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.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Sunday September 6 -- Got news or an update?
If you have news or an update, leave it in comments. . . .
31 comments:
Anonymous
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Van Jones Scandal Threatens Obama Presidency (Accuracy In Media report)
Reporting from near the home turf of embattled Green Jobs Czar Van Jones, Joe Garofoli of the San Francisco Chronicle says it's clearly a bad sign when White House flak Robert Gibbs is asked if Jones still enjoys the confidence of the President and merely replies that Jones "continues to work in this administration."
But the White House has to know that, if Jones goes, the questions won't end.
Who appointed him? Who looked into his background? Who knew what and when? Gibbs knows that the Jones controversy undermines confidence in the President, who bears ultimate responsibility for the appointment.
Gibbs also has to know that, if Jones' background can sink Jones, the President himself is in trouble.
Obama has decades of friendly associations with communists and terrorists, ranging from Communist Party USA member Frank Marshall Davis in his youth in Hawaii to communist terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn in Chicago when he was doing community organizing and running for political office.
By comparison to Obama, when it comes to nefarious connections, Jones is a piker. Curiously, it's not Jones' communist background which has proven to be the most controversial.
Rather, it's his two apologies in a week for statements calling Republicans "assholes" and having signed a 9/11 truth statement blaming the terrorist attacks on U.S. officials.
It's the communism, stupid. As Professor Paul Kengor points out, "We now know that even the most authoritative sources, such as the seminal Harvard University Press work, The Black Book of Communism, were conservative when estimating only 100 million deaths at the hands of communist governments.
The latest research, for instance, claims that Mao Zedong alone was responsible for the deaths of at least 60-70 million in China, and Joseph Stalin alone may well have killed 60 million in the USSR-
Remember last month with an unexpected drop to 9.4% Obama claimed his stimulus plan had saved us from "catastrophe?" Ooops! Spoke too soon!
Here's the headline from August:
Obama: We Saved Economy From 'Catastrophe' It's The First Drop In Unemployment Since Last Year; Strong Sign Recession Is Ending CBS News Aug 7, 2009 President Barack Obama is welcoming an improved national employment report, saying his administration has "rescued our economy from catastrophe."
In an appearance on the White House Rose Garden, Obama applauded a Labor Department report earlier Friday saying that the jobless rate declined to 9.4 percent from 9.5 percent a month earlier. ... President Obama welcomed the news, saying the numbers indicate "the worst may be behind us" in a recession well into its second year.
"Today, we're pointed in the right direction," he said in remarks in the White House Rose Garden.
And where is Obama when the news broke that unemployment had hit a 26 year high at 9.7%? In seclusion at Camp David.
The best the administration could do was send out Bumbling Joe Biden to try once again to insist that the stimulus which they promised would save millions of jobs and keep unemployment below 8% is working.
Pledging allegiance to our beloved Obama (Orange County Register)
The starry-eyed Hopeychangey Generation growing bored with Obama. Now he's targeting the kindergarten constituency.
On Friday, I had the rare honor of appearing in the pages of The New York Times, apropos President Obama's plans to beam himself into every schoolhouse in the land in the peculiar belief that Generation iPod will find this an enthralling technical novelty. As Times reporters James C McKinley Jr. and Sam Dillon wrote:
"Mark Steyn, a Canadian author and political commentator, speaking on theRush Limbaugh show on Wednesday, accused Mr. Obama of trying to create a cult of personality, comparing him to Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader."
Oh, dear! "A Canadian author": Talk about damning with faint credentialization. I don't know what's crueler, the "Canadian" or the indefinite article. As to the rest of it, well, that's one way of putting it. Here's what I said on Wednesday re dear old Saddam and Kim:
"Obviously we're not talking about the cult of personality on the Saddam Hussein/Kim Jong-Il scale."
Close enough for Times work.
But, if the Times wants to play this game, bring it on.
Obama's declining support among whites (chicago tribune)
After a summer of health care battles and sliding approval ratings for President Obama, the White House is facing a troubling new trend: The voters losing faith in the president are the ones he had worked hardest to attract.
New surveys show steep declines in Obama's approval ratings among whites--including Democrats and independents--who were crucial elements of the diverse coalition that helped elect the country's first black president.
Among white Democrats, Obama's job approval rating has dropped 11 points since his 100-days mark in April, according to surveys by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.
It has dropped by nine points among white independents and whites over 50, and by 12 points among white women--all voter groups that will be targeted by both parties for support in next year's mid-term elections.
"While Obama has a lock on African-Americans, his support among white voters seems to be almost in a free-fall," said veteran Republican pollster Neil Newhouse.
Goldwater Jr.: Obama Policies 'Scare the Hell Out of Me' (News Max)
Former California Rep. Barry Goldwater Jr. says President Barack Obama's big-government reforms are "potentially jeopardizing future generations," admitting to Newsmax.TV that "It scares the hell out of me.”
Goldwater, the son of Republican icon Barry Goldwater, warns in an exclusive Newsmax.TV interview that Obama's plans for a government-run health insurance scheme overlook one a crucial fact:
There's no historical evidence the federal government can effectively operate such a massive government program.
Goldwater, who worked as a stockbroker and business executive before he won his first congressional campaign in 1969, believes the insurance business is best left to the private sector. But he adds that citizens are right to "insist that insurance companies do a better job of meeting their responsibilities."
The former congressman interjected himself in the healthcare debate in August, when he wrote a commentary for The American Spectator in which he provided a long list of federal programs that have become organizational and fiscal nightmares:
Turkey Sent Female Agents to Seduce BiSexual Congresswoman EconomicPolicyJournal.com ^
Explosive news coming out of the just released deposition of former FBI translator-turned-whistleblower Sibel Edmonds.
According to the released transcripts, Edmonds testified as follows:
"[T]his Congresswoman's married with children, grown children, but she is bisexual. ... So they have sent Turkish female agents, and that Turkish female agents work for Turkish government, and have sexual relationship with this Congresswoman in her townhouse ... and the entire episodes of their sexual conduct was being filmed because the entire house, this Congressional woman's house was bugged...
Pelosi loath to drop hammer on Rangel [“Unless they find $90,000 in his freezer........] Politico
Why is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refusing a growing chorus of calls to drop the hammer on ethics-challenged Charlie Rangel?
Because, at the moment, doing nothing creates a lot less trouble for Pelosi than doing anything, current and former House aides tell POLITICO.
Stripping the Harlem Democrat of his chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee would force Pelosi to make a series of unpalatable decisions about Rangel’s successor that would create a ruckus in the Democratic caucus.
It would also infuriate the Congressional Black Caucus, which is still sore over Pelosi’s decision to strip committees from former Louisiana Rep. Bill Jefferson – even after Jefferson had been found with a wad of tainted cash in his kitchen.
“Unless they find $90,000 in his freezer, like they did with Jefferson, we’re going to wait [for the outcome of a House ethics probe],” said a Democratic aide familiar with Pelosi’s thinking on the matter.
Jeremiah Wright behind a White House desk (powerlineblog.com)
The key point about the Van Jones affair is what it tells us about Barack Obama. Jones isn't someone who slipped through the cracks of the vetting process.
We know this because, as Scott pointed out earlier today, top Obama aide Valerie Jarrett has said, "So, Van Jones, we were so delighted to be able to recruit him into the White House; we were watching him. . .for as long as he's been active out in Oakland."
Having watched the rise of Van Jones, why did Team Obama nonetheless "recruit" him into the White house? Because what Jones says and believes is well within the range of what Obama believes, and thus not jarrring to him and his crew.
If Jones is now beyond the pale, it is only because the Obama crowd finally hears him through the filter of a controversy. When Obama and company heard him only through the filter of what they believe, there was no controversy because his statements -- e.g., his attack on Israeli "occupation" dating back to 1948 and his claim that "U.S. tax dollars are funding violence against people of color inside the U.S. borders and outside the US borders" -- are not particularly controversial to Team Obama.
This, of course, is the Rev. Jeremiah Wright phenomenon all over again. Wright's racist, anti-Israeli, anti-American statements didn't jar Obama while he was sitting in Wrights's church for 20 years because they were not that different from what Obama believes. Even when controversy erupted and Obama's political future was on the line, Obama at first found Wright's pronouncements no more in need of being "disowned" than his grandmother's view that she'd rather be driven to work than be panhandled by an aggressive man at the bus station.
It took a shot by Wright at Obama himself to jar cause the candidate to break with his spiritual mentor.
The Jones phenomenon signifies that, as my friend Bill Otis likes to say, the left "can't hear itself." That's why when it heard Jones, all it detected was "creative ideas" and "energy" to bring to the White House.
To quote Bill again, "Van Jones is simply Jeremiah Wright behind a White House desk."
WH Discloses 10 More Ethics Waivers for Administration Officials (Political Punch)
Calling President Obama's Executive Order on Ethics for Executive Branch personnel "the strongest ethics standards in U.S. government history," White House counsel Norm Eisen on Friday announced 10 more waivers for Obama administration officials.
Obama Promised 600,000 Jobs This Summer-- Lost Nearly 1 Million Instead (GatewayPundit)
Back on June 8th Barack Obama promised to speed up the Stimulus projects over the summer and to "create or save" 600,000 jobs.
The AP reported: President Barack Obama is promising to speed federal money into hundreds of public works projects this summer, vowing that 600,000 jobs will be created or saved. (June 8)
The US lost 443,000 jobs in June. The US lost 247,000 jobs in July. The US lost 216,000 jobs in August.
Instead of creating or saving 600,000 jobs this summer the US lost 935,000 instead.
The unemployment rate is at 9.7%, the highest rate in 26 years. Thanks Barack.
Obama Expands Relations With Communist Cuba-- Cracks Down On US Ally Honduras (gatewayPundit)
For the first time in history the United States government is siding with Marxist leaders Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, Raul Castro and Evo Morales against the pro-democratic Honduran President Micheletti.
The Honduran Congress and Supreme Court along with the military ousted Leftist President Manuel Zelaya from power after his illegal moves to secure his presidential post as a lifetime position.
The Honduran government appointed Roberto Micheletti president until the planned elections in November. Zelaya was, of course, supported by local Leftist regimes in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Cuba.
Birds of a feather...
(Michael Ramirez) Barack Obama is openly siding with regional Marxists and is punishing the government and people of Honduras who ousted their Leftist dictator wannabe by cutting over $30 million in aid to the poor American ally.
Today Mere Rhetoric is reporting that the Obama administration is opening up to communist Cuba. Unbelievable.
Chavez minister vows more Venezuela radio closings (Reuters )
* Radio stations to be pulled after 34 closed in August
* Critics say hits free speech, government says democratic
* Anti-Chavez TV network in the spotlight over coup rumor
CARACAS, Sept 5 (Reuters) - Venezuela will pull the plug on 29 more radio stations, a top official in President Hugo Chavez's government said on Saturday, just weeks after dozens of other outlets were closed in a media clampdown.
Infrastructure Minister Diosdado Cabello closed 34 radio stations in July, saying the government was "democratizing" media ownership.....
Ahmadinejad and Chavez Vow to Strengthen Ties, Stand Together Against U.S. (Fox News)
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez railed against the West on Saturday, pledging to deepen their ties and stand together against the United States and world powers the two perceive as imperialistic.
Chavez is on an 11-day tour that has taken him to Libya, Algeria, Syria and Iran.
The leftist Venezuelan leader is also to visit Belarus, Russia and Spain in the trip he has described as a bid to build a "multi-polar world" and counter U.S. influence.
After landing in Tehran late Friday — his eighth visit to Iran so far — Chavez said Iran is "a true strategic ally, a staunch ally" to his country and defended Iran's right to a nuclear program.
Daily Presidential Tracking Poll (Sept. 6, Hussein back at -11)
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows that 29% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President.
Forty percent (40%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -11
Networks censor health care debate -- ABC and NBC take one for Team Obama THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The major TV networks don't even let revenue get in the way of their biased coverage in favor of President Obama's agenda.
ABC and NBC in particular seem afraid of a simple 30-second advertisement. Both networks have refused to run an ad proposed for national telecast by the League of American Voters, a nonprofit group with 15,000 members.
The supposedly offensive ad makes the simple claim that the proposed government-run health care program would ration medical care.
ABC won't run the ad because it says it is "partisan." NBC won't run it because that network says it questions the ad's facts.
So what does the script of this horribly troublesome ad say? Here it is:
"How can Obama's plan cover 50 million new patients without any new doctors? It can't. It will hurt our seniors, end Medicare as we know it, ration coverage and care, limit life-saving medicines, impose long delays on cancer treatment and other vital surgery.
It's happening in England and in Canada. Don't let it happen here. Tell Congress to protect American health care."
As Joe Kennedy considers run, Chávez ties loom (Boston Globe)
Firm relies on Venezuela oil
As Joseph P. Kennedy II contemplates a race to reclaim the Senate seat held by his family for nearly half a century, his most formidable obstacle may not be a Massachusetts politician but a political leader some 2,000 miles away: President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.
Over the past four years, Citizens Energy Corp., the signature nonprofit founded by Kennedy in 1979 as a political launching pad, has grown from a local charity serving 10,000 Massachusetts homes a year into a national effort delivering free fuel to 200,000 households in 23 states.
And Kennedy, a former US representative, has relied almost exclusively on Chávez, a vociferous critic of the US government, for that growth.
(snip)
In addition to forging increasingly close ties with Chávez and Citgo Petroleum Corp., an oil company controlled by the Venezuelan government, Kennedy has used the proceeds of Chávez’s donated oil to fund millions in advertising for the heating oil charity - $16 million over the last two winters alone.
Those ads, in turn, prominently feature Kennedy, often personally delivering Chávez-funded oil to needy recipients.
(snip)
“I don’t think you’re going to persuade the public that Citizens Energy and delivering free oil to people who can’t afford it is a bad thing.
I really don’t think that’s going to stick,’’ said William F. Weld, a Republican and a former governor of Massachusetts. “[Kennedy’s] not loony left at all, and I think he could be very good in office.’’
But in a taste of what Kennedy might expect from a Republican opponent in a general election, or even a conservative Democrat in a primary, one operative said the issue could be pivotal in a campaign.
Major school systems won't be open when Obama speaks to kids (Washington Examiner)
Hot Air's Ed Morrissey - joined by bloggers Baseball Crank and Moe Lane - notes that Los Angeles public schools won't be in session next Tuesday when President Obama delivers his speech to the nation's children. Neither will those in the Boston schools. Or the New York City public schools. Or those in Seattle, Buffalo or Eugene (Oregon).
It's the Obamatuerism of the day on this one, but it may be indicative of a new theme concerning the Obama administration's managerial and strategic political competence. All presidential teams tend to get high marks during their honeymoons. But the Obama honeymoon has clearly been over since early summer.
Now, the school speech was poorly thought out, both in concept and execution. The same can be said of Obama's recurring unsuccessful attempts over the summer to "reframe the health care reform debate," and the multiple mis-steps in responding to his Town Hall critics, beginning with the spectacularly inept branding of them as an "angry mob."
There will be many more such opportunities for political mis-steps and odds are the Obama team won't miss many of them. A blitz of news stories about the massive waste and fraud attending the $787 billion stimulus program is probably headed Obama's way in coming months, and who knows how many more Van Jones that he has appointed to influential jobs in the government will suddenly hit the front pages.
Teenage Unemployment Rate at an All-Time High: NYT Blog Post Commenters Explain Why
Yesterday's Employment Situation Report from Uncle Sam's Bureau of Labor Statistics had lots of dismal news.
One of the bigger disappointments, but sadly not one of the bigger surprises, is that the teenage unemployment rate reached an all-time seasonally adjusted high of 25.5%.
People who know even a little bit about economics should understand why, but an oddly titled New York Times blog post by Catherine Rampall took a pass on realistically trying to explain it titled:
Oh What a Time to Be Young!
Pity the unemployed, but especially pity the teenage unemployed.
London Mayor Recommends Ramadan Fast for All (Israel National News)
The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has recommended that non-Muslims take the opportunity of the month of Ramadan to fast, along with their Muslim neighbors, in order to promote "understanding between cultures."
'FOX News Reporting: Do You Know What Textbooks Your Children Are Really Reading?' (Fox News)
Host Tucker Carlson, asked experts, teachers, publishers and parents the same question: "Do you know what is inside your children's textbooks?"
From kindergarten through college, we found staggering errors and omissions which may be pushing agendas, hidden and otherwise.
We spoke to the author of "The Language Police," education historian Diane Ravitch, who said textbook publishers censor images or words they deem to be controversial in children’s textbooks.
She told us that publishers pander to special interest groups, and assemble bias and sensitivity review committees. These committees decide what words to ban or redefine, and even what images are deemed offensive.
And we examined some college textbooks both in print and in digital forms. We found a glaring mistake in an expensive history book written by Alan Brinkley, Provost at New York’s Columbia University.
And in Fairfax County Virginia, questions remain about what textbooks are used in the private Islamic Saudi Academy.
The ISA teaches about 1000 students each year pre-K — 12. Questions have been raised about its textbooks at least since 2006.
This summer, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, ISA’s 1999 valedictorian, was sentenced to life in prison for his role in a 2002 Al Qaeda plot to assassinate President George W. Bush.
The ISA is wholly owned by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and teaches students from textbooks, which according to a report by a Saudi scholar interviewed by FOX News, continues to “propagate an ideology of hate to the unbeliever...
snip
We tracked down two American college professors who were paid by the ISA to review these textbooks. They signed a letter obtained by FOX News that the ISA's 2008-2009 textbooks' do not contain inflammatory material…” One of them sat down for an interview; the other refused.
Since Pelosi won't give Rangel the boot maybe there's some tax-dodging going on in the Pelosi home? How about checking out Nancy's tax dodges and the citizenship of those who pick her grapes in the Napa Valley.
Thugs in charge: “He's not only the first Affirmative Action President, he's the first Peter Principle President.” = Good thought credited to: steveW @ lucianne
Channeling Deep Throat, Where in the world are you? -“WH Discloses 10 More Ethics Waivers for Administration Officials”- Wouldn’t you think the watchdog journalists would be out in force digging into the backgrounds of the other czars? This reeks of something a lot worse than Watergate ever was, and yet the corrupted media continues their big yawn at any news anti-Barry O. The “sneaky bastards” just don’t get it, and their phony chorus will be last heard crying, “wee, wee, weed” all the way home to the dumpsters.
Start your engines bloggers. ===== Nancy DeParle: health czarina, abortion queen (Hey Glenn Beck, here's your next target) Michelle Malkin
Former Kansas Democrat Governor Kathleen Sebelius won Senate confirmation as Health and Human Services Secretary. But the real power lies with with newly-created health czar Nancy-Ann Min DeParle. Her official title: Director of the White House Office for Health Reform. DeParle ran the behemoth Medicare and Medicaid programs under Bill Clinton. She parlayed her government experience into a lucrative private-sector stint. Over the past three years, she made nearly $6 million from her work in the health care industry. Despite President Obama’s loud denunciations of the revolving-door lobbyist culture in Washington, DeParle’s industry ties didn’t bother the White House.
Re Obama’s School children indoctrination. Liberal pundits are trying to paint conservatives as the radicals for shunning the ‘Debt Presidents’ big daddy speech to his little ones. TOTUS will have taken half of the first speech and shitcanned it by now. The blind MSM will forget to mention it was the follow-up presentation by corrupted union teachers that was the real problem. Who knows how they would choose to present their propaganda? What is known, is that they shucked and jived for Obooba in their classrooms before the election, so why would they stop now? They will stop if parents watch them from now on. Taxpayers pay their salaries, yes they do, and it seems to be something they forgot.
Barry smokes and indoctrinates schoolchildren- I certainly ‘Hope’ Barry ‘splains’ the evils of cigarette smoking to our youngins. He can cite thousands of supporting documentation as to why smoking is bad for them. Smoking is the only experience at anything, one can find in his resume, the rest is fuzzy, or nonexistent.
The lying media that would not tell the truth about Obama, is not telling the truth about the radical left's health care plans. Also,if the media told the truth about Obama's radical 'Change', his approval rating would be about 20%, or whatever the population of USA haters there is.
Obama could set an excellent example and be a great role model. He needs to tell the school children to do like he did and get an education in private schools. And to prove his commitment he needs to point out that he has placed his children in private schools.
31 comments:
Van Jones Scandal Threatens Obama Presidency (Accuracy In Media report)
Reporting from near the home turf of embattled Green Jobs Czar Van Jones, Joe Garofoli of the San Francisco Chronicle says it's clearly a bad sign when White House flak Robert Gibbs is asked if Jones still enjoys the confidence of the President and merely replies that Jones "continues to work in this administration."
But the White House has to know that, if Jones goes, the questions won't end.
Who appointed him? Who looked into his background? Who knew what and when? Gibbs knows that the Jones controversy undermines confidence in the President, who bears ultimate responsibility for the appointment.
Gibbs also has to know that, if Jones' background can sink Jones, the President himself is in trouble.
Obama has decades of friendly associations with communists and terrorists, ranging from Communist Party USA member Frank Marshall Davis in his youth in Hawaii to communist terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn in Chicago when he was doing community organizing and running for political office.
By comparison to Obama, when it comes to nefarious connections, Jones is a piker. Curiously, it's not Jones' communist background which has proven to be the most controversial.
Rather, it's his two apologies in a week for statements calling Republicans "assholes" and having signed a 9/11 truth statement blaming the terrorist attacks on U.S. officials.
It's the communism, stupid. As Professor Paul Kengor points out, "We now know that even the most authoritative sources, such as the seminal Harvard University Press work, The Black Book of Communism, were conservative when estimating only 100 million deaths at the hands of communist governments.
The latest research, for instance, claims that Mao Zedong alone was responsible for the deaths of at least 60-70 million in China, and Joseph Stalin alone may well have killed 60 million in the USSR-
Unemployment Skyrockets Again in August to 9.7%
Remember last month with an unexpected drop to 9.4% Obama claimed his stimulus plan had saved us from "catastrophe?" Ooops! Spoke too soon!
Here's the headline from August:
Obama: We Saved Economy From 'Catastrophe' It's The First Drop In Unemployment Since Last Year; Strong Sign Recession Is Ending CBS News Aug 7, 2009
President Barack Obama is welcoming an improved national employment report, saying his administration has "rescued our economy from catastrophe."
In an appearance on the White House Rose Garden, Obama applauded a Labor Department report earlier Friday saying that the jobless rate declined to 9.4 percent from 9.5 percent a month earlier. ... President Obama welcomed the news, saying the numbers indicate "the worst may be behind us" in a recession well into its second year.
"Today, we're pointed in the right direction," he said in remarks in the White House Rose Garden.
And where is Obama when the news broke that unemployment had hit a 26 year high at 9.7%? In seclusion at Camp David.
The best the administration could do was send out Bumbling Joe Biden to try once again to insist that the stimulus which they promised would save millions of jobs and keep unemployment below 8% is working.
Pledging allegiance to our beloved Obama (Orange County Register)
The starry-eyed Hopeychangey Generation growing bored with Obama. Now he's targeting the kindergarten constituency.
On Friday, I had the rare honor of appearing in the pages of The New York Times, apropos President Obama's plans to beam himself into every schoolhouse in the land in the peculiar belief that Generation iPod will find this an enthralling technical novelty. As Times reporters James C McKinley Jr. and Sam Dillon wrote:
"Mark Steyn, a Canadian author and political commentator, speaking on theRush Limbaugh show on Wednesday, accused Mr. Obama of trying to create a cult of personality, comparing him to Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader."
Oh, dear! "A Canadian author": Talk about damning with faint credentialization. I don't know what's crueler, the "Canadian" or the indefinite article. As to the rest of it, well, that's one way of putting it. Here's what I said on Wednesday re dear old Saddam and Kim:
"Obviously we're not talking about the cult of personality on the Saddam Hussein/Kim Jong-Il scale."
Close enough for Times work.
But, if the Times wants to play this game, bring it on.
Obama's declining support among whites (chicago tribune)
After a summer of health care battles and sliding approval ratings for President Obama, the White House is facing a troubling new trend: The voters losing faith in the president are the ones he had worked hardest to attract.
New surveys show steep declines in Obama's approval ratings among whites--including Democrats and independents--who were crucial elements of the diverse coalition that helped elect the country's first black president.
Among white Democrats, Obama's job approval rating has dropped 11 points since his 100-days mark in April, according to surveys by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.
It has dropped by nine points among white independents and whites over 50, and by 12 points among white women--all voter groups that will be targeted by both parties for support in next year's mid-term elections.
"While Obama has a lock on African-Americans, his support among white voters seems to be almost in a free-fall," said veteran Republican pollster Neil Newhouse.
Goldwater Jr.: Obama Policies 'Scare the Hell Out of Me'
(News Max)
Former California Rep. Barry Goldwater Jr. says President Barack Obama's big-government reforms are "potentially jeopardizing future generations," admitting to Newsmax.TV that "It scares the hell out of me.”
Goldwater, the son of Republican icon Barry Goldwater, warns in an exclusive Newsmax.TV interview that Obama's plans for a government-run health insurance scheme overlook one a crucial fact:
There's no historical evidence the federal government can effectively operate such a massive government program.
Goldwater, who worked as a stockbroker and business executive before he won his first congressional campaign in 1969, believes the insurance business is best left to the private sector. But he adds that citizens are right to "insist that insurance companies do a better job of meeting their responsibilities."
The former congressman interjected himself in the healthcare debate in August, when he wrote a commentary for The American Spectator in which he provided a long list of federal programs that have become organizational and fiscal nightmares:
Turkey Sent Female Agents to Seduce BiSexual Congresswoman
EconomicPolicyJournal.com ^
Explosive news coming out of the just released deposition of former FBI translator-turned-whistleblower Sibel Edmonds.
According to the released transcripts, Edmonds testified as follows:
"[T]his Congresswoman's married with children, grown children, but she is bisexual. ... So they have sent Turkish female agents, and that Turkish female agents work for Turkish government, and have sexual relationship with this Congresswoman in her townhouse ... and the entire episodes of their sexual conduct was being filmed because the entire house, this Congressional woman's house was bugged...
Pelosi loath to drop hammer on Rangel [“Unless they find $90,000 in his freezer........]
Politico
Why is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refusing a growing chorus of calls to drop the hammer on ethics-challenged Charlie Rangel?
Because, at the moment, doing nothing creates a lot less trouble for Pelosi than doing anything, current and former House aides tell POLITICO.
Stripping the Harlem Democrat of his chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee would force Pelosi to make a series of unpalatable decisions about Rangel’s successor that would create a ruckus in the Democratic caucus.
It would also infuriate the Congressional Black Caucus, which is still sore over Pelosi’s decision to strip committees from former Louisiana Rep. Bill Jefferson – even after Jefferson had been found with a wad of tainted cash in his kitchen.
“Unless they find $90,000 in his freezer, like they did with Jefferson, we’re going to wait [for the outcome of a House ethics probe],” said a Democratic aide familiar with Pelosi’s thinking on the matter.
Jeremiah Wright behind a White House desk (powerlineblog.com)
The key point about the Van Jones affair is what it tells us about Barack Obama. Jones isn't someone who slipped through the cracks of the vetting process.
We know this because, as Scott pointed out earlier today, top Obama aide Valerie Jarrett has said, "So, Van Jones, we were so delighted to be able to recruit him into the White House; we were watching him. . .for as long as he's been active out in Oakland."
Having watched the rise of Van Jones, why did Team Obama nonetheless "recruit" him into the White house? Because what Jones says and believes is well within the range of what Obama believes, and thus not jarrring to him and his crew.
If Jones is now beyond the pale, it is only because the Obama crowd finally hears him through the filter of a controversy. When Obama and company heard him only through the filter of what they believe, there was no controversy because his statements -- e.g., his attack on Israeli "occupation" dating back to 1948 and his claim that "U.S. tax dollars are funding violence against people of color inside the U.S. borders and outside the US borders" -- are not particularly controversial to Team Obama.
This, of course, is the Rev. Jeremiah Wright phenomenon all over again. Wright's racist, anti-Israeli, anti-American statements didn't jar Obama while he was sitting in Wrights's church for 20 years because they were not that different from what Obama believes. Even when controversy erupted and Obama's political future was on the line, Obama at first found Wright's pronouncements no more in need of being "disowned" than his grandmother's view that she'd rather be driven to work than be panhandled by an aggressive man at the bus station.
It took a shot by Wright at Obama himself to jar cause the candidate to break with his spiritual mentor.
The Jones phenomenon signifies that, as my friend Bill Otis likes to say, the left "can't hear itself." That's why when it heard Jones, all it detected was "creative ideas" and "energy" to bring to the White House.
To quote Bill again, "Van Jones is simply Jeremiah Wright behind a White House desk."
WH Discloses 10 More Ethics Waivers for Administration Officials (Political Punch)
Calling President Obama's Executive Order on Ethics for Executive Branch personnel "the strongest ethics standards in U.S. government history," White House counsel Norm Eisen on Friday announced 10 more waivers for Obama administration officials.
Obama Promised 600,000 Jobs This Summer-- Lost Nearly 1 Million Instead (GatewayPundit)
Back on June 8th Barack Obama promised to speed up the Stimulus projects over the summer and to "create or save" 600,000 jobs.
The AP reported: President Barack Obama is promising to speed federal money into hundreds of public works projects this summer, vowing that 600,000 jobs will be created or saved. (June 8)
The US lost 443,000 jobs in June.
The US lost 247,000 jobs in July.
The US lost 216,000 jobs in August.
Instead of creating or saving 600,000 jobs this summer the US lost 935,000 instead.
The unemployment rate is at 9.7%, the highest rate in 26 years.
Thanks Barack.
Obama Expands Relations With Communist Cuba-- Cracks Down On US Ally Honduras (gatewayPundit)
For the first time in history the United States government is siding with Marxist leaders Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, Raul Castro and Evo Morales against the pro-democratic Honduran President Micheletti.
The Honduran Congress and Supreme Court along with the military ousted Leftist President Manuel Zelaya from power after his illegal moves to secure his presidential post as a lifetime position.
The Honduran government appointed Roberto Micheletti president until the planned elections in November. Zelaya was, of course, supported by local Leftist regimes in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Cuba.
Birds of a feather...
(Michael Ramirez)
Barack Obama is openly siding with regional Marxists and is punishing the government and people of Honduras who ousted their Leftist dictator wannabe by cutting over $30 million in aid to the poor American ally.
Today Mere Rhetoric is reporting that the Obama administration is opening up to communist Cuba.
Unbelievable.
Chavez minister vows more Venezuela radio closings (Reuters )
* Radio stations to be pulled after 34 closed in August
* Critics say hits free speech, government says democratic
* Anti-Chavez TV network in the spotlight over coup rumor
CARACAS, Sept 5 (Reuters) - Venezuela will pull the plug on
29 more radio stations, a top official in President Hugo Chavez's government said on Saturday, just weeks after dozens of other outlets were closed in a media clampdown.
Infrastructure Minister Diosdado Cabello closed 34 radio stations
in July, saying the government was "democratizing" media ownership.....
Ahmadinejad and Chavez Vow to Strengthen Ties, Stand Together Against U.S. (Fox News)
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez railed against the West on Saturday, pledging to deepen their ties and stand together against the United States and world powers the two perceive as imperialistic.
Chavez is on an 11-day tour that has taken him to Libya, Algeria, Syria and Iran.
The leftist Venezuelan leader is also to visit Belarus, Russia and Spain in the trip he has described as a bid to build a "multi-polar world" and counter U.S. influence.
After landing in Tehran late Friday — his eighth visit to Iran so far — Chavez said Iran is "a true strategic ally, a staunch ally" to his country and defended Iran's right to a nuclear program.
Daily Presidential Tracking Poll (Sept. 6, Hussein back at -11)
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows that 29% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President.
Forty percent (40%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -11
Obama dropping like stone in states he won in 08. Virginia 42%, Washington 51% etc etc....
(Survey USA)
Networks censor health care debate -- ABC and NBC take one for Team Obama THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The major TV networks don't even let revenue get in the way of their biased coverage in favor of President Obama's agenda.
ABC and NBC in particular seem afraid of a simple 30-second advertisement. Both networks have refused to run an ad proposed for national telecast by the League of American Voters, a nonprofit group with 15,000 members.
The supposedly offensive ad makes the simple claim that the proposed government-run health care program would ration medical care.
ABC won't run the ad because it says it is "partisan." NBC won't run it because that network says it questions the ad's facts.
So what does the script of this horribly troublesome ad say? Here it is:
"How can Obama's plan cover 50 million new patients without any new doctors? It can't. It will hurt our seniors, end Medicare as we know it, ration coverage and care, limit life-saving medicines, impose long delays on cancer treatment and other vital surgery.
It's happening in England and in Canada. Don't let it happen here. Tell Congress to protect American health care."
As Joe Kennedy considers run, Chávez ties loom (Boston Globe)
Firm relies on Venezuela oil
As Joseph P. Kennedy II contemplates a race to reclaim the Senate seat held by his family for nearly half a century, his most formidable obstacle may not be a Massachusetts politician but a political leader some 2,000 miles away: President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.
Over the past four years, Citizens Energy Corp., the signature nonprofit founded by Kennedy in 1979 as a political launching pad, has grown from a local charity serving 10,000 Massachusetts homes a year into a national effort delivering free fuel to 200,000 households in 23 states.
And Kennedy, a former US representative, has relied almost exclusively on Chávez, a vociferous critic of the US government, for that growth.
(snip)
In addition to forging increasingly close ties with Chávez and Citgo Petroleum Corp., an oil company controlled by the Venezuelan government, Kennedy has used the proceeds of Chávez’s donated oil to fund millions in advertising for the heating oil charity - $16 million over the last two winters alone.
Those ads, in turn, prominently feature Kennedy, often personally delivering Chávez-funded oil to needy recipients.
(snip)
“I don’t think you’re going to persuade the public that Citizens Energy and delivering free oil to people who can’t afford it is a bad thing.
I really don’t think that’s going to stick,’’ said William F. Weld, a Republican and a former governor of Massachusetts. “[Kennedy’s] not loony left at all, and I think he could be very good in office.’’
But in a taste of what Kennedy might expect from a Republican opponent in a general election, or even a conservative Democrat in a primary, one operative said the issue could be pivotal in a campaign.
Major school systems won't be open when Obama speaks to kids (Washington Examiner)
Hot Air's Ed Morrissey - joined by bloggers Baseball Crank and Moe Lane - notes that Los Angeles public schools won't be in session next Tuesday when President Obama delivers his speech to the nation's children. Neither will those in the Boston schools. Or the New York City public schools. Or those in Seattle, Buffalo or Eugene (Oregon).
It's the Obamatuerism of the day on this one, but it may be indicative of a new theme concerning the Obama administration's managerial and strategic political competence. All presidential teams tend to get high marks during their honeymoons. But the Obama honeymoon has clearly been over since early summer.
Now, the school speech was poorly thought out, both in concept and execution. The same can be said of Obama's recurring unsuccessful attempts over the summer to "reframe the health care reform debate," and the multiple mis-steps in responding to his Town Hall critics, beginning with the spectacularly inept branding of them as an "angry mob."
There will be many more such opportunities for political mis-steps and odds are the Obama team won't miss many of them. A blitz of news stories about the massive waste and fraud attending the $787 billion stimulus program is probably headed Obama's way in coming months, and who knows how many more Van Jones that he has appointed to influential jobs in the government will suddenly hit the front pages.
...It's happening in England and in Canada...
An absolute lie.
6:19 AM No it isn't. It is an absolute fact.
Teenage Unemployment Rate at an All-Time High: NYT Blog Post Commenters Explain Why
Yesterday's Employment Situation Report from Uncle Sam's Bureau of Labor Statistics had lots of dismal news.
One of the bigger disappointments, but sadly not one of the bigger surprises, is that the teenage unemployment rate reached an all-time seasonally adjusted high of 25.5%.
People who know even a little bit about economics should understand why, but an oddly titled New York Times blog post by Catherine Rampall took a pass on realistically trying to explain it titled:
Oh What a Time to Be Young!
Pity the unemployed, but especially pity the teenage unemployed.
London Mayor Recommends Ramadan Fast for All (Israel National News)
The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has recommended that non-Muslims take the opportunity of the month of Ramadan to fast, along with their Muslim neighbors, in order to promote "understanding between cultures."
'FOX News Reporting: Do You Know What Textbooks Your Children Are Really Reading?' (Fox News)
Host Tucker Carlson, asked experts, teachers, publishers and parents the same question: "Do you know what is inside your children's textbooks?"
From kindergarten through college, we found staggering errors and omissions which may be pushing agendas, hidden and otherwise.
We spoke to the author of "The Language Police," education historian Diane Ravitch, who said textbook publishers censor images or words they deem to be controversial in children’s textbooks.
She told us that publishers pander to special interest groups, and assemble bias and sensitivity review committees. These committees decide what words to ban or redefine, and even what images are deemed offensive.
And we examined some college textbooks both in print and in digital forms. We found a glaring mistake in an expensive history book written by Alan Brinkley, Provost at New York’s Columbia University.
And in Fairfax County Virginia, questions remain about what textbooks are used in the private Islamic Saudi Academy.
The ISA teaches about 1000 students each year pre-K — 12. Questions have been raised about its textbooks at least since 2006.
This summer, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, ISA’s 1999 valedictorian, was sentenced to life in prison for his role in a 2002 Al Qaeda plot to assassinate President George W. Bush.
The ISA is wholly owned by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and teaches students from textbooks, which according to a report by a Saudi scholar interviewed by FOX News, continues to “propagate an ideology of hate to the unbeliever...
snip
We tracked down two American college professors who were paid by the ISA to review these textbooks. They signed a letter obtained by FOX News that the ISA's 2008-2009 textbooks' do not contain inflammatory material…” One of them sat down for an interview; the other refused.
Since Pelosi won't give Rangel the boot maybe there's some tax-dodging going on in the Pelosi home? How about checking out Nancy's tax dodges and the citizenship of those who pick her grapes in the Napa Valley.
Thugs in charge:
“He's not only the first Affirmative Action President, he's the first Peter Principle President.”
=
Good thought credited to:
steveW @ lucianne
Channeling Deep Throat, Where in the world are you?
-“WH Discloses 10 More Ethics Waivers for Administration Officials”-
Wouldn’t you think the watchdog journalists would be out in force digging into the backgrounds of the other czars? This reeks of something a lot worse than Watergate ever was, and yet the corrupted media continues their big yawn at any news anti-Barry O. The “sneaky bastards” just don’t get it, and their phony chorus will be last heard crying, “wee, wee, weed” all the way home to the dumpsters.
Start your engines bloggers.
=====
Nancy DeParle: health czarina, abortion queen
(Hey Glenn Beck, here's your next target)
Michelle Malkin
Former Kansas Democrat Governor Kathleen Sebelius won Senate confirmation as Health and Human Services Secretary. But the real power lies with with newly-created health czar Nancy-Ann Min DeParle. Her official title: Director of the White House Office for Health Reform. DeParle ran the behemoth Medicare and Medicaid programs under Bill Clinton. She parlayed her government experience into a lucrative private-sector stint. Over the past three years, she made nearly $6 million from her work in the health care industry. Despite President Obama’s loud denunciations of the revolving-door lobbyist culture in Washington, DeParle’s industry ties didn’t bother the White House.
Re Obama’s School children indoctrination.
Liberal pundits are trying to paint conservatives as the radicals for shunning the ‘Debt Presidents’ big daddy speech to his little ones. TOTUS will have taken half of the first speech and shitcanned it by now. The blind MSM will forget to mention it was the follow-up presentation by corrupted union teachers that was the real problem. Who knows how they would choose to present their propaganda? What is known, is that they shucked and jived for Obooba in their classrooms before the election, so why would they stop now? They will stop if parents watch them from now on. Taxpayers pay their salaries, yes they do, and it seems to be something they forgot.
Barry smokes and indoctrinates schoolchildren-
I certainly ‘Hope’ Barry ‘splains’ the evils of cigarette smoking to our youngins. He can cite thousands of supporting documentation as to why smoking is bad for them. Smoking is the only experience at anything, one can find in his resume, the rest is fuzzy, or nonexistent.
The lying media that would not tell the truth about Obama, is not telling the truth about the radical left's health care plans. Also,if the media told the truth about Obama's radical 'Change', his approval rating would be about 20%, or whatever the population of USA haters there is.
Obama could set an excellent example and be a great role model. He needs to tell the school children to do like he did and get an education in private schools. And to prove his commitment he needs to point out that he has placed his children in private schools.
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