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Wednesday, July 1, 2009
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Liberal New Republic Article Actually Makes Sense on Honduras 'Coup'
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The left can try to brush off articles in the Wall Street Journal or the National Review about the "coup" in Honduras as "rightwing propaganda." However, they will have a much harder time applying such a label to an article about the ouster of Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya (in photo with Hugo Chavez), which appeared in the very liberal New Republic.
President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should have read Festishizing the Presidency by Francisco Toro before being so quick in joining Chavez in denouncing the removal of Honduran strong man Zelaya who was acting unconstitutionally:Seen in context, Sunday's military powerplay was different in important ways from the traditional Latin American putsch. The generals move came at the unanimous--yes unanimous--behest of a congress outraged by Zelaya's not-particularly-subtle attempts to extend his hold on power indefinitely. It followed a series of clearly unconstitutional moves on Zelaya's part, including his attempt to unilaterally remove the chief of the army, which, according to Honduras's Constitution, can only be done by a congressional super-majority.
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Time's Padgett: Bush's 'Excessive' Power Pushed Argentinians to Rebuke Their President
[Meanwhile, in the MSM...]
The recent midterm election drubbing of leftist legislative allies of Argentinan power couple President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and husband (and former president) Nestor Kirchner is partly thanks to the imperial designs of power-hungry former U.S. President George W. Bush and the consensus-building ethos of Barack Obama.
Or so Time magazine's Tim Padgett asserts without evidence in a June 30 piece, "Kirchner Loss a Lesson for Latin America":
[BDS: alive and well.]
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Obama re-designates FARC Marxist narcoterrorists as
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Who else can the Commander in chief be talking about but the FARC narcoterrorists in Colombia?"To combat lawlessness and violence, we don't need a debate about whether to blame right-wing paramilitaries or left-wing insurgents - we need practical cooperation to expand our common security."
It's inaccurate that our president characterizes paramilitaries (and what country, other than Colombia has them?) as ‘rightwing.' Those maggots are not rightwing, they are mere dopers who seek to politicize their business as a means of getting leverage over the government, that's it. President Uribe eats these types for breakfast.
But the redesignation of FARC as ‘insurgents' is especially outrageous. The only people Obama could be talking about as ‘insurgents' are FARC because there is nothing comparable anywhere else in the hemisphere.
What Obama is doing is exactly the same thing the msm did for the Iraqi AQs and terrorists, called them ‘insurgents'! Like they are some mass movement instead of reviled by 99% of the Colombian people.
Insurgents my keister!
[I'm actually more concerned with the increasingly prevalent use of "right wing" in association will all things bad. Do we really believe it's coincidence?]
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FLASHBACKs >
- Cuba, FARC may be training guerrillas at Venezuelan camp
- FARC's 'Human Rights' Friends
- Colombian police: FARC responsible for most U.S. cocaine
- Mullen Says Colombia Making Progress Against Narcoterrorists
US troops leave anxious Iraqi cities
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With US troops about to withdraw from Iraqi towns and cities, there has been an upsurge in bomb attacks - but is this a sign of worse to come, asks Jim Muir, or a last throw of the dice from the militants?
Two days before the end-of-the-month deadline, this position, now just a wasteland, and its command building, were to be handed back to the Iraqis.
And not to the Iraqi army, whose units had already redeployed elsewhere but to the Ministry of Agriculture, the original owners of the command building, which was their research station.
The military base was simply disappearing, swords being turned to ploughshares...
[While the attacks continue? Are we trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of hard-won {paid in the blood of Americans} victory?]
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Wikipedia Helps NYT Cover Up Reporter's Capture
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Wikipedia can be a vehicle for tearing down barriers and democratizing information. Unless the New York Times is involved.
Just as the Times was able to keep 40 other media organizations from reporting on the capture of their own David Rohde, so too were they able to keep Wikipedia from reporting it. They also used his Wikipedia page to try to win favor with the Taliban.
Just three days after Rohde was captured, a user edited his Wikipedia page to reflect his capture, but that edit was quickly deleted, and with the help of Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, news of Rohde’s capture was kept off the page until his release...
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Girls' school blown up
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Peshawar - Militants bombed a girls' primary school on the outskirts of Pakistan's Peshawar city on Friday, the latest in a series of such attacks blighting the northwest of the country, police said. The school was badly damaged during the attack in Mattni village.
There were no casualties as schools are closed for the summer in Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province that borders Afghanistan...
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France’s Private Concentration Camp
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The banality of evil lived in that apartment building. Apartment dwellers, all Muslims, heard Ilan's screams and cries of torture over a period of three weeks, and yet did not call the cops. The screams must have been loud because the torture was especially atrocious: the thugs cut bits of flesh off the young man. They cut his fingers and ears. They burned him with acid. They poured flammable liquid on him and set him on fire. Not only did those in the building not go to the police -- they did nothing at all. Worse, many took part in the tortures.
So systemic is the Jew hatred in France that it impeded rescuing Ilan or securing his release.
Throughout Ilan's entire captivity, the French police refused to move on any of the evidence that pointed to an anti-Semitic motive. Instead, the police conducted a routine kidnap investigation (which invariably involves ransom, not death). The police refused to pursue the anti-Semitic motivations of the kidnappers in spite of the fact that, according to newspaper accounts,"in their e-mail and telephone communications with Ilan's family, his captors repeatedly referred to his Judaism, and on at least one occasion recited verses from the Koran while Ilan was heard screaming in agony in the background."
The family begged the police to listen to torturous phone calls from the kidnappers and acknowledge that Ilan was abducted because he was Jewish. Clearly, had the police not acted in judeophobic fashion, they would have recognized that Ilan's life was in terrible danger and taken urgent action.
But law enforcement was not the only guilty party. The government refused to acknowledge the anti-Semitic motives behind the torture and killing a full week after Halimi turned up mutilated and dead...
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The Dis-Uniting Kingdom?
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Britain's European debate has gone septic. More than half of British votes cast in recent European elections went to euro-skeptic parties ranging from the mad, bad political fringes such as the British National Party to a Conservative Party promising to claw back powers from Brussels.
Radio shows pulse with anger as callers vent their frustration about the EU — complaining about everything from mass immigration to an EU ban on wasteful light-bulbs...
[Sound familiar? Luckily here we've a little thing called the 10th Amendment - past time we use it...]
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Media Mostly Ignore German and Hungarian Tax Cuts
The government of Hungary voted to cut income taxes Monday to pull itself out of recession, and America's media for the most part ignored it.
At the same time, German chancellor Angela Merkel is pushing for lower taxes to help her nation's economy, and our press have similarly been less than enthusiastic about sharing the news.
One of the exceptions in both cases is the Wall Street Journal which reported the following Tuesday:The Hungarian parliament approved Monday a tax bill for 2010, a cornerstone of the country's attempts to boost its competitiveness.The bill will include a reduction in personal income taxes for average- income earners, a lowering of social security contributions for employers..
A Google news search identified only WSJ and Reuters reporting this news in the States; a LexisNexis search identified no television news reports on this subject.
As for Germany, WSJ reported this Tuesday:German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced her plan to cut taxes saying "it provide motivation" and encourage economic growth" and "It would be wrong not to do what is right and necessary for growth, and so prevent ourselves emerging quickly from this crisis,"
Much as with Hungary's cuts, Merkel's plans have not been widely reported here. In fact, although she began floating this idea in mid-June, a LexisNexis search identified no television news outlets addressing it.
Not one.
With Germany a member of the G-8, as well as a prominent U.S. ally and major trading partner, shouldn't its fiscal policy changes be newsworthy here? If Hungary and Germany were raising taxes, would our media be more interested in reporting it?
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WORKPLACE FLEXIBILITY VERSUS UNPAID LEAVE
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The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) requires employers to allow employees to take 12 weeks of unpaid leave annually for a serious illness, to care for an immediate family member, or following an adoption or birth. The FMLA now applies to companies that employ 50 or more workers, but during the campaign President Obama supported expanding it to cover businesses with as few as 25 employees.
Expanding the FMLA will have many unintended consequences that will hurt, not help, working families. Businesses and their employees bear the cost of the FMLA. According to the Employment Policy Foundation, direct FMLA compliance costs totaled $21 billion in 2004.
Rather than relying on costly mandates like the FMLA, the government should consider policies that increase workplace flexibility:
- For instance, many employees would prefer to receive compensatory time off in lieu of overtime pay, but the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) requires overtime work to be compensated with time-and-a-half cash wages.
- This means that employees who work extra hours one week are unable to offset those hours with comp time in a subsequent week.
Shouldn't private sector workers have similar options?
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The Secret 'Friends of Angelo'
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Angelo Mozilo, the former Countrywide Financial CEO charged with fraud and insider trading by the Securities and Exchange Commission, had a lot of "friends." The Democratic leadership in Congress just doesn't want you to know their names -- or the details of their loans from Countrywide.
What we know is that Senators Chris Dodd and Kent Conrad were among the VIPs who received sweetheart mortgages under the "Friends of Angelo" program. What we don't know is how many other government officials also received such favors, or what exactly Countrywide expected in return.
A March report by Congressman Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) highlighted internal Countrywide emails in which executives debated whether the mayor of Billings, Montana, was influential enough to warrant a waiving of his mortgage insurance premium. The company ultimately decided that he was.
We can only imagine what Countrywide's internal emails might say about the benefits of "friendship" with Mr. Dodd, who chairs the Banking Committee of the U.S. Senate, or about others who benefited from the program...
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POLL: 74% Trust Their Own Economic Judgment More Than Congress’
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A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 13% trust the average Congress member’s judgment more, while 12% are not sure who knows best.
By a two-to-one margin, voters believe that no matter how bad things are, Congress can always make them worse.
It's not just Congress that people are skeptical about on the economic front. Sixty percent (60%) of voters nationwide now trust their own economic judgment more than President Obama’s.
But then 60% of all Americans say most politicians will break the rules to help people who give them large campaign contributions.
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Everybody Wishes Obama Would Just Go Away
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"Has Jim Cramer just touched off another round of Tea Parties?"
So asked TVNewser's Chris Ariens Thursday in response to another anti-Obama demonstration by the outspoken CNBCer who appeared on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" hours earlier:
"Well, I think that Americans - These are all sub-rows of issues. This is all about taxes, and there's a belief that until the economy recovers, we simply can't afford tax increases, a la what happened in 1937 in this country. And when they hear health care reform, it just means tax increases, and there's got to be someone who pays for it. And the under a trillion dollars, it is over many years as Ron Brownstein said, it just makes it at least somewhat palatable.
But until we get the economy moving again, I think everybody wishes that Obama would just kind of go away for a little bit."
[video avail. at source]
Think he'll soon be Olbermann's "Worst Person in the World?"
That was a rhetorical question.
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Road-building in national forests halted for one year
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WASHINGTON — No new roads or logging will be allowed in 45 million acres of national forest land for the next year, the Obama administration announced Thursday. The one-year moratorium reinstates a Clinton-era ban on new road construction and development in remote national forests...
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Mass Bulldozing Urban Neighborhoods, And Replacing Them With .... Nothing
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Leave it to the British press to once again do the job of real reporting that U.S. journalists apparently won't do.
This time, it's Tom Leonard at the UK Telegraph. From Flint, Michigan, he tells us of a "pioneering scheme" that involves tearing down entire neighborhoods and simply abandoning them -- oops, I'm sorry, I meant to say, "returning them to nature."
This is apparently what passes for sophisticated urban planning these days.
Here are key paragraphs from Leonard's story. Especially note the breathtaking anti-progress hostility of the idea's champion (bolds are mine; Getty picture at top right is from that story):
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How ABC Stacked the Deck for Obama
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With the very first question of its prime time special, Questions for the President: Prescription for America, ABC set the tone that essentially confirmed for viewers that the president was right in his desire to radically remake America's healthcare system. As the infomercial began, "moderator" Charles Gibson asked a seminal question of the doctors and other participants that were about to hear the president speak:"How many of you agree with the president that we need to change our healthcare system?"
Naturally they all raised their hands.
Imagine that. This handpicked crowd all agreed with ABC and Obama that "change" was paramount.
So, as the viewer is introduced to the infomercial, they start off with the unanimous affirmation that the president is right, radical changes have to be made. The premise is set and even the sharp questions to the president later in the show are blunted by the assumption that some major change is needed. And since the president is the only person allowed to offer any plan during this ABC special, the further assumption promulgated is that he is the one that must affect that change.
For viewers of this healthcare informercial, Obama wins thanks to an assist by ABC. The viewer is deftly led to the desired conclusion.
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Obama's 'Very Best Care' For His Own Family ABC Comment Unimportant
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Clearly, the most important takeaway from ABC's low-rated White House 'forum' on health care was President Barack Obama's admission that he would go outside the constraints of a nationalized system to get the "very best care" if necessary for his own family.
Hot Air's Ed Morrissey noted that Obama's response should properly be seen as "a Michael Dukakis moment that exposed him as a hypocrite."
A video of the exchange is at YouTube. To the extent possible, see if you think Diane Sawyer, standing next to the inquiring doctor, looks a bit peeved as the nature of his question becomes clear.
ABC's Jake Tapper and Karen Travers understood the newsworthiness of what Obama said, and led with it in their post-forum coverage: [snip]
At the Associated Press, the wire service's Philip Elliott incredibly portrayed the President's "very best care" hypocrisy as almost heroic (bold is mine):
"At an ABC News town hall event on health care, a doctor asked Obama to promise that his wife and daughters would only get the services allowed under a new government insurance plan he's proposing.
Obama wouldn't bite."
Memo to Phil: Maybe the President didn't "bite," but he definitely got bitten. Fortunately for him, and unfortunately for us, the press is mostly making sure we don't learn about the self-inflicted wound.
Hot Air's Morrissey elaborated:
If ObamaCare isn’t good enough for Sasha, Malia, or Michelle, then it’s not good enough for America. Instead of fighting that impulse, Obama should be working to boost the private sector to encourage more care providers, less red tape and expense, and better care for everyone.
Sadly, the President is heading in the opposite direction for everybody -- oh, except the self-appointed elites like himself.
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Obama signing statement on war funding bill: Left is curiously silent
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Don't you miss the good old days of Bush's "unitary executive" presidency? The left got its panties in a twist every time Bush signed a bill and issued a signing statement listing his objections. They tried to outdo each other in outrage when talking about "dictatorship" and the like whenever these signing statements were published.
Sometimes it was even front page news in the New York Times and Washington Post."Balance of Power!" "Unitary executive!" "Bush is Hitler - or Worse!"
My how times have changed:
President Obama signed the $106 billion war-spending bill into law Friday, but not without taking a page from his predecessor and ignoring a few elements in legislation.
Obama included a five-paragraph signing statement with the bill, including a final paragraph that outlined his objections to at least four areas of the bill.
The Obama administration announced in the statement it would disregard provisions of the legislation that, among other things, would compel the Obama administration to pressure the World Bank to strengthen labor and environmental standards and require the Treasury department to report to Congress on the activities of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF).
John McCormack of the Weekly Standard reminds us that Obama made a big deal during the campaign of promising to end the nefarious practice of the Bush administration issuing signing statements.
The crickets are chirping on the left, but it hardly hides the towering hypocrisy of their position on this issue.
[Heard of this from our professional media?]
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TWOFER DOTS...
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CBS’s Schieffer: Media Bias ‘Irrelevant,’
Appearing on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal Tuesday, CBS Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer dismissed the notion of liberal media bias:"...there is so much media out there now that the idea of bias in the media, it’s almost become irrelevant."
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[Well, he's half right: he's becoming irrelevant...]
Big 3 Nets' Evening News: Viewers Are Leaving
Media Bistro broke it Tuesday morning, and gave us all of the details shortly after noon. The news: CBS and ABC's evening newscasts both came in with record low viewerships during the week of June 15.ABC's fall to less than 6.5 million total viewers is probably more of a surprise than CBS's plunge below 5 million...
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[Hence the Democrats Hush-Rush {aka 'fairness doctrine/localism'} campaign, as his audience ranges up to 30 million a day - or up to six CBSs.]
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