery probe, not least because she had been a vocal opponent of the contract before suddenly switching her sentiments. She became the deciding voice in the city council’s 5-4 vote to approve the sludge-hauling deal in November 2007.

“This is not the beginning and it is certainly not the end, folks,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Andy Arena said at a news conference this morning.

NBC Brian Williams Bows to Obama – Daily Mocks NBC Fawning Coverage

No network has been more ridiculously in the tank for Obama than NBC (with the exception of one Connecticut affiliate who is doing their own news). General Electric (GE) who ownes NBC has massive multi billion dollar contracts proposed with the Obama administration so they quickly moved to stifle the criticism of Obama’s economic policy on CNBC, NBC’s financial news channel.

The Daily Show, knowing corporate whoring when they see it, decided to have a little fun with the situation. See the video via Hotair.com HERE.

How Did Democrats Treat Black Republican Judges: They called them “neanderthals”

American Thinker:

By Jan LaRue

If you believe the myth that Democrats are champions of equality for women, racial minorities, and folks with “compelling” life stories, maybe you’ve been spending more time tracking Big Foot than judicial nominations.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Barack Obama’s Hispanic nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, is the perfect pick to reinforce their myth.

 

That’s not to diminish in any way Sotomayor’s life story and accomplishments, which are impressive and admirable. Still, the American people expect a full and fair hearing regarding her competence, judicial philosophy, temperament, and commitment to “Equal Justice Under Law.”

 

The self-anointed authority on “mainstream” judges, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has already warned that “if Republicans oppose Sonia Sotomayor, they’ll do so at their “own peril.”

 

You don’t have to be a world-class cryptographer to bust that code. No matter how courteous and respectful Republicans are to Sotomayor, the first and every time a Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee (SJC) asks her a relevant question about her judicial philosophy, statements, court opinions (which have a reversal rate of 60 percent in the Supreme Court), the Democrats will consume most of the SJC’s time ranting against Republicans as “anti-Hispanic misogynists.”

 

Here’s some advice and consent for Republicans: “Get over it.”

 

Democrats are so taken by their munificent minority myth that they can’t grasp how demeaned and offended most women and minorities feel about being force-fed affirmative action and set-asides. Most of us believe that we really are capable of making it on our intellect and abilities if we have equal opportunity at the starting line.

 

Sotomayor’s ruling in Ricci v. DeStefano is certainly worth examining, especially in light of her statement: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

 

Ricci concerns firefighters in New Haven, Conn., who were denied promotions because no black firefighters qualified for advancement. Sotomayor, as part of a three-judge panel of the 2^nd Circuit appeals court, upheld the city’s rejection of a race discrimination lawsuit by white firefighters and one Hispanic. She voted with the majority of the full court in refusing to rehear the case. The Supreme Court is currently considering the case, and will announce its opinion at the end of June.

 

If they can stomach it, Republicans should prep themselves for Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing by reviewing tapes or reading transcripts of Judge Janice Rogers Brown’s hearing. Brown was President George W. Bush’s African-American nominee to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Democrats weren’t so smitten with her compelling life story that they were incapable of asking her tough questions.

 

Democrats should have championed Judge Brown’s confirmation, not because of her compelling life story, but because of her record as an exemplary judge committed to the rule of law, equality for all Americans, and her limited role as a judge.

 

Instead, privileged, wealthy, white Democrats attacked Brown as an “extreme right-wing” judge who didn’t care about “civil rights” or the “down-trodden.” They were unconstrained by accusations of racism and sexism.

 

When the Democrats ended their nearly two-year delay, including a filibuster of Brown’s re-nomination in 2005, their attacks continued. They claimed their opposition wasn’t racist or sexist:

 

• Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) ridiculed Bush nominees including Brown, as “Neanderthals.” He attacked Brown as “another extreme right-wing candidate … a judicial activist who will roll back basic rights.”
• Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) said: “I oppose giving Justice Brown this lifetime promotion to the second highest court in our land because the American people deserve judges who will interpret the law fairly and objectively. Janice Rogers Brown is a committed judicial activist who has a consistent record of using her position as a member of the court to put her views above the law and above the interests of working men and women and families across the Nation.”
• Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said: “Janice Rogers Brown is one of President Bush’s most ideological and extreme judicial nominees.”
• Schumer said: Judge Brown “is the least deserving of all of President Bush’s appeal court nominees.”

These attacks are nonsense, judge Brown has been a model of judicial restraint. Brown opposes judicial activism and has demonstrated that time and time again on the bench.

Military Vets – This is what the Penn State University Administration thinks of you. – UPDATED!

Be sure to scroll down for the latest update!!!!!

Anyone who cares about academic freedom should join FIRE’s Campus Freedom Network. Click HERE to take a look and please join!

A sickening example of arrogant, ignorant, elitism.

What is interesting is that she admits that she voices her personal feelings on the war in her class. Now unless this is a political science class how is that for professional partisan detachment? Lack the discipline and control to stay on the subject matter professor?

Mini-Update – a reader sent a link with the following update:

Penn State’s HR 64 regulation states:

“It is not the function of a faculty member in a democracy to indoctrinate his/her students with ready-made conclusions on controversial subjects. The faculty member is expected to train students to think for themselves, and to provide them access to those materials which they need if they are to think intelligently. Hence in giving instruction upon controversial matters the faculty member is expected to be of a fair and judicial mind, and to set forth justly, without supersession or innuendo, the divergent opinions of other investigators.”

The policy goes on to add:

“No faculty member may claim as a right the privilege of discussing in the classroom controversial topics outside his/her own field of study. The faculty member is normally bound not to take advantage of his/her position by introducing into the classroom provocative discussions of irrelevant subjects not within the field of his/her study.”

I have been watching far left academics voice their opinions on things that have nothing to do with the class material for five years now; the vast majority just parrot far left talking points on the war. When they are challenged by someone who has done some serious study of the issue (like this very writer) the vast majority demonstrate they lack the ability to effectively defend their point of view with substance.

Via Penn State CR’s:

Penn State University’s Office of Student Affairs, in partnership with President Graham Spanier, produced this vignette on “worrisome student behaviors” featuring a stereotypical “aggressive” veteran who threatens his professors.

Faculty and administrators again prove they care more about poisonous “progressivism” than intellectual pluralism.

This video was originally online @ http://studentaffairs.psu.edu/caps/ws…

Penn State removed the video from the website on Fri., Feb. 27, but left the others online — all but declaring their awareness of its inappropriateness.

http://www.clubs.psu.edu/up/psucrs/

Just an isolated incident?? No real “academics” think that way you say?? …

I knew in that moment that this was what the future of teaching about justice would include: teaching war criminals who sit glaring at me with hatred for daring to speak the truth of their atrocities and who, if paid to, would disappear, torture and kill me. I wondered that night how long I really have in this so called “free” country to teach my students and to be with my children and grandchildren.  - Dr. June Scorza Terpstra on having Marines in her classroom

And how can we forget this piece of idiocy, who by the way, got lower grades than President Bush in college:

We should not forget Paula Anderson, the professor at UCONN who called the police on a student for making a speech about the Second Amendment during a speech class. And shall we not forget the 88 professors at Duke University who signed the advertisement saying the the (now exonerated) Duke lacrosse players had to be guilty of rape because they were rich, white, and male?

There are plenty of good professors out there and while this is not really a problem in business & economics or the medical schools, in liberal arts this attitude is a problem. In regards to this issue an anonymous professor commented at The Chronicle:

What bothers me about the Academic attitudes towards the military is that they have not changed much over time.  Like the military, that is becoming a separate culture, somewhat out of touch.  There is a certain amount of group think and the same kind of intellectual curiosity that Bush was so often accused of.  Too many things are assumed! 

Indeed! This writer has made similar observations about leftist academia for years.

Here is another comment I found regarding the issue:

Let me give you a more recent example of how academics get this wrong:  About ten years ago I took a few courses for fun at a local community college.  One of the Deans there was very proud of their special program for Veterans Day.  They showed “Apocalypse Now”, one of the better Vietnam era anti-war films. (It has a very distorted and pejorative view of military service.)  As I said to this Dean at the time, in a letter, this was akin to having a minstrel show for Black History Month. Note that no veterans were actually involved in that program.  There was one veteran I met who actually taught there and he’d learned to keep his head down and not say anything about his service.  Not career enhancing and he was up for tenure.

This is exactly the kind of thinking that I see so much of among academia. They just assume that their politically motivated premises about things are the baseline academic truth, when in reality they are baseline far left propaganda. You can bet that professors and staffers and the technical people at Penn State all watched the video they put up many times and thought to themselves, “Oh yes this is so typical…” It took people complaining from the outside that motivated them to take the video down without an apology.

One less egregious and somewhat amusing example of this kind of thinking here at IUSB is the American Democracy Project.

When I first came to the university I sat in some of the ADP events and even participated in a few. I noticed a pattern to the events; they would show a film or present something that was based on a series of far left premises and then they would have a chat about it. The chat would often include several leftists and maybe one guy who would try to give the other side or a moderate view in the few moments he was allowed to speak, but there was no real demonstration of two sides of the issue with well informed and articulate people on both sides getting equal time.

For once how about a screening of the film, The Great Global Warming Swindle with two or three of the IPCC authors at a round table discussion who say that the IPCC summary report was politically motivated nonsense. To leftist academia, having the event weighted the other way around seems just unthinkable. While I am confident a few of the events were structured more equitably, they were not the pattern.

So after a while I stopped attending the events, because there was no way they would allow me enough time to try and balance the event and to be honest, most of the people attending them seemed to only want to have their far left point of view reinforced. Ken Smith, the moderator of the ADP blog, made it pretty clear that he did not appreciate my participation and made several attempts to censor me in what became a series of small battles about it. In a recent ADP event Angela Faulkner was there to participate. I noticed on her facebook page that she was not pleased that several people at the event made some unpleasant cracks to her about being a Republican. Faulkner is more than capable of defending her point of view, but she decided to be nice (whereas I would have challenged the offenders to a public debate).

One of the people involved with ADP is a friend of mine and some of the people who participate do so with good intentions, but their normative ideological premises run so deep that for many of them they just can’t help themselves. There comes a time where it becomes pointless to cast your seeds upon stone.

This was one of the reasons the IUSB Vision was created, and we are happy to enjoy a large number of hits for a college blog. Not that there haven’t been attempts to shut us down, because there have been, but you will have to wait for the editor’s book to get the details :-). 

Hotair.com comments HERE. Pat Dollard comments HERE. National Review commented on John Kerry’s comment HERE.

UPDATE- Video of radicalized SFSU students and professors who tried to drive military recruiters off campus. The recruiters were surrounded by College Republicans who stood their ground and kept these maniac protesters at bay. Let there be no doubt that kids do not get this deranged in high school. It is professors who teach them this garbage.

Levi Johnston goes on Tyra Banks show. Reveals intimate sexual details about Bristol.

Talk about sleaze. Levi Johnston has gone from “just another teen who used bad judgement” to full blown scumbag. Not a word we like to use, but in this case it is warranted.

Levi went on national television and Tyra Banks had him talking about details that no one with half a brain would say on television. It is obvious in the video that Levi is not very bright even for an 18 year old. Of course, while most of the blame goes to Levi for letting Tyra Banks pay him to come on the show, it does show what a bottom feeder Tyra Banks is. Levi’s mother has been arrested for illegal drugs. Did Levi’s mother put him up to going on the show for money?

People Magazine had this to day with the Governor’s reaction:

After taking about sex on The Tyra Banks Show, Johnston – the 18-year-old father of Bristol Palin’s baby – was hit with a blistering response from Bristol’s mother, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

“Bristol did not even know Levi was going on the show. We’re disappointed that Levi and his family, in a quest for fame, attention, and fortune, are engaging in flat-out lies, gross exaggeration, and even distortion of their relationship,” says the statement from the Palin family rep.

“Bristol’s focus will remain on raising Tripp, completing her education, and advocating abstinence,” the statement continues. “It is unfortunate that Levi finds it more appealing to exploit his previous relationship with Bristol than to contribute to the well being of the child.”

The statement ends, saying, “Bristol realizes now that she made a mistake in her relationship and is the one taking responsibility for their actions.”

 

I an confident that Hotair.com speaks for millions on this one:

If I were her, I’d be at the courthouse on Monday filing for child support to get whatever piece she can of the dirty money Tyra Banks paid this kid to tell her things like whether Palin knew they were having sex or not. Stay classy, dad.

The child should get every dime.

VP Biden’s daughter on film with cocaine. ABC, CBS, and NBC offer no coverage. When “Biden” and “Cocaine” are searched on the NBC site it gives you a picture of Bristol Palin….

For those of you on the far left, including some journalism professors at IU, who say “what leftist media bias” here is another one that there is no way that you can dismiss, just like the story about how Obama’s chief of staff got $320,000 from Freddie Mac and ABC, CBS and NBC thought you didn’t need to know and offered no coverage at all – LINK.

Everyone knows how the media went insane reporting UNTRUE and hurtful rumors that Sarah Palin’s son Trig, was not hers and was birthed in secret by the governor’s daughter Bristol. Then when Bristol Palin did get pregnant with her long time boyfriend Levi Johnson the elite media went insane on reporting every available and in some cases invented details about Bristol Palin’s web site. Of course reporting about Michelle Obama’s radical comments and activist past ceased when Obama said to lay off the families; of course that only counts for Democrats as the elite media continued to savage Bristol Palin in an obvious attempt to cause so much pain in her family to push Governor Palin to step down. The NY Times even published four page one stories on Bristol Palin’s sex life on the same day.

In January the Anchorage Daily News, who is often unfair to Governor Palin, was still “investigating” weather Trig was “really Bristol’s baby” – LINK.

Let us also not forget that NBC suspended an anchor for making a crack about Chelsea Clinton.

While all this was happening there was almost no elite media coverage of the legal and ethical problems of Joe Biden’s son Hunter, who is accused in two lawsuits of hedge funds fraud. We reported it way back on September 2nd (LINK) and Fox News covered the story in February (LINK).

The double standard is obvious and in our view deliberate. Now the NY Post is reporting that there is a film showing Ashley Biden doing cocaine. They are also reporting that Ashley Biden has a record of being a “party girl” and was arrested for marijuana in 1999. Funny how we are just finding out about that arrest now instead of during the campaign.

Radar Online first reported the story on March 28:

An explosive video being shopped to media outlets has plunged the White House and Vice President Joe Biden into a cocaine scandal, RadarOnline.com has learned exclusively.

The video shows a woman, who is represented by the seller and his attorneys to be Biden’s daughter Ashley, snorting several lines of cocaine.

The tape has been viewed by a RadarOnline.com freelance reporter who confirms the woman looks identical to Ashley Biden.

Tom Dunlap, an attorney for Dunlap, Grubb and Weaver in Washington D.C. is representing the seller of the tape in brokering a deal and several news organizations have seen the footage.

In addition to RadarOnline.com, representatives for the New York Post, a large British newspaper and the National Enquirer have all viewed the tape.

The woman on the tape clearly resembles Ashley Biden, 27, who is a social worker employed with the Delaware Department of Children, Youth and Families. She is also a board member of the Delaware YWCA organization.

The tape was shot this year.

Radar Online updated the story saying that the tape was made by one of the people supplying her with the cocaine – LINK.  

NY Post:

A “friend” of Vice President Joseph Biden’s daughter, Ashley, is attempting to hawk a videotape that he claims shows her snorting cocaine at a house party this month in Delaware.

The anonymous male acquaintance of Ashley took the video, said Thomas Dunlap, a lawyer representing the seller.

…The lawyers declined to name the person who shot the video, but said he knew Ashley well and had attended other parties with her at which there were illegal drugs.

The New York Post updated the story (LINK) reporting:

A decade before a friend came forward trying to sell a video that he claimed showed her snorting cocaine, Vice President Joseph Biden’s daughter was busted for pot possession.

Ashley Biden “was a hot freshman that every guy wanted to be with,” said Nat Berman, a Tulane University classmate, who said he bailed Ashley out of jail after her 1999 marijuana arrest in New Orleans, for which no conviction was recorded.

“She was very attractive.

“Everybody at Tulane knew that she was a party girl,” Berman said. “She wore some pretty short shorts — a lot.”

Berman, 30, wrote on his blog, Uncoached.com, after Joseph Biden’s election as vice president last November about Ashley’s partying.

Berman told The Post that Ashley — currently a social worker at a Delaware child-welfare agency — called him in September 1999 to say she was “on her way over” to his off-campus home “to hang out.”

An hour or so later, after she didn’t show up, Berman said he received a call from Ashley, who “said she was in jail.”

“She was freaking out. She was like, ‘I’m in this cell,’ ” Berman recalled. “She was not happy.”

Berman said he paid a bail bondsman “between $200 and $400″ to bail Ashley out, and then drove her home.

 

Well well well elite media… what a story that the elite media decided that you didn’t need to know and still thinks that you don’t need to know because after this story being out for three days, ABC, CBS, and NBC have no coverage of this story. The links go to screen shots of searches of their news sites, but it gets better, when you search for this story on NBC news’ web site it brings up a picture of Bristol Palin.

For the record, we take no pleasure in the outing of Ashley Biden’s issues. She is a children’s social worker and is doing cocaine, so this woman needs help and she needs it now and until she gets over this problem and acts more responsible, around children is exactly where Ashley Biden does not belong. The elite media’s gross double standard and hateful actions against Governor Palin’s family forces us to report this story.

Video: Brown Skewered Again at EU!

Ouch!

Glenn Beck working on a project to debunk internet conspiracy theories.

Allahpundit at Hotair.com was nice enough to post this video in his youtube channel. One conspiracy theory Beck talked about being in the process of debunking is the “FEMA Concentration Camps” theory. I have heard that one before and post people who follow politics have.

What is ironic is that Bill Maher lambasted Glenn Beck for believing in these theories and spreading them when the truth is that he has said for months that he is working on a project to debunk them. The left lies, surprise.

This is a video of Glenn talking about the project to debunk these theories:

Far left site posting death threats against Bill O’Reilly

Via Johnny Dollar who is nice enough to monitor these people so we don’t have to.

These are from the Newshounds web site. Newshouds is a favorite of the unhinged left. There is more hate and threats posted at that site than any other that I am aware of since HuffPo and DailyKos started cracking down on the worst of the hate they hosted. Some of those same people have come here and post their hate, but since they are incapable of generating a coherant argument they didn’t stay long, because we respond to it here.

Johnny points out that the poster above claims to be a therapist. Actually that would not surprise me one bit after seeing some of the far left social workers on campus.

The far left is all mad because Bill O’Reilly is helping out charities like the Alexa Foundation. The Alexa Foundation was started by a rape victim to aid other rape victims. The far left unhinged crowd went after Alexa and she had to quit her job and assume a much lower profile after the attacks they made on her. We covered that story in detail HERE. The attacks against Alexa were coordinated by people at NBC News and John Podesta, who has worked as a strategist for President Obama.

Rachel Maddow Deceiving You Part I

She plays the cute girl on MSNBC who spouts dishonest left wing propaganda. I have been watching her from time to time and of all the people on MSNBC, her deceptions are the most subtle carefully pieced together to be believable.

This is her March 19th 2009 segment which Maddow calls “The Memory Hole”. Well Rachel, we have a little memory hole for you. Here is the video, it seems convincing until you see the evidence posted below.

UPDATE - As is so often the case when Maddow blows it MSNBC goes out to start yanking those video’s as they did this one. As this post has been getting a lot of hits. This new video has most of the segment that was taken down from youtube. But alas if they yank this one we have the transcript HERE.

There are three parts of the video to examine very closely.

FIRST:

She shows the “Mission Accomplished” banner. That banner was not placed there by the administration that banner was placed there by the order of General Tommy Franks, and was referring to the mission of toppling Saddam’s regime. Of course after the regime is toppled a new mission begins to stabilize and democratize the country. How is this any different from VE Day (Victory over Europe)  or VJ Day (Victory over Japan)? We toppled the regimes and then the occupation and rebuilding began. The post victory mission after WWII took many years and was a huge commitment and many soldiers died in that process.

Did you see the press making fun of the government for declaring victory over Germany and Japan in 1945 when we still had several years worth of work to do to completely finish the job?

SECOND:

Maddow talks about the reasons for going to war in Iraq and then shows a picture of President Bush while quoting the Iraqi Oil Ministry saying that Iraq is giving oil contracts to foreign firms. While showing that picture of President Bush she is clearly giving the implication that “Bushes oil buddies are getting contracts in Iraq and getting rich” which is a reference to the conspiracy theory that it was all for oil and Bush and Cheney were going to get rich.

Guess what Maddow doesn’t want you to know the vast majority of Iraqi oil contracts went to NON-AMERICAN firms. China, India, France and other countries companies won most of the contracts.

Below is the proof.

AFP: Iraq to award oil contracts to foreign firms

Iraq will award contracts to 41 foreign oil firms in a bid to boost production that could give multinationals a potentially lucrative foothold in huge but underdeveloped oil fields, an official said on Sunday.

“We chose 35 companies of international standard, according to their finances, environment and experience, and we granted them permission to extract oil,” oil ministry spokesman Asim Jihad told AFP.

Six other state-owned oil firms from Algeria, Angola, Pakistan, Thailand, Turkey and Vietnam will also be awarded extraction deals, Jihad said.

Washington Post: Iraq and China Sign $3 Billion Oil Contract. Deal Is First of Its Kind Since Invasion.

BAGHDAD, Aug. 28 — Iraq and China signed a $3 billion deal this week to develop a large Iraqi oil field, the first major commercial oil contract here with a foreign company since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

The 20-year agreement calls for the state-owned China National Petroleum Corp. to begin producing 25,000 barrels of oil a day and gradually increase the output to 125,000 a day, said Asim Jihad, a spokesman for the Iraqi Oil Ministry.

The contract revamps a deal the Chinese company had reached with Saddam Hussein in 1997 to develop the Ahdab oil field in Wasit province, south of Baghdad near the border with Iran. Unlike that deal, which called for China to share in the revenue, the current contract is based on a fixed-fee structure.

Western oil companies came close this summer to reaching agreements with the ministry to return to Iraq. Those smaller technical service contracts involved giving advice on how to boost production. The China deal is a service contract, which is more lucrative and involves large-scale development of the field.

In case someone tells you that American companies got no-bid contracts in Iraq as reported by the New York Times (LINK) be sure they tell you that a few months later those contracts were rescinded (LINK).

AP: Official: Iraq to award oil contract in March
By SINAN SALAHEDDIN , 02.18.09, 10:34 AM EST

Iraq’s Oil Ministry will award a service contract to develop a prized oil field in southern Iraq next month, a senior Iraqi official said Wednesday.

Italy’s Eni SpA, Spain’s Repsol and Japan’s Nippon Oil are competing for the service contract to develop the Nasiriyah oil field. The contract is designed to offer engineering, procurement and construction services.

THIRD:

Examine closely where Maddow calls Condoleeza Rice a liar when she states that the administration never said that Saddam had anything to do with 9/11.

Before I get to the evidence it is important to keep in mind that it was a Democrat talking point that Republicans were claiming ‘all the time’ that Saddam was responsible for 9/11 and the Republicans were lying to the American people to justify the war.

Maddow goes to show President Bush stating that Saddam had aided Al-Qaeda and that official statements by the administration said so. She ties this with the false claim that Republicans said Saddam was responsible for 9/11.  In journalism context is everything. Here is what Maddow left out and doesn’t want you to know.

Saddam was giving aide to any terrorists and terror groups who would come along. He was sending $25,000 checks to the families of homicide bombers. Some of the terrorists Saddam’s government aided with training and funds were members of Al-Qeada. Does this mean that Saddam had operational control over Al-Qaeda and active participation in 9/11?….. no more than the fact that I have aided the Salvation Army and I do not have any operation control over them. As long as they have similar enemies that can aid each other.

For a couple of years the left said that Saddam had no connection to Al-Qeada whatsoever. The evidence shows that Saddam had plenty of links with most of the terror groups in the Middle-East; he just didn’t have genuine operational control on them and he didn’t need it.  The evidence came in the form of the hundreds of thousands of records and intelligence captured from Saddam’s intelligence bureaus that documented it all. We wrote about that story HERE. 

As you can see, it was perfectly reasonable for the administration to say that Saddam’s government had aided Al-Qaeda and also say that Saddam had no operational role to the 9/11 attack. Maddow is trying to fool you.  

I am confident that Rachel Maddow will continue to be a font of deceptive propaganda for this writer to deconstruct. Part II is on the way.

UPDATE – Part II is up LINK.

UPDATE II - Maddow claims that The Constitution does not have a preamble… - LINK.

Obama Administration Targets Armed Pilots for Harassment.

The question is, is this from the top or is this a nutty anti-gun ideologue who he appointed? Answer: Now that it was the editorial in the Washington Times the White House knows about it and if this doesn’t end The One is responsible.

Eiether way, this speaks volumes about the judgement at the top to either target pilots like this, appoint people who would do this (at at least another case of very poor vetting) AND/OR allow the problem to get so bad that it had to hit the editorial page of the Washington Times. Is this the change you voted for?

Washington Times excerpt:

After the September 11 attacks, commercial airline pilots were allowed to carry guns if they completed a federal-safety program. No longer would unarmed pilots be defenseless as remorseless hijackers seized control of aircraft and rammed them into buildings.

Now President Obama is quietly ending the federal firearms program, risking public safety on airlines in the name of an anti-gun ideology.

The Obama administration this past week diverted some $2 million from the pilot training program to hire more supervisory staff, who will engage in field inspections of pilots.

This looks like completely unnecessary harassment of the pilots. The 12,000 Federal Flight Deck Officers, the pilots who have been approved to carry guns, are reported to have the best behavior of any federal law enforcement agency. There are no cases where any of them has improperly brandished or used a gun. There are just a few cases where officers have improperly used their IDs.

Fewer than one percent of the officers have any administrative actions brought against them and, we are told, virtually all of those cases “are trumped up.”

Take a case against one flight officer who had visited the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles within the last few weeks. While there, the pilot noticed that federal law enforcement officers can, with the approval of a superior, obtain a license plate that cannot be traced, a key safety feature for law enforcement personnel. So the pilot asked if, as a member of the federal program, he was eligible. The DMV staffer checked and said “no.” The next day administrative actions were brought against the pilot for “misrepresenting himself.” These are the kinds of cases that President Obama wants to investigate.

Since Mr. Obama’s election, pilots have told us that the approval process for letting pilots carry guns on planes slowed significantly. Last week the problem went from bad to worse. Federal Flight Deck Officers – the pilots who have been approved to carry guns – indicate that the approval process has stalled out.

Pilots cannot openly speak about the changing policies for fear of retaliation from the Transportation Security Administration.

15,000 People Protest at California Tea Party – LA Times Refuses to Cover the Story

What media bias – THIS media bias….

Patterico:

L.A. Times: We Didn’t Cover the John and Ken Rally Because Those Guys Are Idiots Rallies of 15,000 People Aren’t Newsworthy. Oh REALLY?!

— Patterico @ 11:42 pm

Radio personalities John and Ken recently hosted a “taxpayer revolt” in Fullerton with a crowd of between 8,000 and 15,000 — and the L.A. Times wasn’t there to cover it. At the Readers’ Representative blog is a letter that editor David Lauter mass-mailed to “dozens” of readers who had written to complain about the lack of coverage.

Thanks to each of you for writing. I appreciate hearing from all of you — even the ones who called me a moron.

——————————————————————————————–

Michelle Malkin reports today, the LA Times is reporting on upcoming far left ANSWER protests before they even happen:

This is why Old Media is dying. The Los Angeles Times today recycles press releases from left-wing A.N.S.W.E.R. announcing a protest of AIG this afternoon and an anti-war rally next weekend. The paper has no problem serving as advance publicity team for radical Left groups:

Demonstrators plan to rally outside the AIG building today in downtown Los Angeles to protest the giant insurer’s decision to pay $165 million in bonuses to key employees. American International Group Inc. recently received the first part of $180 billion in federal bailout funds.

“We’re going to be down there with whoever we can get,” said Ian Thompson of the Los Angeles chapter of the Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (A.N.S.W.E.R.) coalition. “We’re going to be expressing anger and outrage about the new bonuses that were announced, that will be given to the very same folks who helped cause the financial meltdown.”

UPDATE – Related Story – Study says that elite media acts as ideological gatekeepers to censor news LINK …ya think?

Going Galt – Atlas Shrugged # 27 on Amazon! Producers and small business working to reduce earnings to below the $250 mark to protest Obama’s tax plan.

Click to Enlarge

Atlas Shrugged is number 27 on Amazon.com. Tea Party protests are popping up all over and the press is reporting that producers and small businesses are trying to lower earnings to below the $250k level to protest this administrations big government economic policies.

Via Michelle Malkin:

Going Galt: Tax hikes have consequences

By Michelle Malkin  •  March 2, 2009 06:22 PM

(Photo credit: Free Colorado)

There’s a new report on ABCNews.com about how upper-income business owners are looking for ways to reduce their earnings to deny the government their tax dollars. This is exactly what Dr. Helen was talking about in October and on our PJTV panel this weekend– the producers of this country choosing to “Go Galt.” It’s the sentiment you saw in the “Atlas Will Shrug” sign at the Denver anti-pork rally two weeks ago and at many of the Tea Party protests. And it’s the sentiment you see in the rise of Ayn Rand novel sales.

Tax hikes have consequences. Incentives matter. Only self-deluded wealth redistributors living in la-la-land believe otherwise.

ABC News Reports:

President Barack Obama’s tax proposal, which promises to increase taxes for those families with incomes of $250,000 or more — has some Americans brainstorming ways to decrease their pay, even if it’s just by a dollar.

A 63-year-old attorney based in Lafayette, La., who asked not to be named, told ABCNews.com that she plans to cut back on her business to get her annual income under the quarter million mark should the Obama tax plan be passed by Congress and become law.

So far, Obama’s tax plan is being looked at skeptically by both Democrats and Republicans and therefore may not pass at all.

“We are going to try to figure out how to make our income $249,999.00,” she said.

“We have to find a way out where we can make just what we need to just under the line so we can benefit from Obama’s tax plan,” she added. “Why kill yourself working if you’re going to give it all away to people who aren’t working as hard?”

Here is another installment on this story from Michelle Malkin. Be sure to follow the link and give it a read:

Going Galt, continued

By Michelle Malkin  •  March 10, 2009 06:49 PM

Republicans who sold out.

Our friend Debbie Buckley, who is an IUSB alumni by the way, would like to remind you who in the GOP voted for that shameful $411 Billion earmark bill. This was very large and very bad spending bill that was designed to bloat government that had already been bloated by the previous porkulus.

This bill had very few good things in it and as we mentioned before, this bill contained what can only be described as a dispicable and racist provision to undermine the education of inner city minorities in Washington DC. Anyone who voted for this bill could be labaled as a racist. We know that Democrats are happy to continue its long record of keeping inner city minorities down, when Republicans do it such behavior should not be tolerated; we are the party of Lincoln and need to bahave that way. Evan Bayh made a big deal of voting against this bill, but he voted to preserve that racist provision when Republicans tried to have it stripped from the bill.

Debbie Buckley: 

Republicans who voted Yes for Earmark Bill

Alabama
Shelby (R) Yes
Alaska
Murkowski (R) Yes
Maine
Snowe (R) Yes
Mississippi
Cochran (R) Yes
Wicker (R) Yes
Missouri
Bond (R) Yes
Pennsylvania
Specter (R) Yes
Tennessee
Alexander (R) Yes

An Open Letter to Meghan McCain

Dear Meghan,

I have been watching what you have been saying over the last few days and while I think that you are a nice girl, I think that you are a nice girl who has been making some mistakes.

To quote you:

I straight up don’t understand this woman or her popularity. I find her offensive, radical, insulting, and confusing all at the same time. But no matter how much you or I disagree with her, the cult that follows Coulter cannot be denied.

With all due respect, when you do not understand someone or something wouldn’t it be wise to take the time to find out instead of just making allegations that just happened to look very much like the nonsense you see on the elite media? You then decided to trash Ann Coulter (and the people who read her books) based on the ignorance which you fully admitted to?

I am very concerned that you have leveled an ugly charge of anti-semitism against Ann Coulter when ten minutes of fact checking shows you to be demonstrably false. Lets toss aside the fact that Ann has always been a supporter of Israel and examine what Ann said; essentially that Christians believe that Christianity is the perfection of Judaism. The truth is that this is long ago established Christian doctrine and here is the proof:

The Catholic Encyclopedia from its entry on the New Testament:

Other doctrines, specifically Christian, are not added on to Judaism to develop, but rather to supersede it. In reality, between the New and Old Testaments there is a direct but not revolutionary succession as a superficial observer might be inclined to believe; just as in living beings, the imperfect state of yesterday must give way before the perfection of today although the one has normally prepared the other. If the mystery of the Trinity and the spiritual character of the Messianic Kingdom are ranked among the peculiarly Christian dogmas, it is because the Old Testament was of itself insufficient to establish the doctrine of the New Testament on this subject; and still more because, at the time of Jesus, the opinions current among the Jews went decidedly in the opposite direction.

The Oxford University Guide To the New Testament makes this same point in Paul’s letter to the Hebrews:

The Epistle to the Hebrews asserts the superiority of Christ to the prophets, the angels, Moses, Joshua, and the Jewish priesthood. Christ brings a superior covenant, a superior tabernacle, and makes a superior sacrifice. Like many other authors whose task is Christian self-definition, this author uses the Hebrew Scriptures to illustrate the authenticity of his claims. For example, several Old Testament prophets mention a new covenant that God will make with the Jews. Drawing on Platonic thought, this author argues that the old covenant was a foreshadowing of the new, an imperfect reflection of a perfect reality.

Scholars do not know when or where this book was written. It is clear, though, that the author was concerned to define group boundaries. He argued that Christianity represented the perfection of Judaism. Christianity was the religion foretold by the prophets. Those who did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah, moreover, were not the true people of God.

With all due respect, if that doesn’t satisfy you here are what the most prominent Rabbi’s had to say about Coulters remarks:

Rabbi Levin, a spokesman for the Rabbinical Alliance for America and the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada, commented to LifeSiteNews.com on the matter saying: “It is a fact that millions of Christians believe in evangelizing and preaching the gospel and it is their belief for a Jew to accept the tenets of Christianity and accept the divinity somehow completes them and brings them to perfection.”

Levin stressed, “That’s obviously not our belief; that’s not the traditional Jewish belief at all.”

“But the fact that Miss Coulter was asked to try to say that this is now anti-semitism, I believe is off the mark, is even sad and dangerous in certain ways,” continued Rabbi Levin. “Because I’m concerned that many Christians out there will hear her merely saying what they have been taught in their religion and having that referred to as anti-semitism could put a strain on relations. People will say, ‘I’m not entitled to have my religious opinions on the subject of evangelizing and what’s considered to be perfect’.”

The spokesman for some thousand orthodox rabbis concluded, “So, I very strongly feel it’s important to say that saying things like this does not an anti-Semite make.”

http://catholicexchange.com/2007/10/16/86631/

One of the most revered and respected rabbi’s among conservatives is Dennis Prager. Prager insists that there is not an anti-semitic bone in Ann Coulter. Read his words carefully:

Those who label Ann Coulter an anti-Semite do damage to the battle against anti-Semitism.

I say this as a committed Jew, a religious Jew, a Jewish writer and lecturer, a past college instructor in Jewish history, co-author of a widely read book on anti-Semitism, recipient of the American Jewish Press Association’s Prize for Excellence in Jewish Commentary, instructor in Torah at the American Jewish University, and a man who has fought anti-Semitism all his life.

There is nothing in what Ann Coulter said to a Jewish interviewer on CNBC that indicates she hates Jews or wishes them ill, or does damage to the Jewish people or the Jewish state. And if none of those criteria is present, how can someone be labeled anti-Semitic?

What damage has she ever done to Jews? What is wrong with a person believing that it would be better if another person adopted their faith? Is there one liberal who doesn’t believe that a conservative would be better — “perfected,” if you will — by embracing liberal beliefs and values? Why is it laudable for a liberal to hope that conservatives convert to liberalism, but dangerous and hate-filled when a Christian hopes that Jews or anyone else will go to heaven (that is, after all, Ann Coulter’s and most other Christians’ primary concern) by believing in Jesus?

I have read Jewish and non-Jewish writers who argue that Ann Coulter’s words will lead to another Auschwitz. How does one respond to irrationality? How does one respond to hysteria?

There is also a move to boycott Ann Coulter, so dangerous are her words. Of course, there is no such Jewish or liberal boycott of former President Jimmy Carter, who has done real damage to the Jewish people by describing Israel as an “apartheid” state in the very title of his anti-Israel book. In fact, Carter was invited to speak on his loathsome book at Brandeis University, an ostensibly Jewish university. But for many Jews and liberals, real hatred, real damage to Jewish security can only come from the right, especially from Christians on the right. So Ann Coulter, who has done nothing in her life to compromise Jewish welfare, is to be boycotted, but Jimmy Carter is worthy of invitations to speak. Jewish groups even invite John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, the authors of “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” which is essentially a tempered modern-day version of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” But Ann Coulter is beyond the pale. And she said nothing to harm Jews.

She said she believes that Jews who accept Jesus as their savior are “perfected.” I fail to see why this is some form of hate-speech, let alone the basis of anti-Semitism, as stated by Abe Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League, which often defames conservative Christians, whom he and his organization hold to be the greatest domestic threats to America.

As a practicing Jew, I do not agree with Ann Coulter’s theology any more than those attacking her do. But I am neither offended by her nor frightened by her or her beliefs. She believes that Christianity is better than Judaism. So what? Why is that in any way different from liberals thinking that liberalism is truer and morally superior to conservatism? Or conservatives thinking that their values are superior to liberal values?

Liberals not only believe that conservatives are philosophically imperfect, but they often believe that conservatives are bad human beings (something in no way implied by Coulter about Jews). 

http://townhall.com/Columnists/DennisPrager/2007/10/16/ann_coulter_wants_jews_to_become_christian_–_so_what

Prager is stating what is obvious; Muslims believe people should me Muslim, Jews believe people should convert and Christians believe people should accept Jesus Christ and His teachings. With all due respect, you have shown a great deal of ignorance by acting like one should be surprised by such a concept. As a result, by calling Coulter an anti-semite you have helped create a false narrative that Reagan wing conservatives such as Coulter are against Israel, when in fact most hostility against Israel is from the left and most of the support for Israel comes from the right.

I have experienced this truth first hand because as someone who is finishing a new degree at a university, I have taken heat from the left for standing up against anti-semitism among some of the far left faculty.

You have stated that you do not understand Ann Coulter or why she does what she does and then proceeded to call her an extremist and this had made you popular on the morning TV shows.

Again with all due respect, I would like to help you understand.

Ann Coulter is a political satirist and likely the sharpest tongued satirist alive. Satirists use metaphor, humor, use absurdity to demonstrate absurdity, and use rhetorical sting as literary devices to make a point. The whole idea is that the person reading the satire is supposed to be smart enough to see the intellectual substance behind the satire.

Satire is a literary tradition in politics dating back to the ancient Greeks and truth be told; Coulter’s satire is positively mild compared to what was done in this country in the first 150 years of its history and considered to go with the territory of politics. Face it, political discourse gets mighty dry by always couching it in straight laced policy debates.

The millions of people who read Ann Coulter are not a part of a “cult” as you put it. They are very smart people who appreciate effective satire. Ann Coulter has a stack of number one best sellers on her resume for that very reason.

Before I conclude there is something else that you need to understand.

The elite media can and will be happy to use you, manipulate you, and kiss up to you as long as you are bashing other Republicans and calling them extremists, but you should keep in mind that Ann Coulter is a part of the very large Reagan wing of the party and even if you do not consider yourself a part of the Reagan wing; on the vast majority of individual policy issues you, me, your father, Rudy Giuliani, Ann Coulter and most of those people who attended CPAC by and large do agree. So when you call Ann Coulter an extremist, that allows the far left and the elite media to take any policy position taken by her and portray it as extreme even if it happens to be a policy issue that you and her agree on and why???……because Meghan McCain said so.

Always remember that your father was the elite media’s favorite Republican. They wanted him on whenever he had a fight with members of his own party. When your father took a stand on Barack Obama look at what the New York Times did; they accused your father of having an affair with a 40 year old lobbyist and stopped automatically printing his op-ed letters. The rest of the elite media launched unfair attacks against him, they attacked your mother for being wealthy and look at what the lies and smears they did to Sarah Palin.

Two months later it is now clear that your father was right about Barack Obama on many things. Where is the elite media begging to have him on now…. no wait, they can have his daughter on because she is bashing Republicans and smearing them with ugly charges of anti-semitism.  

The elite media will be happy to use you and manipulate you for this purpose for now, but the time will come when you take a stand based on conservative principle in opposition to an elite media favorite like Obama and when that happens the elite media will stop being interested in your opinion and they will use any excuse to smear and destroy you. If you don’t think that these elite media people who are showing you so much attention would do that to a young woman, just ask Bristol Palin.

And when you are done talking with her ask Clearence Thomas, Robert Bork and Miguel Estrada what it is like to have every manufactured, politically motivated, far left allegation against you presented as fact.

With all due respect, you should apologize to Ann Coulter and be grateful she has (so far) decided to show restraint and not turn her sharp tongue on you. It may make you less popular with the Today Show, but it is the honorable thing to do.

Chuck Norton, Editor

UPDATE – You can see video of one of Meghan’s elite media appearances at Hotair.com.

UPDATE II – Tammy Bruce has comments on this issue HERE.

WSJ on Obama’s Broken 95% Tax Pledge

WSJ explains how you are going to get creamed:

Politicians love cap and trade because they can claim to be taxing “polluters,” not workers. Hardly. Once the government creates a scarce new commodity — in this case the right to emit carbon — and then mandates that businesses buy it, the costs would inevitably be passed on to all consumers in the form of higher prices. Stating the obvious, Peter Orszag — now Mr. Obama’s budget director — told Congress last year that “Those price increases are essential to the success of a cap-and-trade program.”

Hit hardest would be the “95% of working families” Mr. Obama keeps mentioning, usually omitting that his no-new-taxes pledge comes with the caveat “unless you use energy.” Putting a price on carbon is regressive by definition because poor and middle-income households spend more of their paychecks on things like gas to drive to work, groceries or home heating.

The Congressional Budget Office — Mr. Orszag’s former roost — estimates that the price hikes from a 15% cut in emissions would cost the average household in the bottom-income quintile about 3.3% of its after-tax income every year. That’s about $680, not including the costs of reduced employment and output. The three middle quintiles would see their paychecks cut between $880 and $1,500, or 2.9% to 2.7% of income. The rich would pay 1.7%. Cap and trade is the ideal policy for every Beltway analyst who thinks the tax code is too progressive (all five of them).

But the greatest inequities are geographic and would be imposed on the parts of the U.S. that rely most on manufacturing or fossil fuels — particularly coal, which generates most power in the Midwest, Southern and Plains states. It’s no coincidence that the liberals most invested in cap and trade — Barbara Boxer, Henry Waxman, Ed Markey — come from California or the Northeast.

Coal provides more than half of U.S. electricity, and 25 states get more than 50% of their electricity from conventional coal-fired generation. In Ohio, it totals 86%, according to the Energy Information Administration. Ratepayers in Indiana (94%), Missouri (85%), New Mexico (80%), Pennsylvania (56%), West Virginia (98%) and Wyoming (95%) are going to get soaked.

Obama says that his new plan will cause electricity bills to skyrocket and we have the video HERE. Perhaps this is why so many moderates are turning against Obama’s agenda.

Wright State University illegally discriminating against Christian student group, then tries to deceive their way out of it when called on it by the media. Legal action imminent?

Why is it that time and time and time again, case after case, at university after university, administrators who are paid six figure incomes break the law, illegally discriminate against students groups who they don’t like, engage in every type of sophistry and deception to try and wiggle their way out of it and can only be convinced to do the right thing by threat of legal action or the actual filing of legal action in a case the university has zero chance of winning?

Every couple of weeks a new case like this one pops up and this time it’s Wright State University in Ohio.

Wright State has stated that it will require the Christian Bible Fellowship (CBF) student group to adopt an illegal “non-discrimination clause” that would force it to allow atheists or Muslims in it’s leadership. This violates the First Amendment protection of freedom of expressive association.  The Supreme Court has ruled on this recently in the case of Boy Scouts of America v. Dale.

Not only are these kinds of rules illegal, they are also routinely selectively enforced. The College Democrats would not be forced to accept Republicans in its leadership, but the CBF would be required  to accept those who hate Christians in theirs. This is another reason why the courts have shot these rules down over and over again.

The student group has turned to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) for help. FIRE’s letter to Wright State can be viewed HERE.

 

FIRE’s VP Robert Shively:

“A Christian group has the right to be Christian, a Jewish group has the right to be Jewish, and a Muslim group has the right to be Muslim,” said FIRE President Greg Lukianoff. “Courts have affirmed this principle time and time again. It is shocking that in a free society, public universities like Wright State still don’t seem to understand or respect this crucial component of religious liberty.”

After more than 30 years of existence as a registered student organization at Wright State, the Campus Bible Fellowship (CBF) was prohibited from re-registering in 2009. On January 30, according to CBF representatives Joe Hollaway and Gary Holtz, CBF was informed by Wright State’s Office of Student Activities that its registration was being denied for two reasons. First, CBF refused to adopt university-mandated nondiscrimination language in its membership requirements that would have stripped the group of the right to require voting members to adhere to religious and behavioral standards. (Nonvoting members did not have to meet these standards.) Second, Wright State objected to the requirement in CBF’s constitution that voting members “accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior” and subscribe to the group’s articles of faith. Strangely, however, Wright State has so far refused to put this decision in writing.

CBF, which has been unable to meet on campus since the decision, contacted FIRE for help. FIRE wrote to Wright State President David R. Hopkins on February 12, informing him of federal legal precedent setting forth the principle that “if Wright State is to allow expressive organizations to exist on its campus at all, it must allow religious organizations to exist, to define their missions, [and] to select their own members.” FIRE also pointed to its victories in similar religious liberty cases at Ohio State University and at Tufts University.                      

“Wright State’s demands are not only unconstitutional, they are nonsensical,” said Robert L. Shibley, FIRE’s vice president. “It makes no sense for the university to force a group that exists to communicate its version of the Christian message to accept voting members or leaders who reject that very message.”

While President Hopkins has yet to respond to FIRE, Wright State General Counsel Gwen Mattison has continued the university’s increasingly suspicious practice of refusing to respond in writing to letters from both CBF and FIRE. On February 26, Mattison phoned FIRE’s Adam Kissel to inform him that Wright State would be recognizing CBF for the remainder of the academic year, but that the group would be required to make changes to its constitution when reapplying in May. However, when Kissel e-mailed Mattison to confirm the substance of the conversation, Mattison refused, replying only: “Incorrect–no other reply will be forthcoming.” CBF reports that it also has no knowledge that the ban has been lifted.

“If Wright State thinks that it can avoid the consequences of its actions by refusing to put its dealings with the Campus Bible Fellowship in writing, it is sorely mistaken,” said Shibley. “This shady practice strongly suggests that the university knows that its actions are illegitimate and unconstitutional.”

Wright State even appears to be violating its own policy that organizations created “for the purpose of deepening the religious faith of students within the context of a denominational or interdenominational grouping … may register through customary procedures,” even if they exclude members on the basis of religious views.

Fox News inquired to Wright State for comment for its story and issued a very carefully worded deception to fool Fox News into thinking that the university had reversed itself, when it had not.

FIRE was not amused to put it mildly. FIRE’s VP Robert Shively blasted the Wright State administration. Normally I like to just post an excerpt but this statement is SO juicy and SO substantive that I feel like we have no choice but to bring you every precious word.

Shively’s response is nothing short of awesome. The emphasis in bold text is ours:

Wright State Sets Smokescreen in Campus Bible Fellowship Case

by Robert Shibley

March 3, 2009

Developments are coming fast in the Wright State University case that FIRE took public yesterday. Mere hours after FIRE sent out its press release on the case, Wright State began sending the following statement to journalists making inquiries:

“Campus Bible Fellowship is a recognized student organization at Wright State. We do not discriminate on the basis of religion and we treat Campus Bible Fellowship like any other student group on campus,” said Dan Abrahamowicz, vice president for student affairs at Wright State University. “We are in the process of reviewing the policy for recognizing students groups on campus. If there is a change in university policy, all student groups will have to abide by it, not just one or two. Campus Bible Fellowship will have to go through the same process every other student organization has to go through for re-recognition when we do that for the fall quarter. There is no distinction between it and any other student organization on Wright State’s campus.”                                                                                                          

This statement is deceptive and raises sophistry to an art form. Let’s take a closer look.

First, Wright State’s contention that Campus Bible Fellowship was recognized was news to Campus Bible Fellowship, which has been unable to meet on campus since January. This sudden re-recognition was clearly meant to confuse the media into thinking there was no story—notice that the statement says that “Campus Bible Fellowship is a recognized student organization.” Wright State probably made the decision to recognize the group about five minutes before sending out this statement so that it would not be technically false, although it is meant to confuse the issue and hide the truth.

Those who read FIRE’s press release will recall that Wright State General Counsel Gwen Mattison told FIRE last Thursday that CBF would be re-recognized, but when FIRE wrote to Mattison to confirm the conversation, Mattison refused, replying only with “Incorrect–no other reply will be forthcoming.” Mattison undoubtedly thought that was pretty clever at the time.

It’s funny how things change, though, when your unfair treatment of a religious group starts making the news. Here’s an e-mail that Campus Bible Fellowship’s president, Kylyn Magee, received at 6:02 pm yesterday:

 

From: Rick Danals [mailto:rick.danals@wright.edu]
Sent: Monday, March 02, 2009 6:02 PM
To: Kylyn Magee
Cc: halloway.2@wright.edu; glen.jones@wright.edu; ‘Dan Abrahamowicz’; ‘Gary Dickstein’; ‘Viki Harness’
Subject: Campus Bible Fellowship

Dear Kylyn:

This is a follow up on the registration status of Campus Bible Fellowship.  As consistent with the communication Gwen Mattison, University General Counsel, had with a representative of FIRE, on Thursday, February 26, 2009, your organization will be registered for the remainder of the academic year through June 12, 2009.  Your organization will need to attend training and apply for registered status consistent with all other student organizations on campus to be registered for the 2009-2010 academic year.  Registered organizations will receive notification through their OrgSync account for the May training sessions.  Your registration application on OrgSync was reopened last Thursday.

[...]

If you have any questions, please contact me.

Rick Danals, Ph.D.
Director of Student Activities
Wright State University
3640 Colonel Glenn Highway
Dayton, OH 45435
937-775-5543
937-775-5573 (fax)

Now isn’t that interesting! Mattison herself would not confirm her conversation with FIRE, but Rick Danals actually citesthe conversation when telling CBF that it has been re-recognized. And by the way, this e-mail acknowledges the fact that the group was notrecognized until now when it says “Your registration application on OrgSync was reopened last Thursday.” Why would it need to be reopened if the organization had been registered?

As if its deception on the matter of recognition wasn’t bad enough, Wright State has also seen fit to try to confuse people about the nature of its own unconstitutional decision. Wright State’s statement yesterday proclaims:

Campus Bible Fellowship will have to go through the same process every other student organization has to go through for re-recognition when we do that for the fall quarter. There is no distinction between it and any other student organization on Wright State’s campus.

Unfortunately, this is simply a restatement of the problem, not the solution! The entire point of this case is that Wright State’s one-size-fits-all “nondiscrimination” language actually discriminates against religious groups because it does not allow them to require voting members and leaders to share the group’s beliefs. Wright State’s policy demands the equivalent of forcing the College Democrats to allow Republicans to become voting members and leaders of the group. This is nonsensical and violates the group’s expressive rights.

University administrators have long learned the lessons of how to sound reasonable while actually doing the unreasonable. Treating all groups equally sounds great, but if your policies are constitutionally defective, it is no defense to say that these policies are equally enforced—particularly because doing so strips the expressive rights from some groups and not others.

FIRE is glad that Wright State has re-recognized CBF and that the group will once again be able to meet on campus, at least for this semester. But the university has done nothing to address the medium- and long-term problem with its policies. The unconstitutional policy is still on the books, and Wright State is still begging for a civil rights lawsuit. Having taken the first step towards respecting the rights of the Campus Bible Fellowship, Wright State now needs to finish the job.

Moderates Turning Against Obama Agenda – Say Obama is destroying Wealth

UPDATE – Fox News is reporting that moderate Democrat Senators such as Evan Bayh are asking Obama to veto the earmark pork leaden $411 Billion omnibus spending bill. Its confirmed. Bayh wrote this editorial in the Wall Street Journal today.

Charles Payne: Obama’s policies are anti-wealth, stock market tanking. It really is a big deal.

Self professed Democrat, NBC’s Jim Cramer: Obama’s radical agenda is causing the greatest destruction of wealth I have ever seen by a president. Predicts depression.

Jim Cramer: Obama’s agenda is destroying the life savings of millions. By the way Cramer has given thousands to Democrats in donations.

Congressional Quarterly: Revolt against Obama agenda brewing among moderate Democrats in the House.

New York Times’ David Brooks:

But the Obama budget is more than just the sum of its parts. There is, entailed in it, a promiscuous unwillingness to set priorities and accept trade-offs. There is evidence of a party swept up in its own revolutionary fervor – caught up in the self-flattering belief that history has called upon it to solve all problems at once.

So programs are piled on top of each other and we wind up with a gargantuan $3.6 trillion budget. We end up with deficits that, when considered realistically, are $1 trillion a year and stretch as far as the eye can see.

 

These people are saying the same thing that the Wall Street Journal is saying:

As 2009 opened, three weeks before Barack Obama took office, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 9034 on January 2, its highest level since the autumn panic. Yesterday the Dow fell another 4.24% to 6763, for an overall decline of 25% in two months and to its lowest level since 1997. The dismaying message here is that President Obama’s policies have become part of the economy’s problem.

Americans have welcomed the Obama era in the same spirit of hope the President campaigned on. But after five weeks in office, it’s become clear that Mr. Obama’s policies are slowing, if not stopping, what would otherwise be the normal process of economic recovery. From punishing business to squandering scarce national public resources, Team Obama is creating more uncertainty and less confidence — and thus a longer period of recession or subpar growth.

The Obama loving Chris Buckley has now turned:

Hold on—there’s a typo in that paragraph. “$3.6 trillion budget” can’t be right. The entire national debt is—what—about $11 trillion? He can’t actually be proposing to spend nearly one-third of that in one year, surely. Let me check. Hmm. He did. The Wall Street Journal notes that federal outlays in fiscal 2009 will rise to almost 30 percent of the gross national product. In language that even an innumerate English major such as myself can understand: The US government is now spending annually about one-third of what the entire US economy produces. As George Will would say, “Well.”…

If this is what the American people want, so be it, but they ought to have no illusions about the perils of this approach. Mr. Obama is proposing among everything else $1 trillion in new entitlements, and entitlement programs never go away, or in the oddly poetical bureaucratic jargon, “sunset.” He is proposing $1.4 trillion in new taxes, an appetite for which was largely was whetted by the shameful excesses of American CEO corporate culture. And finally, he has proposed $5 trillion in new debt, one-half the total accumulated national debt in all US history. All in one fell swoop.

I liked Hotair.com’s take on the Buckley awakening: Christopher Buckley surprised to find the guy he voted for is, in fact, a statist liberal

Tony Blankley: Obama lied; the economy died:

I am trying to capture the spirit of bipartisanship as practiced by the Democratic Party over the last eight years.

Thus, I have chosen as my lead, the proposition: Obama lied; the economy died. Obviously, I am borrowing this from the Democratic Party theme of 2003-08: “Bush lied, people died.” There are, of course, two differences between the two slogans.

Most importantly, I chose to separate the two clauses with a semicolon rather than a comma because the rule of grammar is that a semicolon rather than a comma) should be used between closely related independent clauses not conjoined with a coordinating conjunction. In the age of Barack Obama, there is little more important than maintaining the integrity of our language – against the onslaught of Orwellian language abuse that is already a babbling brook, and will soon be a cataract of verbal deception.

The other difference is that George W. Bush didn’t lie about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He was merely mistaken. Whereas President Obama told a whopper last week when he claimed he was not for bigger government. As he said Tuesday night: “As soon as I took office, I asked this Congress to send me a recovery plan by President’s Day that would put people back to work and put money in their pockets. Not because I believe in bigger government – I don’t.”

This he asserted though the budget he proposed the next day asks for federal spending as 28 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), higher by at least 6 percent than any time since World War II. Moreover, after 10 years, Mr. Obama’s proposed spending as a percentage of GDP would still be 22.6 percent, nearly 2 percentage points higher than any year during the Bush administration, despite the full costs of the terrorist attacks of Sept, 11, 2001, the Iraq and Afghan wars and the rebuilding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Consider also his assertion in his not-quite-State of the Union address that:

“My administration has also begun to go line by line through the federal budget in order to eliminate wasteful and ineffective programs. As you can imagine, this is a process that will take some time. But we’re starting with the biggest lines. We have already identified $2 trillion in savings over the next decade.”

But, lamentably, a few days later, The Washington Post reported: “A senior administration official acknowledged yesterday that the budget does not contain $2 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade. Instead, the figure represents Obama’s total efforts at deficit reduction, including tax hikes [of more than $1 trillion] on families making over $250,000 a year. It also includes hundreds of billions of dollars ’saved’ by not continuing to spend $170 billion a year in Iraq.”

Only a big government man would think of calling a trillion-dollar tax increase a spending cut or “saving.” Technically, of course, it is true. A trillion-dollar tax increase will reduce spending by a trillion dollars for those private citizens who were taxed. And, from the perspective of the federal government, a trillion dollars taxed is a trillion dollars saved from the greed of the taxpayers who produced the wealth – and might well want to spend or invest it in non governmental activities.

But the foregoing are merely pettifogging numbers compared to Mr. Obama’s bigger ideas about energy and health care.

Our president shares a fascinating idea about energy with most of what used to be known as the “small is beautiful” crowd. It is a curious phenomenon that one needs a very big government to enforce the beauty of small.

As Mr. Obama’s energy secretary, Steven Chu, said last year: The price of electricity in America is “anomalously low.” You see how much smarter that Nobel prize winner is than you. You probably thought you were already spending enough on electricity and fuel.

And sure enough, Mr. Obama explained last week that in order to make alternative energy sources wind, solar – perhaps eventually human muscle power? – economically competitive, he intends to raise the price of carbon-based energy until it is so expensive that even solar power will be such-a-deal.

This level of destructive irrationality cannot be accomplished in the private sector. It will take a very big government indeed to bring such inanities into being. (disclosure: being rational, I give professional advice to carbon-based energy producers.)

If President Obama were to try to misrepresent his positions for the next four years, there would be nothing he could say that would approach the inaccuracy of his claim last week that he is not for big government. It is the essence of the man and his presidency. He doesn’t like America the way it has been since its founding – and it will take an abusively big government to realize his dreams of converting America into something quite different. If you don’t know that, you don’t yet know Barack Obama.

Even the far left, far out, Republican hater Maureen Dowd from the New York Times got in on the act:

Before the Senate resoundingly defeated a McCain amendment on Tuesday that would have shorn 9,000 earmarks worth $7.7 billion from the $410 billion spending bill, the Arizona senator twittered lists of offensive bipartisan pork, including:

• $2.1 million for the Center for Grape Genetics in New York. “quick peel me a grape,” McCain twittered.

• $1.7 million for a honey bee factory in Weslaco, Tex.

• $1.7 million for pig odor research in Iowa.

• $1 million for Mormon cricket control in Utah. “Is that the species of cricket or a game played by the brits?” McCain tweeted.

• $819,000 for catfish genetics research in Alabama.

• $650,000 for beaver management in North Carolina and Mississippi.

• $951,500 for Sustainable Las Vegas. (McCain, a devotee of Vegas and gambling, must really be against earmarks if he doesn’t want to “sustain” Vegas.)

• $2 million “for the promotion of astronomy” in Hawaii, as McCain twittered, “because nothing says new jobs for average Americans like investing in astronomy.”

 • $167,000 for the Autry National Center for the American West in Los Angeles. “Hopefully for a Back in the Saddle Again exhibit,” McCain tweeted sarcastically.

• $238,000 for the Polynesian Voyaging Society in Hawaii. “During these tough economic times with Americans out of work,” McCain twittered.

• $200,000 for a tattoo removal violence outreach program to help gang members or others shed visible signs of their past. “REALLY?” McCain twittered.

• $209,000 to improve blueberry production and efficiency in Georgia.

“When do we turn off the spigots?” Senator McCain said in his cri de coeur on the Senate floor. “Haven’t we learned anything? Bills like this jeopardize our future.” 

Hotair.com has another Jim Cramer Video HERE.

IU School of Journalism Humiliated by Bogus Bill O’Reilly Study

Common sense would tell anyone, that if you are going to take on Bill O’Reilly with a full frontal assault there are a few things that you should keep in mind. Don’t spin, don’t engage in the ridiculous, don’t make half cocked assertions, don’t try to mislead the folks. To sum that all up one could say above all, don’t be a pinhead.

Unfortunately two professors with the IU Bloomington School of Journalism decided not to use common sense when they put out their “study” attacking Bill O’Reilly. He just had a ball with these two professors and IU on his program. Odds are by tomorrow night the segment will be archived on Youtube forever.

The two professors who produced this unscholarly document are Mike Conway and Maria Elizabeth Grabe. I just finished reading the study and it is such an ideological hit piece that I was laughing while I read it because it was so ridiculous. It used every dirty trick used by a radical ideologue that one would typically see on an unregulated internet message board.

Let us begin with the very first deception in the study:

O’Reilly employed the name calling device almost once every seven seconds. 

What didn’t come out till later is that Prof. Conway and Grabe included political labels such as “Democrat and Republican” as name calling devices. Is this what you have in mind, or is that the narrative that comes to mind when you see the term “name calling device”?

Perhaps someone should remind Conway and Grabe that words mean things and in the world of journalism, context is everything. When one distorts context or fails to use it in good faith it creates a story that gives a “false light” and if the story meets certain criteria it is considered “false light libel”.

Other example of “name calling propaganda” cited by the study is when O’Reilly chastised a journalist for using a “buried headline”. Burying the lead is one of the most common forms of media bias.

I wrote a paper on “burying the lead” bias. For example: A Washington Post article told how law enforcement working for the Bush Administration had improperly used the Patriot Act to obtain the private records of about two dozen American citizens and The Post told us that the Attorney General was not ruling out criminal charges. The unwritten narrative was clear; the Bush Administration is criminally violating your privacy. Many paragraphs deep into the story it told you that these mistakes had been caught by the Inspector General, whose job it is to find these kinds of errors and these two dozen mistakes were out of over 1500 legal uses of the Patriot Act that year, or an error rate on the new law of slightly over 1%. In light of those facts it changes your attitude of the story doesn’t it?

There is no way that Conway and Grabe could not have understood what O’Reilly was talking about when he used the term “buried lead”. The only reason to simply refer to this as “name calling propaganda” is because they wanted to impress their far left peers by publishing a ’study’ to damage Bill O’Reilly.

Another example of name calling they counted is when O’Reilly used the term “Kool-Aide Drinkers” when used in conjunction with far left or far right ideologues. “Kool-Aide Drinkers” is a term commonly used term for people who are hardcore political ideologues who believe that their side can do no wrong and the other side can do no right. Anyone who engages in political or cultural discourse becomes familiar with these types of people very quickly. This term can also fall into the same category as shtick or a shows techno-babble. While the term “Kool-Aide Drinker” may seem like pejorative name calling at first glance, it is merely a mildly entertaining term that describes a group of people that almost everyone has had to deal with at one time or another. When viewed in context it is not in the same class as calling someone a jerk or an ass without dealing with their argument as this study clearly implies.

Like any good radical leftist arguing on an internet message board Conway and Grabe compared Bill O’Reilly to whom else ..(do I even have to say it because most normal people know exactly what I am about to say)… you guessed it, a Nazi propagandist who they describe as:

His broadcasts became heavily anti-Semitic and he was one of the few apologists for Adolf Hitler and the reign of terror brought about by the Nazi party in Germany.

When someone makes any kind of comparison to a monster like a Nazi, the comparison becomes what is commonly referred to as a Reductio ad Hitlerum.

A Reductio ad Hitlerum is rationally unsound for two different reasons: As a wrong direction fallacy (a type of questionable cause), it inverts the cause-effect relationship between why a villain and an idea might be criticized; conversely, as guilt by association (a form of association fallacy), it illogically attempts to shift culpability from a villain to an idea regardless of who is espousing it and why. Specific instances of Reductio ad Hitlerum are also frequently likely to suffer from the fallacy of begging the question or take the form of slippery slope arguments, which are frequently (though not always) false as well.

Any comparison to a Nazi propagandist creates a very nasty negative narrative whether it is explicitly stated or not. This is why the far left uses these kind of arguments to the point of being silly on internet message boards, and now IU Journalism School studies. If they can reduce you to a Nazi then no matter how accurate what you say is no longer matters; you can’t be credible because you are like the Nazi.

According to this study here is another example of Bill O’Reilly’s evil propaganda:

Testimonial [testimonial propaganda] involves a respected person endorsing or rejecting an idea or person. For example, in a segment about the new Pope, O’Reilly (4/19/05) referred to him as a good friend of the late Pope John Paul. Thus, through suggested friendship, the former Pope is called on to testify to the legitimacy of the new Pope. Testimonial can also be achieved through negative connotation when someone with a bad reputation is presented as endorsing a person or idea.

Vile propaganda technique or perhaps a newsworthy detail? The fact that Cardinal Ratzinger was a close friend of the former Pope is newsworthy just as if it were said that Ratzinger was a philosophical enemy to the pope or if they genuinely didn’t like each other.  What if Jennifer Aniston came to my birthday party and the South Bend Tribune reported it.  Was The Tribune reporting it to call on to my legitimate star power to make it appear that she was endorsing me for propaganda value; or just reporting a newsworthy fact? What do you think? I report, you decide.

There is so much ammunition in this ’study’ but I will wrap up with this:

Criminals and terrorists were consistently presented as evil in that they endanger human life, but evil was also achieved through moral violation. Here are a few examples: University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill was described as following a Nazi philosophy, hating America, justifying murder, and as a traitor who comforts the enemy (3/2/05;2/7/05; 2/1/05). Illegal aliens were described as dangerous, out of control, causing chaos, and threatening the American way of life (4/7/05; 4/26/05; 4/25/05).

For example, Martin Luther King, Jr. was described (1/17/05) as a hero because he had noble goals in opposing violence and correcting injustice.

Remember how I stated above that in journalism context is everything? The statements above become priceless when viewed in context.

Ward Churchill was a professor who stated the people who died on 9/11 were “little Eichmann’s”. Adolf Eichmann was the man who designed Hitler’s “final solution” for the Jews.  The case Churchill made was clear. Our 3,000 dead were more then just a legitimate target, they deserved it for furthering capitalism and free enterprise which Ward Churchill loathes. Ward Churchill and others who spoke out with such nonsense were used by Al-Jezeera and Al-Qeada for propaganda purposes. That propaganda gives aid and comfort to the enemy. Isn’t it interesting that Conway and Grabe see no hypocrisy in using a Nazi reference against Bill O’Reilly but make out the man who refers to our dead as “little Eichmann’s” as the victim of mean ole Bill O’Reilly.

Now one must ask, why did Bill O’Reilly say that the illegal alien problem was “dangerous, out of control, causing chaos”? We certainly need to ask that very important question because obviously Conway and Grabe simply didn’t care. Bill O’Reilly has covered story after story of criminal illegal aliens who have killed people, raped and driven while intoxicated. These criminal aliens had long records and were never deported. Such a situation indeed is dangerous, out of control and causes chaos in the lives of the victims.

As for the last example of Bill O’Reilly’s evil propaganda cited by this ’study’; the Martin Luther King example is just too much. They had already reached to the point of being laughable before they tossed this in. May I see a show of hands of those who do NOT believe that Dr. King was a hero. That’s what I thought I didn’t see any. Apparently according to the IU School of Journalism pointing out this self evident truth is engaging in propaganda on par with Nazi monsters. I wonder what the IU Black Faculty & Staff Council will have to say about that?

The study had referenced Carl Hovland. I found that to be most amusing bacause Hovland is known for what is sometimes called “attitude change propaganda theory”. One form of this is when only some of the facts are given or those partial facts are misrepresented with an attitude that deliberately creates an unspoken narrative in the reader’s mind (O’Reilly the Nazi propagandist or like the Washington Post example above). This study, which plays so fast and loose with the facts, context and definitions is a quintessential example of Hovland’s theory in practice.

Is the state of academia so bad and so partisan, that they have reduced themselves to writing proposterous propaganda to each other to help keep themselves convinced? Congratulations Mike Conway and Maria Elizabeth Grabe, you just managed to get in my upcoming book.

UPDATE – O’Reilly hit IU again today (3-3-09) on his program. Considering the ammunition Conway and Grabe gave him who can find fault with it? Amy Adams’ comments were featured on The Factor during the IU segment. She told O”Reilly how radical many of the J school profs are. The alumni will not be pleased with this situation, but I suppose it is better that they know the kind of silly propaganda that some professors are trying to peddle as scholarship these days.

For you Florida readers; Bill O’Reilly will be speaking in Palm Beach at a fundraiser for the charity http://ithappenedtoalexa.org/ be sure to attend if you can to support a good cause.

SOMEONE STOP THE MADNESS

Reuters – FY-2009 Obama Budget – $1.75 Trillion deficit.

Folks, with Obama’s projections, he will spend more in the first 20 months of his presidency that the government spent in all eight years under President Bush.

IBD:

Editor’s reaction to the speech – Open letter to President Obama.

Mr. President,

It was a great speech you made to Congress, containing goals that every American can get behind. Understanding that America is a center-right nation; you even managed to couch your plans using conservative rhetoric.

The problem is the legislation that you and the Democrats are proposing/have proposed empowers government and special interest constituent groups that will kick back hundreds of millions back to the Democratic Party and does not do enough to empower regular folks.

You have reversed pledges on transparency (1, 2, 3, 4, 5,) and several other issues.

You bragged that your stimulus bill had no “earmarks” yet your own Senator Schumer has stated that the stimulus bill was filled with “porky amendments”. The AP whose coverage was very sympathetic to your candidacy has even had enough and said that you are being deceptive.

To pay for some of that pork a much needed tax break for home buyers was dropped from the bill. While there are some good things in the bill like the American Opportunity Tax Credit that is intended to give a tax break to working families who have a family member going back to college I am very concerned that for the expense, there is not enough good and too much of the old politics as usual.

You have reversed promises on putting legislation up on the internet for 2-5 days before it is voted on and starting with bill number one, HR1 that promise was broken. You promised a new era of bipartisanship and then locked Republicans out of the bill negotiations. The final version only came out a few hours before the vote but your lobbyist special interest friends got copies of the porky, special interest lined stimulus bill before most members of Congress even saw the final version.

You talk about individual and government responsibility and snuck in language to reverse the hugely successful welfare reform program to the stimulus without telling anyone.

Your wife Michelle criticized one of the  Bush tax cuts because it returned $600 to the taxpayer. The tax cut you bragged about that was in the porky stimulus bill averages out to $13 a week, which totals $676.

According the analysts from Bloomberg, Fox, many universities and even NBC (1, 2, 3,)  who had been in the tank for you more than any other media outlet, your stimulus program does not do much to create jobs and will cost well over $200,000 per job it does create. It is largely special interest and constituent group kick back bill.

These same analysts say that your mortgage plan is wrong headed, isn’t comprehensive, and mostly supports the few who are the least deserving of help.

You keep saying that Republicans want to do nothing when you know that every Republican in the Senate voted for an alternative bill that was so good when it was ran through the economic model that YOUR administration uses it created twice the jobs with half the money. Where I come from what you said is called a lie.

You talk about improving education but not only did you pick a Secretary of Education who is not addressing the real issues in education, your party is proposing legislation to ban the school voucher program in Washington DC, which has been saving inner city black kids where the public schools have failed them utterly. I guess voucher programs aren’t so good for filtering money to the teachers unions so they can kick back our money to you. That same bill has $410 billion in more big government spending with thousands of earmarks which we all learned from the campaign are a part of a corrupt and unethical appropriations process. Didn’t you say in the campaign that you would go through these kinds of bills line by line?

You hold a “Fiscal Responsibility Summit” and special interests were all over it.

You have appointed lobbyists all over your administration after promising not to (1, 2, 3).

Your tax hike idea that you brag will “only impact those who make over $250,000″ will also impact small to medium sized business “S-Corporations”  that have $250,000 in revenue which will lower jobs, raise prices and push more small to medium sized domestic competition out of the competition. Small businesses with 30 or more employees will be damaged by your plan. In the mean time the real super rich are still not paying their fair share.  The “rich” like John Kerry and other hyper millionaires/billionaires make money in many ways that are not considered “earned income”. For example: John Kerry made $5,072,000 in 2003 and had a total federal tax burden of 12.34%  and I guarantee you that those like the Kerry’s will NOT be paying 39.6% as you plan to force high end wage earners and small business to pay (see Norton’s First Law).

While the government is/and is about to send a total of trillions of dollars to Wall Street (2), since 2005 you have taken more money from Wall Street, Fannie Mae and the defunct Lehman Brothers (2, 3) than anyone.

The word disappointed hardly covers it.

Chuck Norton
Editor, IUSB Vision Web Log

Indiana Senate Passes Camera Traffic Enforcement Fraud to Take Your $$$

Time to get on the phone to your State Senator and Indiana Representative in Indianapolis.

Just when states are banning these devices after they have proven to drive up accidents, courts find them unconstitutional, and case after case of fraud are uncovered buy the companies who run these devices, Indiana is moving against the tide of reason.

“It’s a safety factor,” said Sen. Jim Arnold, D-LaPorte.  – Can someone please call this idiot and let him know that these cameras have shown in study after study to increase traffic accidents.

In many cases, the yellow light timing has been manipulated into tricking the motorist into “running a red light”. This resulted in more revenue and increased traffic accidents.

Virginia Dept of Transportation:

Look at the actual VDOT data. Overall in Virginia, T-bone or side-impact accidents increased 20%. Rear-enders went up 42%. Injury accidents increased 18%. Total accidents went up 29%. 

Diana Vice:

As a registered Republican, these types of Republican-sponsored measures make me cringe. The Republican-controlled Indiana Senate passed a bill 28-22 yesterday that would allow cities and towns to install cameras at intersections to catch drivers running red lights.

A 2008 University of South Florida report found:“Comprehensive studies conclude cameras actually increase crashes and injuries, providing a safety argument not to install them…. public policy should avoid conflicts of interest that enhance revenues for government and private interests at the risk of public safety.”

Read a summary Full copy, 80k pdf

A 2007 Virginia Department of Transportation study found:“The cameras were associated with an increase in total crashes… The aggregate EB results suggested that this increase was 29%… The cameras were associated with an increase in the frequency of injury crashes… The aggregate EB results suggested an 18% increase, although the point estimates for individual jurisdictions were substantially higher (59%, 79%, or 89% increases) or lower (6% increase or a 5% decrease).”

Read a summary Full copy, 1mb pdf

A 2006 Winnipeg, Canada city audit found:“The graph shows an increase of 58% in the number of traffic collisions from 2003 to 2004…. Contrary to long-term expectations, the chart shows an increase in claims at each level of damage with the largest percentage increase appearing at the highest dollar value.”

Read a summary Full copy, 541k pdf

A 2005 Virginia DOT study found:“The cameras are correlated with an increase in total crashes of 8% to 17%.”

Read a summary Full copy, 1.7mb pdf

In 2005, The Washington Post found:“The analysis shows that the number of crashes at locations with cameras more than doubled, from 365 collisions in 1998 to 755 last year. Injury and fatal crashes climbed 81 percent, from 144 such wrecks to 262. Broadside crashes, also known as right-angle or T-bone collisions, rose 30 percent, from 81 to 106 during that time frame.”

Read a summaryFull article on the Post website

A 2004 North Carolina A&T University study found:“Our findings are more pessimistic, finding no change in angle accidents and large increases in rear-end crashes and many other types of crashes relative to other intersections.”

Read a summary Full copy, 1.7mb pdf

A 2003 Ontario Ministry of Transportation study found: “Compared to the average number of reported collisions occurring in the before period, the average yearly number of reported collisions increased 15.1 per cent in the after period.”

Read a summary Full copy, 1.5mb pdf

A 1995 Australian Road Research Board study found: “The results of this study suggest that the installation of the RLC at these sites did not provide any reduction in accidents, rather there has been increases in rear end and adjacent approaches accidents on a before and after basis and also by comparison with the changes in accidents at intersection signals.”

Read a summary Full copy, 2.4mb pdf

Related Reports and Studies
The importance of the yellow warning signal time in reducing the instances of red light running is found in the following reports:
A 2004 Texas Transportation Institute study found: “An increase in yellow duration of 1.0 seconds is associated with a [crash frequency] of about 0.6, which corresponds to a 40 percent reduction in crashes.”

Read a summary Full copy, 1.5mb pdf

A 2001 report by the Majority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives found:“The changes in the yellow signal timing regulations have resulted in the inadequate yellow times. And these inadequate yellow times are the likely cause of almost 80 percent of red light entries.”

Full version with summary

And there is MORE where that came from Via Camerafraud.com:

In a photo obtained by CameraFRAUD.com, activists left the words “honest mistake,” possibly a reference to an incident earlier this year when Redflex CEO Karen Finley claimed that their usage of unapproved and non-FCC certified equipment was an “honest oversight.”

Redflex is no stranger to the convenience of Post It notes as detailed in the article “Arizona Official Confirms Redflex Falsified Speed Camera Documents”

Over one thousand of American Traffic Solution’s photo fraud tickets will be dismissed in Tucson after it was revealed that the process server lied about their delivery.

If paid, the notices would have an estimated value of over $183,000.

Minnesota: $2.6 Million in Red Light Camera Tickets Refunded
Refunds proceed for illegally issued red light camera tickets in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Maricopa Cty JP: Photo-enforcement is unconstitutional

Speed Cameras Recording Everyone 24/7

Surprised state lawmakers learned Thursday that the photo enforcement cameras they authorized last year to catch speeders are actually taking – and keeping – videos of everyone who passes.

The information came out as a House panel debated legislation to outlaw the operation of fixed and mobile cameras on state roads. Backers of the legislation complained that the cameras are really designed to generate revenue and not to improve public safety.

High schoolers find ways to generate false photo tickets

Students from Richard Montgomery High School dubbed the prank the Speed Camera “Pimping” game, according to a parent of a student enrolled at one of the high schools.

Originating from Wootton High School, the parent said, students duplicate the license plates by printing plate numbers on glossy photo paper, using fonts from certain websites that “mimic” those on Maryland license plates. They tape the duplicate plate over the existing plate on the back of their car and purposefully speed through a speed camera, the parent said. The victim then receives a citation in the mail days later.

 

Mississippi Bans Photo Enforcement

Resistance to automated ticketing is spreading nationwide. The Mississippi State Legislature has decisively voted 117 to 3 to ban photo enforcement in the state.

Montana may soon follow Mississippi’s lead

Yes folks,  yet another state seems to be passing Arizona on the road to restoring its civil liberties.  Montana may soon ban photo enforcement.

 

Photo Radar Protests Spread Nationwide

.Members of the “Liberty Restoration Project” recently held a demonstration opposed to the use of automated ticketing machines in Kansas City, MO. They are supporting state Senate Bill 211 which would ban the practice outright.

In Maryland, members of CameraFRAUD DC held a small rally which drew the attention of NBC Washington. “Do you really think that these people came out today because they want to be able to drive too fast?” said one forum participant on the NBC Washington website.

 “They came out because they did a little investigating and found out what a racket this is...”

In Arizona, CameraFRAUD plans to hold a rally on Friday afternoon in the Phoenix-suburb of Chandler. Past demonstrations in Arizona have drawn hundreds of participants and captured the attention of local media.

 

Obama Signs Porkulus; Dow Tanks

CNBC:

Stocks tumbled to November levels Tuesday as investors faced a fresh sign of the deepening recession and dilution worries gnawed at bank stocks.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed nearly 297.81 points, or 3.8 percent, to close at 7552.60, within one point of its November closing low.

Today there are talks about the next phase of the so called “recovery plan” the Dow is down 50 points as of 10AM.

And Now for Something Completely Different…

Brad Pitt actually acting…

Warning video suggests acts of torture.

KVOA Tucson Video: Man fights off four armed robbers

Looks like these guys picked the wrong house….