Monday, August 31, 2009
Jaws Drop: Would Mary Jo Kopechne 'Feel It Was Worth It'?
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Melissa Lafsky is the deputy web editor at Discover magazine, where she writes the Reality Base blog. She was previously the editor of the New York Times's Freakonomics blog, and is a former associate editor at HuffPo's Eat The Press." So she's a major-media-certified pundit - who last week wrote about Chappaquiddick drowning victim Mary Jo Kopechne:
"Mary Jo was a dedicated civil rights activist and political talent with a bright future....We don't know what she'd have thought about arguably being a catalyst for the most successful Senate career in history [?].
Still, ignorance doesn't preclude a right to wonder. So it doesn't automatically make someone (aka, me) a Limbaugh-loving, aerial-wolf-hunting NRA troll for asking what Mary Jo Kopechne would have had to say about Ted's death, and what she'd have thought of the life and career that are being (rightfully) [?] heralded.
Who knows -- maybe she'd feel it was worth it."
[After all, what's your life compared to enabling the 'most successful liberal senate career in history'.
Another example of why some of us so frequently use the word delusional in connection with the liberal left.]
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Newsweek Foreign Editor: Chappaquiddick One of Ted's 'Favorite Topics of Humor'
Newsweek’s Ed Klein (told interviewer) Katty Kay about Kennedy’s love of humor. How the late senator loved to hear and tell Chappaquiddick jokes, and was always eager to know if anyone had heard any new ones.
Not that Kennedy lacked remorse, Klein quickly added, seeming to intuit that my jaw and perhaps those of other listeners had just hit the floorboards.
I gather it was a self-deprecating maneuver on Kennedy’s part, exercised with the famous Kennedy charm, though it sounds like one of those “I guess you had to have been there” things.
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NBC Exploits Kennedy to Push ObamaCare: 'National Sorrow Has Created Political Momentum Before'
Proffering how “national sorrow has created political momentum before,” Wednesday's NBC Nightly News devoted a story to the hope of Democrats that Senator Ted Kennedy's passing will propel ObamaCare to victory. Noting how Kennedy was “passionate” about more government in health care, from Hyannis anchor Brian Williams proposed
“ironically, the fact that he did not live long enough to see a possible overhaul of the system” ... “Will this be the very thing that might break the log jam over getting it done? Or not?”
Leading into a clip of President Lyndon Johnson using President John Kennedy's assassination to push for civil rights legislation, O'Donnell delivered the “national sorrow has created political momentum before” formulation, recalling:
"Today, a similar suggestion from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: “Ted Kennedy's dream of quality health care for all Americans will be made real this year because of his leadership and his inspiration.”
And outside groups were even more direct. The seniors lobby, AARP, wrote:
“As Congress seems poised to act this fall, Senator Kennedy will no doubt be watching.”
And the service workers union said:
“Let us continue his cause. Let us take action this year to pass health care reform.”
[Our professional media.]
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Ted Kennedy 'Would Have Brought Comfort' to Mary Jo Kopechne 'In Her Old Age'
Over the course of the past four decades, the media elite have touted Kennedy as a “liberal lion,” spending far more time celebrating his ideological agenda than reminding people of his behavior that night in 1969. As my colleague Brent Baker noted in an op-ed back in 1999, the media have come to refer to Chappaquiddick as a “Kennedy tragedy,” not a “Kopechne tragedy.”
Perhaps the most egregious example of the liberal media planting a pro-Kennedy spin on Chappaquiddick came in a January 5, 2003 Boston Globe Magazine profile of Kennedy:
“If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age,”
wrote the Globe’s Charles Pierce. The quote was recognized as the worst of the year at the MRC’s DisHonors Awards in 2004.
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Obama's Road to Healthcare Serfdom
President Obama is desperate to pass sweeping healthcare reform and now has resorted to pure socialist rhetoric to encourage Americans to support his plan. In his Saturday radio and internet address, President Obama encouraged Americans to call upon
"what's best in each of us to make life better for all of us."
Fortunately, an accurate account of history and a long line of great thinkers point out the contradiction in the President's remark, which is an obvious appeal for Socialism.
The most notable of these thinkers is F.A. Hayek who educated readers about the unintended consequences of government planning in his famous work The Road to Serfdom. His central thesis can be summed up by the line,
"What has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it his heaven."
Regarding the self-sustaining nature of government insurance we have to look no further than Medicare. The following figure provided in the 2009 report from the Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees illustrates that since its inception Medicare has never been self-sustaining based on its dedicated revenue from payroll taxes and premium payments despite the fact that it reimburses at rates 20% less than private insurers.
Medicare has relied on increasing contributions from the general fund revenue for years and this trend only shows signs of increasing... [snip]
Hayek believed that through the inevitable mismanagement of resources and goods at the disposal of the state, all forms of collectivism lead eventually to tyranny... [snip]
There should be no doubt, this fight over healthcare reform is much bigger than providing a public option or not; it's about changing the core principles this country was founded upon; it's about individual freedom versus the tyranny of socialism.
Here's how: ...
[The steps, many already taken, down the path to serfdom through the government's control of a critical service - Highly Recommended > ]
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Obama 2006: Combining Private and Public Health Insurance 'Worst of Both Worlds'
As Barack Obama and his media minions try to force healthcare reform down the throats of the American people, the President has repeatedly said that a public option would increase competition for private insurance companies and thereby drive down prices.
This apparently wasn't his view in 2006 when he said the expansion of medicare to include prescription drug coverage for seniors was "the worst of both worlds: we've got the price gouging of the private sector and the bureaucracy of the public sector."
One would think that in the middle of the current debate about healthcare reform an honest media would share what then Sen. Obama told CBS's Bob Schieffer on June 14, 2006, and that the President would be asked what he meant back then as well as what changed his mind about such a combination:
Think we'll be seeing this video during the Sunday political talk shows tomorrow, or that the President -- whenever his vacation ends -- will be asked to elaborate on this statement three years ago?
If this does get covered, so-called journalists might also point out that during this same interview, then Sen. Obama told Schieffer that President Bush should alter the caustic political tone in Washington by reigning in the partisan attacks by his surrogates:
If Obama felt it was the President's responsibility to prevent partisan attacks in 2006, shouldn't media hold him to the same standard now that he's in the White House?
Or would that be too much like journalism?
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Cop Forces Town Hall Protester to Take Down Anti-Obama Sign
"It ain't [America] no more, okay?"
So amazingly said a police officer at a town hall meeting in Reston, Virginia, Tuesday when he refused to allow a protester to display an anti-ObamaCare sign (pictured right).
I kid you not.
If we had an honest media in America, the following video would have been broadcast repeatedly over the past few days to demonstrate how free speech in our nation is indeed under attack (h/t Gary G. Howell):
[WATCH THIS > ]
Shocking.
Rush Limbaugh was quite right Wednesday when he told Fox News's Glenn Beck, "It is the most dangerous time in my life for freedom and liberty in this country."
It certainly is. [Hence my problem with slamming Rush for his narcissistic and bombastic style; his core points {when he finally makes them} are more often right than wrong.]
Too bad we currently have a media unwilling to report such tyranny and too stupid to understand that these restrictions to free speech will eventually affect them as well.
[Unfortunately the video implies, and I've read nothing to suggest otherwise, that the protester acquiesced to the cops demands. That won't do, in that it's basically doing nothing in the presence of wrongdoing. He should have refused and been arrested {as the officer promises in the video} so he could challenge this behavior in court where such conduct must be fought.]
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Thugs
."If you want the next four years lookin' like the last eight, then I'm not your candidate. But if you want real change...then I need you. I need you to go out and talk to your friends, talk to your neighbors...I want you to argue with them, get in their faces...you guys are the ones who can make the change."- Candidate Barack Obama to supporters 2008
Early last fall, an old friend of mine and long-time volunteer for Republican women's associations, called me from her home in Orlando, Florida. She was quite shaken. She had just returned from what was intended to be a small, quiet McCain support outing, just like the ones she had been dutifully attending for 30 years.
The small group of middle-aged homemakers took their little signs to an approved street corner, carried their small American flags and assembled to do their hour's vote-for-our-guy walk before heading off to the nearest coffee shop to divvy up coming-week duties of stuffing envelopes and making phone calls.
But something had changed between the last election and 2008.
My friend told of a morning from hell, in which the women were rudely accosted on the street by young male thugs (her word), who called them "c*nts," "whitey whores" and "stupid bitches." These young males got in their faces and jostled them with angry shoves.
My friend said that in all the years she had been doing just this simple patriotic activity, she had never had such a frightening experience. It was to be the first of several, which have left her shaken to this day... [snip]
Dr. Lynette Long, a former Hillary supporter compiling data on what she deemed, "Caucus Fraud." She referred me to a set of video testimonials, in which middle-aged women mostly, gave grizzly accounts of the same thuggery employed against them in caucus settings.
The data compiled by Dr. Long, along with the video-recorded testimonials of dozens of caucus-goers, are indeed convincing.
According to Dr. Long, in a personal interview, reports from caucus attendees are pretty horrifying at worst, wholly undemocratic at best. Female Clinton supporters reported being called "c*nts" and other sexual epithets, being spat upon by Obama supporters, being threatened physically, and an overall environment of hostility...[snip]
In the end, it was the caucus states, where such strong-arm tactics were employed by Obama supporters, which finally gave Obama the victory. As Dr. Long points out, the only caucus in the entire nominating contest that Obama lost was Nevada. In every other caucus, relying heavily on thug intimidation, Obama prevailed.
So, it should come as no surprise to anyone that the same thug tactics are now being used against MediCoup** resisters at town halls around the Country...
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CIA Investigation insanity
Flashback to 9/11 and imagine the reaction if George Bush stood with the firemen amid the smoldering ruins and said the United States government will prosecute CIA interrogators for blowing cigar smoke in the face of the terrorist masterminds... [snip]
The Attorney General, Eric Holder, worked for the law firm that defended terrorists before he was chosen by Obama to lead the Justice Department, similar to putting the lawyer for an organized crime family in charge of the FBI... [snip]
What happened to the critic's complaint that President Bush wasted precious seconds seated in front of school children instead of manning the battle stations during 9/11? They're now complaining the CIA was too mean? In a war where the enemy uses women with Down's syndrome as suicide bombers in city markets, making threats is considered torture?
The Cold War was replaced by the War on Terror which now has been replaced by the War on 1970s Television.
The generation growing up with "All in the Family" and "M*A*S*H" are now in positions of power. Meathead has gone to Washington. Corporal Klinger is a K Street lobbyist for GE and the green industrial complex...
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The Commander in Chief Hides
The president has been playing the “Look, Ma—no hands!” game for the better part of a week, denying responsibility for the decision to name a special prosecutor to go after CIA operatives interrogating terrorists overseas.
Democrats are ignoring the whole thing, now dimly aware that this is not the sort of thing the public likes. Conservatives are furious and taking the president to task for his refusal to take responsibility for the decision and not stop what is in his power to end...
[And nary a peep from the MSM...]
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Lockerbie bomber 'set free for oil'
The British government decided it was “in the overwhelming interests of the United Kingdom” to make Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, eligible for return to Libya, leaked ministerial letters reveal.
Gordon Brown’s government made the decision after discussions between Libya and BP over a multi-million-pound oil exploration deal had hit difficulties. These were resolved soon afterwards...
..and not a peep from the White House...
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POLL: 82% Oppose Decision To Release Lockerbie Terrorist
Eighty-two percent (82%) of Americans disagree with the decision to release the terminally ill terrorist convicted of blowing up a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland so he could return home to die in his native Libya.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 10% agree with Scotland’s decision to release Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the only person convicted in the incident in which 270 people were killed. Eight percent (8%) are not sure.
Sizable majorities in every demographic category disagree with the decision to return the convicted Libyan terrorist to his own country.
Many U.S. politicians are now questioning the decision, charging the British government may have been seeking lucrative oil deals with the Libyans and pressured the Scots to release the terrorist...
[Relying on the middle east for oil is suicidal - yet we continue to do so despite our having more reserves than it does...]
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Energy saving light bulbs offer dim future
Energy saving light bulbs are not as bright as their traditional counterparts and claims about the amount of light they produce are ''exaggerated'', the European Union has admitted.
Soon they will be the only kind of light bulb allowed, but now officials in Brussels have admitted that energy-saving bulbs are not as bright as the old-fashioned kind they are replacing...
[How much did they spend on studies to determine the obvious?]
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GERMANY: GETTING AROUND THE EU BAN
As the deadline for the implementation of the first phase of the European Union's ban on incandescent light bulbs approaches, German shoppers, retailers and even museums are hoarding the precious wares -- and helping the manufacturers make a bundle.
The EU ban calls for the gradual replacement of traditional light bulbs with supposedly more energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs (CFL). The first to go will be 100-watt bulbs. Bulbs of other wattages will then gradually fall under the ban by 2012.
But many have mocked the light bulb legislation as just another example of an EU bureaucracy gone wild. In fact, in creating this legislation, the EU failed to address consumer preferences and the reservations of a number of other groups:
- For example, many have complained that the light emitted by a CFL bulb is colder and weaker and that its high-frequency flickering can cause headaches.
- Then there are complaints about the mercury the CFL bulbs contain, how there is no system for disposing of them in a convenient and environmentally friendly way, and how they allegedly result in exposure to radiation levels higher than allowed under international guidelines.
- For some, the issue is also one of broken promises: manufacturers of CFL bulbs justify their higher prices by claiming that they last much longer than traditional bulbs, but a recent test found that 16 of the 32 bulb types tested gave up after 6,000 hours of use.
- And then, of course, there's the issue of the light the bulbs emit. Many complain that the lights are just not bright enough and that they falsify colors.
Bi-Polar Liberals?
For example, they talk incessantly about "choice", as in a woman's right to choose. Or "choosing a life style", which is code for appeals to the gay and lesbian community.
But even though the LPDs preach "tolerance" and "diversity", in terms of certain other "choices" they are utterly intolerant.
School choice comes to mind. As does any healthcare choice other than the so-called public option for health care insurance.
So, are they for or against the concept of individual choice? [snip]
And this apparent bi-polar disorder reveals itself in areas other than healthcare.
Take the Global Warming (Oops, I mean 'Climate Change') debate. LPDs announce that all CO2 emissions from ANY source are evil and are in fact, according to NY Times writer Paul Krugman, "treason against the planet". So the LPDs have determined that we must destroy our economy, reduce our standard of living, and risk the lives of the elderly living on minimal incomes by raising the costs for them to heat their homes - while the Obama administration loans [guarantees the loans] Brazil two billion dollars to develop it's offshore reserves.
Of course China and India have both said they won't even consider adopting such economy-killing restrictions. In fact, the Chinese are planning to continue their massive expansion of coal fired electrical generating plants which will more than offset in CO2 emissions what the LPDs will "cap" with the Waxman-Markey climate bill...
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