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.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Friday December 18 -- Got news or an update?
If you have news or an update, leave it in comments. . . .
31 comments:
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Fistgate X: Kevin Jennings’ Suggested Reading For Kids Included Sick Book That Romanticized Rape of a 13 Year-Old – Media Silent(GatewayPundit)
Yesterday, we reported that Barack Obama’s Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings and his GLSEN organization were promoting a book to children that included a pornographic image of men having sex while boy scouts looked on.
The day before that we reported that Kevin Jennings’ organization GLSEN was promoting a children’s book that detailed first-graders having sex.
As founder and executive director of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) Jennings approved of and promoted several filthy sex books for children.
Scott Baker from Breitbart-TV.com and Co-Host of ‘The B-Cast‘ submitted a shocking report to Gateway Pundit blog back on December 4, 2009. The report detailed the reading list promoted to 7-12 grade students by Kevin Jennings’ GLSEN organization.
This material has not been reported in detail at Big Government website.
Remember as you read this that Kevin Jennings is today the nation’s Safe Schools Czar.
Steve King demands Obama fire radical "safe schools czar"(The Examiner )
Iowa 5th District Congressman Steve King continues to be one of the most outspoken critics of the Obama administration.
For the second time, King wrote a letter to the President, demanding he fire "safe schools" czar Kevin Jennings. Obama never responded to the first letter authored by King, and signed by 52 GOP House members.
Russians Accuse Brits of Manipulating Global Warming Data(GatewayPundit)
Junk Science Meltdown–
James Delingpole at The Telegraph reported today that the Russians are accusing British scientists of manipulating global warming data.
Climategate just got much, much bigger. And all thanks to the Russians who, with perfect timing, dropped this bombshell just as the world’s leaders are gathering in Copenhagen to discuss ways of carbon-taxing us all back to the dark ages.
Feast your eyes on this news release from Rionovosta, via the Ria Novosti agency, posted on Icecap.
A discussion of the November 2009 Climatic Research Unit e-mail hacking incident, referred to by some sources as “Climategate,” continues against the backdrop of the abortive UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen (COP15) discussing alternative agreements to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol that aimed to combat global warming.
The incident involved an e-mail server used by the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich, East England.
Unknown persons stole and anonymously disseminated thousands of e-mails and other documents dealing with the global-warming issue made over the course of 13 years.
Controversy arose after various allegations were made including that climate scientists colluded to withhold scientific evidence and manipulated data to make the case for global warming appear stronger than it is.
Climategate has already affected Russia. On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data.
The IEA believes that Russian meteorological-station data did not substantiate the anthropogenic global-warming theory.
Analysts say Russian meteorological stations cover most of the country’s territory, and that the Hadley Center had used data submitted by only 25% of such stations in its reports.
Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations for some other reasons, rather than the lack of meteorological stations and observations.
The data of stations located in areas not listed in the Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature UK (HadCRUT) survey often does not show any substantial warming in the late 20th century and the early 21st century.
Hillary Clinton Promises $100 Billion to Poor Regimes to Fight Global Warming Junk Science (Video)(GatewayPundit)
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told the junk scientists in Copenhagen that the U.S. would join others in raising $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poorer nations cope with global warming junk science.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke at the climate summit in Copenhagen Wednesday, saying all nations must come together and deliver a climate treaty.
Related...The British media is now reporting that the entire global temperature record used by the IPCC to inform world government policy is a total crock.
Cable News Ratings: Fox News Has Highest Rated Year In Network History (Broadcasting and Cable)
Fox News will finish 2009 as the top-rated cable news network, a perch it has enjoyed for eight years running.
But 2009--the first year of the Obama administration--also marks FNC's highest rated year in the channel's 13-year-history.
FNC topped the competition in all dayparts: morning (1 million total viewers, 340,000 viewers in news' target demographic of 25-54-year-olds); total day (1.2 million viewers, 323,000 in the demo); primetime (2.2 million viewers, 551,000 in the demo).
Those numbers mark year-to-year demo gains of 14% in the morning, 16% in total day and 10% in primetime (Mon-Sun), according to Nielsen.
FNC saw double-digit gains for all of its programs. Year-to-year, Glenn Beck is up 96% among total viewers (2.3 million) and 148% in the demo (612,000).
Special Report with Bret Baier posted gains of 25% among total viewers (2 million) and 33% in the demo (454,000).
The O'Reilly Factor is up 13% among total viewers (3.3 million) and 27% (801,000) in the demo, marking its tenth consecutive year as the No. 1 cable news program.
The only other cable news network to gain market share year-to-year is HLN, which is still comparatively small, but has gained on sister network CNN in 2009.
CNN Falls Behind MSNBC in Annual Prime-Time Ratings (he New York Times) Maybe if they fact-checked Obama's speeches instead of Saturday Night Live people would take them more seriously.
CNN will finish 2009 behind MSNBC in prime-time ratings, the first time CNN has ever trailed a competitor other than the Fox News Channel over a full calendar year.
That finish had been expected. In recent months,
CNN, which continues to stand behind its policy of steering clear of the opinion-based shows that draw large prime-time audiences for its competitors (ROFLMAO)
, has also trailed its own sister network, HLN (formerly Headline News). CNN has frequently finished fourth in the news channel category.
CNN will finish the fourth quarter of 2009 in fourth place — another first — and with two weeks left has been fourth on more than 100 nights this year.
But the end-of-the-year ratings for the news networks — which were being presented this week because nothing is likely to change by Jan. 1 — are bringing some other, less expected, results.
One is the ability of Fox News, which had the biggest ratings year in its history, to grow even against the heavily viewed election year of 2008. (Both CNN and MSNBC were down sharply from last year.)
Perhaps most surprising is the overall growth in viewing for all the news networks over the last several years.
For example, even with its competitive problems in prime time, CNN has had more viewers on average this year than it did in 2006 or 2007. So has MSNBC. But they both have been left in the dust by Fox News.
Fox has averaged 699,000 viewers for the year, up 10 percent, in the weeknight prime-time hours.
“CNN, which continues to stand behind its policy of steering clear of the opinion-based shows”
They just don't get it. They're in trouble BECAUSE they insert so much (far-left) opinion into their coverage.
Dean: I Won't 'Vigorously' Support Obama's Re-election Bid (NewsBusters)
Yesterday, Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs took shots at Howard Dean and his opposition to ObamaCare, suggesting the good doctor didn't know what he was talking about.
It was payback time this morning, as Dean announced that he would support Pres. Obama's re-election bid "not vigorously."
Olbermann joins call to kill bill (almost brought to tears slamming Hussein & Deathcare) Yahoo
Keith Olbermann became the latest progressive icon to voice opposition for the Senate health care reform bill on Wednesday.
Olbermann, host of MSNBC’s “Countdown,” wrote in a post on the DAILY KOS that he agrees with former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who has told numerous media outlets that because the bill provides too many concessions and does not constitute real reform, Democrats should “kill the bill.”
“There could not be a finer line between the words compromise and compromised and tonight, with the greatest possible reluctance, I believe I have to go on the air and state my opinion that the Senate bill in its current form has clearly crossed that line and, as currently constituted, cannot be passed,” Olbermann wrote.
CDC: Life Expectancy in U.S. Hits New High (BusinessWeek) Unless DeathCare is passed. Impossible! People are dying everyday because we have not passed a “Health Care Reform” bill!
Average life expectancy in the United States has reached almost 78years, a record high, federal health officials said Wednesday.
From birth in 2007, women can expect to live to 80.4 years on average and men to 75.3 years, according to the report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"This is great news," Dr. William O'Neill, executive dean for clinical affairs at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, said of the overall findings.
Many people say the United States health care system is broken, O'Neill said. "But, this is kind of great evidence to show there has actually been some dramatic improvements in the health of Americans over the last 20 years.
Today President Obama said the costs of Medicare and Medicaid are increasing on an “unsustainable” trajectory.”
Obama also said we must pass health care reform or “health care costs are going to consume the entire federal budget” and the U.S. will go bankrupt.
Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP accounted for $718 billion in health care costs in 2006 —“slightly more than one-third of the country’s total health care expenditures and almost three-fourths of all public spending on health care.”
The federal government paid an additional $252 billion in publicly-funded health care for veterans, Indians, federal workers compensation, federally-sponsored womens’ and childrens’ programs, substance abuse programs, assistance to the states, and for public research.
It sounds like Obama’s answer to our bankrupt federal health care programs is to cover everyone.
...For instance, the Reid bill (in sections 3403 and 2021) explicitly empowers Medicare to deny treatment based on cost.
An Independent Medicare Advisory Board created by the bill—composed of permanent, unelected and, therefore, unaccountable members—will greatly expand the rationing practices that already occur in the program.
Medicare, for example, has limited cancer patients' access to Epogen, a costly but vital drug that stimulates red blood cell production.
It has limited the use of virtual, and safer, colonoscopies due to cost concerns. And Medicare refuses medical claims at twice the rate of the largest private insurers.
Section 6301 of the Reid bill creates new comparative effectiveness research (CER) programs.
CER panels have been used as rationing commissions in other countries such as the U.K., where 15,000 cancer patients die prematurely every year according to the National Cancer Intelligence Network.
CER panels here could effectively dictate coverage options and ration care for plans that participate in the state insurance exchanges created by the bill.
Additionally, the Reid bill depends on the recommendations of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force in no fewer than 14 places.
This task force was responsible for advising women under 50 to not undergo annual mammograms. The administration claims the task force recommendations do not carry the force of law, but the Reid bill itself contradicts them in section 2713.
The bill explicitly states, on page 17, that health insurance plans "shall provide coverage for" services approved by the task force.
This chilling provision represents the government stepping between doctors and patients.
When the government asserts the power to provide care, it also asserts the power to deny care....
David Axelrod: Left 'insane' to sink health bill (Politico)
Trying to stave off a sudden fusillade from the left, White House senior adviser David Axelrod said Thursday that Howard Dean's criticisms of health-care reform are "predicated on a bunch of erroneous conclusions" and that for progressives to torpedo the legislation "would be a tragic, tragic outcome."
“To defeat a bill that will bend the curve on this inexorable rise in health-care costs is insane,” Axelrod said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
"I don’t think that you want this moment to pass. It will not come back."
Axelrod called in from the West Wing as the White House mobilized Thursday morning in the face of a surprising and potentially fatal chorus of opposition from the left.
In the most vivid indication of the crisis facing White House messengers, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann told viewers Wednesday night that the Senate version has become “unsupportable...a hollow shell of a bill.”
Former DNC chairman and Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, an unofficial leader of progressives, on Thursday began a third day of media appearances by arguing in a Washington Post op-ed that the compromise emerging this week meets “none” of his benchmarks for “real reform.”
The Gulag Obama: No Excellence, Just 'Fairness' (Healthcare) (theFinancialSkinny)
The healthcare reform plan was written by the President's good friend, Andy Stern, who heads SEIU, which contributed $60 million to the 2008 Obama campaign. SEIU also gave millions to Health Care For America NOW!, which advocates a plan, not surprisingly, that is nearly identical to the President's.
Barack Obama has won a place in history with the worst ratings of any president at the end of his first year
-- snip --
Mr. Obama may believe, as he told Oprah Winfrey in a recent interview, that he deserves a "solid B+" for his first year in office, but the American people beg to differ.
A presidency that started with so much promise is receiving unprecedentedly low grades from the country that elected him. He's earned them.
EDITORIAL: Walpin-gate may snag Mrs. Obama--Skullduggery alleged in White House dismissal of IG (Thw Washington Times)
No inspector general can unearth corruption without access to his office, computer or staff.
An "administrative leave" putting an IG in that position has the same effect, for all intents and purposes, as an immediate firing.
That's the basic logic behind former Inspector General Gerald Walpin's lawsuit demanding at least temporary reinstatement to his job as watchdog at the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS).
New revelations about the case from two lawmakers indicate that there is good reason to suspect duplicity from those who helped force Mr. Walpin's overnight removal in June.
In the past 10 days, two major developments have occurred.
First, Obama administration attorneys continued their efforts to deny Mr. Walpin his day in court.
On Dec. 7, they filed reply briefs rearguing their demand that the case be dismissed without even a hearing.
Second, Rep. Darrell Issa of California and Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, both Republicans, have openly questioned the honesty of CNCS Chairman Alan D. Solomont.
Most explosively of all, dirty deeds may have been employed to hide extensive involvement in the affair by the office of first lady Michelle Obama, whom the White House months earlier had announced would play "a central role in the national service agenda."
Mr. Walpin's suit claims that President Obama did not abide by the requirement in the Inspector General Act that IGs be given 30 days' notice before being "removed" from office.
Mr. Walpin instead was placed on "paid administrative leave" for 30 days.
The new administration brief argues that such "leave" does not constitute "removal."
Mr. Walpin's suit explained that the entire reason for the 30-day-notice requirement is to ward off political interference with ongoing investigations.
The administrative leave that denied him access to all the tools of his job, he contended, effectively "removed"...
Lord Monckton reports on Pachauri’s eye opening Copenhagen presentation (IPCC Lies Exposed!) (Watts Up With That)
In the Grand Ceremonial Hall of the University of Copenhagen, a splendid Nordic classical space overlooking the Church of our Lady in the heart of the old city, rows of repellent, blue plastic chairs surrounded the podium from which no less a personage than Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, was to speak.
I had arrived in good time to take my seat among the dignitaries in the front row. Rapidly, the room filled with enthusiastic Greenies and enviro-zombs waiting to hear the latest from ye Holy Bookes of Ipecac, yea verily.
The official party shambled in and perched on the blue plastic chairs next to me. Pachauri was just a couple of seats away, so I gave him a letter from me and Senator Fielding of Australia, pointing out that the headline graph in the IPCC’s 2007 report, purporting to show that the rate of warming over the past 150 years had itself accelerated, was fraudulent.
Would he use the bogus graph in his lecture? I had seen him do so when he received an honorary doctorate from the University of New South Wales. I watched and waited.
Sure enough, he used the bogus graph. I decided to wait until he had finished, and ask a question then.
Pachauri then produced the now wearisome list of lies, fibs, fabrications and exaggerations that comprise the entire case for alarm about “global warming”.
He delivered it in a tired, unenthusiastic voice, knowing that a growing majority of the world’s peoples – particularly in those countries where comment is free – no longer believe a word the IPCC says.
They are right not to believe. Science is not a belief system.
But here is what Pachauri invited the audience in Copenhagen to believe.
The good news for all of the J-school grads being let go is that they will still get their checks from the DNC.
Confirmations are coming in on Los Angeles Times newsroom staffers who were laid off in yesterday's new wave of staff cuts, or who are taking buyouts to get the heck out while the getting is good enough.
Among those leaving is science desk writer John Johnson, a veteran who has covered a number of beats. He sent the newsroom a note this afternoon:
I had always planned that when it came my time to be remaindered that I would simply slip away like the proverbial housebreaker. Now that it's happened, it feels rude not to say thanks to the many, and I do mean many, people who befriended and helped me over the past two decades.
So thanks and, as that great Glam band of yesteryear, Slade, said, Gudbuy t' Jane.
Pete Thomas covered outdoors recreation — fishing, surfing, adventure and stuff like that — for a good chunk of his 30 years at the Los Angeles Times.
He posted yesterday at Facebook that he's among the layoffs.
Sports staffer Mark Medina sent the newsroom a note saying he was leaving. Three photographers and a photo editor got tapped, and at least one books staffer is leaving.
I posted yesterday about Elina Shatkin, and earlier about the departures of arts writer Suzanne Muchnic and Jerusalem bureau correspondent Richard Boudreaux.
I'm told that, in Orange County, columnist-turned-staff writer Dana Parsons has decided to leave at the end of the year.
NYT layoffs begin (Politico) New York Times...meet hope and change!
With 74 Times staffers taking the recent buyout offer, management has been left with the tough decision of cutting 26 people from the newsroom.
That process began yesterday, as New York magazine reported that eight staffers were getting the ax.
But still, there haven't been any layoffs yet in the D.C. bureau. As I reported over the past couple of weeks, the bureau has slimmed down and isn't expected to get hit hard when it comes to layoffs.
Several veteran D.C. reporters — Stephen Labaton, Neil Lewis, David Johnston, David Stout and Ed Andrews — have taken the buyout.
Bradley J. Fikes quotes from an article by Michael S. Malone, who considers what motivates the mainstream media to ignore stories like ClimateGate:
“I’ve puzzled over this for a long time. I don’t entirely buy the argument that it is politics, pure and simple.
I think it is more than that: that newspapers and their editors want to give their declining pools of readers what they want to read – and when the news, no matter how juicy, is not just going to be upsetting (that’s usually okay), but challenges their sense of the way the world works, the story has to be spiked, dribbled out carefully, or swathed in more comforting ‘analysis’.”
Bradley has more thoughts at the link on what this means for the legacy media.
So if you are looking for last-minute Christmas gifts, not only are newspapers great for use by conservatives as dog trainers, they also make fine gifts for liberals who need their intellectual Snugglies.
AP: Bad Job News is Good Recovery News (Patterico)
Today’s job report is bad but you wouldn’t know that from reading this AP headline and article, at least not based on the opening paragraphs:
Economic reports point to gradual recovery
“A report on unemployment claims and a forecast of U.S. economic activity pointed Thursday to an economy mending slowly, without the job growth needed to fuel a vigorous recovery.
The number of newly laid-off workers filing claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week. But the four-week average for jobless claims, which smooths out fluctuations, fell.
That was an encouraging sign that the labor market is gradually improving. The four-week average is now at its lowest point since late September 2008, when the financial crisis hit with full force.”
Deeper in the article comes the real picture: An unexpected jump of 7,000 in new jobless claims, an increase of 5,000 in ongoing jobless claims, and an increase of 143,759 in people receiving extended job benefits.
Could this be a one-time blip? Of course, but these are not signs of a “gradual recovery” unless you have a flexible definition of “recovery.”
Soft toilet paper becomes target of environmentalists (kansas.com) With newsprint readily available, wouldn’t lefties want to use "Recycled Toilet NewsPaper"?
"They'll take my Ultra Soft Charmin only when they pry it from my cold, dead, aloe-smelling hands."
Highly doubtful it will come to that. Please, sit.
We're talking about toilet paper. Charlton Heston's famous vow was of guns.
The issue over tissue in the bathroom — the really super-soft stuff — is more like the fight about the big SUVs loved by many Americans.
Why should Americans use luxurious toilet paper made from old-growth trees when much of the world gets by with a far more basic and often recycled product?
Why should we flush redwoods, so to speak?
So Greenpeace, the Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmental groups have pushed manufacturers such as Kimberly-Clark (Cottonelle) and Procter & Gamble (Charmin) to stop using wood from virgin forests to make tissue products.
Mountains of paper are dumped every day into recycling bins in homes, offices, factories and schools.
Use that to make toilet paper, the activists say.
Time to roll off the big number: If each American family would buy one recycled roll just one time, it would save 400,000 trees, allegedly.
The problem, though, is that each time paper is shredded during the recycling process, its fibers get shorter.
The shorter the fiber, the less soft the tissue. And Americans, though saying in surveys that they embrace green initiatives, also say they don't want to sacrifice comfort.
"The truth is that other parts of the world are further along in using recycled content," said Kay Jackson, spokeswoman for Kimberly-Clark. "The American consumer still wants softness, and they are speaking with their pocketbooks."
Pulling back in a competitive market is asking a lot, manufacturers say. They also point out that only 5 percent of forest-industry production goes toward toilet paper.
Democrats and Harry Reid tell cancer patients others on lifetime maintenance drugs to “Drop dead!” (The Collins Report)
This one will kill people.
It’s a good thing Harry Reid’s phony “health care” bill is looking like it will die because hidden within its thousands of pages is at least one provision that will condemn the sick and weak among us to an early death.
Reid is helping Barack Obama break another promise about the healthcare monstrosity he wants to ram down our throats.
Obama promised there would be no limits on lifetime medical care.
There will be no rationing he said, but like the rest of his socialist plans that was a lie.
Rationing in any government run healthcare plan is essential.
The Democrats aren’t even pretending about rationing anymore: it’s in there.
Democrat lies have run smack into reality. Harry Reid has slipped a lifetime cap on health care treatments into his monstrous 2074 page bill.
This cynical skunk Reid slipped language describing what is ACTUALLY a life time health services cap for individuals, under the caption, “No lifetime or annual limits.”
Even the AP reports Reid’s bill certainly will allow insurance companies to eventually cut off payments for people they decide they’ve spent enough on. Just cancer alone
Fortunately, The American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, people who are actually fighting on our side, brought this to our attention.
Under Reid’s bill if you are diagnosed with cancer or another disease requiring massive amounts of expensive life saving drugs, the amount of treatments you can receive will eventually run out unless you run out.
Combined with Pelosi’s plans to sells our health care to drug companies by “indefinitely” blocking introduction of less expensive generic drugs, this will kill people.
Cancer experts say some regimens of cancer treatments can exceed $100,000 a year.
How many $100,000 years do you think the Democrats will allow you and me?
Boehner: Pelosi left marketing 'garbage' (The Hill)
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will be left marketing "garbage" legislation to Americans, her GOP leader John Boehner (Ohio) said Thursday.
In a press conference with reporters, Boehner dismissed Pelosi's promise to tout Democrats' legislative achievements in the year to come.
"I hope she does a great job of marketing all the garbage they passed this past year," Boehner said.
Pelosi said during her end-of-year news conference with reporters that she is in "campaign mode" in the coming year.
"I have been making a lot of what we have talked to Members about is be proud of what we have done," she said. "We fully intend to be in the majority, and they will be in the majority when they return.
And that if they need help in their election, that is my first responsibility, is to make sure that they come back."
Boehner said that Republicans have offered better solutions.
"When we have to stand up on principle and oppose our Democrat colleagues, we will do so," he said.
"But we will also offer to the American people what we think is a better solution to the problem that's attempted to being fixed."
Obama Pick for Salvador Post Withdrew Prior Nomination Over Cuba Concerns (Fox) (Another Communist surfaces)
President Obama's recent nominee for ambassador to El Salvador was forced to withdraw her nomination to another diplomatic post a decade ago following concerns about ties to Cuba, raising red flags as her name heads to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee once again for approval.
The White House announced the nomination of Mari Del Carmen Aponte last Wednesday along with a handful of other appointments.
The selection has started to draw some attention given that former President Clinton nominated her for ambassador to the Dominican Republic in 1998, only to see the nomination fizzle after the foreign relations panel questioned her over her past relationship with someone who had apparently caught the attention of the FBI.
One former official with knowledge of that nomination said the committee started scrutinizing Aponte after learning that she had attended a party at the Cuban mission to the United Nations in New York City, and that she had a relationship with someone, Roberto Tamayo, who had raised concern at the FBI over "possible ties to the Cuban government" and "repeated trips there."
The former official said the matter "sure as hell" should come up this time around.
"I think it's a mistake to have someone who did not pass muster before to be nominated again," the former official told FoxNews.com.
"It shows a disrespect to the process I think. ... Hopefully there'll be somebody on the committee who takes a sober look at the record."
According to reports at the time, a former Cuban intelligence
Democratic districts received nearly twice the amount of stimulus funds as GOP districts (Washington Examiner)
A new analysis of the $157 billion distributed by the American Reinvestment and Recovery act, popularly known as the stimulus bill, shows that the funds were distributed without regard for what states were most in need of jobs.
“You would think that if the stimulus money was actually spent to create jobs, there would be more stimulus money spent in high unemployment states,” said Veronique de Rugy, a scholar at the Mercatus Center who produced the analysis. "But we don't find any correlation."
The Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Virginia is one of the nation's most respected economic and regulatory think tanks and has a Nobel prize-winning economist on staff.
The econometric analysis was done using data provided by Recovery.gov -- the government website devoted to tracking the stimulus data -- as well as a host of other government databases.
Additionally, Mercatus found that stimulus funds were not disbursed geographically with any special regard for low-income Americans.
“We find no correlation between economic indicators and stimulus funding. Preliminary results find no statistically significant effect of unemployment, median income or mean income on stimulus funds allocation,” said the report.
DA, Democrat Party Discuss Missing $200,000 (WOAI)
San Antonio - As it prepares to begin the critical election season, the Bexar County Democratic Party reports it is missing some $200,000 from its accounts, 1200 WOAI's Bud Little reports.
"Its money that is used to pay the county for conducting the primary elections," First Assistant District Attorney Cliff Herberg told 1200 WOAI news.
Herberg says party officials met with his office's white collar crimes division and police to determine what needs to be done to launch an investigation.
"There is an allegation that the money was diverted for improper purposes by an officer of the party," Herberg said. So far, no charges have been filed.
Outgoing county Democratic Party chair Carla Vela is pointing the finger at the former county treasurer as the person who siphoned off the funds, but Herberg days the investigation has not progressed to the point where officials are making any allegations of wrongdoing.
Vela says she realized the funds were missing when a check written on an account she thought contained $200,000 bounced, and she then determined there was actually less than $200 in the account.
Vela is resigning as the chair of the Democratic Party to run for County Clerk.
(Its money that is used to pay the county for conducting the primary elections
But, they didn't pay the county for their "most transparent" primary elections; forcing all tax payers of San Antonio to support them.
Their treasurer, Dwayne E. Adams, told party members he had a Ph.D. in finance, and is an Iraq war veteran with experience in the real-estate business.
Turns out, his finance degree was mail-ordered from a degree mill.
His real-estate experience consists of screwing his landlord out of $50,000+ in back rent, and the subsequent law suit against him. Naturally his 'veteran' status is also suspect.
I see great potential for a couple of more White House czars, (should the MSM ever report this)
Matthews: Change Constitution To Make Senate More Democratic - And Pass ObamaCare (NewsBusters)
Chris Matthews asked a New York Congressman Thursday if we should "change the Constitution to make the Senate a more democratic body."
At issue of course was the difficulty Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is having getting 60 Democrats to sign on to any version of a healthcare reform bill.
Pelosi Bars Republicans from Copenhagen Press Conference (Humanevents.com)
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) today barred Republican members of the congressional delegation to Copenhagen for the U.N. “climate change” conference from participation in the official congressional press conference at Bella Center.
Sources at the event told HUMAN EVENTS that Republicans were not initially informed of the event then were subsequently barred from participation.
The Bella Center is the base for the U.S. Delegation in Copenhagen. Around 3:45 pm local time today, Republican members of Congress and their staffs were rounded up for transport back to their hotels on busses just as the press conference began.
They were not allowed to hold their own press conference.
Displaying more of the same type of “Climategate” behavior that has caused worldwide skepticism over the authenticity of the claims behind the anthropogenic global warming “science,” Pelosi is barring dissenting views in Congress from access to the worldwide press in Copenhagen.
One source said it’s a “delicate situation” right now but Republicans may be able to hold their own presser at the Bella Center tomorrow. Maybe.
In Record Time: Lib Not Getting His Way Calls America 'Ungovernable' (NewsBusters)
The last two times I remember this happening -- with Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s and New York City Mayor David Dinkins in the early 1990s -- it at least took a few years for exasperated establishment media liberals to blame the system for a favored politician's difficulties in achieving his agenda, and to call the country and Gotham, respectively, "ungovernable."
Afterwards, Ronald Reagan and Rudy Giuliani proved the whiners spectacularly wrong.
Matt Yglesias at Think Progress is years ahead of those prior hand-wringers.
A bit less than 11 months into the Obama administration, the Think Progress blogger considered by many to be one of the far left's opinion leaders is moaning about how tough it has recently become to get anything done. Poor baby.
As Obama's poll numbers plunge, and statist health care comes down to final pre-Christmas votes, Yglesias reprises the lament that the system is the problem.
The smarter elements in Washington DC are starting to pick up on the fact that it’s not tactical errors on the part of the president that make it hard to get things done, it’s the fact that the country has become ungovernable.
.... We’re suffering from an incoherent institutional set-up in the senate. You can have a system in which a defeated minority still gets a share of governing authority and participates constructively in the victorious majority’s governing agenda, shaping policy around the margins in ways more to their liking.
Or you can have a system in which a defeated minority rejects the majority’s governing agenda out of hand, seeks opening for attack, and hopes that failure on the part of the majority will bring them to power.
But right now we have both simultaneously. It’s a system in which the minority benefits if the government fails, and the minority has the power to ensure failure. It’s insane, and it needs to be changed.
Yglesias's claim is a real hoot, given that 60 Democratic senators can basically do whatever they want if they all manage to agree.
He continues the glad-handing off the podium, until he spots someone and breaks into . . . a bow [screen cap after the jump].
With all the mulling around, it's hard to determine exactly what's going on. It looks like he might have been exchanging bows with a man in the scrum surrounding him.
But PBO's bow seemed to go beyond the perfunctory head-nod that in the circumstances surely would have satisfied, say, Japanese etiquette.
I lived in Cleveland when Dennis Kucinich was mayor. The city went into default. He was almost recalled after one year because his goofy, populist policies were too far left and too expensive. 30 years after his two-year term as mayor ended, he has spun his crushing defeat on ’saving” the city-owned electric company, the fact remains that he was voted out of office because he was a young and inexperienced leftist who should not have been trusted with his own checkbook. @Don Surber
Interesting. The usual daily garbage from the Big Business - Big Insurance paid lobbyist from 3:21 to 4:53, then only one unrelated post all the rest of the day. Apparently even MW's knee-jerk regulars are tired of all the spam.
31 comments:
Fistgate X: Kevin Jennings’ Suggested Reading For Kids Included Sick Book That Romanticized Rape of a 13 Year-Old – Media Silent(GatewayPundit)
Yesterday, we reported that Barack Obama’s Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings and his GLSEN organization were promoting a book to children that included a pornographic image of men having sex while boy scouts looked on.
The day before that we reported that Kevin Jennings’ organization GLSEN was promoting a children’s book that detailed first-graders having sex.
As founder and executive director of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) Jennings approved of and promoted several filthy sex books for children.
Scott Baker from Breitbart-TV.com and Co-Host of ‘The B-Cast‘ submitted a shocking report to Gateway Pundit blog back on December 4, 2009. The report detailed the reading list promoted to 7-12 grade students by Kevin Jennings’ GLSEN organization.
This material has not been reported in detail at Big Government website.
Remember as you read this that Kevin Jennings is today the nation’s Safe Schools Czar.
Steve King demands Obama fire radical "safe schools czar"(The Examiner )
Iowa 5th District Congressman Steve King continues to be one of the most outspoken critics of the Obama administration.
For the second time, King wrote a letter to the President, demanding he fire "safe schools" czar Kevin Jennings. Obama never responded to the first letter authored by King, and signed by 52 GOP House members.
Russians Accuse Brits of Manipulating Global Warming Data(GatewayPundit)
Junk Science Meltdown–
James Delingpole at The Telegraph reported today that the Russians are accusing British scientists of manipulating global warming data.
Climategate just got much, much bigger. And all thanks to the Russians who, with perfect timing, dropped this bombshell just as the world’s leaders are gathering in Copenhagen to discuss ways of carbon-taxing us all back to the dark ages.
Feast your eyes on this news release from Rionovosta, via the Ria Novosti agency, posted on Icecap.
A discussion of the November 2009 Climatic Research Unit e-mail hacking incident, referred to by some sources as “Climategate,” continues against the backdrop of the abortive UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen (COP15) discussing alternative agreements to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol that aimed to combat global warming.
The incident involved an e-mail server used by the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich, East England.
Unknown persons stole and anonymously disseminated thousands of e-mails and other documents dealing with the global-warming issue made over the course of 13 years.
Controversy arose after various allegations were made including that climate scientists colluded to withhold scientific evidence and manipulated data to make the case for global warming appear stronger than it is.
Climategate has already affected Russia. On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data.
The IEA believes that Russian meteorological-station data did not substantiate the anthropogenic global-warming theory.
Analysts say Russian meteorological stations cover most of the country’s territory, and that the Hadley Center had used data submitted by only 25% of such stations in its reports.
Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations for some other reasons, rather than the lack of meteorological stations and observations.
The data of stations located in areas not listed in the Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature UK (HadCRUT) survey often does not show any substantial warming in the late 20th century and the early 21st century.
Pravda has more on the manipulated data.
Hillary Clinton Promises $100 Billion to Poor Regimes to Fight Global Warming Junk Science (Video)(GatewayPundit)
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told the junk scientists in Copenhagen that the U.S. would join others in raising $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poorer nations cope with global warming junk science.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke at the climate summit in Copenhagen Wednesday, saying all nations must come together and deliver a climate treaty.
Related...The British media is now reporting that the entire global temperature record used by the IPCC to inform world government policy is a total crock.
Cable News Ratings: Fox News Has Highest Rated Year In Network History (Broadcasting and Cable)
Fox News will finish 2009 as the top-rated cable news network, a perch it has enjoyed for eight years running.
But 2009--the first year of the Obama administration--also marks FNC's highest rated year in the channel's 13-year-history.
FNC topped the competition in all dayparts: morning (1 million total viewers, 340,000 viewers in news' target demographic of 25-54-year-olds); total day (1.2 million viewers, 323,000 in the demo); primetime (2.2 million viewers, 551,000 in the demo).
Those numbers mark year-to-year demo gains of 14% in the morning, 16% in total day and 10% in primetime (Mon-Sun), according to Nielsen.
FNC saw double-digit gains for all of its programs. Year-to-year, Glenn Beck is up 96% among total viewers (2.3 million) and 148% in the demo (612,000).
Special Report with Bret Baier posted gains of 25% among total viewers (2 million) and 33% in the demo (454,000).
The O'Reilly Factor is up 13% among total viewers (3.3 million) and 27% (801,000) in the demo, marking its tenth consecutive year as the No. 1 cable news program.
The only other cable news network to gain market share year-to-year is HLN, which is still comparatively small, but has gained on sister network CNN in 2009.
CNN Falls Behind MSNBC in Annual Prime-Time Ratings (he New York Times) Maybe if they fact-checked Obama's speeches instead of Saturday Night Live people would take them more seriously.
CNN will finish 2009 behind MSNBC in prime-time ratings, the first time CNN has ever trailed a competitor other than the Fox News Channel over a full calendar year.
That finish had been expected. In recent months,
CNN, which continues to stand behind its policy of steering clear of the opinion-based shows that draw large prime-time audiences for its competitors (ROFLMAO)
, has also trailed its own sister network, HLN (formerly Headline News). CNN has frequently finished fourth in the news channel category.
CNN will finish the fourth quarter of 2009 in fourth place — another first — and with two weeks left has been fourth on more than 100 nights this year.
But the end-of-the-year ratings for the news networks — which were being presented this week because nothing is likely to change by Jan. 1 — are bringing some other, less expected, results.
One is the ability of Fox News, which had the biggest ratings year in its history, to grow even against the heavily viewed election year of 2008. (Both CNN and MSNBC were down sharply from last year.)
Perhaps most surprising is the overall growth in viewing for all the news networks over the last several years.
For example, even with its competitive problems in prime time, CNN has had more viewers on average this year than it did in 2006 or 2007. So has MSNBC. But they both have been left in the dust by Fox News.
Fox has averaged 699,000 viewers for the year, up 10 percent, in the weeknight prime-time hours.
“CNN, which continues to stand behind its policy of steering clear of the opinion-based shows”
They just don't get it. They're in trouble BECAUSE they insert so much (far-left) opinion into their coverage.
Dean: I Won't 'Vigorously' Support Obama's Re-election Bid
(NewsBusters)
Yesterday, Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs took shots at Howard Dean and his opposition to ObamaCare, suggesting the good doctor didn't know what he was talking about.
It was payback time this morning, as Dean announced that he would support Pres. Obama's re-election bid "not vigorously."
Olbermann joins call to kill bill (almost brought to tears slamming Hussein & Deathcare) Yahoo
Keith Olbermann became the latest progressive icon to voice opposition for the Senate health care reform bill on Wednesday.
Olbermann, host of MSNBC’s “Countdown,” wrote in a post on the DAILY KOS that he agrees with former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who has told numerous media outlets that because the bill provides too many concessions and does not constitute real reform, Democrats should “kill the bill.”
“There could not be a finer line between the words compromise and compromised and tonight, with the greatest possible reluctance, I believe I have to go on the air and state my opinion that the Senate bill in its current form has clearly crossed that line and, as currently constituted, cannot be passed,” Olbermann wrote.
CDC: Life Expectancy in U.S. Hits New High (BusinessWeek) Unless DeathCare is passed. Impossible! People are dying everyday because we have not passed a “Health Care Reform” bill!
Average life expectancy in the United States has reached almost 78years, a record high, federal health officials said Wednesday.
From birth in 2007, women can expect to live to 80.4 years on average and men to 75.3 years, according to the report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"This is great news," Dr. William O'Neill, executive dean for clinical affairs at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, said of the overall findings.
Many people say the United States health care system is broken, O'Neill said. "But, this is kind of great evidence to show there has actually been some dramatic improvements in the health of Americans over the last 20 years.
A Health Care Riddle PATTERICO
Today President Obama said the costs of Medicare and Medicaid are increasing on an “unsustainable” trajectory.”
Obama also said we must pass health care reform or “health care costs are going to consume the entire federal budget” and the U.S. will go bankrupt.
Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP accounted for $718 billion in health care costs in 2006 —“slightly more than one-third of the country’s total health care expenditures and almost three-fourths of all public spending on health care.”
The federal government paid an additional $252 billion in publicly-funded health care for veterans, Indians, federal workers compensation, federally-sponsored womens’ and childrens’ programs, substance abuse programs, assistance to the states, and for public research.
It sounds like Obama’s answer to our bankrupt federal health care programs is to cover everyone.
Won’t that make us go bankrupt that much faster?
The Health Bill Is Scary (WSJ)
...For instance, the Reid bill (in sections 3403 and 2021) explicitly empowers Medicare to deny treatment based on cost.
An Independent Medicare Advisory Board created by the bill—composed of permanent, unelected and, therefore, unaccountable members—will greatly expand the rationing practices that already occur in the program.
Medicare, for example, has limited cancer patients' access to Epogen, a costly but vital drug that stimulates red blood cell production.
It has limited the use of virtual, and safer, colonoscopies due to cost concerns. And Medicare refuses medical claims at twice the rate of the largest private insurers.
Section 6301 of the Reid bill creates new comparative effectiveness research (CER) programs.
CER panels have been used as rationing commissions in other countries such as the U.K., where 15,000 cancer patients die prematurely every year according to the National Cancer Intelligence Network.
CER panels here could effectively dictate coverage options and ration care for plans that participate in the state insurance exchanges created by the bill.
Additionally, the Reid bill depends on the recommendations of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force in no fewer than 14 places.
This task force was responsible for advising women under 50 to not undergo annual mammograms. The administration claims the task force recommendations do not carry the force of law, but the Reid bill itself contradicts them in section 2713.
The bill explicitly states, on page 17, that health insurance plans "shall provide coverage for" services approved by the task force.
This chilling provision represents the government stepping between doctors and patients.
When the government asserts the power to provide care, it also asserts the power to deny care....
David Axelrod: Left 'insane' to sink health bill (Politico)
Trying to stave off a sudden fusillade from the left, White House senior adviser David Axelrod said Thursday that Howard Dean's criticisms of health-care reform are "predicated on a bunch of erroneous conclusions" and that for progressives to torpedo the legislation "would be a tragic, tragic outcome."
“To defeat a bill that will bend the curve on this inexorable rise in health-care costs is insane,” Axelrod said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
"I don’t think that you want this moment to pass. It will not come back."
Axelrod called in from the West Wing as the White House mobilized Thursday morning in the face of a surprising and potentially fatal chorus of opposition from the left.
In the most vivid indication of the crisis facing White House messengers, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann told viewers Wednesday night that the Senate version has become “unsupportable...a hollow shell of a bill.”
Former DNC chairman and Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, an unofficial leader of progressives, on Thursday began a third day of media appearances by arguing in a Washington Post op-ed that the compromise emerging this week meets “none” of his benchmarks for “real reform.”
The Gulag Obama: No Excellence, Just 'Fairness' (Healthcare) (theFinancialSkinny)
The healthcare reform plan was written by the President's good friend, Andy Stern, who heads SEIU, which contributed $60 million to the 2008 Obama campaign. SEIU also gave millions to Health Care For America NOW!, which advocates a plan, not surprisingly, that is nearly identical to the President's.
Karl Rove: The President Is No B+ (WSJ)
Barack Obama has won a place in history with the worst ratings of any president at the end of his first year
-- snip --
Mr. Obama may believe, as he told Oprah Winfrey in a recent interview, that he deserves a "solid B+" for his first year in office, but the American people beg to differ.
A presidency that started with so much promise is receiving unprecedentedly low grades from the country that elected him. He's earned them.
EDITORIAL: Walpin-gate may snag Mrs. Obama--Skullduggery alleged in White House dismissal of IG (Thw Washington Times)
No inspector general can unearth corruption without access to his office, computer or staff.
An "administrative leave" putting an IG in that position has the same effect, for all intents and purposes, as an immediate firing.
That's the basic logic behind former Inspector General Gerald Walpin's lawsuit demanding at least temporary reinstatement to his job as watchdog at the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS).
New revelations about the case from two lawmakers indicate that there is good reason to suspect duplicity from those who helped force Mr. Walpin's overnight removal in June.
In the past 10 days, two major developments have occurred.
First, Obama administration attorneys continued their efforts to deny Mr. Walpin his day in court.
On Dec. 7, they filed reply briefs rearguing their demand that the case be dismissed without even a hearing.
Second, Rep. Darrell Issa of California and Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, both Republicans, have openly questioned the honesty of CNCS Chairman Alan D. Solomont.
Most explosively of all, dirty deeds may have been employed to hide extensive involvement in the affair by the office of first lady Michelle Obama, whom the White House months earlier had announced would play "a central role in the national service agenda."
Mr. Walpin's suit claims that President Obama did not abide by the requirement in the Inspector General Act that IGs be given 30 days' notice before being "removed" from office.
Mr. Walpin instead was placed on "paid administrative leave" for 30 days.
The new administration brief argues that such "leave" does not constitute "removal."
Mr. Walpin's suit explained that the entire reason for the 30-day-notice requirement is to ward off political interference with ongoing investigations.
The administrative leave that denied him access to all the tools of his job, he contended, effectively "removed"...
Lord Monckton reports on Pachauri’s eye opening Copenhagen presentation (IPCC Lies Exposed!) (Watts Up With That)
In the Grand Ceremonial Hall of the University of Copenhagen, a splendid Nordic classical space overlooking the Church of our Lady in the heart of the old city, rows of repellent, blue plastic chairs surrounded the podium from which no less a personage than Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, was to speak.
I had arrived in good time to take my seat among the dignitaries in the front row. Rapidly, the room filled with enthusiastic Greenies and enviro-zombs waiting to hear the latest from ye Holy Bookes of Ipecac, yea verily.
The official party shambled in and perched on the blue plastic chairs next to me. Pachauri was just a couple of seats away, so I gave him a letter from me and Senator Fielding of Australia, pointing out that the headline graph in the IPCC’s 2007 report, purporting to show that the rate of warming over the past 150 years had itself accelerated, was fraudulent.
Would he use the bogus graph in his lecture? I had seen him do so when he received an honorary doctorate from the University of New South Wales. I watched and waited.
Sure enough, he used the bogus graph. I decided to wait until he had finished, and ask a question then.
Pachauri then produced the now wearisome list of lies, fibs, fabrications and exaggerations that comprise the entire case for alarm about “global warming”.
He delivered it in a tired, unenthusiastic voice, knowing that a growing majority of the world’s peoples – particularly in those countries where comment is free – no longer believe a word the IPCC says.
They are right not to believe. Science is not a belief system.
But here is what Pachauri invited the audience in Copenhagen to believe.
L.A. Times Laying Off Even More People PATTERICO
The good news for all of the J-school grads being let go is that they will still get their checks from the DNC.
Confirmations are coming in on Los Angeles Times newsroom staffers who were laid off in yesterday's new wave of staff cuts, or who are taking buyouts to get the heck out while the getting is good enough.
Among those leaving is science desk writer John Johnson, a veteran who has covered a number of beats. He sent the newsroom a note this afternoon:
I had always planned that when it came my time to be remaindered that I would simply slip away like the proverbial housebreaker. Now that it's happened, it feels rude not to say thanks to the many, and I do mean many, people who befriended and helped me over the past two decades.
So thanks and, as that great Glam band of yesteryear, Slade, said, Gudbuy t' Jane.
Pete Thomas covered outdoors recreation — fishing, surfing, adventure and stuff like that — for a good chunk of his 30 years at the Los Angeles Times.
He posted yesterday at Facebook that he's among the layoffs.
Sports staffer Mark Medina sent the newsroom a note saying he was leaving. Three photographers and a photo editor got tapped, and at least one books staffer is leaving.
I posted yesterday about Elina Shatkin, and earlier about the departures of arts writer Suzanne Muchnic and Jerusalem bureau correspondent Richard Boudreaux.
I'm told that, in Orange County, columnist-turned-staff writer Dana Parsons has decided to leave at the end of the year.
NYT layoffs begin (Politico) New York Times...meet hope and change!
With 74 Times staffers taking the recent buyout offer, management has been left with the tough decision of cutting 26 people from the newsroom.
That process began yesterday, as New York magazine reported that eight staffers were getting the ax.
But still, there haven't been any layoffs yet in the D.C. bureau. As I reported over the past couple of weeks, the bureau has slimmed down and isn't expected to get hit hard when it comes to layoffs.
Several veteran D.C. reporters — Stephen Labaton, Neil Lewis, David Johnston, David Stout and Ed Andrews — have taken the buyout.
Media’s Goal: Comforting Distressed Liberals (Patterico)
Bradley J. Fikes quotes from an article by Michael S. Malone, who considers what motivates the mainstream media to ignore stories like ClimateGate:
“I’ve puzzled over this for a long time. I don’t entirely buy the argument that it is politics, pure and simple.
I think it is more than that: that newspapers and their editors want to give their declining pools of readers what they want to read – and when the news, no matter how juicy, is not just going to be upsetting (that’s usually okay), but challenges their sense of the way the world works, the story has to be spiked, dribbled out carefully, or swathed in more comforting ‘analysis’.”
Bradley has more thoughts at the link on what this means for the legacy media.
So if you are looking for last-minute Christmas gifts, not only are newspapers great for use by conservatives as dog trainers, they also make fine gifts for liberals who need their intellectual Snugglies.
AP: Bad Job News is Good Recovery News (Patterico)
Today’s job report is bad but you wouldn’t know that from reading this AP headline and article, at least not based on the opening paragraphs:
Economic reports point to gradual recovery
“A report on unemployment claims and a forecast of U.S. economic activity pointed Thursday to an economy mending slowly, without the job growth needed to fuel a vigorous recovery.
The number of newly laid-off workers filing claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week. But the four-week average for jobless claims, which smooths out fluctuations, fell.
That was an encouraging sign that the labor market is gradually improving. The four-week average is now at its lowest point since late September 2008, when the financial crisis hit with full force.”
Deeper in the article comes the real picture: An unexpected jump of 7,000 in new jobless claims, an increase of 5,000 in ongoing jobless claims, and an increase of 143,759 in people receiving extended job benefits.
Could this be a one-time blip? Of course, but these are not signs of a “gradual recovery” unless you have a flexible definition of “recovery.”
Soft toilet paper becomes target of environmentalists (kansas.com) With newsprint readily available, wouldn’t lefties want to use "Recycled Toilet NewsPaper"?
"They'll take my Ultra Soft Charmin only when they pry it from my cold, dead, aloe-smelling hands."
Highly doubtful it will come to that. Please, sit.
We're talking about toilet paper. Charlton Heston's famous vow was of guns.
The issue over tissue in the bathroom — the really super-soft stuff — is more like the fight about the big SUVs loved by many Americans.
Anti-green, environmentalists say. Politically incorrect.
Why should Americans use luxurious toilet paper made from old-growth trees when much of the world gets by with a far more basic and often recycled product?
Why should we flush redwoods, so to speak?
So Greenpeace, the Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmental groups have pushed manufacturers such as Kimberly-Clark (Cottonelle) and Procter & Gamble (Charmin) to stop using wood from virgin forests to make tissue products.
Mountains of paper are dumped every day into recycling bins in homes, offices, factories and schools.
Use that to make toilet paper, the activists say.
Time to roll off the big number: If each American family would buy one recycled roll just one time, it would save 400,000 trees, allegedly.
The problem, though, is that each time paper is shredded during the recycling process, its fibers get shorter.
The shorter the fiber, the less soft the tissue. And Americans, though saying in surveys that they embrace green initiatives, also say they don't want to sacrifice comfort.
"The truth is that other parts of the world are further along in using recycled content," said Kay Jackson, spokeswoman for Kimberly-Clark. "The American consumer still wants softness, and they are speaking with their pocketbooks."
Pulling back in a competitive market is asking a lot, manufacturers say. They also point out that only 5 percent of forest-industry production goes toward toilet paper.
Democrats and Harry Reid tell cancer patients others on lifetime maintenance drugs to “Drop dead!” (The Collins Report)
This one will kill people.
It’s a good thing Harry Reid’s phony “health care” bill is looking like it will die because hidden within its thousands of pages is at least one provision that will condemn the sick and weak among us to an early death.
Reid is helping Barack Obama break another promise about the healthcare monstrosity he wants to ram down our throats.
Obama promised there would be no limits on lifetime medical care.
There will be no rationing he said, but like the rest of his socialist plans that was a lie.
Rationing in any government run healthcare plan is essential.
The Democrats aren’t even pretending about rationing anymore: it’s in there.
Democrat lies have run smack into reality. Harry Reid has slipped a lifetime cap on health care treatments into his monstrous 2074 page bill.
This cynical skunk Reid slipped language describing what is ACTUALLY a life time health services cap for individuals, under the caption, “No lifetime or annual limits.”
Even the AP reports Reid’s bill certainly will allow insurance companies to eventually cut off payments for people they decide they’ve spent enough on. Just cancer alone
Fortunately, The American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, people who are actually fighting on our side, brought this to our attention.
Under Reid’s bill if you are diagnosed with cancer or another disease requiring massive amounts of expensive life saving drugs, the amount of treatments you can receive will eventually run out unless you run out.
Combined with Pelosi’s plans to sells our health care to drug companies by “indefinitely” blocking introduction of less expensive generic drugs, this will kill people.
Cancer experts say some regimens of cancer treatments can exceed $100,000 a year.
How many $100,000 years do you think the Democrats will allow you and me?
Boehner: Pelosi left marketing 'garbage' (The Hill)
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will be left marketing "garbage" legislation to Americans, her GOP leader John Boehner (Ohio) said Thursday.
In a press conference with reporters, Boehner dismissed Pelosi's promise to tout Democrats' legislative achievements in the year to come.
"I hope she does a great job of marketing all the garbage they passed this past year," Boehner said.
Pelosi said during her end-of-year news conference with reporters that she is in "campaign mode" in the coming year.
"I have been making a lot of what we have talked to Members about is be proud of what we have done," she said. "We fully intend to be in the majority, and they will be in the majority when they return.
And that if they need help in their election, that is my first responsibility, is to make sure that they come back."
Boehner said that Republicans have offered better solutions.
"When we have to stand up on principle and oppose our Democrat colleagues, we will do so," he said.
"But we will also offer to the American people what we think is a better solution to the problem that's attempted to being fixed."
Obama Pick for Salvador Post Withdrew Prior Nomination Over Cuba Concerns (Fox) (Another Communist surfaces)
President Obama's recent nominee for ambassador to El Salvador was forced to withdraw her nomination to another diplomatic post a decade ago following concerns about ties to Cuba, raising red flags as her name heads to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee once again for approval.
The White House announced the nomination of Mari Del Carmen Aponte last Wednesday along with a handful of other appointments.
The selection has started to draw some attention given that former President Clinton nominated her for ambassador to the Dominican Republic in 1998, only to see the nomination fizzle after the foreign relations panel questioned her over her past relationship with someone who had apparently caught the attention of the FBI.
One former official with knowledge of that nomination said the committee started scrutinizing Aponte after learning that she had attended a party at the Cuban mission to the United Nations in New York City, and that she had a relationship with someone, Roberto Tamayo, who had raised concern at the FBI over "possible ties to the Cuban government" and "repeated trips there."
The former official said the matter "sure as hell" should come up this time around.
"I think it's a mistake to have someone who did not pass muster before to be nominated again," the former official told FoxNews.com.
"It shows a disrespect to the process I think. ... Hopefully there'll be somebody on the committee who takes a sober look at the record."
According to reports at the time, a former Cuban intelligence
Democratic districts received nearly twice the amount of stimulus funds as GOP districts (Washington Examiner)
A new analysis of the $157 billion distributed by the American Reinvestment and Recovery act, popularly known as the stimulus bill, shows that the funds were distributed without regard for what states were most in need of jobs.
“You would think that if the stimulus money was actually spent to create jobs, there would be more stimulus money spent in high unemployment states,” said Veronique de Rugy, a scholar at the Mercatus Center who produced the analysis. "But we don't find any correlation."
The Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Virginia is one of the nation's most respected economic and regulatory think tanks and has a Nobel prize-winning economist on staff.
The econometric analysis was done using data provided by Recovery.gov -- the government website devoted to tracking the stimulus data -- as well as a host of other government databases.
Additionally, Mercatus found that stimulus funds were not disbursed geographically with any special regard for low-income Americans.
“We find no correlation between economic indicators and stimulus funding. Preliminary results find no statistically significant effect of unemployment, median income or mean income on stimulus funds allocation,” said the report.
DA, Democrat Party Discuss Missing $200,000 (WOAI)
San Antonio - As it prepares to begin the critical election season, the Bexar County Democratic Party reports it is missing some $200,000 from its accounts, 1200 WOAI's Bud Little reports.
"Its money that is used to pay the county for conducting the primary elections," First Assistant District Attorney Cliff Herberg told 1200 WOAI news.
Herberg says party officials met with his office's white collar crimes division and police to determine what needs to be done to launch an investigation.
"There is an allegation that the money was diverted for improper purposes by an officer of the party," Herberg said. So far, no charges have been filed.
Outgoing county Democratic Party chair Carla Vela is pointing the finger at the former county treasurer as the person who siphoned off the funds, but Herberg days the investigation has not progressed to the point where officials are making any allegations of wrongdoing.
Vela says she realized the funds were missing when a check written on an account she thought contained $200,000 bounced, and she then determined there was actually less than $200 in the account.
Vela is resigning as the chair of the Democratic Party to run for County Clerk.
(Its money that is used to pay the county for conducting the primary elections
But, they didn't pay the county for their "most transparent" primary elections; forcing all tax payers of San Antonio to support them.
Their treasurer, Dwayne E. Adams, told party members he had a Ph.D. in finance, and is an Iraq war veteran with experience in the real-estate business.
Turns out, his finance degree was mail-ordered from a degree mill.
His real-estate experience consists of screwing his landlord out of $50,000+ in back rent, and the subsequent law suit against him. Naturally his 'veteran' status is also suspect.
I see great potential for a couple of more White House czars, (should the MSM ever report this)
Matthews: Change Constitution To Make Senate More Democratic - And Pass ObamaCare (NewsBusters)
Chris Matthews asked a New York Congressman Thursday if we should "change the Constitution to make the Senate a more democratic body."
At issue of course was the difficulty Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is having getting 60 Democrats to sign on to any version of a healthcare reform bill.
Pelosi Bars Republicans from Copenhagen Press Conference
(Humanevents.com)
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) today barred Republican members of the congressional delegation to Copenhagen for the U.N. “climate change” conference from participation in the official congressional press conference at Bella Center.
Sources at the event told HUMAN EVENTS that Republicans were not initially informed of the event then were subsequently barred from participation.
The Bella Center is the base for the U.S. Delegation in Copenhagen.
Around 3:45 pm local time today, Republican members of Congress and their staffs were rounded up for transport back to their hotels on busses just as the press conference began.
They were not allowed to hold their own press conference.
Displaying more of the same type of “Climategate” behavior that has caused worldwide skepticism over the authenticity of the claims behind the anthropogenic global warming “science,” Pelosi is barring dissenting views in Congress from access to the worldwide press in Copenhagen.
One source said it’s a “delicate situation” right now but Republicans may be able to hold their own presser at the Bella Center tomorrow. Maybe.
In Record Time: Lib Not Getting His Way Calls America 'Ungovernable' (NewsBusters)
The last two times I remember this happening -- with Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s and New York City Mayor David Dinkins in the early 1990s -- it at least took a few years for exasperated establishment media liberals to blame the system for a favored politician's difficulties in achieving his agenda, and to call the country and Gotham, respectively, "ungovernable."
Afterwards, Ronald Reagan and Rudy Giuliani proved the whiners spectacularly wrong.
Matt Yglesias at Think Progress is years ahead of those prior hand-wringers.
A bit less than 11 months into the Obama administration, the Think Progress blogger considered by many to be one of the far left's opinion leaders is moaning about how tough it has recently become to get anything done. Poor baby.
As Obama's poll numbers plunge, and statist health care comes down to final pre-Christmas votes, Yglesias reprises the lament that the system is the problem.
The smarter elements in Washington DC are starting to pick up on the fact that it’s not tactical errors on the part of the president that make it hard to get things done, it’s the fact that the country has become ungovernable.
.... We’re suffering from an incoherent institutional set-up in the senate. You can have a system in which a defeated minority still gets a share of governing authority and participates constructively in the victorious majority’s governing agenda, shaping policy around the margins in ways more to their liking.
Or you can have a system in which a defeated minority rejects the majority’s governing agenda out of hand, seeks opening for attack, and hopes that failure on the part of the majority will bring them to power.
But right now we have both simultaneously. It’s a system in which the minority benefits if the government fails, and the minority has the power to ensure failure.
It’s insane, and it needs to be changed.
Yglesias's claim is a real hoot, given that 60 Democratic senators can basically do whatever they want if they all manage to agree.
O-bow-ma Finds Someone To Bow To In Copenhagen (NewsBusters)
Check out the video. After his brief, listless and cliché-ridden speech in Copenhagen ["time for action, not words," "we should live in the future, not the past"] that aired live on Morning Joe today, Pres. Obama makes the hand-shaking rounds on the podium.
He continues the glad-handing off the podium, until he spots someone and breaks into . . . a bow [screen cap after the jump].
With all the mulling around, it's hard to determine exactly what's going on. It looks like he might have been exchanging bows with a man in the scrum surrounding him.
But PBO's bow seemed to go beyond the perfunctory head-nod that in the circumstances surely would have satisfied, say, Japanese etiquette.
President Barack Kucinich
I lived in Cleveland when Dennis Kucinich was mayor. The city went into default. He was almost recalled after one year because his goofy, populist policies were too far left and too expensive. 30 years after his two-year term as mayor ended, he has spun his crushing defeat on ’saving” the city-owned electric company, the fact remains that he was voted out of office because he was a young and inexperienced leftist who should not have been trusted with his own checkbook.
@Don Surber
Interesting. The usual daily garbage from the Big Business - Big Insurance paid lobbyist from 3:21 to 4:53, then only one unrelated post all the rest of the day. Apparently even MW's knee-jerk regulars are tired of all the spam.
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