This blog is mainly about the spectacular train wreck at The Sacramento Bee and its parent company, the McClatchy Company. But I also post about current events, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, politics, anything else that grabs my attention. Take a look around this blog, hope you enjoy it.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Monday September 14 -- Got news or an update?
If you have news or a question, leave it in comments. . . .
43 comments:
Anonymous
said...
ACORN has partnered with the IRS!!!! --- Time for IRS to review all ACORN-prepared tax filings American Thinker ^Clarice Feldman
The federal government should review all tax returns prepared by ACORN tax preparers (and all loan applications prepared by ACORN -- but that is a separate review process). That the IRS knows who these people are is suggested by this article, which I suppose was repeated throughout the country: ... ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) Tax and Benefits Centers in Hartford and Bridgeport are ready to assist CT Taxpayers. ACORN has partnered with the IRS Volunteer Income Tax Preparation (VITA) program to provide free tax preparation for low and moderate income taxpayers who cannot afford...
What biased media? Good graph heading down to ZERO - Bwhahahaha-
Press Accuracy Rating Hits Two Decade Low Public Evaluations of the News Media: 1985-2009 The public’s assessment of the accuracy of news stories is now at its lowest level in more than two decades of Pew Research surveys, and Americans’ views of media bias and independence now match previous lows. Just 29% of Americans say that news organizations generally get the facts straight, while 63% say that news stories are often inaccurate. http://people-press.org/report/543/
House Democrats Will Seek Massive $540 Billion Tax Increase—Announcement Came Late Friday Afternoon
(CNSNews.com) - Despite a still-lagging U.S. economy and rising unemployment rate, House Democrats announced late yesterday that they will seek a massive increase in federal income taxes to help pay for the national health-care reform proposal that President Obama is urging Congress to enact this summer.
House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D.-N.Y.)revealed late Friday afternoon that House Democrats will seek to increase income taxes by $540 billion.
New York's Charles Rangel — a sign of the times (The Morning Journal)
REP. Charles Rangel (D-NY), chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, is becoming a metaphor for almost all the sins of our age.
Let us count the ways. How about corruption? Currently, Rangel is under investigation by two House subcommittees for illegally holding four rent-stabilized apartments in New York and not disclosing more than $75,000 in income from a rental villa he owns.
He also took free Caribbean trips paid for by corporate cronies and used his congressional letterhead to press for money for the City College of New York's new educational center, which bears his name.
Rangel also acknowledged that he improperly listed his assets, as required by law, and failed to report additional checking accounts valued between $250,000 and $500,000 — princely sums acquired on a congressional salary.
Try also hypocrisy. Rangel is the head of the Ways and Means Committee that writes the nation's income tax policy. The politician, who for generations has urged higher taxes, has chronically schemed to avoid paying them.
Don't dare try that if you are a waitress or schoolteacher. In this regard, Rangel is similar to other Obama cabinet nominees and secretaries like Tom Daschle and Timothy Geithner — advocates of higher taxes, and bigger government — who themselves were in violation of the federal tax code. In this weird new moral landscape, good public intentions apparently offset private lapses.
While Charles Rangel lived across the street in luxury Harlem digs, his tenants coped with collapsing ceilings, sinking floors and roaches.
In just one apartment in the six-unit building on West 132nd Street, city inspectors found nine violations in 2003.
Rangel and his wife, Alma -- the landlords -- were ordered to repair the wood floor in the entire apartment, plaster, paint, fix broken bathroom tiles and faulty window frames, and get rid of roaches and mice.
The city also found that the Rangels failed to file the building's annual occupancy statement five times between 1982 and 1996.
Reid, Pelosi Thank Union Members, Pledge Action (AFL-CIO)
The 2009 AFL-CIO Convention just got a message from the top leaders in Congress: We stand with you and with America’s workers. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the leader of the U.S. House, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) each delivered a video message to the opening session of the convention.
Pelosi thanked outgoing AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and the union movement, crediting union members with taking the lead in winning a pro-worker Congress and giving them the momentum needed to pass legislation that really changed lives.
SNIP
Reid also said he wants to swiftly pass the Employee Free Choice Act.
I’m as committed today as ever to passing the Employee Free Choice Act and making it law.
It’s a sign of the changes the union movement has helped to make in this country that the top leaders in Congress are so enthusiastic to offer thanks to union members at this Convention.
US tyre duties spark China clash (Obama sides with the Unions again!)Financial Times UK
A full-blown trade row erupted between the US and China after Beijing accused Washington of “rampant protectionism” for imposing heavy duties on imported Chinese tyres and threatened action against imports of US poultry and vehicles.
Trade relations between two of the world’s biggest economies deteriorated after Barack Obama, US president, signed an order late on Friday to impose a new duty of 35 per cent on Chinese tyre imports on top of an existing 4 per cent tariff.
In his first big test on world trade since taking office in January, Mr Obama sided with America’s trade unions, which have complained that a “surge” in imports of Chinese-made tyres had caused 7,000 job losses among US factory workers.
Home Delivery: The New York Times Serves Up Some Malware (NYT website distributing ad virus)(All Things Digital)
Here’s a front page story the New York Times (NYT) would rather not be running: The paper is warning readers to be aware of bogus ads running on its Web site.
The paper says “some readers” have seen unauthorized pop-up ads promoting antivirus software on NYTimes.com, and warns visitors who see the ad not to click on it but to restart their browsers instead.
While the Times doesn’t spell this out, it has likely had its site hijacked by a “malware” scammer who is trying to trick visitors into installing pernicious software onto their hard drives.
ACORN Video: Prostitution Scandal in New York, NY (biggovernment.com)
This recent scam, which was attempted in San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia to name a few places, had failed for months before the results we’ve all recently seen. -Bertha Lewis, Chief Organizer, ACORN
It's remarkable that in the whole brouhaha about Joe Wilson shouting "You lie!" at President Obama's assertion that illegal immigrant won't be covered by Obamacare, no one has pursued the question, "Who's right?" So here's the answer. Yes, illegal immigrants will be covered for Obamacare. Or rather, "Illegal immigrants may be legally ineligible for Obamacare, but they'll get covered anyway." How do we know this?
Filmmaker Demands Apology From ACORN for Claiming Undercover Video 'Doctored' (Fox News)
The independent filmmaker whose hidden-camera videos prompted the firing of four ACORN workers is demanding an apology from ACORN for calling his work a fabricated "scam" and daring the activist group to take legal action against him.
"Bring it on," filmmaker James O'Keefe said Sunday on FOX News. That was after ACORN lashed out at O'Keefe, who with his friend Hannah Giles posed as a pimp and prostitute looking to evade the IRS and apply for an illegal housing loan for a brothel.
The sting operation caught four ACORN workers in the Baltimore and Washington, D.C., offices appearing to offer their help.
Those workers were subsequently fired, and the U.S. Census Bureau severed ties with ACORN in the wake of the controversy.
But ACORN chief organizer Bertha Lewis issued a written statement Saturday saying that while she cannot defend the actions of the workers who were terminated, O'Keefe may have committed a "felony" with his operation. She also threatened legal
Reid called Bush "liar," stood by comment (Politico)
Interview with Senator Harry Reid, NBC’s Meet the Press, December 5, 2004
MR. RUSSERT: When the president talked about Yucca Mountain and moving the nation's nuclear waste there, you were very, very, very strong in your words. You said, "President Bush is a liar.
He betrayed Nevada and he betrayed the country."
Is that rhetoric appropriate?
SEN. REID: I don't know if that rhetoric is appropriate. That's how I feel, and that's how I felt.
I think to take that issue, Tim, to take the most poisonous substance known to man, plutonium, and haul 70,000 tons of it across the highways and railways of this country, past schools and churches and people's businesses is wrong.
It's something that is being forced upon this country by the utilities, and it's wrong. And we have to stop it. And people may not like what I said, but I said it, and I don't back off one bit.
Barack Hussein Obama continued his practice of lying to the American people. His topic was the gasping healthcare reform bill HR3200.
Obama made a number of assertions that quite frankly were out and out lies; outrageous lies if you are one of the many Republicans who have read the bill.
Not so outrageous if you are a Democrat who hasn’t even bothered to crack the cover.
Joe Wilson, Republican Congressman from South Carolina called Obama a liar. Mr. Wilson has been forced to apologize for having the bad grace to speak the truth in the hall of Congress.
Pelosi’s face and the utter shock she expressed when he spoke out said it all. The media is not going to be kind and will probably treat him worse than what was done to Joe the Plumber.
What is interesting about this is the continual inequity of reporting. You see, Harry Reid expounded on his feelings about President Bush the Second more than once and refused to apologize.
GW may have been inept, but the office still deserves a modicum of respect. What we have is even worse. Obama is not inept and he knows exactly the damage he is doing.
Wilson was right. The President was delivering a pack of lies. Let’s explore his work of fiction
Washington Examiner [DC], by Editorial Dozens of states have charged ACORN employees with voter registration fraud, numerous corporations have paid exorbitant sums of hush money to get the group to call off its demonstrators crying racism, and media organizations have exposed serious questions about how the radical group has spent the hundreds of millions of federal tax dollars it has received over the years. Yet the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now continues uninterrupted with its corrupt... via Lucianne.com
Limited care [Obamacare would limit treatment for people losing their eyesight]Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Regarding Charles Krauthammer's Aug. 29 column ("Obamacare 2.0: A Seductive Exit Strategy -- With a Catch"): I was pleased to see that someone finally did their research on a drug I use daily to save sight.
Lucentis injections have transformed the lives of the elderly who are unfortunate enough to have (wet) macular degeneration.
We (ophthalmologists) have enthusiastically been able to help our patients maintain their independence as well as their dignity with this relatively new drug.
It is important to note that even now, according to my Genentec reps, the "Orwellian body" Mr. Krauthammer speaks of in Britain still limits these treatments to seven treatments per year per eye.
In many cases this falls far short of the often-needed monthly injections in order to save and improve vision. In fact, seven per year may result in simply slowing the inevitable, allowing these frightened people to watch as their visions fades.
Mr. Obama's health-care plan limits these treatments to 14 per eye per lifetime if I read HR 3200 correctly (not an easy task).
I wonder if anyone in Congress would opt for this plan if they have a family history of this disease or suffer from macular degeneration themselves? Can anyone name a reasonable price for loss of vision?
Doctors said I'd had a miscarriage and did nothing as my premature baby fought for his life (Daily Mail)
Doctors said I'd had a miscarriage and did nothing as my premature baby fought for his life Like all mothers, Sarah Capewell will never forget the first minutes she spent with her newborn baby.
She told her tiny son how much she loved him, gently kissed his face and took photos of him wrapped in the pretty blanket she'd bought for his birth.
Then she held him tightly in her arms and watched helplessly as his body grew cold and he finally stopped breathing. Sarah pleaded for help from hospital staff from the moment he was born, but none came.
Jayden died when he was just two hours old.
No help came because although mother and baby were surrounded by nurses and empty incubators, doctors had already decided her son would not be saved - not based on observation and assessment, but because under current guidelines paediatricians treat only babies born after 22 weeks gestation.
And he was born 48 hours before that threshold.
As Sarah was told when her waters broke one Wednesday last October, if she held out until the Sunday they would save her baby.
Jayden was born on the Friday - so paediatricians refused not only to treat him, but, shockingly, even to see him.
Obama: "Death Panels" Necessary to Control Health Care Costs (IsraPundit)
President says independent panel of doctors, ethicists, and scientists needed to make "difficult" choices Barack Obama's health care speech of Wednesday September 9 accused his opponents of lying, "plain and simple," when they said his health care plan included "death panels" that would cut off health care to senior citizens, chronically ill people, and other forms of Lebensunwertes Leben ("life unworthy of life").
House Bill 3200 does not, contrary to various allegations on blogs and talk radio, call for the establishment of such panels.
Barack Obama, on the other hand, did, and Sarah Palin's allegation about "death panels" is therefore 100 percent accurate.
Video: 9/12 DC Marchers Take on More than Government Fiscal Policy -- ** The Media**
Newsbusters| Jeff Poor Maybe there's a reason why the media have either denigrated or completely ignored the Sept. 12 march in Washington, D.C. - they were highly critical of their job performance as well. Aside from protesters taking on CNN reporter Lisa Desjardins, as NewsBusters Matt Sheffield pointed out, there were also other pockets of backlash against media evident at the march, which were captured on video (pardon my shoddy camera work). ...more (w/video)...
Even the Democrats finally have admitted that Republicans may pick up 25-30 seats in the 2010 Congressional elections. People are angry. We need a creative way of harnessing that anger and giving the voters a weapon to fight the Left’s agenda for the rest of the President’s term. Obama won in 2008 with 53% of the vote. The President felt he had a mandate to enact his legislative programs.
WaPo Promotes Story That 9-12 Marchers Are Racist: 'They Don't Even Know What They Are Protesting'
NewsBusters - Tim Graham On Sunday, the home page of the Washington Post website buried the 9-12 rally in tiny type, while the rotating photos at the top of the page were all local stories. On Monday, one of those rotating photos highlighted a Post story on the front of the Metro section on how people attending the Black Family Reunion think that tens of thousands of Americans came to Washington not because they love freedom, but because they hate black people. Metro reporter Yamiche Alcindor began: On Saturday, tens of thousands of protesters thronged to the U.S. Capitol to angrily accuse President Obama...
ACORN Watch: “Honesty is not going to get you the house” Michelle Malkin
James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles visited one of ACORN’s New York offices in August, where they picked up handy tips on how to lie on housing forms to cover up a prostitution business
(”Honesty is not going to get you the house,” one ACORN official advises) and how to hide cash from their illicit business (”When you buy the house with the backyard, you get a tin…and you bury it down in there…cover it…and put the grass over it…”).
Watch the whole thing at Big Government. This is now the third videotaped sting exposing the ACORN racket’s law-undermining, truth-sabotaging counseling sessions.
If the Census Bureau no longer trusts ACORN to collect data as a result of these videotapes, why is Congress still allowing taxpayer money to be funneled to the ACORN Housing Corporation?
Teamsters Call on Whole Foods, UNFI to Support Health Reform OAKLAND, Calif
The Teamsters protested at the "Entrepreneur’s Open Forum" at the Numi Tea Garden to highlight Whole Food’s hypocrisy of claiming to support sustainable policies while its CEO lobbies against real health reform for its workers and customers.
The Whole Foods CEO, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, attacked President Obama’s efforts to reform America’s ailing health care system.
Whole Foods believes that Americans have no right to health care and that health care should be an individual responsibility.
That’s easy for its CEO, who can afford expensive private health insurance, to say.
The Teamsters believe it is shameful for Whole Foods to seek to shift the health care burden even further onto individuals and to call for less government help in solving America’s health care crisis.
"Whole Foods’ CEO is talking out of both sides of his mouth when it comes to enacting real change in health reform," said Teamsters General President James P. Hoffa. "We can’t allow corporate agendas to stop us from making health care affordable for everyone."
The Teamsters call upon Whole Foods, and its principal supplier UNFI, to promote a sustainable organic food supply chain and sustainable jobs, and support our President’s efforts for a sustainable health care system for America…
Group once linked to Barack Obama taped giving advice to 'brothel owners' (Telegraph U.K.)
The US Census Bureau has broken links with the controversial community group Acorn, once a close ally of President Barack Obama, after it supported a purported brothel owner with a stable of underage prostitutes.
Unamplified, Beck's Voice Still Carries (Washington Post)
It has become a familiar chain reaction: Talk-show hosts whip up a noisy controversy, which hits higher decibels as it spreads to the establishment media, which costs some unfortunate soul his job.
But now the middleman -- the journalistic gatekeepers of yore --may no longer be necessary.
By the time White House environmental adviser Van Jones resigned over Labor Day weekend, the New York Times had not run a single story.
Neither had USA Today, which also didn't cover the resignation. The Washington Post had done one piece, on the day before he quit.
The Los Angeles Times had carried a short article the previous week questioning Glenn Beck's assault on the White House aide. There had been nothing on the network newscasts.
"Where is the press on this?" Beck asked in late August during one of several rants against Jones. But it turned out the Fox News host didn't need the big news organizations to claim his scalp.
Doctor quits because of costs, while Obama bends to trial lawyers. Who needs tort reform? 5000 female patients need tort reform! ====== Rx for money woes: Doctors quit medicine Parija B. Kavilanz
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Some 5,000 patients suddenly found themselves without an ob/gyn last November when Dr. Tara Wah closed her practice in Tallahassee, Fla. Wah, 55, informed her patients in a letter that she could "no longer afford to make ends meet." After 24 years, "I'm working longer hours than ever," she wrote. "Insurance payments for patient care have stayed virtually the same for the last 15 years, while the cost of doing business, including health insurance, staff salaries and supplies have risen."
The rising cost of malpractice insurance, particularly for her specialty, was the straw that broke the...
TV Guide is expected to become the latest Mass-circulation magazine to radically chop the number of copies it delivers, On the Money has learned.
In a move expected to be announced as soon as tomorrow, TV Guide, starting next month, will drop from its current rate base of 2.9 million down to 2 million, a drop of more than 30 percent.
SNIP
Reader's Digest, which once had circulation of 10 million, said in June that it was going to reduce its now 8 million circulation down to 5.5 million.
Time magazine had reduced its circulation to 3.2 million two years ago and Newsweek this year said it was moving in stages from 3.1 million at the end of last year to 1.5 million at the start of next year.
The New York Times is counting the ways it could charge readers for eyeballing its content online.
In an out-of-town meeting, CEO Janet Robinson said the Times is considering three options. It could charge "membership fees," charge as people read or put prices on special content.
She said it could also institute a combination of the three strategies. The paper will likely shift from free to paid Web content this fall.
The Times tried charging for content a couple of years ago, offering access to certain stories only with a TimesSelect subscription. That project was killed in 2007.
Robinson was in Worcester, Mass. on Thursday to confirm to employees at its regional newspaper -- the Telegram & Gazette -- that online charges would probably apply to all the company's Web sites.
On another crisis, Robinson continued to hedge her answers on whether the Times would keep pressing for the sale of its Boston Globe and the Worcester paper.
Both have been on the block for months, but Robinson said the owners, the Sulzberger family, might also hold onto the papers,...
...which together lost more than $1 million a week last year.
"Our hand is not being forced to sell," she told the employees, adding that retaining the papers would be based on an improvement of their finances. Paul Tharp
'Pimp & hooker' catch B'klyn staff (ACORN) Ny Post
The scandal surrounding the left-wing activist organization ACORN has spread to New York, with employees at its Brooklyn office caught on video helping supposed ladies of the night get loans for their dream houses of ill repute.
Rather than reminding the women that prostitution is dangerous and illegal and advising them to change their careers, counselors at the social-services group shockingly offer suggestions on how they can launder their earnings.
New ABC/Washington Post poll on ABCNews website says Obama health care address to congress had no impact on voters. Same negative numbers as before his speech! Barry is losing his touch.
Anybody know anything about Politico.com? It seems very left wing. There's nothing about the ACORN scandals, which makes them just like the mainstream media - ignore it and it'll go away. Just wondering???
Kudos to Maureen Dowd for going there. 'There' being some public recognition of what should be inescapable by now: that a lot of the more electric and intemperate reactions to President Obama come from people who cannot or will not accept that a black man is the President of the United States.
I think Dowd was right to see it behind Wednesday night's outburst from Rep. Joe Wilson (R) of South Carolina, a man previously best known as one of the last hold-outs for keeping the confederate flag flying over the Capitol in South Carolina. And you didn't have to wait for the night of the speech though. The day before the speech, Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R) of Georgia said Obama needed to show some "humility" when he showed up on Capitol Hill Wednesday night. I've heard presidents criticized, pilloried, even villified for lots of things. But I don't think I've ever heard one warned to show some humility.
It's no accident that both comments came from white men from the Deep South in their early to mid-60s. I won't say because I don't think this is all the GOP, just as I don't think that all the opposition to Obama is rooted in atavism and paranoia. But it is a big chunk of it. And it's the 'chunk' that's got the voice at the moment and increasingly seems to be calling the shots.
Thanks 10:09. I went to the "about us" and all Politico.com had was its staff members, nothing about its partisan nature. I'm not going to give them another click!
White House Dismisses Dowd Claim That Wilson Outburst Was Race-Based (FoxNews)
White House Dismisses Dowd Claim That Wilson Outburst Was Race-Based Maureen Dowd writes in The New York Times that Rep. Joe Wilson's outburst Wednesday -- when he shouted, You lie," at the president for claiming his health care reform plan would not cover illegal immigrants -- convinced her that racial angst is the underlying motive among Obama critics like Wilson.
Dowd is a has-been hagbag. Who gives a shit what she thinks? Her liberal garbage is so predictable, and boring. Shhhh, don’t tell her we are laughing at her. She’s as relevant as an eight-track player.
Politico was okay when they first started, but they have taken a sharp left turn. Perhaps they bent to sponsors, or they were liberal all along, and just wanted to appear unbiased to gain popularity. They want to become an online news source, but their biased articles are about on par with the Huffington Post. I don’t want or need more spoon-fed editorializing instead of news reporting. MOO
The SucBee has endorsed every tax & spend Democrat running for office, and now they are realizing what liberals have done to the state. CA liberals will never change, when they run out of people to tax, they will move to another state and ruin it. Just ask the natives of Oregon, Colorado, and Montana. = New Meltdown Looms As Sacramento-Area Commercial Vacancy Rate Rises Dale Kasler Sacramento Bee
From an unfinished shopping mall in Elk Grove to the ghostly quiet office parks of South Placer, the slump that has overtaken commercial real estate could rival the meltdown in the housing market. Across the Sacramento region, vacancy rates have soared while rents and property values have plummeted, leaving many landlords struggling to pay their mortgages. A few are in bankruptcy protection. Sacramento's troubles are worse than most, according to national analysts, but the threat looms across the entire country.
Just ask the natives of Oregon, Colorado, and Montana.
I can testify. My aunt lives in Portland and they are constantly trying to pass laws to keep Californians out.
They say that Portland is now so bad that only the people too crazy for California move there. Where can they go? Washington? New home of the live public sex shows and the old home of Animal Sex Farms!
43 comments:
ACORN has partnered with the IRS!!!!
---
Time for IRS to review all ACORN-prepared tax filings
American Thinker ^Clarice Feldman
The federal government should review all tax returns prepared by ACORN tax preparers (and all loan applications prepared by ACORN -- but that is a separate review process). That the IRS knows who these people are is suggested by this article, which I suppose was repeated throughout the country: ... ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) Tax and Benefits Centers in Hartford and Bridgeport are ready to assist CT Taxpayers. ACORN has partnered with the IRS Volunteer Income Tax Preparation (VITA) program to provide free tax preparation for low and moderate income taxpayers who cannot afford...
What biased media? Good graph heading down to ZERO - Bwhahahaha-
Press Accuracy Rating Hits Two Decade Low
Public Evaluations of the News Media: 1985-2009
The public’s assessment of the accuracy of news stories is now at its lowest level in more than two decades of Pew Research surveys, and Americans’ views of media bias and independence now match previous lows.
Just 29% of Americans say that news organizations generally get the facts straight, while 63% say that news stories are often inaccurate.
http://people-press.org/report/543/
House Democrats Will Seek Massive $540 Billion Tax Increase—Announcement Came Late Friday Afternoon
(CNSNews.com) - Despite a still-lagging U.S. economy and rising unemployment rate, House Democrats announced late yesterday that they will seek a massive increase in federal income taxes to help pay for the national health-care reform proposal that President Obama is urging Congress to enact this summer.
House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D.-N.Y.)revealed late Friday afternoon that House Democrats will seek to increase income taxes by $540 billion.
New York's Charles Rangel — a sign of the times (The Morning Journal)
REP. Charles Rangel (D-NY), chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, is becoming a metaphor for almost all the sins of our age.
Let us count the ways. How about corruption? Currently, Rangel is under investigation by two House subcommittees for illegally holding four rent-stabilized apartments in New York and not disclosing more than $75,000 in income from a rental villa he owns.
He also took free Caribbean trips paid for by corporate cronies and used his congressional letterhead to press for money for the City College of New York's new educational center, which bears his name.
Rangel also acknowledged that he improperly listed his assets, as required by law, and failed to report additional checking accounts valued between $250,000 and $500,000 — princely sums acquired on a congressional salary.
Try also hypocrisy. Rangel is the head of the Ways and Means Committee that writes the nation's income tax policy. The politician, who for generations has urged higher taxes, has chronically schemed to avoid paying them.
Don't dare try that if you are a waitress or schoolteacher. In this regard, Rangel is similar to other Obama cabinet nominees and secretaries like Tom Daschle and Timothy Geithner — advocates of higher taxes, and bigger government — who themselves were in violation of the federal tax code. In this weird new moral landscape, good public intentions apparently offset private lapses.
'Slumlord' Violations (New York Post)
While Charles Rangel lived across the street in luxury Harlem digs, his tenants coped with collapsing ceilings, sinking floors and roaches.
In just one apartment in the six-unit building on West 132nd Street, city inspectors found nine violations in 2003.
Rangel and his wife, Alma -- the landlords -- were ordered to repair the wood floor in the entire apartment, plaster, paint, fix broken bathroom tiles and faulty window frames, and get rid of roaches and mice.
The city also found that the Rangels failed to file the building's annual occupancy statement five times between 1982 and 1996.
Reid, Pelosi Thank Union Members, Pledge Action (AFL-CIO)
The 2009 AFL-CIO Convention just got a message from the top leaders in Congress: We stand with you and with America’s workers.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the leader of the U.S. House, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) each delivered a video message to the opening session of the convention.
Pelosi thanked outgoing AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and the union movement, crediting union members with taking the lead in winning a pro-worker Congress and giving them the momentum needed to pass legislation that really changed lives.
SNIP
Reid also said he wants to swiftly pass the Employee Free Choice Act.
I’m as committed today as ever to passing the Employee Free Choice Act and making it law.
It’s a sign of the changes the union movement has helped to make in this country that the top leaders in Congress are so enthusiastic to offer thanks to union members at this Convention.
US tyre duties spark China clash (Obama sides with the Unions again!)Financial Times UK
A full-blown trade row erupted between the US and China after Beijing accused Washington of “rampant protectionism” for imposing heavy duties on imported Chinese tyres and threatened action against imports of US poultry and vehicles.
Trade relations between two of the world’s biggest economies deteriorated after Barack Obama, US president, signed an order late on Friday to impose a new duty of 35 per cent on Chinese tyre imports on top of an existing 4 per cent tariff.
In his first big test on world trade since taking office in January, Mr Obama sided with America’s trade unions, which have complained that a “surge” in imports of Chinese-made tyres had caused 7,000 job losses among US factory workers.
Home Delivery: The New York Times Serves Up Some Malware (NYT website distributing ad virus)(All Things Digital)
Here’s a front page story the New York Times (NYT) would rather not be running: The paper is warning readers to be aware of bogus ads running on its Web site.
The paper says “some readers” have seen unauthorized pop-up ads promoting antivirus software on NYTimes.com, and warns visitors who see the ad not to click on it but to restart their browsers instead.
While the Times doesn’t spell this out, it has likely had its site hijacked by a “malware” scammer who is trying to trick visitors into installing pernicious software onto their hard drives.
ACORN Video: Prostitution Scandal in New York, NY (biggovernment.com)
This recent scam, which was attempted in San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia to name a few places, had failed for months before the results we’ve all recently seen. -Bertha Lewis, Chief Organizer, ACORN
So, we headed up to New York…
Joe Wilson: The Answer to
Your Question Is "Yes"
American Spectator
by William Tucker
It's remarkable that in the whole brouhaha about Joe Wilson shouting "You lie!" at President Obama's assertion that illegal immigrant won't be covered by Obamacare, no one has pursued the question, "Who's right?" So here's the answer. Yes, illegal immigrants will be covered for Obamacare. Or rather, "Illegal immigrants may be legally ineligible for Obamacare, but they'll get covered anyway." How do we know this?
http://spectator.org/archives/2009/09/14/joe-wilson-the-answer-
Filmmaker Demands Apology From ACORN for Claiming Undercover Video 'Doctored' (Fox News)
The independent filmmaker whose hidden-camera videos prompted the firing of four ACORN workers is demanding an apology from ACORN for calling his work a fabricated "scam" and daring the activist group to take legal action against him.
"Bring it on," filmmaker James O'Keefe said Sunday on FOX News.
That was after ACORN lashed out at O'Keefe, who with his friend Hannah Giles posed as a pimp and prostitute looking to evade the IRS and apply for an illegal housing loan for a brothel.
The sting operation caught four ACORN workers in the Baltimore and Washington, D.C., offices appearing to offer their help.
Those workers were subsequently fired, and the U.S. Census Bureau severed ties with ACORN in the wake of the controversy.
But ACORN chief organizer Bertha Lewis issued a written statement Saturday saying that while she cannot defend the actions of the workers who were terminated, O'Keefe may have committed a "felony" with his operation. She also threatened legal
Maryland ACORN Official: It’s Racism (Big Government)
It is clear and not coincidence that FOX continues to attack and divide our nation along racial lines.
We believe our country is beyond this type of attack and call on all Americans to demand that FOX stop its racist coverage.
Reid called Bush "liar," stood by comment (Politico)
Interview with Senator Harry Reid, NBC’s Meet the Press, December 5, 2004
MR. RUSSERT: When the president talked about Yucca Mountain and moving the nation's nuclear waste there, you were very, very, very strong in your words. You said, "President Bush is a liar.
He betrayed Nevada and he betrayed the country."
Is that rhetoric appropriate?
SEN. REID: I don't know if that rhetoric is appropriate. That's how I feel, and that's how I felt.
I think to take that issue, Tim, to take the most poisonous substance known to man, plutonium, and haul 70,000 tons of it across the highways and railways of this country, past schools and churches and people's businesses is wrong.
It's something that is being forced upon this country by the utilities, and it's wrong. And we have to stop it. And people may not like what I said, but I said it, and I don't back off one bit.
More from a 2005 Rolling Stone sit-down:
RS: You've called Bush a loser.
HR: And a liar.
RS: You apologized for the loser comment.
HR: But never for the liar, have I?
Should Joe Have Apologized? (Canada Free Press)
Barack Hussein Obama continued his practice of lying to the American people. His topic was the gasping healthcare reform bill HR3200.
Obama made a number of assertions that quite frankly were out and out lies; outrageous lies if you are one of the many Republicans who have read the bill.
Not so outrageous if you are a Democrat who hasn’t even bothered to crack the cover.
Joe Wilson, Republican Congressman from South Carolina called Obama a liar. Mr. Wilson has been forced to apologize for having the bad grace to speak the truth in the hall of Congress.
Pelosi’s face and the utter shock she expressed when he spoke out said it all. The media is not going to be kind and will probably treat him worse than what was done to Joe the Plumber.
What is interesting about this is the continual inequity of reporting. You see, Harry Reid expounded on his feelings about President Bush the Second more than once and refused to apologize.
GW may have been inept, but the office still deserves a modicum of respect. What we have is even worse. Obama is not inept and he knows exactly the damage he is doing.
Wilson was right. The President was delivering a pack of lies. Let’s explore his work of fiction
Now will Congress investigate ACORN?
Washington Examiner [DC], by Editorial
Dozens of states have charged ACORN employees with voter registration fraud, numerous corporations have paid exorbitant sums of hush money to get the group to call off its demonstrators crying racism, and media organizations have exposed serious questions about how the radical group has spent the hundreds of millions of federal tax dollars it has received over the years. Yet the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now continues uninterrupted with its corrupt...
via Lucianne.com
CLEAN Conservatives vs FILTHY Liberals-- A Photographic Essay (GatewayPundit)
After the 2 million strong conservative freedom rally on 9-12:
(Picture of cleanliness)
And, here is the filth left for someone else to clean up after the Inauguration of Barack Obama:
(Pictures of lib trash and filth)
The democrats were obviously waiting for Big Government to clean up for them.
Limited care [Obamacare would limit treatment for people losing their eyesight]Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Regarding Charles Krauthammer's Aug. 29 column ("Obamacare 2.0: A Seductive Exit Strategy -- With a Catch"): I was pleased to see that someone finally did their research on a drug I use daily to save sight.
Lucentis injections have transformed the lives of the elderly who are unfortunate enough to have (wet) macular degeneration.
We (ophthalmologists) have enthusiastically been able to help our patients maintain their independence as well as their dignity with this relatively new drug.
It is important to note that even now, according to my Genentec reps, the "Orwellian body" Mr. Krauthammer speaks of in Britain still limits these treatments to seven treatments per year per eye.
In many cases this falls far short of the often-needed monthly injections in order to save and improve vision. In fact, seven per year may result in simply slowing the inevitable, allowing these frightened people to watch as their visions fades.
Mr. Obama's health-care plan limits these treatments to 14 per eye per lifetime if I read HR 3200 correctly (not an easy task).
I wonder if anyone in Congress would opt for this plan if they have a family history of this disease or suffer from macular degeneration themselves? Can anyone name a reasonable price for loss of vision?
Doctors said I'd had a miscarriage and did nothing as my premature baby fought for his life (Daily Mail)
Doctors said I'd had a miscarriage and did nothing as my premature baby fought for his life
Like all mothers, Sarah Capewell will never forget the first minutes she spent with her newborn baby.
She told her tiny son how much she loved him, gently kissed his face and took photos of him wrapped in the pretty blanket she'd bought for his birth.
Then she held him tightly in her arms and watched helplessly as his body grew cold and he finally stopped breathing. Sarah pleaded for help from hospital staff from the moment he was born, but none came.
Jayden died when he was just two hours old.
No help came because although mother and baby were surrounded by nurses and empty incubators, doctors had already decided her son would not be saved - not based on observation and assessment, but because under current guidelines paediatricians treat only babies born after 22 weeks gestation.
And he was born 48 hours before that threshold.
As Sarah was told when her waters broke one Wednesday last October, if she held out until the Sunday they would save her baby.
Jayden was born on the Friday - so paediatricians refused not only to treat him, but, shockingly, even to see him.
Obama: "Death Panels" Necessary to Control Health Care Costs (IsraPundit)
President says independent panel of doctors, ethicists, and scientists needed to make "difficult" choices
Barack Obama's health care speech of Wednesday September 9 accused his opponents of lying, "plain and simple," when they said his health care plan included "death panels" that would cut off health care to senior citizens, chronically ill people, and other forms of Lebensunwertes Leben ("life unworthy of life").
House Bill 3200 does not, contrary to various allegations on blogs and talk radio, call for the establishment of such panels.
Barack Obama, on the other hand, did, and Sarah Palin's allegation about "death panels" is therefore 100 percent accurate.
Video: 9/12 DC Marchers Take on More than Government Fiscal Policy --
** The Media**
Newsbusters| Jeff Poor
Maybe there's a reason why the media have either denigrated or completely ignored the Sept. 12 march in Washington, D.C. - they were highly critical of their job performance as well. Aside from protesters taking on CNN reporter Lisa Desjardins, as NewsBusters Matt Sheffield pointed out, there were also other pockets of backlash against media evident at the march, which were captured on video (pardon my shoddy camera work). ...more (w/video)...
A Winning 2010 Issue:
I’m Not Paying For That
Big Hollywood
by Myrna Sokolof
Even the Democrats finally have admitted that Republicans may pick up 25-30 seats in the 2010 Congressional elections. People are angry. We need a creative way of harnessing that anger and giving the voters a weapon to fight the Left’s agenda for the rest of the President’s term. Obama won in 2008 with 53% of the vote. The President felt he had a mandate to enact his legislative programs.
WaPo Promotes Story That 9-12 Marchers Are Racist: 'They Don't Even Know What They Are Protesting'
NewsBusters - Tim Graham
On Sunday, the home page of the Washington Post website buried the 9-12 rally in tiny type, while the rotating photos at the top of the page were all local stories. On Monday, one of those rotating photos highlighted a Post story on the front of the Metro section on how people attending the Black Family Reunion think that tens of thousands of Americans came to Washington not because they love freedom, but because they hate black people. Metro reporter Yamiche Alcindor began: On Saturday, tens of thousands of protesters thronged to the U.S. Capitol to angrily accuse President Obama...
ACORN Watch: “Honesty is not going to get you the house” Michelle Malkin
James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles visited one of ACORN’s New York offices in August, where they picked up handy tips on how to lie on housing forms to cover up a prostitution business
(”Honesty is not going to get you the house,” one ACORN official advises) and how to hide cash from their illicit business (”When you buy the house with the backyard, you get a tin…and you bury it down in there…cover it…and put the grass over it…”).
Watch the whole thing at Big Government. This is now the third videotaped sting exposing the ACORN racket’s law-undermining, truth-sabotaging counseling sessions.
If the Census Bureau no longer trusts ACORN to collect data as a result of these videotapes, why is Congress still allowing taxpayer money to be funneled to the ACORN Housing Corporation?
Teamsters Call on Whole Foods, UNFI to Support Health Reform
OAKLAND, Calif
The Teamsters protested at the "Entrepreneur’s Open Forum" at the Numi Tea Garden to highlight Whole Food’s hypocrisy of claiming to support sustainable policies while its CEO lobbies against real health reform for its workers and customers.
The Whole Foods CEO, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, attacked President Obama’s efforts to reform America’s ailing health care system.
Whole Foods believes that Americans have no right to health care and that health care should be an individual responsibility.
That’s easy for its CEO, who can afford expensive private health insurance, to say.
The Teamsters believe it is shameful for Whole Foods to seek to shift the health care burden even further onto individuals and to call for less government help in solving America’s health care crisis.
"Whole Foods’ CEO is talking out of both sides of his mouth when it comes to enacting real change in health reform," said Teamsters General President James P. Hoffa. "We can’t allow corporate agendas to stop us from making health care affordable for everyone."
The Teamsters call upon Whole Foods, and its principal supplier UNFI, to promote a sustainable organic food supply chain and sustainable jobs, and support our President’s efforts for a sustainable health care system for America…
Group once linked to Barack Obama taped giving advice to 'brothel owners' (Telegraph U.K.)
The US Census Bureau has broken links with the controversial community group Acorn, once a close ally of President Barack Obama, after it supported a purported brothel owner with a stable of underage prostitutes.
Unamplified, Beck's Voice Still Carries (Washington Post)
It has become a familiar chain reaction: Talk-show hosts whip up a noisy controversy, which hits higher decibels as it spreads to the establishment media, which costs some unfortunate soul his job.
But now the middleman -- the journalistic gatekeepers of yore --may no longer be necessary.
By the time White House environmental adviser Van Jones resigned over Labor Day weekend, the New York Times had not run a single story.
Neither had USA Today, which also didn't cover the resignation. The Washington Post had done one piece, on the day before he quit.
The Los Angeles Times had carried a short article the previous week questioning Glenn Beck's assault on the White House aide. There had been nothing on the network newscasts.
"Where is the press on this?" Beck asked in late August during one of several rants against Jones. But it turned out the Fox News host didn't need the big news organizations to claim his scalp.
Doctor quits because of costs, while Obama bends to trial lawyers. Who needs tort reform? 5000 female patients need tort reform!
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Rx for money woes: Doctors quit medicine
Parija B. Kavilanz
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Some 5,000 patients suddenly found themselves without an ob/gyn last November when Dr. Tara Wah closed her practice in Tallahassee, Fla. Wah, 55, informed her patients in a letter that she could "no longer afford to make ends meet." After 24 years, "I'm working longer hours than ever," she wrote. "Insurance payments for patient care have stayed virtually the same for the last 15 years, while the cost of doing business, including health insurance, staff salaries and supplies have risen."
The rising cost of malpractice insurance, particularly for her specialty, was the straw that broke the...
via: FreeRepublic.com
TV Guide gets haircut (NY Post)
TV Guide is expected to become the latest Mass-circulation magazine to radically chop the number of copies it delivers, On the Money has learned.
In a move expected to be announced as soon as tomorrow, TV Guide, starting next month, will drop from its current rate base of 2.9 million down to 2 million, a drop of more than 30 percent.
SNIP
Reader's Digest, which once had circulation of 10 million, said in June that it was going to reduce its now 8 million circulation down to 5.5 million.
Time magazine had reduced its circulation to 3.2 million two years ago and Newsweek this year said it was moving in stages from 3.1 million at the end of last year to 1.5 million at the start of next year.
Times ponders online fee$ (NY Post)
The New York Times is counting the ways it could charge readers for eyeballing its content online.
In an out-of-town meeting, CEO Janet Robinson said the Times is considering three options. It could charge "membership fees," charge as people read or put prices on special content.
She said it could also institute a combination of the three strategies. The paper will likely shift from free to paid Web content this fall.
The Times tried charging for content a couple of years ago, offering access to certain stories only with a TimesSelect subscription. That project was killed in 2007.
Robinson was in Worcester, Mass. on Thursday to confirm to employees at its regional newspaper -- the Telegram & Gazette -- that online charges would probably apply to all the company's Web sites.
On another crisis, Robinson continued to hedge her answers on whether the Times would keep pressing for the sale of its Boston Globe and the Worcester paper.
Both have been on the block for months, but Robinson said the owners, the Sulzberger family, might also hold onto the papers,...
...which together lost more than $1 million a week last year.
"Our hand is not being forced to sell," she told the employees, adding that retaining the papers would be based on an improvement of their finances. Paul Tharp
'Pimp & hooker' catch B'klyn staff (ACORN) Ny Post
The scandal surrounding the left-wing activist organization ACORN has spread to New York, with employees at its Brooklyn office caught on video helping supposed ladies of the night get loans for their dream houses of ill repute.
Rather than reminding the women that prostitution is dangerous and illegal and advising them to change their careers, counselors at the social-services group shockingly offer suggestions on how they can launder their earnings.
VENEZUELA TO DEVELOP NUCLEAR ENERGY WITH RUSSIAN HELP
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Time for Barry to go on another apology tour.
New ABC/Washington Post poll on ABCNews website says Obama health care address to congress had no impact on voters. Same negative numbers as before his speech! Barry is losing his touch.
Anybody know anything about Politico.com? It seems very left wing. There's nothing about the ACORN scandals, which makes them just like the mainstream media - ignore it and it'll go away. Just wondering???
Show some respect, boy
Kudos to Maureen Dowd for going there. 'There' being some public recognition of what should be inescapable by now: that a lot of the more electric and intemperate reactions to President Obama come from people who cannot or will not accept that a black man is the President of the United States.
I think Dowd was right to see it behind Wednesday night's outburst from Rep. Joe Wilson (R) of South Carolina, a man previously best known as one of the last hold-outs for keeping the confederate flag flying over the Capitol in South Carolina. And you didn't have to wait for the night of the speech though. The day before the speech, Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R) of Georgia said Obama needed to show some "humility" when he showed up on Capitol Hill Wednesday night. I've heard presidents criticized, pilloried, even villified for lots of things. But I don't think I've ever heard one warned to show some humility.
It's no accident that both comments came from white men from the Deep South in their early to mid-60s. I won't say because I don't think this is all the GOP, just as I don't think that all the opposition to Obama is rooted in atavism and paranoia. But it is a big chunk of it. And it's the 'chunk' that's got the voice at the moment and increasingly seems to be calling the shots.
Josh Marshall
www.talkingpointsmemo.com
8:07 AM Of course it is left wing. It is run by former Washington Post hacks and is based in Gannett's old suburban D.C. building.
They're all Washington insiders.
Is this a good thing?
http://moconews.net/article/419-ap-mobile-now-has-access-to-all-of-mcclatchys-30-newspapers/
Seems like it gives away precious McClatchy content all the more without serving ads to local eyeballs (where the money is needed).
Thanks 10:09. I went to the "about us" and all Politico.com had was its staff members, nothing about its partisan nature. I'm not going to give them another click!
White House Dismisses Dowd Claim That Wilson Outburst Was Race-Based
(FoxNews)
White House Dismisses Dowd Claim That Wilson Outburst Was Race-Based Maureen Dowd writes in The New York Times that Rep. Joe Wilson's outburst Wednesday -- when he shouted, You lie," at the president for claiming his health care reform plan would not cover illegal immigrants -- convinced her that racial angst is the underlying motive among Obama critics like Wilson.
Dowd is a has-been hagbag. Who gives a shit what she thinks? Her liberal garbage is so predictable, and boring. Shhhh, don’t tell her we are laughing at her. She’s as relevant as an eight-track player.
Politico was okay when they first started, but they have taken a sharp left turn. Perhaps they bent to sponsors, or they were liberal all along, and just wanted to appear unbiased to gain popularity. They want to become an online news source, but their biased articles are about on par with the Huffington Post. I don’t want or need more spoon-fed editorializing instead of news reporting. MOO
The SucBee has endorsed every tax & spend Democrat running for office, and now they are realizing what liberals have done to the state. CA liberals will never change, when they run out of people to tax, they will move to another state and ruin it. Just ask the natives of Oregon, Colorado, and Montana.
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New Meltdown Looms As Sacramento-Area Commercial Vacancy Rate Rises
Dale Kasler
Sacramento Bee
From an unfinished shopping mall in Elk Grove to the ghostly quiet office parks of South Placer, the slump that has overtaken commercial real estate could rival the meltdown in the housing market. Across the Sacramento region, vacancy rates have soared while rents and property values have plummeted, leaving many landlords struggling to pay their mortgages. A few are in bankruptcy protection. Sacramento's troubles are worse than most, according to national analysts, but the threat looms across the entire country.
Just ask the natives of Oregon, Colorado, and Montana.
I can testify. My aunt lives in Portland and they are constantly trying to pass laws to keep Californians out.
They say that Portland is now so bad that only the people too crazy for California move there. Where can they go? Washington? New home of the live public sex shows and the old home of Animal Sex Farms!
hahaha! Glen Beck strikes again. Third Video of ACORN abuses posted....SENATE VOTES TO DEFUND ACORN HOUSING!
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