Wednesday, August 19, 2009
No more letting the angry opposition control the agenda
On CBS’s Sunday Morning correspondent Martha Teichner touted President Obama’s latest PR blitz to promote health care reform:
"For the third time in five days, Barack Obama used the presidential bully pulpit on behalf of what he’s now calling health insurance reform. No more letting the angry opposition control the agenda."
[That 'opposition' is American citizens - you know, government's employers...]
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Don't Fact Check Obama
NBC on Tuesday night tried to turn public opposition to ObamaCare into a “split” in public opinion discovered in a new NBC News poll as Chuck Todd assessed Obama's health effort is “still in serious condition politically, but it is stable,” and he listed four charges against the Democratic bills which he asserted have “been checked independently and proven to be false,” yet NBC didn't inquire about any claims from Obama and other liberals that those same groups have discredited.
Todd also tried to minimize the impact -- of what he derided as the “town hall madness” -- by attributing the view of them to partisan positions without mentioning how independents consider them beneficial: “And those town halls -- the country is evenly divided -- and by overwhelming majority, Democrats believe they're harmful. Republicans believe they're good.” On MSNBC.com, however, NBC News deputy political director Mark Murray pointed out: “Independents believe, by a 50-34 percent margin, that the protests have done more good.”
[Re: the illegal immigrant aspect of the poll, FactCheck.org claims this to be a false argument because ‘the House bill specifically says that no federal money would be spent on giving illegal immigrants health coverage'. But while the bill specifically states illegal immigrants are to be excluded, it also offers zero provisions to enforce such an exclusion, which in the real world means illegals will line up for the free services. The proof of this fact lies in the amendment to rectify have required immigration verification screening - but was shot down by Democrats in the House Ways and Means Committee in July. Why?]
Again, these bills have nothing to do with health care - they're about planting the seeds for governments eventual control of health care and by extension the populace.]
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Reality Check: Media Double-Standard on Anti-ObamaCare 'Mobs'
With President Obama and congressional liberals facing loud protests over their big government health care plan, journalists are casting the anti-ObamaCare forces as “ugly,” “unruly,” “nasty” mobs, with reporters presenting the most odious images (like pictures of Obama drawn as Hitler) as somehow representative.
But when President George W. Bush faced left-wing protests, the media scrubbed their stories of radical voices and depicted demonstrators as mainstream, and even “prescient.”
In January 2003, all of the broadcast networks touted an anti-war march organized by the radical International ANSWER, an outgrowth of the communist Workers World Party. Signs at the rally read: “USA Is #1 Terrorist,” “Bush Is a Terrorist,” and “The NYPD Are Terrorists Too.” National Review Online quoted several protesters who claimed 9/11 was a Bush plot, “like when Hitler burned down the Reichstag,” and argued Bush would “build a worldwide planetary death machine.”
But reporters then bypassed all that hate and showcased the protesters as everyday Americans.
On ABC, Bill Blakemore stressed how the protest attracted “Democrats and Republicans, many middle-aged, from all walks of life,” while CBS’s Joie Chen saw “young, old, veterans and veteran activists — all united in the effort to stop the war before it starts.”
In Feburary 2003, CNN donated two hours of programming, “Voices of Dissent,” to another International ANSWER event. Correspondent Maria Hinojosa enthused: “It’s an extraordinarily diverse crowd." ['extraordinary' for a crowd to be diverse - in America?]
On March 22, 2003, CNN offered 38 separate reports on a demonstration that day, but managed to never show any of the radical rhetoric from the podium.
Over on ABC, Chris Cuomo saluted the leftists converging in New York City:
“While protesters like today are a statistical minority, in American history protests like this have been prescient indicators of the national mood. So the government may do well to listen to what’s said today.”
[ditto that last, but...]
In contrast, today’s protesters are being portrayed as crazy and even dangerous.
Ex-CNN reporter Bob Franken called the anti-Obama protesters “a crazed group” engaged in “organized intimidation.”
An August 10 graphic on MSNBC wondered: “Conservatives Coming Unhinged?”
Chris Matthews saw racism: “I think some of the people are upset because we have a black President.”
And ABC’s Bill Weir on Friday warned “the rising anger is now ramping up concerns over the President’s personal safety.”
The double-standard is obvious. How can professional journalists possibly justify it?
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MSNBC: ObamaCare Protesters ‘Racist,’ Including Black Gun-Owner
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On Tuesday, MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer fretted over health care reform protesters legally carrying guns: "A man at a pro-health care reform rally...wore a semiautomatic assault rifle on his shoulder and a pistol on his hip....there are questions about whether this has racial overtones....white people showing up with guns."
Brewer failed to mention the man she described was black.
MSNBC pop culture analyst [?] Toure discussed the supposed racism involved in the protests. Toure argued:
"...there is tremendous anger in this country about government, the way government seems to be taking over the country, anger about a black person being president [?!?] ....we see these hate groups rising up and this is definitely part of that."
Not only did Brewer, Ratigan, and Toure fail to point out the fact that the gun-toting protester that sparked the discussion was black, but the video footage shown of that protester was so edited, that it was impossible to see that he was black.
[Making the deceit intentional. To review: one (1) black man showed up with legal side arms and our professional journalists reported it as 'white people {plural} showing up with guns {plural}. Watch the video, these folks are drumming up racism.]
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Media upset by pistols, ignores AK-47s
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According to the mainstream media, carrying a gun to a protest is just plain crazy, even if perfectly legal. What’s more, it’s indicative of the toxic, hate-filled atmosphere filling conservative protests of President Obama and his plans for health care reform.
“Hardball” host Chris Matthews and his daytime colleagues at MSNBC, for example, have their used air time to marvel at what would possess an average American citizen to go to a rally near where President Obama is speaking with a gun.
But the media reaction was markedly different nine years ago when a group of Black Panthers marched on the Texas Republican Party’s state convention on June 2000 brandishing AK-47s.
A search of Nexis and the Media Research Center’s News Tracking System found no stories on that evening’s broadcast network newscasts about the Black Panthers brandishing “assault weapons” to protest then-presumptive GOP presidential nominee – and Secret Service protectee – Gov. George W. Bush’s refusal to intervene in the pending execution of convicted murderer Gary Graham.
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CO-OPS: A "PUBLIC OPTION" BY ANOTHER NAME
Establishing health insurance co-operatives is a poor alternative to the public option plan. Opponents of a government takeover of the health care system should not be fooled, says Michael D. Tanner, a senior fellow with the Cato Institute.
Government-run health care is government-run health care no matter what you call it:
- The health care "co-op" approach now embraced by the Obama administration will still give the federal government control over one-sixth of the U.S. economy, with a government-appointed board, taxpayer funding, and with bureaucrats setting premiums, benefits, and operating rules.
- Plus, it won't be a true co-op, like rural electrical co-ops or your local health-food store -- owned and controlled by its workers and the people who use its services.
- Under the government plan, the members wouldn't choose its officers -- the president would.
The [REAL] issue is whether the government will take over the U.S. health care system, controlling many of our most important, personal, and private decisions.
Even without a public option, the bills in Congress would make Americans pay higher taxes and higher premiums, while government bureaucrats determine what insurance benefits they must have and, ultimately, what care they'll be allowed to receive.
ObamaCare was a bad idea with an explicit "public option." It is still a bad idea without one.
[We're being fooled again by 'debating' what the government should do - vs. if it should be doing it. ANY 'health care 'reform'' bill that passes will only set a path to an eventual single payer, 100% government controlled system. Starting down such a path is the real agenda here - the rest is smoke, and we'll regret it if we're foolish enough to fall for it.]
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Taliban burns down schools
Taliban militants burnt down seven primary schools in northwest Pakistan, where children recently resumed their studies after the area was declared safe by the army, officials said on Tuesday. ''Three boys' and four girls' primary schools were set on fire by militants late Monday in Buner district,'' district police chief Abdul Rasheed told AFP.
[GWOT]
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Kuwait nabs al-Qaida cell over bomb plot
Kuwait City - Kuwaiti authorities said Tuesday they have arrested an al-Qaida-linked group allegedly planning to attack a US military base in the small oil-rich state.
The Interior Ministry said in a brief statement that State Security has detained a ''terrorist network'' of six Kuwaitis who gave ''detailed confessions'' about plans to attack Camp Arifjan, the main US base in the country, as well as the headquarters of the country's security agency...
[GWOT]
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Hamas asserts power in Gaza after Qaeda clash
Hamas militiamen were out in strength in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, asserting their authority over the Palestinian enclave after a bloody showdown with a rival Islamist splinter group aligned with al Qaeda.
In the southern town of Rafah, by the border with Egypt, residents sifted through the rubble of apartment buildings blown up during hours of fighting on Friday and Saturday that left up to 28 dead and a mosque ravaged by bullets and grenades.
Many bemoaned the bloodiest violence among Palestinians since 2007. Some forecast reprisals by more young men, some of them former Hamas fighters now disillusioned by its attempts to reach out to the West and negotiate an end to Gaza's isolation.
In a statement on a Web site used by al Qaeda-allied groups from Gaza, a shadowy figure using the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Maqdessi made clear there was anger against Hamas: "The slaughterer in Gaza is Hamas. It is the one holding the knife."
[First we were forced to actually look upon Fatah as something less than a terrorist organization {which it is} so to serve as the lesser evil vs. Hamas. Now Hamas is the comparatively moderate faction? Terrific.]
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Obama's State Department Submits to Islam
Here is the latest act of submission to Islam by your State Department.
A State Department cable has just been sent out with this announcement:
The Bureau of International Information Programs (IIP) has assembled a range of innovative and traditional tools to support Posts' outreach activities during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
The State Department's Ramadan programs are wide-ranging. "On August 10," the cable continues, "America.gov will publish a ‘Multicultural Ramadan' feature. American Muslims trace their ancestry to more than 80 countries and the feature will highlight the richness of these various cultural traditions through the lens of Ramadan and Eid. Content will include essays by young Muslims who are part of Eboo Patel's Interfaith Youth Core (IYC). Contact: Alexandra Abboud (AbboudAM@state.gov)."
There's more. The Bureau of International Information Programs "will publish three articles for Ramadan 2009 addressing the concept of an Islam in America 'brand'; advocacy (civic and political) of the Muslim American community; and community innovation/community building. The writer will contact Muslim American experts in each of these fields. These articles will be available on America.gov in English, Arabic, and Persian." [snip]
Can you imagine every Embassy and consulate putting up a Menorah and having some Rabbis as speakers via a webcast?
Can you imagine if we had the Stations of the Cross put on the walls of all of our embassies, consulates, and other posts, as well as the many Department of State buildings across the country, including C Street?
Why aren't priests, pastors, etc. invited during Christmas to give blessings or talk about Christianity in the United States?
I mean, put it in reverse and see how crazy it is. Absolutely nuts.
Perhaps this is an initiative of President Barack Obama's newly created Office for Outreach to the Ummah at State. In June Obama had the Secretary-General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, at the White House. Ihsanoglu urged Obama to appoint a U.S. ambassador to the Islamic world - and Obama immediately created a new State Department Office for Muslim Outreach.
Why is this immense effort necessary?
We act as if we were a slave of the Muslim world. This sickness of licking the boots of an ideology that wants to destroy us is incomprehensible.
Burt Prelutsky said it best:
"What is wrong with our leaders? Are they worried that they won't be invited to those cool Ramadan parties? The Islamists have been actively at war with us for 30 years and generally at war with western civilization for well over a thousand years, and still we pay lip service to these people in a way we never did with Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan or the Soviet Union.
Is it because the Muslims commit sadism and murder in the name of religion and not country? If anything, I would think that would make their evil acts all the more contemptible."
It does.
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A BETTER MODEL FOR MALPRACTICE SYSTEM
Health care reform is bogged down because none of the bills before Congress deals with the staggering waste of the current system, estimated to be $700 billion to $1 trillion annually.
The waste flows from a culture of health care in which every incentive is to do more; yet, congressional leadership has slammed the door on solutions to the one driver of waste that is relatively easy to fix: expensive and time-consuming malpractice system.
The answer is inescapable -- such expert courts might succeed and undercut the special interest of an influential lobby, the trial lawyers.
An expeditious and reliable new system would compensate patients more quickly and at a fraction of the overhead of the current medical justice system, which spends nearly 60 cents of every dollar on lawyers' fees and administrative costs.
Even more compelling, expert health courts would eliminate the need for "defensive medicine," thereby helping save enough money for America to afford universal health coverage:
- A 2005 survey in the Journal of the American Medical Association related that 93 percent of high-risk specialists in Pennsylvania admitted to the practice, and 83 percent of Massachusetts physicians did the same in a 2008.
- Defensive medicine is notoriously hard to quantify, but some estimates place the annual cost at $100 billion to $200 billion or more.
- But containing costs requires overhauling the culture of health care delivery; therefore, incentives need to be realigned and a legal framework that encourages doctors to focus on is needed.
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The Next Fannie Mae
If there was ever any proof needed that government is run by a bunch of idiots, this is it.
After bailing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to the tune of almost a trillion dollars, one might think that government had learned its lesson about loaning money to people for houses who either can't afford it or have proven to be bad risks in the past.
Enter Ginnie Mae - the Government National Mortgage Association - whose parent, the FHA, has quadrupled its loan portfolios since 2006. Ginnie has mostly been issuing the same kind of mortgage backed securities to guarantee loans made to bad risks that were made by Fannie Mae.
Very good explanation of this in a Wall Street Journal editorial:
On June 18, HUD's Inspector General issued a scathing report on the FHA's lax insurance practices. It found that the FHA's default rate has grown to 7%, which is about double the level considered safe and sound for lenders, and that 13% of these loans are delinquent by more than 30 days. The FHA's reserve fund was found to have fallen in half, to 3% from 6.4% in 2007-meaning it now has a 33 to 1 leverage ratio, which is into Bear Stearns territory. The IG says the FHA may need a "Congressional appropriation intervention to make up the shortfall."
Don't you just love government nomenclature? "Congressional appropriation intervention" - sounds almost harmless, eh? Except it's a bailout by any other name using our tax dollars to pull bureaucratic chestnuts out of the fire because they were too stupid to learn the lessons from Fannie Mae's downfall.
[Government: when no one pays a price for failure, you guarantee it. Health Care anyone?]
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AARP-- Where The Customer is Always Wrong
Last week, many of you saw the video of a Dallas AARP town hall meeting on health care that AARP officials ended early after the audience raised too many objections. The woman leading the meeting, for instance, tried to shut up audience members who said they disagreed with her when she made assumptions about what she thought they would agree with her on. At one point, a man summed it up by asking,
“Do you guys work for us, or do we work for you?”
As bad as the video made AARP look, on some level, you could write it off as an instance of a local AARP representative getting frustrated and simply not having the experience or temperament to deal with an audience that was pushing back against her talking points. That's why I found it much more damning when I saw AARP vice president and spokesman Drew Nannis appearing on Fox (clip below).
Not only does he refuse to apologize for the woman's behavior, but he dismisses those dues-paying AARP members as "a bunch of people yelling..." [snip]
AARP is not an organization that represents its members, but a group that treats its members as dupes so it can suck up their money and use it to advocate a liberal policy agenda supported by its Washington leadership...
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AARP Members Defecting to Conservative ASA
On Monday's CBS Evening News, correspondent Sharyl Attkisson filed a report highlighting the recent defections of thousands of AARP members to the more conservative American Seniors Association (ASA), because of AARP support for ObamaCare.
The report recounted that Obama recently had to correct a claim that the AARP supports his plan, while some are suspicious that the group may support the President privately, but are unwilling to admit to doing so publicly.
[UPDATE: Heard on ABC radio last night that AARP itself reports that they've had >sixty-thousand members terminate their membership in the last two months.
Contrary to liberal dogma, most folks get wiser with age.]
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Shhh! Gallup Reports That Conservatives Outnumber Libs in All 50 States; Media Plays Dumb
You know this is important polling news, because the establishment media is pretending it doesn't exist.
You can't find a relevant reference to it in searches on "Gallup" at the New York Times, AP.org, the Washington Post, or the LA Times. A Google News search on "Gallup conservatives outnumber liberals" (not in quotes) comes up with all of eight results.
The news isn't just that self-identified conservatives outnumber self-identified liberals nationwide. That's old hat. The big news from Gallup is that conservatives outnumber liberals in every state in the union, including supposedly uberliberal Vermont and Massachusetts.
It's hard not to wonder if someone at Gallup did what they did with the headline and subheadline to help ensure that establishment media outlets ignored this stunning news. I would suggest that they didn't have to work that hard; the media would have ignored it anyway.
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FLASHBACK:
Still the Biggest Missing Story in Politics
The answer is the same - just the same - America is still, in every way and from every vantage, a conservative nation.
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A Fundamental Disconnect
Hollywood and the media routinely offer up two standard portrayals of government officials -- inept and comical idiots or sinister characters: bureaucrats are either hilarious nincompoops or dangerous evil-doers, and amazingly enough, sometimes both at once.
However, the people who hold these convictions are the exact same people who want to turn over the operation of all the key components of the country to the government to manage. Health care, energy, education, the economy itself -- these and dozens of other critical features of American society should be directed, according to the Left, from the hallowed halls in which the bumblers and betrayers work.
Is there not a fundamental disconnect here? What could possibly explain this self-contradictory faith in the power of the government to successfully solve the nation's problems?
I will offer three explanations and then speculate as to which applies to the celebrity who now occupies the White House.
The first explanation is ignorance.
The people of our nation have been subjected to an intense liberal indoctrination for so long that there are a huge number of them for whom the tenets of liberalism are so deeply ingrained that they accept without question the proposition that the government must address any problem that arises anywhere in America.
Under a relentless assault from the liberal dominated media, educational establishment, legal profession, arts community, foundations, and even segments of the business and religious communities, many have succumbed to the brainwashing.
Consequently, they believe:
- FDR's New Deal saved us from the Depression rather than prolonged it;
- the Great Society helped to lift minorities out of poverty, rather than institutionalizing it;
- capitalism creates unjust, inequitable outcomes in the US, ignoring the fact that it has powered our economy to unimagined and unequaled heights of prosperity;
- government creates jobs by spending the tax payer's money, rather than preventing their creation because of the tax dollars pilfered from entrepreneurs;
- government regulations improve the functioning of our economy, revealing obliviousness to the enormous drag they impose;
- the rich don't pay their fair share, whereas in fact the "rich" pay the overwhelming majority of the income tax that Uncle Sam extracts, while the lowest 40% of income earners pay virtually nothing;
- the Constitution is a malleable document that serves as a guide to the making of law -- in fact, it is a binding document that can be changed only by a demanding Amendment process and the American republic has survived and prospered precisely because continuing generations have agreed to abide by the deal struck by our founders with the people;
- radical change not adherence to tradition, is the American way.
I venture that a large proportion, perhaps a substantial majority of the folks who voted for Obama fit into this category -- especially young people... [snip]
It is legitimate to ask how such people can accept the portrayal of the government as bumbling or sinister or both, while somehow avoiding the inescapable conclusion, if their first premise is true, that it is lunacy to entrust our welfare to these same bumblers and evil-doers?[Why I frequently use the word 'delusion' when attempting to describe 'liberal logic'. The first of 3 reasons explored/explained - Highly Recommended > ]
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WaPo Slams Obama/Joker as ’ ‘Racially Charged’
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An article in Thursday’s Washington Post lashed out at the viral Obama-as-the-Joker posters, attacking them as promoting "coded," "racially charged" images. Art critic Philip Kennicott smeared the images, which have been showing up in Los Angeles, as flat-out bigoted:
"The charge of socialism is secondary to the basic message that Obama can't be trusted, not because he is a politician, but because he's black."
[Right: and that big word across the bottom of the poster, that couldn't have been the 'basic' message.
No, it's obvious it was used to suggest race due to precedence - when used on this guy:
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Obama Joker artist unmasked as Liberal-Leaning Palestinian and fellow Chicagoan
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Since NewsBusters and the Drudge Report first introduced America to the Obama Joker poster -- with help from talk radio host Tammy Bruce, of course -- most media outlets have speculated the artist was likely white, conservative and of course, racist.
Not exactly.
As reported by the Los Angeles Times moments ago, the up-until-now anonymous creator of the poster sweeping the nation is a 20-year-old college student of Palestinian descent with largely liberal political leanings.
Honestly, you can't make this stuff up:
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Right must learn to tell great stories
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“Give me the making of the songs of a nation and I care not who makes its laws.”- Andrew Fletcher, 1703.
Communicators on the Left have mastered and now continually deploy narrative - a strategic weapon far more potent than the World Wide Web (which, however, is proving an extremely efficient delivery vehicle).
Wikipedia describes narrative as, "along with exposition, argumentation and description, narration, broadly defined,...one of four rhetorical modes of discourse.”
Typically, conservatives present our case in exposition, argumentation and description. By empirical observation, these are much less potent persuaders than narrative. Consider, for example, “global warming” (note, though, that, since it has become clear that global warming is unsubstantiated by the data, proponents now call it the vaguer “climate change.”)
The global warming narrative is based entirely on junk science, with the phenomenon, its cause (if it exists) and the corrective steps unsubstantiated by data. And yet we recently saw Secretary of State Hillary Clinton apologizing to the government of India for America being the bad guy in this drama.
This apology came even though the government of India – and China - refuses to adopt the anti-growth and prosperity-throttling policies called for by proponents of this (ultimately preposterous) story.
Why is this happening? The power of narrative. A compelling narrative, artfully deployed, captures the imagination of the people...
[Recommended > ]
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Expelled From the New York Times
Then, two things happened to change and end my career at the Times. Well, maybe three.
But the two main things, as I see them, were that I started criticizing Mr. Obama quite sharply over his policies and practices. I had tried to do this before over the firing of Rick Wagoner from the Chairmanship of GM. My column had questioned whether there was a legal basis for the firing by the government, what law allowed or authorized the federal government to fire the head of what was then a private company, and just where the Obama administration thought their limits were, if anywhere.
This column was flat out nixed by my editors at the Times because in their opinion Mr. Obama inherently had such powers...
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Strong Grassroots Support For Palin’s SarahPAC
The political action committee associated with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin , SarahPAC, reported strong support from small donors in its mid-year report. SarahPAC reported $733,000 in total receipts through June 30, of which $420,000 was “unitemized” or from donors who contributed $200 or less...
[As predicted, the MSM's orchestrated opinion that Sarah's resignation was political suicide isn't selling with those who put their money where their mouths are.
Et Tu?]
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Tipping Smart cars the latest prank trend
Edmonton - Owners of pint-sized Smart cars aren't laughing about reports that vandals may be targeting the tiny vehicles in a 21st-century take on tipping cows over.
The Internet and blogosphere are abuzz with media reports that pranksters may have pushed several of the tiny vehicles into canals in Amsterdam...
[Stop laughing, it's not funny. Ok a little funny. Actually, go ahead - ]
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