Thursday, October 8, 2009
Opting Out of Medicare
Subject: txt 1st hcare -
A centerpiece of the debate over ObamaCare is government coercion and the right to choose a health-care plan. So it's worth watching a lawsuit now making its way through the federal courts that seeks to let seniors keep their Social Security benefits even if they reject Medicare.
Last week, Washington D.C. District Judge Rosemary Collyer handed a victory to three plaintiffs seeking that right.
This could be a big deal...
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Consumer Reports Tosses Political Neutrality Away
Subject: txt 1st hcare -
So much for any claim of political neutrality on the part of Consumer Reports.
They have now come out in support of ObamaCare which you can see on their website along with their TV ad. Here is the message from the president of Consumers Union, Jim Guest, publisher of Consumer Reports:
READ MORE"today we are doing something that we've never done before. For the first time ever, Consumers Union is weighing in with a TV ad that calls on lawmakers to find a solution for health reform..."
Pimping For Al
Subject: txt crpt reps bdd - acorn -
EVEN the Democrats in Minnesota now realize their new US Sen. Al Franken was elected with the help of ACORN chicanery. The disgraced, pimp-friendly community organizing group claims it registered 43,000 new Minnesota voters.
If just 1 percent were fraudulent but survived the recount process, that's 430 votes, almost all cast for Franken, who won by just 312 votes.
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ACORN's Man in the White House
Subject: txt crpt -
Newly discovered evidence shows the radical advocacy group ACORN has a man in the Obama White House.
This power behind the throne is longtime ACORN operative Patrick Gaspard. He holds the title of White House political affairs director, the same title Karl Rove held in President Bush's White House.
Evidence shows that years before he joined the Obama administration, Gaspard was ACORN boss Bertha Lewis's political mentor...
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Investigate Jerry Brown
Subject: txt 1st crpt cali -
California’s Attorney General Jerry Brown is going to investigate
That’s right. He’s going after the filmmakers rather than the corruption exposed by their works.
He’d just assume rough up the young folks who caught ACORN committing unlawful acts while Gerry Brown and his staff weren’t catching ACORN committing unlawful acts.
Gerry Brown is one of ACORN’s A-rated attorneys general. In other words, all the while ACORN was engaged in its apparently many unlawful activities in his state, Gerry Brown was helping ACORN on the taxpayer dime.
It’s a bad sign, to say the least, when the chief law enforcement officer of a state is actually helping an entity that is running afoul of multiple laws. In fact, that should be career ending, which may explain his motives for going after the two young filmmakers in his investigation.
Factor in, if you will, the continuously emerging evidence that ACORN is an entity that has been actively engaging in partisan political activity favorable to Gerry Brown-types.
Brown’s office released a letter stating in part, "The Attorney General shares your concerns and he takes seriously his obligation to see that the laws of California are uniformly and adequately enforced."
Uh-huh.
Did I mention Gerry Brown wants to be governor of California?
Thoroughly and professionally investigating ACORN could hurt his get-out-the-vote efforts, and certainly might affect its vast network’s endorsement of him...
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Nation of Men, Not of Laws
Subject: txt 1st bbro crpt bdd vals lbrty -
Roman Polanski and his allies seek to rape the United States and her Constitution.
While this metaphor may seem repugnantly acerbic, it rings true...
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Repulsion: Polanski's horror story
Subject: txt bdd vals 1st -
How sickening is the chorus of sycophants and enablers defending Roman Polanski, the 76-year-old Polish director arrested at a Zurich film festival over a three decade-old statutory rape case.
Now that justice has, belatedly, come calling, we are treated to all manner of sophistry employed by politicians, commentators and celebrities and France's ''cultural elite'' to justify Polanski's crime.
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POLL: 78% of Those Following Polanski Story Say He Should Go To Prison
Subject: txt bdd vals msm bias -
Polanski, best known for the film "Chinatown," was recently arrested in Switzerland on an outstanding warrant from Los Angeles and is now the subject of extradition proceedings to bring him back to the United States.
He pleaded guilty to the 1977 rape but fled the United States out of fear that the judge in the case would send him to prison.
Since then, he has continued to make films overseas and been a high-profile international celebrity. Polanski’s surprise arrest prompted an outpouring of support from the Hollywood and international artistic community, but that has been muted in recent days with the retelling of the facts in the case.
The failure to arrest Polanski despite his high international visibility helps explain why 72% of Americans think celebrities get special treatment from the U.S. justice system. Only 15% think that system treats everybody about the same, while 13% are not sure.
Younger adults are even more skeptical of the U.S. justice system than their elders.
[Me, I'm a moderate on this issue: drag his ass back here to stand trial - then send him up the creek...]
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Hollywood demands Polanski's release
Subject: txt bdd vals msm fnn -
Woody Allen, Pedro Almodovar and Martin Scorsese have "demanded the immediate release" of fellow filmmaker Roman Polanski, who was arrested in Switzerland on a U.S. arrest warrant related to a child rape charge.
They were among 138 people in the film industry who signed a petition against the arrest.
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Obama seeks Afghanistan non-victory options
Subject: txt gwot -
Now, as a condition for approving his request for additional troops in Afghanistan, General McChrystal is launching a study creating various options for Obama, including some that reflect us being in this to win, others, not so much.
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Obama can't downsize to success in Afghanistan
Subject: txt gwot -
During last year's campaign, Barack Obama stressed that while he wanted to withdraw from Iraq, he was no pacifist. "As president," he said on July 15, 2008,
"I will make the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban THE top priority that it should be. This is a war that we have to win."
[Name one instance in the world's long history of warfare where 'moderation' every won a war. One. You either fight to win, or lose by default.
Worse, this particular situation is likely to prove {again} Jefferson's maxim that all wars must be won at all costs, as that is always less costly than losing.]
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FLASHBACK >
Lose Afghanistan, Lose Pakistan, Lose Iran, Lose It All
The gangster regimes of the world are on the march, and they've got our number...
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Delay on Troop Request for Afghanistan
Subject: txt gwot -
Is this any way to run a war?
Critics are lambasting President Obama for hitting the pause button on the war in Afghanistan, making U.S. commanders seeking thousands more troops there wait for a decision as he tries to get the "strategy right first.""You can't fight a war from Washington D.C. There's only one way this works: You have trust and confidence in the leaders on the ground, or you don't."
Some critics are going so far as to ask whether Obama is more concerned with finding a political strategy to ensure his re-election than he is in finding a military strategy to win the eight-year war...
[Asked and answered on both points.]
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Afghan War Hypocrites
Subject: txt gwot -
We are experiencing a festival of liberal hypocrisy on the Afghan war, as all the left-wing doves who touted the war as absolutely essential for years back off now that it's no longer a politically convenient war...
[Meanwhile, American servicemen die...]
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HOW URBAN PLANNERS CAUSED THE HOUSING BUBBLE
Subject: txt housing bbro sclm - othr -
Some people blame the Federal Reserve for keeping interest rates low; some blame the Community Reinvestment Act for encouraging lenders to offer loans to marginal homebuyers; others blame Wall Street for failing to properly assess the risks of subprime mortgages.
But all of these explanations apply equally nationwide, while a close look reveals that only some communities suffered from housing bubbles:
- Between 2000 and the bubble's peak, inflation- adjusted housing prices in California and Florida more than doubled, and since the peak they have fallen by 20 to 30 percent.
- In contrast, housing prices in Georgia and Texas grew by only about 20 to 25 percent, and they haven't significantly declined.
- In other words, California and Florida housing bubbled, but Georgia and Texas housing did not; this is hardly because people don't want to live in Georgia and Texas: since 2000, Atlanta, Dallas-Ft. Worth, and Houston have been the nation's fastest-growing urban areas, each growing by more than 120,000 people per year.
This suggests that local factors, not national policies, were a necessary condition for the housing bubbles where they took place.
The most important factor that distinguishes states like California and Florida from states like Georgia and Texas is the amount of regulation imposed on landowners and developers, and in particular a regulatory system known as growth management.
In short, restrictive growth management was a necessary condition for housing bubbles, all of which were regional.
States that use some form of growth management should repeal laws that mandate or allow such planning, and other states and urban areas should avoid passing such laws or implementing such plans; otherwise, the next housing bubble could be even more devastating than this one...
Source: Randal O'Toole, "How Urban Planners Caused the Housing Bubble," Cato Institute, October 2, 2009.
READ MORE
[Thomas Sowell's been warning us for years >
THE IMPACT OF 'SMART' GROWTH ON HOUSING AFFORDABILITY
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Identical Unemployment Numbers 'Good ' News for Obama, But 'All' Bad for Reagan
Subject: txt mny msm -
Unemployment is currently at a 26-year-high of 9.7 percent and expected to continue rising. The last president to govern with such high unemployment was President Ronald Reagan.
But in 1982, when unemployment was rising similarly to the way it has in 2009 the network news media were merciless quoting attacks from Democrats, union leaders and the unemployed to attack Reagan's "sadistic" fiscal policies.
2009 was a different story, for a different president. Even though unemployment has shot up from 8.1 percent since February, network reporters looked for "hopeful signs" of an economic turnaround in their jobs report.
The Business & Media Institute just released a Special Report: Networks Flip Flop on Jobs that exposes that double-standard of unemployment coverage from 1982 and 2009 (See video below). The full report is available here, but here are some of our major findings:
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Jobless Numbers Jump; Watch ABC's Bias Spin of 1982 vs 2009
Subject: txt msm mny -
Unemployment rose again in September, to 9.8 percent, with 263,000 jobs lost according to Bureau of Labor Statistics release. That followed months of positive economic coverage from the networks and begs the question: how with the network news spin that tonight?
The network news media have been manipulating bad jobs reports in Obama's favor since March as the unemployment rate rose from 8.1 percent in February to 9.7 percent in August. Reporters have found rehired people "doing backflips," in 2009, but the last time unemployment was that high network journalists found people living under bridges and plenty of "hopelessness." That was under President Ronald Reagan in 1982. But when Reagan was facing a similar rising unemployment rate the networks attacked him with it, month after month.
ABC anchor Charles Gibson illustrated how dramatically different the network coverage of Reagan and Obama really were by covering the exact same numbers in totally opposite fashion.(Watch video)
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Networks Coverage of Unemployment ‘13 Times More Negative to President Reagan than to Obama’
Subject: txt msm bias mny -
BMI's Julia A. Seymour appeared on today's Fox Business Live with Stuart Varney to discuss the discrepancy in media coverage of unemployment under Presidents Reagan and Obama.
Author of BMI's latest study, "Networks Flip-Flop on Jobs," Seymour explained her findings:
"We looked specifically at seven months of coverage in 1982 and again in 2009 that had very similar periods of unemployment where it was going up between 8 - between 8 and the high 9 percent range. And what we found was that the network reporting on ABC, NBC and CBS was overwhelmingly negative to Reagan but positive toward Obama. They were actually 13 times more negative to President Reagan than they were to Obama..."
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Name That Party: Broward County and Jersey City Episodes
Subject: txt msm fnn othr which party =
Okay ladies and gentlemen, it's time to once again play America's favorite political parlor game---Name That Party! And today we have a special two-part episode: Broward County and Jersey City. First up Broward County but I warn you, it won't be easy to figure out the political party to which the protagonists belong.
The Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel has certainly played along in keeping the party label under wraps as you can see in this story...
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MSNBC Drags Out Scarborough to Argue it's Not a 'One-Party' Network
Subject: txt msm bias fnn -
Political consultant Mike Murphy is a veteran defender of Old Media (he once praised Dan Rather to his face as unbiased on CNN), so it wasn’t surprising on Sunday’s Meet the Press when he accused Fox News and MSNBC of being dueling "freak shows...amplifying the shrillest voices" as "one-party cable networks."
What was amusing was Rachel Maddow pushing around Joe Scarborough as proof of MSNBC’s bipartisanship.
MADDOW: Wait, is, is Joe Scarborough, which network is he on? Which one-party network?
MURPHY: He's on your liberal network.
MADDOW: So he's the--how is that a one-party network?
This is where Murphy should have pulled out Scarborough’s Washington Monthly piece rooting for the Republicans to get "their brains beaten in" in 2006...
[I.e., it's called a token - but some folks fall for it again and again. Scarborough is conservative like Specter was Republican.]
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'Red Eye' Gets More 'Demo' Viewers at 3AM Than CNN Does at 8PM
CNN and Campbell Brown must be awfully proud of themselves.
After all, Brown's prime time television program which airs at 8PM ET is getting fewer viewers between the ages of 25 and 54 than Fox New's "Red Eye."
Here's the punch line: "Red Eye" is on at 3AM when most people in the country are asleep.
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-end 091008 post-
[way late, gotta go sorry]
[way late, gotta go sorry]
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