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[HT:LH]
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Our 'Intolerance Festival'
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It’s very easy to be outraged by the way our "objective" media greeted the massive September 12 rally against Big Government in Washington and across the country. They treated it as a menacing surge of white anger, meanness, and racism.
But all the media bias against this rally clearly illustrates one nagging truth for media liberals: they really don’t think conservatives should be allowed to protest. It’s somehow like a copyright violation.
On Monday night’s "Countdown," MSNBC’s David Shuster found the protest united "in apparent hatred of the current president, Barack Obama." It was undemocratic, a sign of people not accepting election results, and Shuster even suggested Sen. Jim DeMint’s speech at the rally signaled he favored a "military coup." The unglued anchorman also dismissed the crowd as "white, whiter, and whitest," all attending an "intolerance festival."
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Jimmy Carter: Wilson's Obama Outburst Racist
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ATLANTA – Former President Jimmy Carter says Congressman Joe Wilson's outburst to President Barack Obama last week was an act "based on racism." Carter says Wilson's comment was part of an "inherent feeling" of some in this country who feel that a black man should not be president.
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Wilson's Son Says Dad Is Not Racist
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"There is not a racist bone in my dad's body," said Alan Wilson, an Iraq veteran who is running for state attorney general in South Carolina. "He doesn't even laugh at distasteful jokes. I won't comment on former President Carter, because I don't know President Carter. But I know my dad, and it's just not in him."
"It's unfortunate people make that jump. People can disagree -- and appropriately disagree -- on issues of substance, but when they make the jump to race it's absolutely ludicrous. My brothers and I were raised by our parents to respect everyone regardless of background or race."
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FLASHBACK:
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2009
Joe Wilson's War
Discourse: The reaction to the congressman's outburst shows what happens when you judge this president by the content of his character.
In a post-racial presidency, charges of racism are the new last refuge of scoundrels...
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Matthews: Was Joe Wilson Outburst 'A Race Thing?'
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Chris Matthews, on Tuesday’s "Hardball," insinuated racism may have been behind Rep. Joe Wilson's outburst against President Obama, at last week’s health care speech, as he repeatedly asked his guests if they thought Wilson's exclamation was "A race thing," that represented "the old black/white attitude of the South."
In the very first segment of the show Matthews pressed Democratic Congresswoman Donna Edwards,
"Do you think this is a race thing...I mean was it a racial thing on the part of Wilson? Was he expressing contempt for Barack Obama because of his heritage?"
For her part Edwards insisted, "I don’t think that at all." [audio available here]
However Matthews persisted and, later in the show, got the reply he desired from the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson, as seen in the following exchange:
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WashPost Ignores Own Poll Finding: 54 Percent Say the More They Learn About ObamaCare, the Less They Like It
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This particular poll result was not mentioned anywhere in the story about the poll that was posted by the Washington Post on its Web site on Monday. The result did appear in the data sheet from the poll that was linked to the story.
The 54% who now say that the more they hear about Obama’s health-care plan, the less they like it is larger than the percentage who answered a similar question about then-First Lady Hillary Clinton’s health-care plan back in 1993 and 1994.
The new finding comes on the heels of an extraordinary effort by the president to sell his plan. On Wednesday evening, the president gave a nationally televised primetime speech to a joint session of Congress that was solely focused on pitching the health care plan...
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Obama Healthcare Speech No Game-Changer
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Something absolutely shocking happened on Monday's "Good Morning America": ABC's George Stephanopoulos told the nation that the President's healthcare address to the country Wednesday did nothing to change Americans' views about ObamaCare.
Referring to a new ABC News/Washington Post poll released moments earlier, Stephanopoulos shared numbers with host Diane Sawyer indicating the President's speech wasn't the game-changer Democrats and the Obama-loving media had hoped.
And, you can see by the expression on Stephanopoulos's face that no one was more disappointed than him (video embedded below the fold with some of the poll results, h/t Jake Tapper):
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Most Still Oppossed to President's Health Care Plan
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Following President Obama’s speech to Congress Wednesday night, a plurality of voters are still opposed. While gains in favorability were made, all appear to have come from Democrats.
New Rasmussen Reports national polling - conducted over the two nights following the speech - shows that while 47% of Americans now favor the plan proposed by the president and congressional Democrats forty-nine percent (49%) of voters remain opposed to the plan.
The gain in overall support for the plan comes entirely from Democrats. Eighty-four percent (84%) of those in the President’s party now support the health care plan, up from 72% earlier in the week. Support among Republicans is unchanged.
Notably, support among those not affiliated with either major party has fallen after Obama's prime time address...
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TRANSPARENCY IN THE HEALTH INSURANCE MARKET
There is a remedy for shaking up the private health insurance market: increased transparency. And unlike the public option, this is actually favored by voters.
Americans overwhelmingly want the government to require that performance ratings on hospitals and doctors be publicly available, say Regina Herzlinger, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and Peter Pronovost, a professor of anesthesiology and critical-care medicine and health policy and management at Johns Hopkins University.
Transparency could stimulate competition by revealing which insurance companies and policies provide the most medical-care benefits and best outcomes per dollar, which ones offer the best doctors and hospitals, and which ones hassle sick people the least.
Armed with answers to these questions, consumers could reward best value. If insurers with lackluster scores do not improve, competitors would enter this surprisingly entrepreneurial market. (The leading providers of high-deductible insurance, for example, were formed only nine years ago.)
Further, the mere act of providing data motivates providers to effect changes, a phenomenon known as "the audit effect,":
- The CBO estimated that sharing peer-profile scorecards with physicians would save Medicare $350 billion from 2010 to 2014.
- Evidence confirms that hospitals respond to publicly reported data with efforts to improve patient care and their standing in reports.
- For example, although Johns Hopkins researchers virtually eliminated one type of hospital infection in Michigan intensive-care units, this intervention disseminated slowly, probably because infection rates are invisible.
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A promise fulfilled: US to talk directly with Iran
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Obama may have broken dozens of promises he made during the campaign. I just wish he would have broken the one where he promised to establish direct talks with Iran. And to make matters even worse, Obama has agreed not even to discuss Iran's nuclear program:
Glenn Kessler of WaPo has the story:
The United States has decided to ignore Iran's refusal to discuss its nuclear program and instead accept a vague Iranian plan for talks as in the hope of drawing Tehran into real negotiations.
Iran this week ruled out talks on its program, instead offering a five-page plan that it said would lay the groundwork for peace and stability in the region.
The document made no reference to international demands that Iran suspend its efforts to enrich uranium...
And what happened to Obama's other promise - you know, the one where he said he wouldn't talk to the Iranians unless their nuclear program was included?
The sell out begins.
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Chavez: Nothing Will Stop Venezuela Going Nuclear
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CARACAS, Venezuela -- Hugo Chavez wants to join the nuclear energy club and is looking to Russia for help in getting started.
"I say it before the world: Venezuela is going to start the process of developing nuclear energy, but we're not going to make an atomic bomb, so don't be bothering us afterward ... (with) something like what they have against Iran,"
Russia has offered to help bridge both the technological and financial gap, and Chavez has announced that the two countries have created an atomic energy commission.
[Every time American communicate weakness the despots emerge.
Every time.]
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Look who wants to be Russian president - again
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Why Vladimir Putin continues the charade of running for any office is beyond me. He should just drop all the pretension and declare himself president for life.
Luke Harding and David Hearst of the Guardian have the details... [snip]
'So, while Communism has been pushed into the background in Russia thanks to Reagan, Putin and his KGB thugs will continue to rule. Democracy, while not completely dead, nevertheless is under attack - literally. Putin doesn't arrest opponents very often. He simply has them murdered. In that respect, Putin is worse than the Communists and will continue to rule with an iron hand until he is deposed or until he dies.'
[But it's the US that needs 'reset' our relationship with Russia? Our current administration is empowering Putin with its embarrassing acquiescence.]
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Eastern Europe not feeling the love from Obama
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Czechs feel betrayed, Poles irked, Romanians slighted. Ask them who's to blame, and the answer may come as a surprise: President Barack Obama.
George W. Bush fawned over Eastern Europe's recently free democracies, and its leaders rushed to join his post-9/11 "coalition of the willing."
Now many—officials and ordinary citizens alike—are grumbling over what they perceive as the Obama administration's neglect...
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BOWING TO THE GLOBAL TAX BULLIES
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A meeting was held in Mexico City last week under the auspices of the Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), whose implicit goal is to create a global high-tax cartel.
In order to create a global tax cartel, the OECD needs to have tax information shared among nations -- which means that the citizen of any country that signs on to this scheme may have his or her tax information shared with other member jurisdictions.
- The OECD has managed to get 87 jurisdictions to sign on to its global "tax standard."
- The high-tax countries are using the OECD to threaten low-tax jurisdictions to sign this agreement.
- It is worth noting that the tax bullies at the OECD and at other international organizations, such as the United Nations, International Monetary Fund and World Bank, who demand that others pay higher taxes, enjoy tax-free personal income courtesy of the world's taxpayers.
The OECD is supporting the double taxation of capital and trying to quash those jurisdictions that do not levy multiple taxes on savings and investment, i.e., productive capital.
If the OECD ultimately gets its way, individuals and businesses trying to protect themselves from multiple taxation from thuggish and rapacious governments will have nowhere to go...
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FLASHBACK:
THE GLOBAL TAX REVOLUTION
Policymakers in international organizations such as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the European Commission and the United Nations (UN) want to create an OPEC for taxes to insulate governments from tax competition.
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RESEARCH: $100 BILLION ED. STIMULUS HURTING ECONOMY
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A July 2008 study in the Journal of Policy Sciences finds that higher spending on public schooling is associated with lower subsequent economic growth. Spending more on public schools hurts the U.S. economy.
How is that possible?
There is little debate - in academic circles - that raising human capital -- improving the skills and knowledge of workers -- boosts productivity. So an obvious interpretation of the JPS study is that raising public school spending must not increase human capital.
While this possibility surprised study authors Norman Baldwin and Stephen Borrelli, it is consistent with the data on U.S. educational productivity over the past two generations.
- Since 1970, inflation adjusted public school spending has more than doubled.
- Over the same period, achievement of students at the end of high school has stagnated according to the Department of Education's own long term National Assessment of Educational Progress.
- Meanwhile, the high school graduation rate has declined by 4 percent or 5 percent, according to Nobel laureate economist James Heckman.
- So the only thing higher public school spending has accomplished is to raise taxes by about $300 billion annually, without improving outcomes.
Based on this body of research, the president's decision to pump $100 billion into existing public school systems is likely slowing the U.S. economic recovery.
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Biden ignores problems with stimulus
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Vice President Joe Biden proclaimed success beyond expectations Thursday for the $787 billion economic stimulus, but his glowing assessment overlooks many of the program's problems, including delays in releasing money, questionable spending priorities and project picks that are under investigation.
"The Recovery Act is doing more, faster and more efficiently and more effectively than most people expected," [snip]
But most states are spending stimulus money on bridges that are already in good shape - of the 2,476 bridges scheduled to receive stimulus money so far, nearly half have passed inspections with high marks, according to federal data.
Those 1,123 sound bridges received such high inspection ratings that they normally would not qualify for federal bridge money, yet they will share in more than $1.2 billion in stimulus money.
The vice president's speech is part of a concerted White House push in advance of the 200th day of the stimulus act on Saturday. Five top administration officials also were speaking about the law's benefits on Thursday in appearances in Arkansas, Virginia, Illinois, California and Minnesota.
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