Tuesday, April 20, 2010
CNN Guest Slams an 'Angry' White, Male, Reactionary Tea Party Movement 'Mired in the Past'
Subject: txt 2010 lbrty msm - NYT's Zernike
New York Times reporter Kate Zernike, the paper's main reporter on the Tea Party beat, dropped all pretense of fairness in her story for the front of the Sunday Week in Review,
"Tea Party Supporters Doing Fine, but Angry Nonetheless." ... "They tend to be white and male, with a disproportionate number above 45, and above 65. Their memories are of a different time, when the country was less diverse."
Zernike boiled down the results from the paper's recent polling of the Tea Party movement, keeping only what could be spun as racial or extreme views on the part of participants...
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'Watch Your Words,' ABC Advances Clinton's Charge Anti-Obama Rhetoric 'Could Lead to Violent Acts'
Subject: txt msm bias 1st bdd vals -
“Watch your words,” fill-in ABC anchor Elizabeth Vargas scolded in teasing Friday's World News, as she trumpeted: “Former President Clinton warns harsh anti-government talk could lead to violent acts, like the Oklahoma City bombing.”
Introducing the subsequent story, Vargas identified talk radio and Tea Party participants as the culprits:
"There is a lot of attention tonight on comments made by former President Bill Clinton, who has weighed in on the angry anti-government rhetoric, ringing out from talk radio to Tea Party rallies..."
[As opposed to movies about the assassination of Bush that weren't covered by the MSM at all.]
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Tea Parties & The Inconvenience of Truth
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Protest is the essence of America. It formed the nation. To say people attending these rallies are loons is to say the same of those who dumped tea into Boston Harbor to protest British taxes.
Yet to read or watch what remains of the mainline press, tea partiers at Tax Day rallies are nothing good -- racists, fascists, gun nuts, gay-bashers, militant separatists. They are described as generally hateful, ignorant, unhinged, and of course extreme.
Most are none of those things. Rather, they are largely independent voters angry at relentless Democratic leftism, frustrated by big-spending Republicanism (primarily under Bush II), and outraged by the hubris, pretension, shameless immoralism, and patronizing arrogance so widespread among the lofties in both political parties.
Are these people lopsidedly Christian? Yes indeed -- and so is the nation. Are they conservative? Yes again, and hence typical of how a large percentage of voters describe themselves (a percentage consistently twice that of voters describing themselves as liberals).
Are they loons swimming out of the mainstream? Here's NPR and Fox analyst Juan Williams:
A Pew poll in early March found 78 percent of Americans "dissatisfied with the way things are going in the country today." . . . A Fox poll in February found that 59 percent say they don't trust the federal government. A CNN poll the same month reported results that suggest 56 percent are well beyond mere mistrust: They agree that the federal government is "so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens..." [snip]
With all that, would it be too much to suggest the tea partiers are riding to the nation's rescue on the political/ideological inconvenience of the truth?
[Recommended > ]
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Video: TEA Party Crashers
[HT:SU]
During the tax day TEA Party rally in Washington, D.C., Eyeblast.tv's Stephen Gutowski interviewed some suspicious characters with outlandish signs. Despite their best attempts to conceal their smirks these three clearly come off as TEA Party crashers:
Click here to watch the full unedited interview.
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Criminalizing Debate
Subject: txt lbrty crpt libs - 
Free Speech: Those fighting unprecedented federal expansion appeal to constitutional principles. With Bill Clinton deployed to demonize the Tea Party movement, is it really the Constitution those in power fear?
There is something terrifying to Democratic leaders about the flavor and the force of the Tea Party, so on the eve of the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, they portrayed the group as a bunch of Timothy McVeighs.
Joe Klein of Time magazine, whose "anonymous" novel "Primary Colors" sought to immortalize the Clintons, on Sunday told Chris Matthews on NBC that the statements of Fox News commentator Glenn Beck and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin "rub right up close to being seditious."
Sedition — it's a word usually reserved for government moles who deliver secrets that uncover our spies and get them killed, or conspirators constructing fertilizer bombs in the basement.
Is it really seditious to warn that forcing Americans to buy insurance might violate our constitutional rights? Do you have to be a member of a right-wing militia to worry that we're speeding ever faster toward a fiscal train wreck? Are you a deranged John Hinckley wannabe if you express concern about the administration softening our nuclear use doctrine, or scaling down missile defense?
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[I'd say 'portrayal' vs. reality.]
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Obama administration already laying groundwork for VAT
Subject: txt libs mny lbrty -
According to the New York Times, the Obama administration’s economic team is already running the numbers to prepare for the possibility of instituting a national value added tax. A more aggressive approach would seek quick action on Social Security.
One way to reach that 3 percent goal, by the calculations of Mr. Obama’s economic team: a 5 percent value-added tax, which would generate enough revenue to pay for the looming costs of the recently passed health care legislation...
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EUROPE'S VAT LESSONS: RATES START LOW AND INCREASE, WHILE INCOME TAX RATES STAY HIGH
[You need to read up on this because it IS coming if we're the least bit lethargic about its defeat.]
Paul Volcker, Nancy Pelosi, John Podesta and other allies of the Obama Administration have already floated the idea of an American VAT, so how has it has worked in Europe, asks the Wall Street Journal?
- A VAT is essentially a national sales tax that is assessed at each stage of production, with the total bill passed along to consumers at the cash register.
- In the United States, a federal VAT would presumably be levied on top of state and local sales taxes that range as high as 10 percent.
VATs were sold in Europe as a way to tax consumption, which in principle does less economic harm than taxing income, savings or investment, says the Journal:
- This sounds good, but in practice the VAT hasn't replaced the income tax, or even resulted in a lower income-tax rate.
- The top individual income tax rate remains very high in Europe despite the VAT, with an average on the continent of about 46 percent.
- In the United States, VAT proponents aren't calling for a repeal of the 16th Amendment that allowed the income tax -- and, in fact, they want income tax rates to also rise.
One trait of European VATs is that while their rates often start low, they rarely stay that way, says the Journal:
- Of the 10 major Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations with VATs or national sales taxes, only Canada has lowered its rate.
- Denmark has gone to 25 percent from 9 percent, Germany to 19 percent from 10 percent, and Italy to 20 percent from 12 percent.
The nonpartisan Tax Foundation recently calculated that to balance the U.S. federal budget with a VAT would require a rate of at least 18 percent - to start...
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Is Government-Subsidized News on the Way?
Subject: txt msm bdd sclm bbro -
Is the Federal Communications Commission building a case for government-subsidized news? It’s not hard to imagine that will be the outcome of the Commission’s “Future of Media” inquiry. The digital age has produced a “democratic shortfall,” according to one source cited in the inquiry’s public notice. Another scholar working on the project for the FCC has said that today’s media abundance calls for “public media entities” that will serve “as both a filter to reduce information overload and a megaphone to give voice to the unheard.”
In other words, a free marketplace of ideas isn’t good enough for some. They want the government to pick winners and losers—as long as the winners express views with which they happen to agree. Care to guess which views those will be?
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POLL: 57% Have More Trust In Those In Congress Who Voted Against Bailouts
Subject: txt sclm 2010 mny -
Voters have opposed bailouts from the start. Most continue to believe they were the wrong thing to do and bad for the economy. Voters consistently opposed the bailouts from the start.
Fifty-six percent (56%) of all voters also agree with President Reagan’s declaration in his first inaugural address in 1980 that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” That’s little changed since October 2008 when the bailouts began. Most also shared Reagan’s view in late February 2009 following passage of the $787-billion economic stimulus plan.
Not surprisingly, the Political Class has major problems with Reagan’s assessment. Eighty-eight percent (88%) of the Political Class disagree with the notion that government is the problem. Among Mainstream voters on the other hand, 75% think Reagan was right.
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White House Caught Altering Stimulus Baseline Projection by 7 Million Jobs
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The number of jobs in the U.S. is currently 129.7 million. So to justify the Administration’s current claim of 2.8 million jobs “created or saved” by stimulus, they need to also claim that without that stimulus there would be only 126.9 million jobs. That’s exactly what they do, displayed as the “baseline projection” level in the graphic below from an April 14, 2010 report:
An inconvenient truth, at least for the Obama Administration, is that once upon a time, in their January 2009 Romer/Bernstein Report they told America that without their stimulus there would be 133.9 million jobs.
That’s right, in order to make it look like their stimulus has “created or saved” 2.8 million jobs, the Obama Administration first had to whack 7 million jobs from their previous estimates...READ MORE
A Non-Solution For A Nuclear Iran
Subject: txt nsec iran owg -
The U.S. is spending endless time and diplomatic capital pushing for more economic sanctions to stop Tehran from building nuclear weapons — a strategy that won't work even if it's somehow put in place.
The president is doing all the things recommended by the professional diplomatic geniuses who see the United Nations as the Master Key to all global problem-solving and the dream of world peace.
The way the president is doing this is an internationalist's dream: Instead of throwing America's weight around and making secret deals, he invited all the heavy hitters to Washington and sat them at a roundtable while the news cameras rolled.
True global democracy, led by a U.S. president who doesn't believe in American might — that'll solve the Islamist nuclear threat.
But it isn't solving it...
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Donkey bomb kills 3 children in Afghanistan's Kandahar
Subject: txt islm - gwot - 
Kandahar, Afghanistan - A bomb strapped to the back of a donkey blew up in the centre of Afghanistan's southern city of Kandahar on Monday, killing three children and wounding five people, officials said.
The bomb struck close to a police post guarding the residence of a tribal chief and ally of President Hamid Karzai in an area of the city where several government buildings are located. Zalmai Ayoubi, a spokesman for the provincial governor, said three nephews of the tribal chief, Fazluddin, were killed...
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Top Qaeda Leaders in Iraq Killed in Raid
Subject: txt heroes - gwot -
BAGHDAD — Iraqi intelligence officers have located and killed Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki announced on Monday. Mr. Maliki said the intelligence team also killed Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the leader of an affiliated group, the Islamic State of Iraq, in an operation that was backed by American forces...
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IslamoCare
[HT:JW]Subject: txt islm edu -
The UK Department of Health recently announced that it would loosen hygiene rules for Muslim and Sikh doctors and nurses. From now on, Muslim female staff will not need to wash their hands before procedures as it compromises their modesty. Instead, they will have the admittedly less sanitary option of wearing disposable plastic over-sleeves.
Acknowledging the danger of microbes and death, a Department of Health spokesman said, “The guidance is intended to . . . balance infection control measures with cultural beliefs.” But, believe it or not, from a culturist perspective, the death of some patients is not the main cause for concern that this policy elicits.
The most dangerous problem is that this policy encodes multiculturalism not culturism. Whereas culturism acknowledges that England has a majority culture to protect and promote, this multiculturalist policy implicitly says that England has no core culture. It says that the nation can be whatever pressure groups decide it is. It, therefore, officially ends the dominance of English culture in England.
If you think this is hyperbole, consider the decision’s potential impact on schools...
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Univ. of Illinois Gives ‘Exceptional Achievement’ Award to Ecuador’s Terrorist Sponsoring President
Subject: txt edu libs othr - 
The University of Illinois Alumni Association recently awarded it’s “International Alumni Award for Exceptional Achievement” to the current President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa Delgado. Since the University of Illinois is the premier university for the state of Illinois, let’s see the list of accomplishments President Correa can boast of while claiming this prestigious award:
- Transparency International listed Ecuador as one of the world’s most corrupt countries under Correa.
- He has seized numerous TV and Radio outlets in his country.
- He has jailed reporters critical of his government.
- Organzied crime has had a magnificient rise during his reign.
- He has rammed through constitutional changes to increase his power and extend his term of office.
- He was found to have FARC terrorists fund his campaigns.
- Documents found by Colombia show that he has actively worked with FARC terrorists. FARC has also been involved with kindnapping Americans.
- Ecuador has provided a safe haven for FARC terrorists to launch attacks on Columbia, an ally of the United States.
- Ecuador has ties to both Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and has increased ties to Iran.
You could see awarding an individual responsible for the above antics (and more) at, say, Berkeley, but in the midwest? Then again, this is the same university system that employs and granted tenure to Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers...
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Supreme Court appears to back student group's exclusionary rules
Subject: txt bdd vals cali edu - 
WASHINGTON — Conservative Supreme Court justices appeared poised Monday to strike down a San Francisco law school's refusal to recognize a Christian student group because it effectively prohibits gays from joining.
With pointed questions and sharp tones, the court's most vocal conservatives repeatedly challenged the University of California's Hastings College of the Law's treatment of the Christian Legal Society.
The skeptics say the school violates the organization's First Amendment rights to define their own membership...
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Obama's Failure to Launch
Subject: txt hstry othr bdd - nasa - nsec -
In a speech to political allies gathered at Cape Canaveral last week, President Obama laid out his vision for America's space program.
Under the Obama plan, NASA will spend $100 billion on human spaceflight over the next 10 years in order to accomplish nothing.
Of course, that's not how Mr. Obama phrased it. But beneath the President's flowery rhetoric, that's how things add up.
Here's the background.
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America The Also-Ran
Leadership: In yet another example of this administration's rejection of American exceptionalism, science adviser John Holdren says the U.S. can't be expected to always be on top. How uninspiring. How wrong.
A little more than a year ago, the president himself said much the same thing at a NATO conference. "I believe in American exceptionalism," Barack Obama said, "just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism."
In other words, America might think it's special, but so do other countries. And there's no reason to believe they're wrong. It's all relative...
[From the President of the United States.]
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Liberal WaPo Columnist Attends Tea Party Rally; Discovers Refreshing Rationality
Robert McCartney, the liberal Washington Post columnist, has done something that Chris Matthews and his fellow leftist MSNBC hosts have yet to do: attend a tea party rally without being confrontational and/or snarky. McCartney went to a tea party with an open mind last week and this is what he discovered:
I went to the "tea party" rally at the Washington Monument on Thursday to check out just how reactionary and potentially violent the movement truly was.
Answer: Not very.
"Based on what I saw and heard, tea party members are not seething, ready-to-explode racists, as some liberal commentators have caricatured them."
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