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.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Thursday November 19 -- Got news or an update?
If you have news or an update, post it in comments. . . .
29 comments:
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From the Buried Lede Department: 75to Be Held Without Trial PATTERICO
The Washington Post’s lede: The Senate on Tuesday rejected an attempt to bar using funds from a defense spending bill to build or modify prisons in the United States to hold detainees from Guantanamo Bay, a move that suggested congressional Democrats may be lining up behind President Obama’s vision for closing the military prison.
Gotcha. Hey, anything else going on? Let’s read on to paragraph 12 of the article, shall we?
Administration officials say they expect that as many as 40 of the 215 detainees at Guantanamo will be tried in federal court or military commissions.
About 90 others have been cleared for repatriation or resettlement in a third country, and about 75 more have been deemed too dangerous to release but cannot be prosecuted because of evidentiary issues and limits on the use of classified material.
We told you about this category in earlier posts. The concept of holding people without trials was discussed by Obama in a May speech.
In May, Karl fleshed out the details: some detainees will be held because we can’t try them — and some might even be tried and acquitted . . . and then held nevertheless.
Kinda makes KSM’s trial seem like a show trial, huh?
Hope and change, baby. Let’s all watch and see how other news organizations handle the news that Obama has identified 75 people that he plans to hold indefnitely without trial.
Mention it in the 12th paragraph? Don’t mention it all? The options are unlimited, Big Media news editors!
NPR Shocker: Attorney General Holder Stumped By Lindsey Graham (Where would you try Bin Ladin?) Newsbusters
During Wednesday's Justice Department oversight hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) stumped Attorney General Eric Holder on what should have been a fairly routine question for America's top law enforcement official.
Maybe more surprisingly, NPR reported it at its website.
As NPR's Frank James noted, "The exchange started with Graham stumping Holder with a question one would have thought the attorney general would have been prepared for."
SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM, (R-S.C): Can you give me a case in United States history where a enemy combatant caught on a battlefield was tried in civilian court?
ERIC HOLDER, ATTORNEY GENERAL: I don't know. I'd have to look at that. I think that, you know, the determination I've made --
GRAHAM: We're making history here, Mr. Attorney General. I'll answer it for you. The answer is no.
HOLDER: Well, I think --
GRAHAM: The Ghailani case -- he was indicted for the Cole bombing before 9/11. And I didn't object to it going into federal court.
But I'm telling you right now. We're making history and we're making bad history. And let me tell you why.
Now, the real focus of this NPR piece was Graham's subsequent question concerning whether or not U.S. officials would have to Mirandize Osama bin Laden if he was captured:
GRAHAM: If bin Laden were caught tomorrow, would it be the position of this administration that he would be brought to justice?
HOLDER: He would certainly be brought to justice, absolutely.
GRAHAM: Where would you try him?
HOLDER: Well, we'd go through our protocol. And we'd make the determination about where he should appropriately be tried. [...]
GRAHAM: If we captured bin Laden tomorrow, would he be entitled to Miranda warnings at the moment of capture?
HOLDER: Again I'm not -- that all depends. I mean, the notion that we --
GRAHAM: Well, it does not depend. If you're going to prosecute anybody in civilian court, our law is clear that the moment custodial interrogation occurs the defendant, the criminal defendant, is entitled to a lawyer and to be informed of their right to remain silent.
The big problem I have is that you're criminalizing the war, that if we caught bin Laden tomorrow, we'd have mixed theories and we couldn't turn him over -- to the CIA, the FBI or military intelligence -- for an interrogation on the battlefield, because now we're saying that he is subject to criminal court in the United States. And you're confusing the people fighting this war.
Much as what NPR did with its piece, this bin Laden segment will likely get a lot of attention from the media in the next 24 hours, as it certainly should.
Obama Meets With Brother in China… For Five Minutes (GatewayPundit)
30 minutes ... time for handpicked commander in chief begging for more troops to enable victory, 5 minutes... time for half brother, SEIU... all the time in the world
The Telegraph reported: Mr Obama had the brief meeting with Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo, who had the same, late, father as the US President, on Monday evening in Beijing, a White House official said.
Mr Ndesandjo has kept a low public profile since reports surfaced last year that he was living and working in the southern Chinese capitalist and manufacturing haven of Shenzhen.
Obama’s brother Mark runs an illegal firm in China. The Times Online reported this back in July 2008. The American media obviously ignored it.
Mark Ndesandjo is the son of Barack Obama’s late father and his third wife, an American woman named Ruth Nidesand who runs the up-market Maduri kindergarten in Nairobi.
Obama, however, refers to him simply as “my brother” and says he was the only uncontested heir after their father, a Kenyan, died in a car crash in 1982.
Previously On Obama’s Family:
** Obama’s Militant Muslim Brother Abongo Is Luo Activist
** Media Interviews Obama’s Younger Muslim Brother in England
** Surprise!… Obama Breaks Promise to Poor Kenyan Family Members
** Anti-Trade Obama Has Brother Running Illegal Firm In China
** Obama’s Long Lost Brother Lives In Kenyan Slum Hut
** Catching Up With Barack’s Little Brother George In His Filthy Slum Hut
** Foreign Media Finds Obama’s Aunt… In a Boston Slum
** Figures. Obama’s Dear Auntie Onyango Is an Illegal Alien
** Barack Obama: This Isn’t the Illegal Alien Auntie I Thought I Knew
** Obama Knew His Auntie Onyango Was Here Illegally
** Dope & Change… Obama’s Brother George Busted With Pot
** Obama Welcomes His Militant Muslim Brother Abongo to White House
** Obama’s Illegal Immigrant Aunt Moves Back Into Boston Apartment
** Barack Obama’s Brother Accused of Sexual Assault– Denied Entry Into UK
** Obama’s Brother Accused of Sexual Assault On Teen Girl Attended Inauguration
** Obama’s Slum Hut Brother is Community Organizer
** Dreams of My Absent, Wife-Beating and Violent Father (Video)
FEDS' MAMMOGRAM POLICY IS A DEATH SENTENCE (boblonsberry.com)
It's a death sentence. Our first taste of Obamacare -- the government as the arbitrer of what health care we do and don't need -- will kill thousands of women.
It is a death list by another name.
A federal task force has declared that for most women mammograms are unnecessary before the age of 50 and should only be administered every other year after that.
Further, breast self-exams are no longer recommended.
In a fight with a horrific disease in which early detection is the most-effective tool, America's women have been told by their government to forget about it.
Previous recommendations, based on years of experience and analysis, were for most women to begin annual mammograms at age 40 and to perform monthly breast self-exams starting at puberty.
Countless thousands of women's lives have been saved by following that prudent, simple process.
The discovery of a lump or a mammogram anomoly led to further testing and treatment, and that jump on fighting cancer in many instances saved lives. Without that jump on the disease, it is an incontrovertable fact that women will die.
According to the federal government, however, that's OK.
Apparently there is some threshold at which unnecessary death is acceptable.
At least in the mind of the bureaucracy that is about to be put in charge of the nation's health care. The folks who want health care reform have tipped their hand with this first insight into rationing.
How will the government reduce the cost of health care? By allowing less of it. The savings in this new pronouncement alone are staggering.
A good portion of an entire health-care industry has been swept away. Most women in their 40s are no longer going to be patients of breast-care clinics, and all the women over 40 are only going to go half as often.
(UK) Doctors were told to practice on patients, says whistleblower (The Telegraph)
Dr Otto Chan told a hearing in East London that some doctors at the Royal London Hospital were ''exposed'' to procedures that they were not trained for.
He said: ''The department was going rapidly backwards, I had real serious concerns about patient care in relation to the training programme.
''The junior staff in our department were doing too much unsupervised work.''
Dr Chan added: ''The juniors were being exposed to procedures that they were clearly not trained to do.''
The radiologist said junior doctors were sometimes given notes on how to do a procedure and ''being told to go and practise it on a patient.''
(snip)
The 52-year-old claims he was sacked from his post at the Royal London in 2006 for whistle-blowing.
He claims he lost his job after saying publicly that X-ray files and scans belonging to thousands of patients were dumped unchecked in boxes
Rationing body tells liver cancer victims that life-prolonging drug is 'too costly' (dailymail.co.uk)
Liver cancer sufferers are being condemned to an early death by being denied a new drug on the Health Service, campaigners warn.
They criticised draft guidance that will effectively ban the drug sorafenib - which is routinely used in every other country where it is licensed.
Trials show the drug, which costs £36,000 a year, can increase survival by around six months for patients who have run out of options.
The Government's rationing body, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) said the overall cost was 'simply too high' to justify the 'benefit to patients'.
However, relatively few would be eligible for the treatment - around 700, or one in four of those diagnosed each year with primary liver cancer.
Germany Trying To Escape Obama's Great Idea Of German-Style Healthcare (Debbie Schlussel)
Ah, so nationalized healthcare doesn’t work, they’re essentially saying. And to make up for the gap, people will have to buy private insurance.
Hmmm . . . isn’t private insurance allegedly “discriminating” against the poor and those with pre-conditions the thing ObamaCare is supposed to solve?
It’s very clear it doesn’t solve that. Germany, with this move, is moving away from government healthcare toward private providers because government can’t afford it.
And yet the ObamaCare proponents are citing Germany as an example of how government healthcare works better than private insurance?
Someone’s not paying attention. And it isn’t the opponents of this looming disaster of nationalized healthcare.
Meanwhile, our “universal healthcare heroes” in Germany are facing a horrible economic crisis, to which their healthcare plan contributed in no small part.
Angela Merkel is proposing tax cuts in addition to her man Rosler’s suggestion of a return to partial private insurance coverage.
They’re trying to be more capitalist and conservative in order to raise themselves up. And we’re trying to emulate their failed socialism to “raise” ourselves down.
Desperate Democrats to bypass 10th Amend; force states to allow 87% Democrat voting felons to vote (The Collins Report)
Democrats are scheming to give themselves new voters through legislation to violate the 10th Amendment by forcing states to allow felons to vote.
The law called The Democracy Restoration Act (DRA) would give the worst of the worst living in our communities (nearly 4 million released felons) the right to vote in federal elections.
Democrats know a University of Minnesota study found that felons vote 87% Democrat. This is obviously why they want it.
Ten states totally bar felon voters and another 18 states require released felons to finish their parole/ probation time first.
Maine and Vermont actually allow voting from prison!
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama's choice for a top job with the Treasury Department is having tax problems.
A congressional report says Obama's nominee for undersecretary of the Treasury for international affairs, Lael Brainard, was late in paying real estate taxes in 2005, 2006 and 2007.
The report by the Senate Finance Committee staff also challenges the accuracy of a deduction Brainard claimed for running an office from her home. The challenge led Brainard to reduce the deduction on her 2008 return.
The committee's top Republican is unhappy that the committee staff had to submit 10 sets of questions to Brainard before getting complete information about the discrepancies.
Obama approval rating drops below 50 percent (now on Quinnipiac!) (The Hill)
President Barack Obama’s approval rating has dropped to 48 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University poll out Wednesday.
The poll shows Obama’s approval rating dropping below 50 percent for the first time since taking office as support for the war in Afghanistan drops and the economy continues to struggle.
The same poll showed the president enjoyed a 50 percent approval rating last month.
The poll shows an “erosion of support” for the war in Afghanistan, with 48 percent saying that fighting the war is the right thing to do, compared to 52 percent in an October survey.
Gov't Wastes $98B in Taxpayer Dollars in 2009 (AP)
About 5 percent of spending in federal programs in fiscal year 2009 was improper, according to new details of a government financial report that were released Tuesday.
WASHINGTON -- More than $98 billion in taxpayer dollars spent by government agencies was wasted, much of it on questionable claims for tax credits and Medicare benefits, representing an increase of $26 billion from the previous year.
Rep. Darrell Issa: Counterpoint: Fake job numbers vital to stimulus propaganda (The Washington Examiner)
Since President Obama took office, the American people have been subjected to an aggressive propaganda campaign designed to convince them that the $787 billion stimulus bill is working.
Month after month, as unemployment continues to rise, the administration has sent its spinmeisters out to trumpet an altogether dubious number of jobs "created or saved."
Vice President Biden -- the man appointed by the president to oversee the recovery effort -- has shamelessly continued to claim credit for as many as one million jobs that the administration argues the stimulus has "created or saved."
Meanwhile, unemployment hit the highest point in a quarter century, and 3.8 million more Americans are out of work since the White House promised to "get the economy moving again." There's good reason to doubt thepresident's policies are working.
"Here in Washington, we've all seen how quickly good intentions can turn into broken promises and wasteful spending," the president noted in his State of the Union address while responding to skepticism about the stimulus. "And with a plan of this scale comes enormous responsibility to get it right.
"That is why I've asked Vice President Biden to lead a tough, unprecedented oversight effort -- because nobody messes with Joe."
Apparently, somebody is messing with Joe. Or even worse, Joe seems to be messing with us.
On top of espousing fictitious jobs claims, the White House has now directed the stimulus auditor to report inaccurate information on the Recovery.gov Web site.
This continues to occur even as media reports savage the ridiculously inaccurate data.
From $1.2 million in stimulus funds that saved 935 jobs at a Georgia community council with only 508 employees, to a $1,047 lawnmower in Arkansas purchased with stimulus funds that resulted in 50 jobs, to the $26,174 grant for roof repairs in Texas that created 450 jobs, the signature item in the president's economic policy has been fraught with Enron-style accounting tricks and fraudulent reporting.
And all from a president who promised an "unprecedented level of openness and transparency."
The manifest inaccuracies in the data the Obama administration uses to justify its economic policies constitutes the promulgation of inaccurate and misleading information by the federal government.
The American people deserve a straightforward accounting of the way the president spends their tax dollars, and they have the right to expect a return on their "investment."
So far, all they are getting is deceitful propaganda and a backbreaking trillion-dollar tax bill from the officials they elected to bring about change. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
BEIJING – President Barack Obama says he's worried that spending too much money to help revive the economy could undermine a fragile U.S. recovery and throw the economy into a double-dip recession.
That's when the economy begins to recover briefly from a recession only to be dragged back under.
Obama told Fox News in an interview Wednesday that his administration is weighing tax breaks that could encourage businesses to begin hiring again.
Stunner. GQ Names Obama ‘Leader of the Year’ (GatewayPundit)
He’s increased the national debt to $12 Trillion, nearly doubled the unemployment rate since the Bush years, and tripled the national deficit in less than one year. Some leader.
Via FOX Nation GQ will name Barack Obama leader of the year in their December issue.
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows that 26% 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 -14. That matches the lowest Approval Index rating yet recorded for this President (see trends).
Beijing, China (CNN) -- A little more than a year after his election, President Obama said his administration has laid the groundwork for success on global and domestic matters.
"I think that we've restored America's standing in the world, and that's confirmed by polls," he told CNN's Ed Henry in a wide-ranging interview this week during his trip to China.
"I think a recent one indicated that around the world, before my election, less than half the people -- maybe less than 40 percent of the people -- thought that you could count on America to do to the right thing. Now it's up to 75 percent."
The president said that makes it easier for world leaders to cooperate with the United States, noting Chinese and Russia involvement in nuclear talks with Iran.
Obama has visited 20 countries during his first year in office, more than any other U.S. president.
A decision on troops levels in Afghanistan is "very close," the president said. "I will announce that decision certainly in the next several weeks."
ABC NEWS Why Was White House Website Riddled With Errors? (listed 700 phantom Cong districts)
Officials tell ABC News so far, they found 700 mistaken Congressional districts out of more than 130,000 stimulus grants.
On Monday night, ABC reported on errors found on the website set up by the White House to track the number of jobs created or saved by the economic stimulus program.
The website was riddled with reports of jobs in places that didn't even exist. That report prompted anger on Capitol Hill, and defensiveness at the White House.
Conservatives are not the only ones that think the president's stimulus package was a colossal failure.
Believe it or not, the NAACP, the AFL-CIO and La Raza are complaining that the stimulus has not worked, telling the president that he must do more to fight unemployment.
With unemployment among African-Americans above 20 percent in several states, senior NAACP official Hillary Shelton told The New York Times, "It's time for us to really stoke this issue up."
Al Gore: Earth's Interior 'Extremely Hot, Several Million Degrees' (Yes, several million) News Busters
For several years as uneducated sycophants in the media gushed and fawned over every utterance from former Vice President Al Gore, NewsBusters has informed readers of just how absurd the junk science he's peddling really is.
Last Thursday, NBC "Tonight Show" viewers got a perfect example of how the Nobel Laureate basically makes things up, and that his poor grades in college were quite an indicator of just how little he understands about science.
Papers Worry About Lost Revenue If Bill Regulating Pay for Legal Notices Passes (Editor and Publisher)
Some Pennsylvania lawmakers say they wonder how a bill regulating what newspapers can charge governmental bodies for legal notices would be enforced if it becomes law.
The bill passed the state House of Representatives by a 127-62 vote and was sent to the Senate. It would link legal ad rates to 75 percent of either the papers' lowest commercial rate or what papers were charging their customers on July 1, whichever is lower.
The Pennsylvania Newspaper Association estimates the bill would reduce payments to more than 175 daily and weekly papers across the state by a total of about $5 million in the first year. The newspaper association supports the bill.
But detractors say with the secrecy that surrounds advertising rates, the measure would be hard to enforce.
TIME runs out for buyout volunteers; layoffs loom (New York Post)
The biggest magazines in the Time Inc. empire — People, Time, Sports Illustrated, Fortune and Money — should find out today how many volunteers have stepped forward to accept buyout packages.
Time Inc. is said to be looking to slash more than 500 jobs from its ranks, with the bulk of the layoffs to happen next week before the process is wrapped up by year-end.
While not all titles outlined how many volunteers they need, sources said that Time Inc.'s biggest magazines could eliminate as many as 90 editorial positions.
Fortune is expected to see the deepest cuts at about 40 positions. However, with just over 20 volunteers having stepped up so far, Managing Editor Andy Serwer is widely expected to impose layoffs to make up the shortfall.
So far, the highest-ranking person on the masthead to accept a buyout is Deputy Managing Editor Steve Koepp, a 29-year veteran who spent 26 years at Time and the past three at Fortune.
At the Sports Illustrated group, which includes Golf Magazine, the damage was expected to be slightly less severe. Though there were no estimates of how many have volunteered, it's widely expected that Editorial Director Terry McDonell will have to make involuntary cuts to reach the target believed to be around 30 jobs.
Time magazine is looking for only 12 volunteers to accept buyouts, and the early signs are the magazine should meet that goal.
There had been talk that Deputy Managing Editor Romesh Ratnesar was leaning toward taking a buyout but might have been talked out of it in light of Josh Tyrangiel's decision to leave Time to run the Bloomberg LP-owned BusinessWeek.
Time Magazine Falls for Rocket Launch Hoax (Space Frontier Foundation Press Release)
Names Ares "Invention of the Year" Based on Launch of Dummy Vehicle Citing Time magazine's selection of NASA's proposed Ares rockets "The Best Invention of the Year" based on a single purported "test flight" of the vehicle on October 28th, the Space Frontier Foundation congratulated NASA on its propaganda triumph.
The Foundation pointed out that the rocket launched by NASA was not an Ares 1 at all, but a dummy vehicle cobbled together from pieces of other space systems, an elaborate mock-up shaped and painted to look like the actual vehicle, which isn't even scheduled to fly for another 6 years.
"While many reporters know that Ares 1 is far behind schedule and likely to be canceled as an unnecessary and expensive distraction from real exploration missions, apparently Time magazine fell for this publicity hoax.
There was no boy in the balloon and there most definitely was no Ares rocket launched in Florida last month," said the Foundation's Rick Tumlinson. "If anyone at Time had bothered to go beyond the NASA and contractor flacks, they would have found out what most people in the space community already knew.
This was a marketing ploy designed to save a program threatened with imminent cancellation."
Time's assertion that the Ares 1 rocket is "The best and smartest and coolest thing built in 2009" is a simple error of fact and should be immediately retracted.
There was no Ares 1 vehicle built in 2009.
"Even if a real Ares 1 launch vehicle were ever built and launched, it would still be an obscenely wasteful duplication of existing commercial and military rockets, which doesn't seem too smart or cool during our federal budget meltdown," Tumlinson added.
Charlie Gibson, ABC News, uses clip from John Stewart Comedy Central as news report
Seen it all now!
Caught a few minutes of Charlie Gibson on ABC News this evening in all his seriousness playing a clip of John Stewart's Comedy Central with Stewart asking Biden about the screw ups at his web site, Recovery.gov. Charlie didn't seem to mind that ABC News was in all seriousness using clips of a COMEDIAN and his show to give Biden's answers to the problems at recovery.gov instead of just getting THEIR OWN DANG INTERVIEW WITH BIDEN!
Morning Joe, Piping Hot a Year Ago, Steadily Loses Steam (New York Observer)
Joe Scarborough held up a copy of The New York Times. It was Monday, Nov. 16, and earlier in the morning The Times had published a piece about Newsweek, which had recently laid off 13 staffers.
Quarterly ad revenue at the newsweekly was down 48 percent versus last year. That said, according to The Times, things were looking up. In the third quarter, The Washington Post’s magazine division, largely comprised of Newsweek, lost only $4.3 million, a major improvement over the first half of the year.
Mr. Scarborough put down the newspaper and looked over at Jon Meacham, the editor of Newsweek, who was sitting across the table in the Morning Joe studio. “It’s a very positive article, congratulations,” said Mr. Scarborough.
“I know it’s a rough time for everyone in print right now.”
Mr. Meacham nodded. The Times article, said Mr. Meacham, was a vote of confidence for everyone in the news business, like Newsweek and Morning Joe, who was fighting the good fight and producing serious journalism. Mr. Scarborough agreed. He was committed to the mission. Hard news, politics, intellectual rigor. MSNBC had made a bet, said Mr. Scarborough, that audiences would reward them for steering clear of tabloid fodder. “We don’t dumb down here,” said Mr. Scarborough.
On Monday’s program, one similarity between Newsweek and Morning Joe was left unspoken—namely, that both are catering to significantly diminishing audiences.
Newsweek has lowered its rate base twice in the past two years and will do so again in January.
Likewise, Morning Joe is struggling to hang on to viewers.
So far this fall, from Sept. 1 through Nov. 13, according to The Observer’s analysis of Nielsen numbers, Morning Joe has averaged 357,000 total viewers and 124,000 in the 25- to 54-year-old demographic—down 35 percent and 43 percent, respectively, from the same time period last year.
Of course, Morning Joe is hardly the only cable news show to suffer a steep decline from last year’s election high. But over the past eight months, Morning Joe has been slipping not only in overall ratings, but also relative to its competition.
Not long ago, Morning Joe—like MSNBC’s prime-time lineup—was seemingly well poised to push past CNN into the No. 2 position in cable news (Fox News’ Fox & Friends maintains the top position by a wide margin).
To wit: In March of 2009, MSNBC executives announced that Morning Joe had topped CNN’s American Morning in the demographic for the entire month—the first such victory for the network’s morning programming in more than seven years. At the time, MSNBC press releases regularly referred to Morning Joe as “the fastest growing cable news morning show.”
These days, it looks more like the fastest shrinking.
Palin gives Oprah her highest TV ratings in two years - even higher than when Obama was a guest! Since Oprah's ratings have been in decline, she should have Palin on every month.
29 comments:
From the Buried Lede Department: 75to Be Held Without Trial PATTERICO
The Washington Post’s lede:
The Senate on Tuesday rejected an attempt to bar using funds from a defense spending bill to build or modify prisons in the United States to hold detainees from Guantanamo Bay, a move that suggested congressional Democrats may be lining up behind President Obama’s vision for closing the military prison.
Gotcha. Hey, anything else going on? Let’s read on to paragraph 12 of the article, shall we?
Administration officials say they expect that as many as 40 of the 215 detainees at Guantanamo will be tried in federal court or military commissions.
About 90 others have been cleared for repatriation or resettlement in a third country, and about 75 more have been deemed too dangerous to release but cannot be prosecuted because of evidentiary issues and limits on the use of classified material.
We told you about this category in earlier posts. The concept of holding people without trials was discussed by Obama in a May speech.
In May, Karl fleshed out the details: some detainees will be held because we can’t try them — and some might even be tried and acquitted . . . and then held nevertheless.
Kinda makes KSM’s trial seem like a show trial, huh?
Hope and change, baby. Let’s all watch and see how other news organizations handle the news that Obama has identified 75 people that he plans to hold indefnitely without trial.
Mention it in the 12th paragraph? Don’t mention it all? The options are unlimited, Big Media news editors!
Obama Reveals He Didn’t Sign Off on Decision to Try KSM in NYC (video) CNN|(Votes Present again, and again)
Chairman Obama: "I said to the Attorney General, 'Make a decision based on the law.'"
NPR Shocker: Attorney General Holder Stumped By Lindsey Graham (Where would you try Bin Ladin?)
Newsbusters
During Wednesday's Justice Department oversight hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) stumped Attorney General Eric Holder on what should have been a fairly routine question for America's top law enforcement official.
Maybe more surprisingly, NPR reported it at its website.
As NPR's Frank James noted, "The exchange started with Graham stumping Holder with a question one would have thought the attorney general would have been prepared for."
SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM, (R-S.C): Can you give me a case in United States history where a enemy combatant caught on a battlefield was tried in civilian court?
ERIC HOLDER, ATTORNEY GENERAL: I don't know. I'd have to look at that. I think that, you know, the determination I've made --
GRAHAM: We're making history here, Mr. Attorney General. I'll answer it for you. The answer is no.
HOLDER: Well, I think --
GRAHAM: The Ghailani case -- he was indicted for the Cole bombing before 9/11. And I didn't object to it going into federal court.
But I'm telling you right now. We're making history and we're making bad history. And let me tell you why.
Now, the real focus of this NPR piece was Graham's subsequent question concerning whether or not U.S. officials would have to Mirandize Osama bin Laden if he was captured:
GRAHAM: If bin Laden were caught tomorrow, would it be the position of this administration that he would be brought to justice?
HOLDER: He would certainly be brought to justice, absolutely.
GRAHAM: Where would you try him?
HOLDER: Well, we'd go through our protocol. And we'd make the determination about where he should appropriately be tried. [...]
GRAHAM: If we captured bin Laden tomorrow, would he be entitled to Miranda warnings at the moment of capture?
HOLDER: Again I'm not -- that all depends. I mean, the notion that we --
GRAHAM: Well, it does not depend. If you're going to prosecute anybody in civilian court, our law is clear that the moment custodial interrogation occurs the defendant, the criminal defendant, is entitled to a lawyer and to be informed of their right to remain silent.
The big problem I have is that you're criminalizing the war, that if we caught bin Laden tomorrow, we'd have mixed theories and we couldn't turn him over -- to the CIA, the FBI or military intelligence -- for an interrogation on the battlefield, because now we're saying that he is subject to criminal court in the United States. And you're confusing the people fighting this war.
Much as what NPR did with its piece, this bin Laden segment will likely get a lot of attention from the media in the next 24 hours, as it certainly should.
Obama Meets With Brother in China… For Five Minutes (GatewayPundit)
30 minutes ... time for handpicked commander in chief begging for more troops to enable victory, 5 minutes... time for half brother, SEIU... all the time in the world
The Telegraph reported:
Mr Obama had the brief meeting with Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo, who had the same, late, father as the US President, on Monday evening in Beijing, a White House official said.
Mr Ndesandjo has kept a low public profile since reports surfaced last year that he was living and working in the southern Chinese capitalist and manufacturing haven of Shenzhen.
Obama’s brother Mark runs an illegal firm in China. The Times Online reported this back in July 2008. The American media obviously ignored it.
Mark Ndesandjo is the son of Barack Obama’s late father and his third wife, an American woman named Ruth Nidesand who runs the up-market Maduri kindergarten in Nairobi.
Obama, however, refers to him simply as “my brother” and says he was the only uncontested heir after their father, a Kenyan, died in a car crash in 1982.
Previously On Obama’s Family:
** Obama’s Militant Muslim Brother Abongo Is Luo Activist
** Media Interviews Obama’s Younger Muslim Brother in England
** Surprise!… Obama Breaks Promise to Poor Kenyan Family Members
** Anti-Trade Obama Has Brother Running Illegal Firm In China
** Obama’s Long Lost Brother Lives In Kenyan Slum Hut
** Catching Up With Barack’s Little Brother George In His Filthy Slum Hut
** Foreign Media Finds Obama’s Aunt… In a Boston Slum
** Figures. Obama’s Dear Auntie Onyango Is an Illegal Alien
** Barack Obama: This Isn’t the Illegal Alien Auntie I Thought I Knew
** Obama Knew His Auntie Onyango Was Here Illegally
** Dope & Change… Obama’s Brother George Busted With Pot
** Obama Welcomes His Militant Muslim Brother Abongo to White House
** Obama’s Illegal Immigrant Aunt Moves Back Into Boston Apartment
** Barack Obama’s Brother Accused of Sexual Assault– Denied Entry Into UK
** Obama’s Brother Accused of Sexual Assault On Teen Girl Attended Inauguration
** Obama’s Slum Hut Brother is Community Organizer
** Dreams of My Absent, Wife-Beating and Violent Father (Video)
FEDS' MAMMOGRAM POLICY IS A DEATH SENTENCE (boblonsberry.com)
It's a death sentence.
Our first taste of Obamacare -- the government as the arbitrer of what health care we do and don't need -- will kill thousands of women.
It is a death list by another name.
A federal task force has declared that for most women mammograms are unnecessary before the age of 50 and should only be administered every other year after that.
Further, breast self-exams are no longer recommended.
In a fight with a horrific disease in which early detection is the most-effective tool, America's women have been told by their government to forget about it.
Previous recommendations, based on years of experience and analysis, were for most women to begin annual mammograms at age 40 and to perform monthly breast self-exams starting at puberty.
Countless thousands of women's lives have been saved by following that prudent, simple process.
The discovery of a lump or a mammogram anomoly led to further testing and treatment, and that jump on fighting cancer in many instances saved lives. Without that jump on the disease, it is an incontrovertable fact that women will die.
According to the federal government, however, that's OK.
Apparently there is some threshold at which unnecessary death is acceptable.
At least in the mind of the bureaucracy that is about to be put in charge of the nation's health care. The folks who want health care reform have tipped their hand with this first insight into rationing.
How will the government reduce the cost of health care? By allowing less of it. The savings in this new pronouncement alone are staggering.
A good portion of an entire health-care industry has been swept away. Most women in their 40s are no longer going to be patients of breast-care clinics, and all the women over 40 are only going to go half as often.
(UK) Doctors were told to practice on patients, says whistleblower
(The Telegraph)
Dr Otto Chan told a hearing in East London that some doctors at the Royal London Hospital were ''exposed'' to procedures that they were not trained for.
He said: ''The department was going rapidly backwards, I had real serious concerns about patient care in relation to the training programme.
''The junior staff in our department were doing too much unsupervised work.''
Dr Chan added: ''The juniors were being exposed to procedures that they were clearly not trained to do.''
The radiologist said junior doctors were sometimes given notes on how to do a procedure and ''being told to go and practise it on a patient.''
(snip)
The 52-year-old claims he was sacked from his post at the Royal London in 2006 for whistle-blowing.
He claims he lost his job after saying publicly that X-ray files and scans belonging to thousands of patients were dumped unchecked in boxes
Rationing body tells liver cancer victims that life-prolonging drug is 'too costly' (dailymail.co.uk)
Liver cancer sufferers are being condemned to an early death by being denied a new drug on the Health Service, campaigners warn.
They criticised draft guidance that will effectively ban the drug sorafenib - which is routinely used in every other country where it is licensed.
Trials show the drug, which costs £36,000 a year, can increase survival by around six months for patients who have run out of options.
The Government's rationing body, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) said the overall cost was 'simply too high' to justify the 'benefit to patients'.
However, relatively few would be eligible for the treatment - around 700, or one in four of those diagnosed each year with primary liver cancer.
Germany Trying To Escape Obama's Great Idea Of German-Style Healthcare (Debbie Schlussel)
Ah, so nationalized healthcare doesn’t work, they’re essentially saying. And to make up for the gap, people will have to buy private insurance.
Hmmm . . . isn’t private insurance allegedly “discriminating” against the poor and those with pre-conditions the thing ObamaCare is supposed to solve?
It’s very clear it doesn’t solve that. Germany, with this move, is moving away from government healthcare toward private providers because government can’t afford it.
And yet the ObamaCare proponents are citing Germany as an example of how government healthcare works better than private insurance?
Someone’s not paying attention. And it isn’t the opponents of this looming disaster of nationalized healthcare.
Meanwhile, our “universal healthcare heroes” in Germany are facing a horrible economic crisis, to which their healthcare plan contributed in no small part.
Angela Merkel is proposing tax cuts in addition to her man Rosler’s suggestion of a return to partial private insurance coverage.
They’re trying to be more capitalist and conservative in order to raise themselves up. And we’re trying to emulate their failed socialism to “raise” ourselves down.
Reid HC Bill -- CBO says will cost 849 BILLION over 10 years (FOX)
Estimates price tag of bill at 849 billion.
Raised taxes on cadillac plan
Should cover 31 MILLION AMERICANS after 10 years
Desperate Democrats to bypass 10th Amend; force states to allow 87% Democrat voting felons to vote (The Collins Report)
Democrats are scheming to give themselves new voters through legislation to violate the 10th Amendment by forcing states to allow felons to vote.
The law called The Democracy Restoration Act (DRA) would give the worst of the worst living in our communities (nearly 4 million released felons) the right to vote in federal elections.
Democrats know a University of Minnesota study found that felons vote 87% Democrat. This is obviously why they want it.
Ten states totally bar felon voters and another 18 states require released felons to finish their parole/ probation time first.
Maine and Vermont actually allow voting from prison!
Another Obama nominee runs into tax problems (AP)
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama's choice for a top job with the Treasury Department is having tax problems.
A congressional report says Obama's nominee for undersecretary of the Treasury for international affairs, Lael Brainard, was late in paying real estate taxes in 2005, 2006 and 2007.
The report by the Senate Finance Committee staff also challenges the accuracy of a deduction Brainard claimed for running an office from her home. The challenge led Brainard to reduce the deduction on her 2008 return.
The committee's top Republican is unhappy that the committee staff had to submit 10 sets of questions to Brainard before getting complete information about the discrepancies.
Obama approval rating drops below 50 percent (now on Quinnipiac!)
(The Hill)
President Barack Obama’s approval rating has dropped to 48 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University poll out Wednesday.
The poll shows Obama’s approval rating dropping below 50 percent for the first time since taking office as support for the war in Afghanistan drops and the economy continues to struggle.
The same poll showed the president enjoyed a 50 percent approval rating last month.
The poll shows an “erosion of support” for the war in Afghanistan, with 48 percent saying that fighting the war is the right thing to do, compared to 52 percent in an October survey.
Gov't Wastes $98B in Taxpayer Dollars in 2009 (AP)
About 5 percent of spending in federal programs in fiscal year 2009 was improper, according to new details of a government financial report that were released Tuesday.
WASHINGTON -- More than $98 billion in taxpayer dollars spent by government agencies was wasted, much of it on questionable claims for tax credits and Medicare benefits, representing an increase of $26 billion from the previous year.
Rep. Darrell Issa: Counterpoint: Fake job numbers vital to stimulus propaganda (The Washington Examiner)
Since President Obama took office, the American people have been subjected to an aggressive propaganda campaign designed to convince them that the $787 billion stimulus bill is working.
Month after month, as unemployment continues to rise, the administration has sent its spinmeisters out to trumpet an altogether dubious number of jobs "created or saved."
Vice President Biden -- the man appointed by the president to oversee the recovery effort -- has shamelessly continued to claim credit for as many as one million jobs that the administration argues the stimulus has "created or saved."
Meanwhile, unemployment hit the highest point in a quarter century, and 3.8 million more Americans are out of work since the White House promised to "get the economy moving again." There's good reason to doubt thepresident's policies are working.
"Here in Washington, we've all seen how quickly good intentions can turn into broken promises and wasteful spending," the president noted in his State of the Union address while responding to skepticism about the stimulus. "And with a plan of this scale comes enormous responsibility to get it right.
"That is why I've asked Vice President Biden to lead a tough, unprecedented oversight effort -- because nobody messes with Joe."
Apparently, somebody is messing with Joe. Or even worse, Joe seems to be messing with us.
On top of espousing fictitious jobs claims, the White House has now directed the stimulus auditor to report inaccurate information on the Recovery.gov Web site.
This continues to occur even as media reports savage the ridiculously inaccurate data.
From $1.2 million in stimulus funds that saved 935 jobs at a Georgia community council with only 508 employees, to a $1,047 lawnmower in Arkansas purchased with stimulus funds that resulted in 50 jobs, to the $26,174 grant for roof repairs in Texas that created 450 jobs, the signature item in the president's economic policy has been fraught with Enron-style accounting tricks and fraudulent reporting.
And all from a president who promised an "unprecedented level of openness and transparency."
The manifest inaccuracies in the data the Obama administration uses to justify its economic policies constitutes the promulgation of inaccurate and misleading information by the federal government.
The American people deserve a straightforward accounting of the way the president spends their tax dollars, and they have the right to expect a return on their "investment."
So far, all they are getting is deceitful propaganda and a backbreaking trillion-dollar tax bill from the officials they elected to bring about change.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Obama warns of a 'double dip' recession (AP)
BEIJING – President Barack Obama says he's worried that spending too much money to help revive the economy could undermine a fragile U.S. recovery and throw the economy into a double-dip recession.
That's when the economy begins to recover briefly from a recession only to be dragged back under.
Obama told Fox News in an interview Wednesday that his administration is weighing tax breaks that could encourage businesses to begin hiring again.
Stunner. GQ Names Obama ‘Leader of the Year’ (GatewayPundit)
He’s increased the national debt to $12 Trillion, nearly doubled the unemployment rate since the Bush years, and tripled the national deficit in less than one year. Some leader.
Via FOX Nation GQ will name Barack Obama leader of the year in their December issue.
Rasmussen Daily Presidential Tracking Poll (-14bama - 26% strongly approve plumbs record low)
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows that 26% 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 -14. That matches the lowest Approval Index rating yet recorded for this President (see trends).
Obama: 'We've restored America's standing' (CNN) WTF?
Beijing, China (CNN) -- A little more than a year after his election, President Obama said his administration has laid the groundwork for success on global and domestic matters.
"I think that we've restored America's standing in the world, and that's confirmed by polls," he told CNN's Ed Henry in a wide-ranging interview this week during his trip to China.
"I think a recent one indicated that around the world, before my election, less than half the people -- maybe less than 40 percent of the people -- thought that you could count on America to do to the right thing. Now it's up to 75 percent."
The president said that makes it easier for world leaders to cooperate with the United States, noting Chinese and Russia involvement in nuclear talks with Iran.
Obama has visited 20 countries during his first year in office, more than any other U.S. president.
A decision on troops levels in Afghanistan is "very close," the president said. "I will announce that decision certainly in the next several weeks."
ABC NEWS Why Was White House Website Riddled With Errors? (listed 700 phantom Cong districts)
Officials tell ABC News so far, they found 700 mistaken Congressional districts out of more than 130,000 stimulus grants.
On Monday night, ABC reported on errors found on the website set up by the White House to track the number of jobs created or saved by the economic stimulus program.
The website was riddled with reports of jobs in places that didn't even exist. That report prompted anger on Capitol Hill, and defensiveness at the White House.
Liberal Groups Say Stimulus Didn't Work (Fox)
Conservatives are not the only ones that think the president's stimulus package was a colossal failure.
Believe it or not, the NAACP, the AFL-CIO and La Raza are complaining that the stimulus has not worked, telling the president that he must do more to fight unemployment.
With unemployment among African-Americans above 20 percent in several states, senior NAACP official Hillary Shelton told The New York Times, "It's time for us to really stoke this issue up."
Al Gore: Earth's Interior 'Extremely Hot, Several Million Degrees' (Yes, several million) News Busters
For several years as uneducated sycophants in the media gushed and fawned over every utterance from former Vice President Al Gore, NewsBusters has informed readers of just how absurd the junk science he's peddling really is.
Last Thursday, NBC "Tonight Show" viewers got a perfect example of how the Nobel Laureate basically makes things up, and that his poor grades in college were quite an indicator of just how little he understands about science.
The President's Timetable For Retreat (Investors.com)
Afghanistan: President Obama has made a ringing commitment to fight the Taliban with one foot out the door.
Seven years tops, he says, and we're out of there. If he's serious, we've already lost.
The president still seems to have trouble deciding what to do next in the country that he used to call the "central front" in the war on terror.
But he's clear about one thing: the need for an exit strategy.
Not a victory strategy, mind you, but a strategy that will ensure an American departure, preferably before he leaves office.
Papers Worry About Lost Revenue If Bill Regulating Pay for Legal Notices Passes (Editor and Publisher)
Some Pennsylvania lawmakers say they wonder how a bill regulating what newspapers can charge governmental bodies for legal notices would be enforced if it becomes law.
The bill passed the state House of Representatives by a 127-62 vote and was sent to the Senate. It would link legal ad rates to 75 percent of either the papers' lowest commercial rate or what papers were charging their customers on July 1, whichever is lower.
The Pennsylvania Newspaper Association estimates the bill would reduce payments to more than 175 daily and weekly papers across the state by a total of about $5 million in the first year. The newspaper association supports the bill.
But detractors say with the secrecy that surrounds advertising rates, the measure would be hard to enforce.
TIME runs out for buyout volunteers; layoffs loom (New York Post)
The biggest magazines in the Time Inc. empire — People, Time, Sports Illustrated, Fortune and Money — should find out today how many volunteers have stepped forward to accept buyout packages.
Time Inc. is said to be looking to slash more than 500 jobs from its ranks, with the bulk of the layoffs to happen next week before the process is wrapped up by year-end.
While not all titles outlined how many volunteers they need, sources said that Time Inc.'s biggest magazines could eliminate as many as 90 editorial positions.
Fortune is expected to see the deepest cuts at about 40 positions. However, with just over 20 volunteers having stepped up so far, Managing Editor Andy Serwer is widely expected to impose layoffs to make up the shortfall.
So far, the highest-ranking person on the masthead to accept a buyout is Deputy Managing Editor Steve Koepp, a 29-year veteran who spent 26 years at Time and the past three at Fortune.
At the Sports Illustrated group, which includes Golf Magazine, the damage was expected to be slightly less severe. Though there were no estimates of how many have volunteered, it's widely expected that Editorial Director Terry McDonell will have to make involuntary cuts to reach the target believed to be around 30 jobs.
Time magazine is looking for only 12 volunteers to accept buyouts, and the early signs are the magazine should meet that goal.
There had been talk that Deputy Managing Editor Romesh Ratnesar was leaning toward taking a buyout but might have been talked out of it in light of Josh Tyrangiel's decision to leave Time to run the Bloomberg LP-owned BusinessWeek.
Time Magazine Falls for Rocket Launch Hoax (Space Frontier Foundation Press Release)
Names Ares "Invention of the Year" Based on Launch of Dummy Vehicle
Citing Time magazine's selection of NASA's proposed Ares rockets "The Best Invention of the Year" based on a single purported "test flight" of the vehicle on October 28th, the Space Frontier Foundation congratulated NASA on its propaganda triumph.
The Foundation pointed out that the rocket launched by NASA was not an Ares 1 at all, but a dummy vehicle cobbled together from pieces of other space systems, an elaborate mock-up shaped and painted to look like the actual vehicle, which isn't even scheduled to fly for another 6 years.
"While many reporters know that Ares 1 is far behind schedule and likely to be canceled as an unnecessary and expensive distraction from real exploration missions, apparently Time magazine fell for this publicity hoax.
There was no boy in the balloon and there most definitely was no Ares rocket launched in Florida last month," said the Foundation's Rick Tumlinson. "If anyone at Time had bothered to go beyond the NASA and contractor flacks, they would have found out what most people in the space community already knew.
This was a marketing ploy designed to save a program threatened with imminent cancellation."
Time's assertion that the Ares 1 rocket is "The best and smartest and coolest thing built in 2009" is a simple error of fact and should be immediately retracted.
There was no Ares 1 vehicle built in 2009.
"Even if a real Ares 1 launch vehicle were ever built and launched, it would still be an obscenely wasteful duplication of existing commercial and military rockets, which doesn't seem too smart or cool during our federal budget meltdown," Tumlinson added.
Charlie Gibson, ABC News, uses clip from John Stewart Comedy Central as news report
Seen it all now!
Caught a few minutes of Charlie Gibson on ABC News this evening in all his seriousness playing a clip of John Stewart's Comedy Central with Stewart asking Biden about the screw ups at his web site, Recovery.gov. Charlie didn't seem to mind that ABC News was in all seriousness using clips of a COMEDIAN and his show to give Biden's answers to the problems at recovery.gov instead of just getting THEIR OWN DANG INTERVIEW WITH BIDEN!
Morning Joe, Piping Hot a Year Ago, Steadily Loses Steam (New York Observer)
Joe Scarborough held up a copy of The New York Times. It was Monday, Nov. 16, and earlier in the morning The Times had published a piece about Newsweek, which had recently laid off 13 staffers.
Quarterly ad revenue at the newsweekly was down 48 percent versus last year. That said, according to The Times, things were looking up. In the third quarter, The Washington Post’s magazine division, largely comprised of Newsweek, lost only $4.3 million, a major improvement over the first half of the year.
Mr. Scarborough put down the newspaper and looked over at Jon Meacham, the editor of Newsweek, who was sitting across the table in the Morning Joe studio. “It’s a very positive article, congratulations,” said Mr. Scarborough.
“I know it’s a rough time for everyone in print right now.”
Mr. Meacham nodded. The Times article, said Mr. Meacham, was a vote of confidence for everyone in the news business, like Newsweek and Morning Joe, who was fighting the good fight and producing serious journalism. Mr. Scarborough agreed. He was committed to the mission. Hard news, politics, intellectual rigor. MSNBC had made a bet, said Mr. Scarborough, that audiences would reward them for steering clear of tabloid fodder. “We don’t dumb down here,” said Mr.
Scarborough.
On Monday’s program, one similarity between Newsweek and Morning Joe was left unspoken—namely, that both are catering to significantly diminishing audiences.
Newsweek has lowered its rate base twice in the past two years and will do so again in January.
Likewise, Morning Joe is struggling to hang on to viewers.
So far this fall, from Sept. 1 through Nov. 13, according to The Observer’s analysis of Nielsen numbers, Morning Joe has averaged 357,000 total viewers and 124,000 in the 25- to 54-year-old demographic—down 35 percent and 43 percent, respectively, from the same time period last year.
Of course, Morning Joe is hardly the only cable news show to suffer a steep decline from last year’s election high. But over the past eight months, Morning Joe has been slipping not only in overall ratings, but also relative to its competition.
Not long ago, Morning Joe—like MSNBC’s prime-time lineup—was seemingly well poised to push past CNN into the No. 2 position in cable news (Fox News’ Fox & Friends maintains the top position by a wide margin).
To wit: In March of 2009, MSNBC executives announced that Morning Joe had topped CNN’s American Morning in the demographic for the entire month—the first such victory for the network’s morning programming in more than seven years. At the time, MSNBC press releases regularly referred to Morning Joe as “the fastest growing cable news morning show.”
These days, it looks more like the fastest shrinking.
Palin gives Oprah her highest TV ratings in two years - even higher than when Obama was a guest! Since Oprah's ratings have been in decline, she should have Palin on every month.
Pailin pretty
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