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.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Tuesday December 15 -- Got news or an update?
If you have news or an update, leave it in comments. . . .
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Fistgate VII: Explosive… After Years of Silence Massachusetts Teacher Speaks Out About What She Saw at Fistgate (Audio)(GatewayPundit)
After years of silence a traumatized Massachusetts teacher spoke out in an interview about what she witnessed at GLSEN’s Fistgate Conference in 2000.
She also describes Barack Obama’s Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings’ role at the infamous conference that discussed “fisting” and “watersports” with children.
The Massachusetts teacher in this interview attended the conference and actually took the photo of Obama’s Safe School Czar Kevin Jennings sitting and holding a conference program during a break. Jennings was the keynote speaker at the conference.
The teacher claims that there is “no way” that Obama’s Safe School Czar did not know about the pornographic and sexually explicit material that was presented and discussed at the conference.
Kevin Jennings is the founder of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN).
Here is a partial transcript of the interview. The teacher wanted to remain anonymous out of safety considerations for herself and her family:
Jim Hoft- Gateway Pundit: I had a couple of more questions. One is did you see Kevin Jennings at the conference?
Massachusetts Teacher: Yes, he was the keynote speaker…
GP: So he was at this conference where they were promoting sexual acts with kids. They were promoting sex between kids and adults and he was the keynote speaker there?
MT: Yes.
GP: And it was his organization that actually ran the conference. Is that correct?
MT: Specifically, it was GLSEN Massachusetts. But remember, he not only founded GLSEN in Massachusetts but at that point he was the head of the national GLSEN which I believe was in New York City at that time.
I don’t know where it is now. He was touted as this wonderful person who helped children so that they wouldn’t be harassed by parents, and other students…
GP: Right. Which sounds like a good thing.
MT: Oh yeah. It sounds really good because there’s not a single teacher I know that wants any child to be mistreated… And so all of these things sound really good.
GP: Right… So let me ask you this. Was Kevin, did you see him throughout the day? Do you recall him at all?
MT: Um. The last time I saw him was when I snapped the picture of him and Adam Glick that was taken in the front row of the auditorium. I knew that I wanted to get his picture. Cameras were not outlawed the first year (2000)
...Now in that picture Adam Glick is on the left and Kevin is on the right and Adam is giving him a lunch ticket. I took it just at the moment they were looking down and it wasn’t a real attractive...It was one of those pictures you really want to get.
GP: It’s a great picture. So there’s no way. Let me ask you this, there’s no way that Kevin Jennings could have been at this conference and not know that there was this explosive sexual speeches, talks, materials around the conference?
MT: This whole conference was his dream and his mindset. This was his vision from the very beginning.
GP: So there was no way that they would have had material there that he would not have, would you say approved of?
MT: Obviously, this is material that he abvocates. Even today if you read the text of some of the books that they put out.
GP: That was up on my blog, by the way.
MT: He knew about that too. He knows about everything all along. Remember, the buck stops with him. He was the head of all of this.
GP: OK.
MT: He brought in all of the people that would agree with him as any administrator would do. You bring in people who agree with you who you can work with.
GP: Sure. Alright. Oh wow! That’s a powerful statement right there. That’s really powerful.
Today Kevin Jennings is Barack Obama’s Safe Schools Czar.
FOX News: Chapter & Perverse? Safe School’s Czar Hit For Promoting Sex-Explicit Books(GatewayPundit)
FOX News just released this report on Barack Obama’s controversial Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings:
Obama’s Safe Schools Czar Tied to Lewd Readings for 7th Graders By Maxim Lott FOXNews.com
Obama adviser Kevin Jennings is under fresh attack after it was revealed that the pro-gay group he formerly headed recommends books his critics say are pornographic.
President Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar,” already a target of social conservatives for his past drug abuse and what they say is his promotion of homosexuality in schools, is under fresh attack after it was revealed that the pro-gay group he formerly headed recommends books his critics say are pornographic.
The group under fire is the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), which Kevin Jennings, now the assistant deputy secretary for safe and drug-free schools in the Department of Education, founded and ran from 1990 to 2008.
GLSEN says it works to create a welcoming atmosphere for homosexual students in schools, and that effort includes recommending books for students of all ages.
But critics say many of the books, particularly some that are targeted for children between Grades 7 to 12, are inappropriately explicit.
A full list is available at the blog Gateway Pundit, which has published dozens of controversial passages from the books.
One recommended book is titled “Queer 13: Lesbian and Gay Writers Recall Seventh Grade.” On pages 43 through 45, writer Justin Chin tells of how as a 13-year-old, he went along with “near-rapes” by older men, but “really did enjoy those sexual encounters.”
Chin also recounts each sexual action he performed with an “ugly f*** of a man” he met on a bus...
Go read the rest here. They even go into the GLSEN conference fisting kits.
Eye-Witness Teacher Says Safe Schools Czar Present at "Fistgate" Conference (Life Site News)
New details on President Barack Obama's "Safe Schools Czar" Kevin Jennings have emerged, as an eye-witness has finally broken her silence and says that Jennings was present at Tufts University during the infamous "Fistgate" scandal, and says that he bears personal responsibility for the event.
Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit reports that a Massachusetts teacher - who remains anonymous out of concern for herself and her family - told him that she saw Jennings in 2000 at the 10 Year Anniversary Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN)/Boston conference at Tufts University.
At that time Jennings was the executive director of GLSEN, an organization which he founded.
The event, cosponsored by the Massachusetts Department of Education, featured a youth workshop on sex, specifically targeting 14-21-year-olds.
During that workshop GLSEN presenters taught youth how to perform a dangerous sexual practice known as "fisting" - a practice so obscene that it cannot be described here.
snip
The teacher also snapped a picture of Jennings showing him getting a lunch ticket at the event. Hoft asked, "There's no way that Kevin Jennings could have been at this conference and not know that there was this explosive sexual speeches, talks, materials around the conference."
"This whole conference was his dream and his mindset. This was his vision from the very beginning," said the teacher.
snip
When news of the seminars at the GLSEN conference broke in the early 2000s, Jennings denied he knew that GLSEN presenters were promoting these activities to youth.
He stated: "We need to make our expectations and guidelines to outside facilitators much more clear, because we are surprised and troubled by some of the accounts we've heard." Jennings, however, also criticized the Massachusetts parents who taped the event that exposed the scandal.
However, next year's GLSEN conference at Tufts belied Jennings's public commitment to eliminating any repetition of the "Fistgate" scandal.
Campus police maintained a strict ban on cameras and video-recorders at the 2001 GLSEN event, but the pro-family group "Mass Resistance" - which exposed the previous conference to the Boston media - was able to obtain Planned Parenthood "fisting kits" made available at the conference.
In defense of Jennings, the socially-liberal organization Media Matters commented that "neither Hoft nor the anonymous teacher provide any actual evidence that Jennings knew the specific explicit content that would be discussed at that workshop."
But page eight of the "Teach Out" conference schedule - available from Mass Resistence - describes the "youth-only" workshop called, "What They Didn't Tell You About Queer Sex and Sexuality in Health Class."
A description for this workshop states: "This workshop for youth addresses what is different for glbt [sic] youth when it comes to sex, dating, relationships, HIV, etc.
Come and discuss the questions you couldn't or didn't ask in health class...
What does it mean to identify as queer and still be sexually active with the opposite sex...
We will address the information you want about queer sexuality and some of the politics that prevent us from getting our needs met."
"Remember, the buck stops with him. [Jennings] was the head of all of this," the teacher told Hoft.
Jennings' insistence that he bore no responsibility for scandal makes no sense, she said, for the reason that, "He brought in all of the people that would agree with him as any administrator would do. You bring in people who agree with you, who you can work with."
President Barack Obama appointed Jennings as deputy assistant to the Office of Safe Schools in the Department of Education on July 6.
ObamaCare: Lieberman, Nelson needle Reid’s trial balloon (and the CLASS Act) PATTERICO
The Hill feigned a little surprise over this:
Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) both said a Medicare “buy-in” option for those aged 55-64 was a deal breaker.
***
Lieberman said Democrats should stop looking for a public option “compromise” and simply scrap the idea altogether.
***
If Democrats stick to relying primarily on the bill’s subsidies, the legislation would pass easily and with bipartisan support, Lieberman argued.
But how can anyone be surprised, after Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) already signaled his doubts about Reid’s Kennedy retread?
Sen. Ben Nelson is a creature of the insurance industry from a state that has been Red since 1964 Sen. Joe Lieberman represents Connecticut, a state which — like Nebraska — is home to a number of major insurers and lukewarm at best on ObamaCare.
Lieberman apparently reiterated his opposition directly to Sen. Maj. Ldr. Harry Reid:
The pledge by Lieberman to oppose the bill represents a potentially huge setback for reform proponents, many of who saw the latest round of policy compromises as the last true chance to corral the needed votes.
That said, leadership has several fallback options (none of them promising) should Lieberman follow through on the threat...
TNR’s Jonathan Cohn claims that Lieberman previously told Reid he could support the Medicare buy-in, but for sheer, unadulterated schadenfreude, you cannot beat Ezra Klein accusing ol’ Joe of being “willing to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in order to settle an old electoral score.”
Democrats are quietly panicking over the possibility that Reid’s trial balloon will get a bad CBO score.
But what the Nelsons and Lieberman (and Snowe, for that matter) are suggesting is that a good CBO score likely does not matter.
Indeed, the “public option” is not the only problem these senators have with Reid’s bill, either.
Lieberman said that Ted Kennedy’s CLASS Act (a long-term care entitlement program that Sen. Kent Conrad called “a Ponzi scheme of the first order”) also has to come out of the bill. Ben Nelson has previously issued the same demand.
And there were 51 votes to remove it — a majority, but not the 60 required under the current Senate procedure. Like the public option, Reid included the CLASS Act to appease his Lefty base, and will have to find a way to back out.
Emptywheel complains that relying primarily on the bill’s subsidies amounts to a bailout of the health care industry...and she is correct.
Unfortunately, most of her friends on the Left do not want to confront the fact that Obama’s healthcare strategy has always been to buy off the interest groups, and to give up the public option as part of the deal.
Consequently, they end up stamping their feet, demanding something they were never going to get, instead of joining a bipartisan coalition to kill a bill that whacks 68.4 million individuals, families, and single parents with incomes under $200K, and does nothing to meaningfully address the cost curve it claims to bend.
Change!...20 States Cut Mammograms After Government Report Released (GatewayPundit)
This won’t end well.
A full 20 states have now cut funding for mammogram screenings for low income women after a government task force last month made its recommendations that women in their 40s should stop routinely having annual mammograms.
Poll: 81 percent of Democrats want Lieberman punished (Digital Journal) I thought the Democrats were the party of Bi-partisanship while celebrating the diversity of political views unlike the mean and ‘stuck in their ways’ republicans?
More than 80 percent of Democrats say they believe Sen. Joe Lieberman should be stripped of his chairmanship in the Senate if he ends up supporting a Republican filibuster of health care reform.
According to the Huffington Post, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Democracy for America ordered a study a few days ago, in which they polled over 800 voters.
The main question in the poll was whether Lieberman - an Independent who usually caucuses with the Democrats - should lose his chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
81 percent of Democrats responded that they think he should lose that chairmanship should he sustain a health care reform filibuster.
One contributing factor to the high number of Democrats who wish Lieberman punished is that this is not the first time he has gone against the Democratic leadership since they took back power.
During the 2008 Presidential campaign, Lieberman openly campaigned for Senator John McCain. Only 10 percent of Democrats said there should be no punishment, and only nine percent said they weren't sure.
Among Independents, 43 percent said that Lieberman should lose his position, while 30 percent said. Not surprisingly, only 10 percent of Republicans feel he should be punished for helping them.
Lieberman reportedly recently told Senate Majority leader that he would vote against the Health Care Reform bill in it's present form, and would support any Republican attempts at filibustering the bill.
Blog Wants to Oust Lieberman's Wife From Susan Komen Ambassadorship - (Fox News)
A liberal Web site is trying to enlist celebrities to persuade a top breast cancer research group to dump Sen. Joe Lieberman's wife as its "global ambassador," saying Hadassah Lieberman's health care lobbying work and her husband's opposition to the so-called public option make her unfit for the role.
Oops! Turns out Obama's cost-cutting health plan won't save a dime; cheaper to do nothing (L.A. Times)
It's probably just coincidental that bad numbers about President Obama's much-coveted healthcare legislation came out late last week when few people were paying attention.
This is the absolutely crucial healthcare reform plan that simply had to be drafted, discussed, debated, amended and passed before early August.
It's supposed to cover millions more Americans and reduce the nation's soaring medical costs.
Turns out, not. Here's a little chapter review before semester finals:
"You mean extending insurance to an additional 20 million people, restricting insurance premium hikes for higher risk people, and eliminating denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions would actually raise costs? I'm shocked, shocked."
AP sources: Obama summons Senate Dems to WH (What, no republicans?)
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama will meet with Senate Democrats at the White House Tuesday to press for action at a make-or-break moment for his health care overhaul.
All 60 members of the Democratic caucus have been invited, according to three Democratic officials.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement was not yet public.
Socialized Medicine: The administration's own health department, in a devastating analysis, warns of rising costs, shrinking benefits and a long-term health care "death spiral." "Reform" has been pronounced dead.
When even the liberal Washington Post warns that congressional Democrats, in trying to save their increasingly unpopular health reform bill, are sneakily making it more like European-style socialized medicine, it means the death watch is on.
Letting 55-year-olds "buy in" to the fiscally doomed Medicare program "could be a bigger step toward a single-payer system than the milquetoast public option plans rejected by Senate moderates as too disruptive of the private market," the Post wrote last week.
The key reason: "sicker near-seniors ... might assume, with good reason, that the government will be more accommodating in approving treatments, and they might flock to Medicare.
That would raise premium costs and, correspondingly, the pressure to dip into federal funds for extra help."
Medicare is already rocketing toward bankruptcy; that move would switch on the afterburners.
The president can talk about enactment before Christmas all he wants; the fact is that the more that information gets disseminated about this ever-shape-shifting nightmare of a plan, the more the American people fear it.
The IBD/TIPP Poll pegs public support at 41%; Gallup gauges its popularity at just 35%.
Now comes the final, fatal blow: a report from the chief actuary of the Department of Health and Human Services' Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that says health "reform" will mean the opposite of its advertised promises.
Black Activists Condemn Senate Leader Harry Reid Playing the Race Card in Health Care Debate (Urban Mecca)
Race-related comments by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are offensive and historically inaccurate, says the Project 21 black leadership group.
“Harry Reid has resorted to the most shopworn trick in the liberal playbook.
He deployed the race card in the ugliest way while debating health care reform,” said Deroy Murdock, a Project 21 member and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.
“It is astonishing and outrageous to equate those who seek the defeat of Reid’s 2,074-page, $2.5 trillion legislative monstrosity with those who were happy to keep blacks in chains, unpaid for their back-breaking labor and traded back and forth like cattle.
The fact that Reid would use such deplorable, insulting and insensitive rhetoric indicates that he is out of credible arguments to defend his own proposal.”
Murdock added: “The Senate’s top Democrat owes an immediate apology to Republicans on Capitol Hill, the 39 House Democrats who voted against Obamacare on November 7 and the 51 percent of Americans from coast to coast who a Rasmussen survey recently found are against Obamacare.
If Reid believes these Americans who object to his high-cost, low-quality legislation also hold warm feelings for slavery, he is further removed from reality than anyone so far has feared.
If he does not believe this, he should stop cynically firing rhetorical mortar shells at decent Americans who merely disagree with his spendthrift, Big Government approach to health care.”
Reid’s comments are historically inaccurate, as his own Democratic Party stood in the way of slavery abolition and civil rights legislation in the past.
“Why is history so confusing to Harry Reid?,” asked Project 21 Chairman Mychal Massie.
“Six of the nine original planks of the Republican Party at its inception in 1856 were based on opposition to slavery and promoting civil rights.
Did Reid also forget what party Lyndon Johnson worked with to get the Civil Rights Act of 1964 not only passed but to even get it through committee and onto the floor for a vote?
One of the Democratic opponents – Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV), a former Klansman – is still serving today and is third in the presidential line of succession as the President pro tem.
Reid’s daring to brand opponents as racist is indicative of how far liberals are willing to go in order to control Americans from the cradle to the grave.”
House GOP warns Nancy Pelosi on defense bill (politico.com)
One-hundred-and-seventy-four House Republicans warned House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Monday that they won’t vote for the Defense Department’s spending bill if a hike of the debt ceiling is tacked on.
“Unfortunately, there seems to be pattern developing this year of using legislation that supports our men and women in uniform to pass other contentious proposals that are extraneous to our troops,” the Republicans said in a letter to Pelosi.
Corruption-plagued US Atty Democrat nominee Stephanie Villafuerte withdraws (Michelle Malkin)
In October, I called your attention to the smelly US Attorney nomination out of Colorado involving Stephanie Villafuerte.
Looks like the stonewall that the Dems and DOJ built for her has collapsed under the weight of local and state pressure — compounded by tough questions from the Denver Post’s Karen Crummy and GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions and constant pounding by KHOW talk show host Peter Boyles.
She has now withdrawn her nomination. But the questions will not go away:
Stephanie Villafuerte has withdrawn her name from consideration to become Colorado’s next U.S. Attorney.
In a letter to President Barack Obama, who nominated her for the post, and Attorney General Eric Holder, Villafuerte said she was confident she would have “served well in this important position” but was withdrawing because of “political attacks” surrounding her role in the 2006 Colorado gubernatorial campaign.
“Unforunately, a needless and extraneous political fight has emerged in Colorado and that fight, in my judgment has completely overshadowed the deliberative and independent assessment of my qualifications for this important office,” Villafuerte wrote.
“I continue to stand by my statements and maintain that my involvement was appropriate at all times.”
The move comes two days after U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee asked that consideration of her nomination as Colorado U.S. attorney be delayed because her record is “incomplete.”
In a letter to the committee’s chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, Sessions said he wanted answers from Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano about why Cory Voorhis, an immigration agent, was fired for accessing the same restricted database that Villafuerte’s former colleagues also accessed.
Sessions said after asking those questions that he also became concerned that Villafuerte’s record was not complete.
U.S. Sen. Mark Udall said he was disappointed by Villfuerte’s “very personal” decision.
“I had a positive conversation with Senator Jeff Sessions, the Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on Saturday morning in which we both agreed that the confirmation process for this office could, and should, be framed to resolve any remaining questions he or other Members of the Judiciary Committee might want to put to the U.S. Attorney nominee,” Udall said in a statement released by his office.
“Despite these assurances from Senator Sessions and despite Stephanie’s willingness to answer questions by the Judiciary Committee, it’s clear to me that a further delay in the confirmation is not good for Colorado or the office of U.S. Attorney.
Stephanie has made a decision in the best interests of the office she hoped to serve, and I respect her for it.”
Did AmeriCorps official lie about possible First Lady link to IG firing? (Washington Examiner)
Congressional investigators looking into the abrupt firing of AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin have discovered that the head of AmeriCorps met with a top aide to First Lady Michelle Obama the day before Walpin was removed.
According to Republican investigators, Alan Solomont, then the chairman of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which oversees AmeriCorps, had denied meeting with Jackie Norris, at the time the First Lady's chief of staff.
But recently-released White House visitor logs show that Solomont met with Norris on June 9 of this year (as well as on two earlier occasions).
President Obama fired Walpin on June 10 after an intense dispute over Walpin's aggressive investigation of misuse of AmeriCorps money by Obama political ally Kevin Johnson, the mayor of Sacramento, California.
After being presented with the visitor logs, investigators say, Solomont explained that he met with Norris to discuss Corporation business but did not discuss the Walpin matter.
When pressed, Solomont said he might have made an offhand comment, or a mention in passing, about the Walpin affair, but that he and Norris did not have a discussion about it.
EDITORIAL: Black Panther battle intensifies- Is the Justice Department against civil rights? (WASHINGTON TIMES)
The dispute between the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the Justice Department is starting to look like the legal equivalent of World War II's Anzio campaign, which represented a major escalation late in the war.
The battleground is the controversy about the department's decision to drop voter-intimidation cases against members of the New Black Panther Party.
The commission is mounting a massive legal assault; Justice is refusing to be budged; and the casualties could be high.
The shame of it is that the department itself would be well-served if it would merely cooperate. That's what it would do if it were confident its decision was correct.
For six months, various members of Congress and the commission have been asking for cooperation from the Justice Department.
The basic questions are simple enough: On what legal basis did Justice drop these cases, which it effectively already had won?
Who were all the officials at Justice (and possibly the White House) who were involved in the decision? And does the decision represent a shift in enforcement policy concerning voting rights?
The Justice Department stonewalled at almost every turn or provided false information.
For instance, department official Portia Robinson wrongly claimed that New Black Panther defendant Jerry Jackson "was a resident of the apartment building where the polling place was located" (and thus presumably had more of a right to loiter there).
If the department can't even figure out that Mr. Jackson, a visibly fit age 53, doesn't live in a senior assisted-living facility, its overall reliability surely is questionable.
Media: By now the decline of the newspaper industry has become, well, yesterday's news.
Small wonder the industry's own trade publication would eventually close its own doors. But there's a little more to the story.
Last week Editor & Publisher magazine, aged 125, finally ended its run as newspaperdom's principal trade pub when owner Neilsen Business Media announced it no longer fit in with the company's reformulated plans.
Journalists who had long since ceased reading the print edition offered nostalgic tributes — online.
That their posts appeared on the Internet itself tells much of the story.
In recent years both circulation and advertising revenues have migrated to the newer media as eyeballs preferred screens atop keyboards to inky pages. Only the most innovative newspapers survive.
E&P reflected a bygone era when publishers thumbed through its pages in search of the latest press equipment and itinerant reporters, on the prowl for more attractive and better-paying jobs, flipped to its classifieds.
The magazine, which a few years back shifted from weekly to monthly while developing a daily Web site, never positioned itself as the guardian of High Church Journalism, as the Columbia Journalism Review and other critical journals would.
And yet, it did its part in creating a pantheon of Fourth Estate saints — from John Peter Zenger through Woodward and Bernstein — all the while genuflecting to the First Amendment.
Feds (workers) owe Uncle Sam $3Billion in unpaid taxes (WTOP.com Washington) timmy and charlie lead the way!
At a time when the White House is projecting the largest deficit in the nation's history, Uncle Sam is trying to recover billions of dollars in unpaid taxes from its own employees.
Federal workers owe more than $3 billion in income taxes they failed to pay in 2008. According to Internal Revenue Service documents, 276,300 federal employees and retirees owe $3,042,200,000.
The IRS tracks the voluntary compliance rate of federal employees and retirees each year, and each year feds come up short.
The one bright spot in this year's report is that after several years of a steady increase, the amount owed by feds is down from the previous year.
Federal employees and retirees owed $3,586,784,725 in unpaid income taxes in 2007.
The documents show delinquent employees from nearly every federal agency with more than 25 employees.
Based on percentages, the Department of The Treasury, which includes the IRS, has the best compliance rate. Fewer than 1 percent of Treasury employees didn't pay their taxes in 2008.
The IRS is the only federal agency where employees can be fired for not paying their taxes. The non-compliance rate for IRS employees in 2008 was 0.76 percent -- down from 0.89 percent in 2007.
The agency with the most tax scofflaws is the U.S. Postal Service, with 28,913 employees who owe $297,933,756.
But that is still a dramatic improvement from 2007 when more than 54,000 employees owed more than $407 million.
Job Market Worsens For Recent College Graduates (67% Voters 18-29voted for Dear Leader) (LATimes) Welcome to the world of Obamanomics, kids. I sense a whole lot of young Republicans in the making. Nothing shakes one’s liberalism like a cold dose of reality!
Reporting from Washington - The unemployment rate dropped last month for men and women, blacks and whites, lifting hopes that the long dry spell in the jobs market may be coming to an end.
But for recent college graduates and other young adults, the labor situation didn't just remain dire -- it got worse.
For 20- to 24-year-olds, the jobless rate rose four-tenths of a percent to 16% in November, even as unemployment nationally slipped to 10% from 10.2%.
And data from the Labor Department show that the unemployment figure for college graduates in that age group was 10.6% in the third quarter -- the highest since early 1983 and more than double the rate for older college-educated workers.
Kyle Daley, 22, of Walnut Creek, Calif., provides a grim case study. In June, Daley graduated from UCLA, one of the country's best universities.
He received a degree in political science. His grade-point average: a solid 3.5.
Since January, he has applied for about 600 jobs, mostly entry-level positions such as office assistant, junior analyst and marketing associate.
He has reached out to small firms and Fortune 500 companies in aerospace, entertainment, finance and government, from Alabama to Washington state.
And kids, remember that it is important to know what the candidate actually stands for.
This is best determined by looking at his or her PAST record, not what he or she says he WILL do.
It is also good to vote for a candidate who wants to promote industry, not punish it.
Also young folks, it is probably best to vote for the candidate who actually loves America and wants to see better days for this country, not the candidate who seems to be COOL.
Lastly, vote for a candidate based upon his character, not the COLOR OF HIS SKIN! But, but...“We got to vote for the cool black guy and be a part of an historic election!”
Obama Gives Britain the Cold Shoulder (Wall Street Journal)
Britain is the only European country President Barack Obama can really count on to respond positively to his plea for NATO to provide extra forces for Afghanistan.
So why is it, then, that the Obama administration can barely conceal its disdain for a nation that, by its deeds, time and again proves itself to be America's staunchest and most reliable ally?
Shortly before Mr. Obama's Afghan policy speech at West Point earlier this month, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced Britain was sending another 500 troops to that beleaguered country, bringing the total number of British troops to around 10,000
Yet the president never mentioned Britain's support—even though, unlike most other European countries, British soldiers are prepared to undertake combat operations, and have incurred significant casualties in so doing.
Cindy Sheehan Writes Letter To Obama (Wants some of his Nobel Prize money) (peaceoftheaction.org)
Dear Mr. Obama,
I hear that you were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize recently in Oslo, Norway and that, in addition to that spiffy medal, it comes with 1.4 million tax-free dollars that you are going to "donate to charity."
I just want to let you know that there are still some of us in the US who oppose the wars, even though you are president, and its nothing personal, but I vehemently oppose your wars and especially oppose the escalation of troops to Afghanistan and the fact that there has been no de-escalation from Iraq.
It has been super-tough being a peace activist since you took office, because a lot of my colleagues supported your candidacy and gave you a "wait and see"and "give him a chance," while I have been working against these policies since Bush was president and have never stopped.
But why is it Now The State Run Media’s love affair with Cindy is now long over?
Remember when she was a star on NBC? Remember when NBC says she has the moral authority over Bush?
Obama’s -19 crash: a tale of two Rasmussens one America’s leading pollster, one a Euroweenie (The Collins Report)
Barack Obama’s Copenhagen trip reminds us there are two Rasmussens.
Both are talking about Obama, but one counts to real Americans the other only to socialists in and out of the media trying to destroy America.
Rasmussen One is Scott Rasmussen. He’s telling the world Americans don’t like their hero so you have to search to find his reports.
Rasmussen Two is a Euroweenie trying to get his hand into our pocket so media types love him and show him on television.
RASMUSSEN ONE:
America’s Rasmussen tracks the approval levels of Obama as determined by American voters, which is a powerful indicator of his actual status.
Rasmussen One compares Obama’s “strongly approve” versus “strongly disapprove” numbers and reports Obama has slipped to a -19 points since his +25 high in January.
He also says among Independent LIKELY voters from January to today Obama’s approval rating has capsized falling from 55/42 to 35/65.
RASMUSSEN TWO:
In Copenhagen this week Obama is in his element surrounded by fellow Leftists. He’s the prize pig in an international butt kissing hoedown, meeting and greeting clammy handed Leftists begging for American dollars.
The generally anti American media has been eagerly showing a video of Rasmussen Two, the Danish Prime Minister puckering up for a “twofer” and saying, “Compared to the last presidency, I must say that the new American president has, .., changed gear and made huge progress..”
Obama may appeal to this butt mooching socialist with his obligatory swipe at George Bush for resisting Europe’s attempts to fleece America with the Climate change fraud, but in the end he doesn’t count for squat.
So there you have it: two Rasmussens, One is kicking Obama’s rear end, the other kissing it.
Is there any wonder we hear about Rasmussen Two but nothing about Rasmussen One?
Shocker… Liberals Dominate in Top 10 Most FAIL Moments of 2009(GatewayPundit)
Democratic and liberal kooks dominated the years Top 10 Most FAIL moments.
Kanye “George Bush Doesn’t Care About Black People” landed on the top of the list this year for stealing the moment from country singer Taylor Swift at the MTV Video Music Awards.
Top 10 Most Memorable FAIL Moments of 2009:
1. Kanye West’s Outburst at the Video Music Awards 37%
2. Bolivian Newscast Airs “Lost” Scene as Flight 447’s Last Moments 13%
3. Richard Heene’s Balloon Boy Hoax 11%
4. Photo Opportunity for Air Force One Mistaken for Terrorist Attack 8%
5. Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich Tries to Sell Obama’s Senate Seat 7%
6. Northwest Flight to Minneapolis Overshoots Airport by 150 Miles 7%
7. Gordon Brown’s Hand Shake Fail 4%
8. Christian Bale’s Freak Out on Terminator Set 3%
9. South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford Affair with Argentinean 3%
10. White House Crashers Michaele and Tareq Salahi 2%
They forgot Barack Obama’s entrance into the White House window.
New GMA Host George Stephanopoulos Lobbies for More Taxes; Axelrod Points Out George’s Lib Roots (NewsBusters) Just like McClatchy, liberal media for liberal viewers
On his first day as the new co-anchor of Good Morning America, former Clinton aide turned journalist George Stephanopoulos lobbied for a windfall profits tax on the bonuses of bankers.
Also on Monday’s program, senior White House advisor David Axelrod reminded viewers of Stephanopoulos’ liberal background. [Audio available here.]
After the rookie GMA host asserted that Axelrod "has an office right next to the President," the Obama official retorted, "Used to be your office, George." A laughing Stephanopoulos quickly spun, "That’s right. A long, long time ago."
The journalist clearly hasn’t lost the habits of a Clinton-era Democrat.
He pressed Axelrod for new taxes on the bonuses of bankers: "David, why not tax the bonuses? Britain last week announced that they're going to have a big windfall tax, a one-time tax on these big bonuses this year because the banks got so much help.
Charlie Gibson Says He's Leaving Because Objectivity's Passe -- But He Loved Puffing Ted Kennedy? (NewsBusters)
Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz presented quite a paradox in a Charlie Gibson profile Monday.
The retiring ABC World News anchor said that "it’s time to move on" since objectivity is "less of a marketable commodity." (WTF)
But Kurtz also underlined how Gibson dared to keep airing live coverage of Ted Kennedy’s funeral until they were able to broadcast the reading of Ted Kennedy’s letter to Pope Benedict.
These passages came late in the article:
Gibson worries whether broadcast networks will be able to support sizable editorial staffs in an era of declining audiences, when cable news channels are louder -- and more profitable.
"Objectivity -- or the extent to which we strive for objectivity -- is less of a marketable commodity," he says.
"People seem to want to hear news presented according to their own beliefs, and I don't understand that."
"I'm so much of a traditional, over-the-air broadcaster. I'm aware that it's changing, and I'm not adapting fast enough with it.
Having hit the perfect arc of this business, I think it's time to move on."
A few paragraphs before was this Gibson tidbit of "defiance" to insure more glowing, dramatic tributes to Ted Kennedy:
As a political junkie, the highlight of his tenure was chronicling the 2008 campaign.
While he also liked John McCain, Gibson says that for Barack Obama, "there was just a tide of history in the election, extraordinary to behold and to cover."
He recalls the day of Ted Kennedy's burial, when the evening procession crawled toward Arlington National Cemetery and he was left with 90 minutes to fill.
It was too dark to see much when the casket reached the burial site, and his producers "were screaming, 'Get off! Get off!' Why would you get off when you've just done this hour-and-a-half preamble? So I just stayed on.
They can't cut you off in mid-sentence." Gibson felt vindicated when his defiance led to the network airing the dramatic reading of the late senator's letter to the pope.
The reading was performed by former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. I doubt Gibson would have balanced that liberal spectacle with the Vatican official quoted in Time magazine: "Here in Rome, Ted Kennedy is nobody."
This is hardly the way he acted when it was his turn to be a Palin-terrogator.
For a review of other episodes of Gibson's liberal bias, see our Profile in Bias page.
COPENHAGEN — As international climate talks appeared in danger of disintegrating, Al Gore arrived to a rock star’s welcome in Copenhagen today.
If Copenhagen is the enviros' Woodstock, then Gore is The Who, the Grateful Dead and Creedence Clearwater Revival as a one-man band.
The former vice president drew such a big crowd that security had to shut down access, with hundreds of unhappy activists left outside. Inside the mobbed room, Gore watched as Danish and Norwegian officials presented a new scientific report that the sea levels are rising much faster than previous estimates.
snip
The former vice president has scrapped a $1,200-a-head fundraiser for 3,000 guests scheduled for later in the week, to the dismay of Danish organizers.
Inconvenient truth for Al Gore as his North Pole sums don't add up (UK Press Catches Gore in a Fib) (TimesOnline.com (UK)
There are many kinds of truth. Al Gore was poleaxed by an inconvenient one yesterday.
The former US Vice-President, who became an unlikely figurehead for the green movement after narrating the Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, became entangled in a new climate change “spin” row.
Mr Gore, speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, stated the latest research showed that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years.
In his speech, Mr Gore told the conference: “These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.”
“It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,” Dr Maslowski said. “I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”
Mr Gore’s office later admitted that the 75 per cent figure was one used by Dr Maslowksi as a “ballpark figure” several years ago in a conversation with Mr Gore.
The embarrassing error cast another shadow over the conference after the controversy over the hacked e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, which appeared to suggest that scientists had manipulated data to strengthen their argument that human activities were causing global warming....
Gore at climate talks: Polar ice may go in 5 years AP
…The Arctic Ocean sea ice has shrunk dramatically, to record low levels, the past several summers.
Scientists blame global warming, which has raised temperatures twice as fast in the far north as elsewhere.
Gore said polar scientists told him Sunday that the latest data "suggest a 75 percent chance the entire polar ice cap will melt in summer within the next five to seven years."
Billion people's water at risk from melting ice: Gore (AFP)
If the ice doesn’t melt, they won’t have any water Al. But then you said, the center of the earth is millions of degrees—what do you expect, you total idiot.
COPENHAGEN — Climate guru Al Gore warned UN climate talks Monday that record melting of Polar and Himalayan ice could deprive more than a billion people's access to clean water.
Adding to an avalanche of bad scientific news over the last two years, the former US vice president cited new research showing that the Arctic ice cap may have shrunk to record-low levels last year.
"2008 had a smaller minimum, probably, than 2007," Gore said at the release of a report he co-sponsored with the Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store, called Melting Snow and Ice: A call for Action.
"These figures are fresh, I just got them yesterday," Gore said, alluding to work led by Wieslaw Maslowski of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.
Does Avoidance of ClimateGate Reporting Represent MSM Suicide? (NewsBusters)
Notice how the mainstream media pretty much avoids the inconvenient scandal of ClimateGate?
Although this scandal seems to mark the end of blind faith in the global warming dogma, it could also represent the final act of the long MSM suicide that has been going on for the past few years.
That is the assertion made by author, broadcaster, and columnist Gerald Warmer in a fascinating UK Telegraph article:
Climategate is a global household name. No cat has ever emancipated itself more completely from the bag.
It is a world-wide scandal – thanks to the internet. Yet, as its ramifications proliferate and dominoes continue to fall, the most repeatedly asked question online is: how can the mainstream media ignore this?
Well, we know the answer to that: the MSM are in thrall to the leftist consensus. End of story.
Global Warming? Snow Falls Down Under During Australian Summer (NewsBusters)
Paging Al Gore!
The global warming alarmists are claiming that 2010 could be the warmest year on record. Perhaps they better inform Mother Nature about this since she seems to be having other plans leading into the new year.
Not only is the U.S.A. experiencing unusually cold weather but, almost unbelievably, Australia has just had some snowfall two weeks into their summer which officially began on December 1.
Here is a report from the Australian Weather Zone about the summer snow:
Most people consider summer a time to wear shorts and thongs wherever one pleases, with little thought of ski jackets or snowboards.
However Victoria's Mount Baw Baw saw a light dusting of snow, and it's already two weeks into summer.
In Touting 'Climate Justice' Protesters, Networks Oblivious to Communist Participation (NewsBusters)
Network journalists who were quick to see racists, haters and extremists amongst the “tea party” protesters were oblivious on Saturday to communists in the “climate justice” march in Copenhagen whose cause they trumpeted -- even as the video they showed included brief shots of marchers waving red flags displaying the Soviet Union's hammer and sickle.
“The streets were filled today with tens of thousands of protesters from around the world, demanding action to stop global warming,” NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt announced before Anne Thompson marveled: “An extraordinary sight in front of Denmark's parliament building:
35,000 protesters filling the square, stepping off on a slow march with an urgent plea: Save the planet.”
On the CBS Evening News, anchor Jeff Glor touted how “around the world tonight, protesters are creating heat over climate change.
In Copenhagen, where UN talks on global warming are under way, police estimate 40,000 activists marched, mostly peacefully, to demand an agreement that produces real change.”
Reporter Sheila MacVicar began: “From India to Australia, from China to Copenhagen, tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets.”
Neither Thompson nor MacVicar mentioned the communist participation obvious from the video that producers ran with their narration, though a Financial Times article included the less-appealing parts of the coalition:
“The protesters were a mix of environmental campaigners, church groups and ordinary Danes, many with children, as well as anarchists and communists.”
In a post for the Santa Barbara Independent, Ethan Stewart noted: “From Communist groups and Greenpeace to radical vegetarians and a pro-Iranian crew, there were not many activist sub groups without representation in the march.”
Holt introduced the Saturday, December 12 NBC Nightly News story: Now to Copenhagen. The streets were filled today with tens of thousands of protesters from around the world, demanding action to stop global warming.
Their demonstrations were mostly peaceful, but still hundreds were arrested. Our report tonight from chief environmental affairs correspondent Anne Thompson in Copenhagen.
From the top of Thompson's report: An extraordinary sight in front of Denmark's parliament building: 35,000 protesters filling the square, stepping off on a slow march with an urgent plea: Save the planet.
The four-mile trek to the site of the climate talks was part street theater, part political theater....The marchers have a simple message for the delegates.
Stop talking and start acting. [A Danish man] pushed his 10-month-old son, worried about his future and the future of those elsewhere in the world.
MAN: I definitely want them to, to make an agreement that's fair also in the third-world countries.
THOMPSON: That's what the marchers call climate justice. They want rich countries to help poor countries already dealing with the affects of disappearing natural resources by creating $100 billion fund. But at the negotiating table, rich countries are only talking about a quick-start $10 billion fund....
From the CBS Evening News, Jeff Glor set up MacVicar: Around the world tonight, protesters are creating heat over climate change. In Copenhagen, where UN talks on global warming are under way, police estimate 40,000 activists marched, mostly peacefully, to demand an agreement that produces real change. Here is Sheila MacVicar. MacVicar: From India to Australia, from China to Copenhagen, tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets. Their point, to drive home demands for binding global agreement on climate change as negotiators, scientists and activists head into the final week of the climate conference. Today, former presidents, top models and a retired arch bishop lent their voices in support of an agreement, any agreement....
Good Bye Gitmo, Hello Thomson, Illinois (Via Chicago Sun)
WASHINGTON -- The White House will announce Tuesday that President Obama will seek to acquire the Thomson Correctional Center in northwestern Illinois to house detainees now held at the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.
//religious intolerance can be found throughout the literature of the left. often disguised as concerns for the "separation of church and state"//
Right, John. No need to be concerned about separation of church and state. There was so much more tolerance in the Middle Ages, when religious leaders appointed political leaders, and vice versa. And what on earth were the founding fathers drinking when they approved the U.S. Constitution's take on religious freedom?
You have no message. You babble juvenile talking points that have relevant basis or bearing on anything being discussed. Come up with some original thought for a change instead of trolling all day and night.
40 comments:
Fistgate VII: Explosive… After Years of Silence Massachusetts Teacher Speaks Out About What She Saw at Fistgate (Audio)(GatewayPundit)
After years of silence a traumatized Massachusetts teacher spoke out in an interview about what she witnessed at GLSEN’s Fistgate Conference in 2000.
She also describes Barack Obama’s Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings’ role at the infamous conference that discussed “fisting” and “watersports” with children.
The Massachusetts teacher in this interview attended the conference and actually took the photo of Obama’s Safe School Czar Kevin Jennings sitting and holding a conference program during a break.
Jennings was the keynote speaker at the conference.
The teacher claims that there is “no way” that Obama’s Safe School Czar did not know about the pornographic and sexually explicit material that was presented and discussed at the conference.
Kevin Jennings is the founder of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN).
Here is a partial transcript of the interview. The teacher wanted to remain anonymous out of safety considerations for herself and her family:
Jim Hoft- Gateway Pundit: I had a couple of more questions. One is did you see Kevin Jennings at the conference?
Massachusetts Teacher: Yes, he was the keynote speaker…
GP: So he was at this conference where they were promoting sexual acts with kids. They were promoting sex between kids and adults and he was the keynote speaker there?
MT: Yes.
GP: And it was his organization that actually ran the conference. Is that correct?
MT: Specifically, it was GLSEN Massachusetts. But remember, he not only founded GLSEN in Massachusetts but at that point he was the head of the national GLSEN which I believe was in New York City at that time.
I don’t know where it is now. He was touted as this wonderful person who helped children so that they wouldn’t be harassed by parents, and other students…
GP: Right. Which sounds like a good thing.
MT: Oh yeah. It sounds really good because there’s not a single teacher I know that wants any child to be mistreated… And so all of these things sound really good.
GP: Right… So let me ask you this. Was Kevin, did you see him throughout the day? Do you recall him at all?
MT: Um. The last time I saw him was when I snapped the picture of him and Adam Glick that was taken in the front row of the auditorium. I knew that I wanted to get his picture. Cameras were not outlawed the first year (2000)
...Now in that picture Adam Glick is on the left and Kevin is on the right and Adam is giving him a lunch ticket. I took it just at the moment they were looking down and it wasn’t a real attractive...It was one of those pictures you really want to get.
GP: It’s a great picture. So there’s no way. Let me ask you this, there’s no way that Kevin Jennings could have been at this conference and not know that there was this explosive sexual speeches, talks, materials around the conference?
MT: This whole conference was his dream and his mindset. This was his vision from the very beginning.
GP: So there was no way that they would have had material there that he would not have, would you say approved of?
MT: Obviously, this is material that he abvocates. Even today if you read the text of some of the books that they put out.
GP: That was up on my blog, by the way.
MT: He knew about that too. He knows about everything all along. Remember, the buck stops with him. He was the head of all of this.
GP: OK.
MT: He brought in all of the people that would agree with him as any administrator would do. You bring in people who agree with you who you can work with.
GP: Sure. Alright. Oh wow! That’s a powerful statement right there. That’s really powerful.
Today Kevin Jennings is Barack Obama’s Safe Schools Czar.
FOX News: Chapter & Perverse? Safe School’s Czar Hit For Promoting Sex-Explicit Books(GatewayPundit)
FOX News just released this report on Barack Obama’s controversial Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings:
Obama’s Safe Schools Czar Tied to Lewd Readings for 7th Graders
By Maxim Lott FOXNews.com
Obama adviser Kevin Jennings is under fresh attack after it was revealed that the pro-gay group he formerly headed recommends books his critics say are pornographic.
President Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar,” already a target of social conservatives for his past drug abuse and what they say is his promotion of homosexuality in schools, is under fresh attack after it was revealed that the pro-gay group he formerly headed recommends books his critics say are pornographic.
The group under fire is the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), which Kevin Jennings, now the assistant deputy secretary for safe and drug-free schools in the Department of Education, founded and ran from 1990 to 2008.
GLSEN says it works to create a welcoming atmosphere for homosexual students in schools, and that effort includes recommending books for students of all ages.
But critics say many of the books, particularly some that are targeted for children between Grades 7 to 12, are inappropriately explicit.
A full list is available at the blog Gateway Pundit, which has published dozens of controversial passages from the books.
One recommended book is titled “Queer 13: Lesbian and Gay Writers Recall Seventh Grade.” On pages 43 through 45, writer Justin Chin tells of how as a 13-year-old, he went along with “near-rapes” by older men, but “really did enjoy those sexual encounters.”
Chin also recounts each sexual action he performed with an “ugly f*** of a man” he met on a bus...
Go read the rest here. They even go into the GLSEN conference fisting kits.
Eye-Witness Teacher Says Safe Schools Czar Present at "Fistgate" Conference (Life Site News)
New details on President Barack Obama's "Safe Schools Czar" Kevin Jennings have emerged, as an eye-witness has finally broken her silence and says that Jennings was present at Tufts University during the infamous "Fistgate" scandal, and says that he bears personal responsibility for the event.
Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit reports that a Massachusetts teacher - who remains anonymous out of concern for herself and her family - told him that she saw Jennings in 2000 at the 10 Year Anniversary Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN)/Boston conference at Tufts University.
At that time Jennings was the executive director of GLSEN, an organization which he founded.
The event, cosponsored by the Massachusetts Department of Education, featured a youth workshop on sex, specifically targeting 14-21-year-olds.
During that workshop GLSEN presenters taught youth how to perform a dangerous sexual practice known as "fisting" - a practice so obscene that it cannot be described here.
snip
The teacher also snapped a picture of Jennings showing him getting a lunch ticket at the event.
Hoft asked, "There's no way that Kevin Jennings could have been at this conference and not know that there was this explosive sexual speeches, talks, materials around the conference."
"This whole conference was his dream and his mindset. This was his vision from the very beginning," said the teacher.
snip
When news of the seminars at the GLSEN conference broke in the early 2000s, Jennings denied he knew that GLSEN presenters were promoting these activities to youth.
He stated: "We need to make our expectations and guidelines to outside facilitators much more clear, because we are surprised and troubled by some of the accounts we've heard." Jennings, however, also criticized the Massachusetts parents who taped the event that exposed the scandal.
However, next year's GLSEN conference at Tufts belied Jennings's public commitment to eliminating any repetition of the "Fistgate" scandal.
Campus police maintained a strict ban on cameras and video-recorders at the 2001 GLSEN event, but the pro-family group "Mass Resistance" - which exposed the previous conference to the Boston media - was able to obtain Planned Parenthood "fisting kits" made available at the conference.
In defense of Jennings, the socially-liberal organization Media Matters commented that "neither Hoft nor the anonymous teacher provide any actual evidence that Jennings knew the specific explicit content that would be discussed at that workshop."
But page eight of the "Teach Out" conference schedule - available from Mass Resistence - describes the "youth-only" workshop called, "What They Didn't Tell You About Queer Sex and Sexuality in Health Class."
A description for this workshop states: "This workshop for youth addresses what is different for glbt [sic] youth when it comes to sex, dating, relationships, HIV, etc.
Come and discuss the questions you couldn't or didn't ask in health class...
What does it mean to identify as queer and still be sexually active with the opposite sex...
We will address the information you want about queer sexuality and some of the politics that prevent us from getting our needs met."
"Remember, the buck stops with him. [Jennings] was the head of all of this," the teacher told Hoft.
Jennings' insistence that he bore no responsibility for scandal makes no sense, she said, for the reason that, "He brought in all of the people that would agree with him as any administrator would do. You bring in people who agree with you, who you can work with."
President Barack Obama appointed Jennings as deputy assistant to the Office of Safe Schools in the Department of Education on July 6.
ObamaCare: Lieberman, Nelson needle Reid’s trial balloon (and the CLASS Act) PATTERICO
The Hill feigned a little surprise over this:
Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) both said a Medicare “buy-in” option for those aged 55-64 was a deal breaker.
***
Lieberman said Democrats should stop looking for a public option “compromise” and simply scrap the idea altogether.
***
If Democrats stick to relying primarily on the bill’s subsidies, the legislation would pass easily and with bipartisan support, Lieberman argued.
But how can anyone be surprised, after Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) already signaled his doubts about Reid’s Kennedy retread?
Sen. Ben Nelson is a creature of the insurance industry from a state that has been Red since 1964
Sen. Joe Lieberman represents Connecticut, a state which — like Nebraska — is home to a number of major insurers and lukewarm at best on ObamaCare.
Lieberman apparently reiterated his opposition directly to Sen. Maj. Ldr. Harry Reid:
The pledge by Lieberman to oppose the bill represents a potentially huge setback for reform proponents, many of who saw the latest round of policy compromises as the last true chance to corral the needed votes.
That said, leadership has several fallback options (none of them promising) should Lieberman follow through on the threat...
TNR’s Jonathan Cohn claims that Lieberman previously told Reid he could support the Medicare buy-in, but for sheer, unadulterated schadenfreude, you cannot beat Ezra Klein accusing ol’ Joe of being “willing to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in order to settle an old electoral score.”
Democrats are quietly panicking over the possibility that Reid’s trial balloon will get a bad CBO score.
But what the Nelsons and Lieberman (and Snowe, for that matter) are suggesting is that a good CBO score likely does not matter.
Indeed, the “public option” is not the only problem these senators have with Reid’s bill, either.
Lieberman said that Ted Kennedy’s CLASS Act (a long-term care entitlement program that Sen. Kent Conrad called “a Ponzi scheme of the first order”) also has to come out of the bill. Ben Nelson has previously issued the same demand.
And there were 51 votes to remove it — a majority, but not the 60 required under the current Senate procedure. Like the public option, Reid included the CLASS Act to appease his Lefty base, and will have to find a way to back out.
Emptywheel complains that relying primarily on the bill’s subsidies amounts to a bailout of the health care industry...and she is correct.
Unfortunately, most of her friends on the Left do not want to confront the fact that Obama’s healthcare strategy has always been to buy off the interest groups, and to give up the public option as part of the deal.
Consequently, they end up stamping their feet, demanding something they were never going to get, instead of joining a bipartisan coalition to kill a bill that whacks 68.4 million individuals, families, and single parents with incomes under $200K, and does nothing to meaningfully address the cost curve it claims to bend.
Change!...20 States Cut Mammograms After Government Report Released
(GatewayPundit)
This won’t end well.
A full 20 states have now cut funding for mammogram screenings for low income women after a government task force last month made its recommendations that women in their 40s should stop routinely having annual mammograms.
Poll: 81 percent of Democrats want Lieberman punished (Digital Journal) I thought the Democrats were the party of Bi-partisanship while celebrating the diversity of political views unlike the mean and ‘stuck in their ways’ republicans?
More than 80 percent of Democrats say they believe Sen. Joe Lieberman should be stripped of his chairmanship in the Senate if he ends up supporting a Republican filibuster of health care reform.
According to the Huffington Post, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Democracy for America ordered a study a few days ago, in which they polled over 800 voters.
The main question in the poll was whether Lieberman - an Independent who usually caucuses with the Democrats - should lose his chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
81 percent of Democrats responded that they think he should lose that chairmanship should he sustain a health care reform filibuster.
One contributing factor to the high number of Democrats who wish Lieberman punished is that this is not the first time he has gone against the Democratic leadership since they took back power.
During the 2008 Presidential campaign, Lieberman openly campaigned for Senator John McCain. Only 10 percent of Democrats said there should be no punishment, and only nine percent said they weren't sure.
Among Independents, 43 percent said that Lieberman should lose his position, while 30 percent said. Not surprisingly, only 10 percent of Republicans feel he should be punished for helping them.
Lieberman reportedly recently told Senate Majority leader that he would vote against the Health Care Reform bill in it's present form, and would support any Republican attempts at filibustering the bill.
Blog Wants to Oust Lieberman's Wife From Susan Komen Ambassadorship - (Fox News)
A liberal Web site is trying to enlist celebrities to persuade a top breast cancer research group to dump Sen. Joe Lieberman's wife as its "global ambassador," saying Hadassah Lieberman's health care lobbying work and her husband's opposition to the so-called public option make her unfit for the role.
Oops! Turns out Obama's cost-cutting health plan won't save a dime; cheaper to do nothing (L.A. Times)
It's probably just coincidental that bad numbers about President Obama's much-coveted healthcare legislation came out late last week when few people were paying attention.
This is the absolutely crucial healthcare reform plan that simply had to be drafted, discussed, debated, amended and passed before early August.
It's supposed to cover millions more Americans and reduce the nation's soaring medical costs.
Turns out, not. Here's a little chapter review before semester finals:
"You mean extending insurance to an additional 20 million people, restricting insurance premium hikes for higher risk people, and eliminating denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions would actually raise costs? I'm shocked, shocked."
AP sources: Obama summons Senate Dems to WH (What, no republicans?)
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama will meet with Senate Democrats at the White House Tuesday to press for action at a make-or-break moment for his health care overhaul.
All 60 members of the Democratic caucus have been invited, according to three Democratic officials.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement was not yet public.
A Death Blow To Health 'Reform' (Investors.com)
Socialized Medicine: The administration's own health department, in a devastating analysis, warns of rising costs, shrinking benefits and a long-term health care "death spiral." "Reform" has been pronounced dead.
When even the liberal Washington Post warns that congressional Democrats, in trying to save their increasingly unpopular health reform bill, are sneakily making it more like European-style socialized medicine, it means the death watch is on.
Letting 55-year-olds "buy in" to the fiscally doomed Medicare program "could be a bigger step toward a single-payer system than the milquetoast public option plans rejected by Senate moderates as too disruptive of the private market," the Post wrote last week.
The key reason: "sicker near-seniors ... might assume, with good reason, that the government will be more accommodating in approving treatments, and they might flock to Medicare.
That would raise premium costs and, correspondingly, the pressure to dip into federal funds for extra help."
Medicare is already rocketing toward bankruptcy; that move would switch on the afterburners.
The president can talk about enactment before Christmas all he wants; the fact is that the more that information gets disseminated about this ever-shape-shifting nightmare of a plan, the more the American people fear it.
The IBD/TIPP Poll pegs public support at 41%; Gallup gauges its popularity at just 35%.
Now comes the final, fatal blow: a report from the chief actuary of the Department of Health and Human Services' Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that says health "reform" will mean the opposite of its advertised promises.
Black Activists Condemn Senate Leader Harry Reid Playing the Race Card in Health Care Debate (Urban Mecca)
Race-related comments by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are offensive and historically inaccurate, says the Project 21 black leadership group.
“Harry Reid has resorted to the most shopworn trick in the liberal playbook.
He deployed the race card in the ugliest way while debating health care reform,” said Deroy Murdock, a Project 21 member and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.
“It is astonishing and outrageous to equate those who seek the defeat of Reid’s 2,074-page, $2.5 trillion legislative monstrosity with those who were happy to keep blacks in chains, unpaid for their back-breaking labor and traded back and forth like cattle.
The fact that Reid would use such deplorable, insulting and insensitive rhetoric indicates that he is out of credible arguments to defend his own proposal.”
Murdock added: “The Senate’s top Democrat owes an immediate apology to Republicans on Capitol Hill, the 39 House Democrats who voted against Obamacare on November 7 and the 51 percent of Americans from coast to coast who a Rasmussen survey recently found are against Obamacare.
If Reid believes these Americans who object to his high-cost, low-quality legislation also hold warm feelings for slavery, he is further removed from reality than anyone so far has feared.
If he does not believe this, he should stop cynically firing rhetorical mortar shells at decent Americans who merely disagree with his spendthrift, Big Government approach to health care.”
Reid’s comments are historically inaccurate, as his own Democratic Party stood in the way of slavery abolition and civil rights legislation in the past.
“Why is history so confusing to Harry Reid?,” asked Project 21 Chairman Mychal Massie.
“Six of the nine original planks of the Republican Party at its inception in 1856 were based on opposition to slavery and promoting civil rights.
Did Reid also forget what party Lyndon Johnson worked with to get the Civil Rights Act of 1964 not only passed but to even get it through committee and onto the floor for a vote?
One of the Democratic opponents – Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV), a former Klansman – is still serving today and is third in the presidential line of succession as the President pro tem.
Reid’s daring to brand opponents as racist is indicative of how far liberals are willing to go in order to control Americans from the cradle to the grave.”
House GOP warns Nancy Pelosi on defense bill (politico.com)
One-hundred-and-seventy-four House Republicans warned House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Monday that they won’t vote for the Defense Department’s spending bill if a hike of the debt ceiling is tacked on.
“Unfortunately, there seems to be pattern developing this year of using legislation that supports our men and women in uniform to pass other contentious proposals that are extraneous to our troops,” the Republicans said in a letter to Pelosi.
Corruption-plagued US Atty Democrat nominee Stephanie Villafuerte withdraws (Michelle Malkin)
In October, I called your attention to the smelly US Attorney nomination out of Colorado involving Stephanie Villafuerte.
Looks like the stonewall that the Dems and DOJ built for her has collapsed under the weight of local and state pressure — compounded by tough questions from the Denver Post’s Karen Crummy and GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions and constant pounding by KHOW talk show host Peter Boyles.
She has now withdrawn her nomination. But the questions will not go away:
Stephanie Villafuerte has withdrawn her name from consideration to become Colorado’s next U.S. Attorney.
In a letter to President Barack Obama, who nominated her for the post, and Attorney General Eric Holder, Villafuerte said she was confident she would have “served well in this important position” but was withdrawing because of “political attacks” surrounding her role in the 2006 Colorado gubernatorial campaign.
“Unforunately, a needless and extraneous political fight has emerged in Colorado and that fight, in my judgment has completely overshadowed the deliberative and independent assessment of my qualifications for this important office,” Villafuerte wrote.
“I continue to stand by my statements and maintain that my involvement was appropriate at all times.”
The move comes two days after U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee asked that consideration of her nomination as Colorado U.S. attorney be delayed because her record is “incomplete.”
In a letter to the committee’s chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, Sessions said he wanted answers from Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano about why Cory Voorhis, an immigration agent, was fired for accessing the same restricted database that Villafuerte’s former colleagues also accessed.
Sessions said after asking those questions that he also became concerned that Villafuerte’s record was not complete.
U.S. Sen. Mark Udall said he was disappointed by Villfuerte’s “very personal” decision.
“I had a positive conversation with Senator Jeff Sessions, the Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on Saturday morning in which we both agreed that the confirmation process for this office could, and should, be framed to resolve any remaining questions he or other Members of the Judiciary Committee might want to put to the U.S. Attorney nominee,” Udall said in a statement released by his office.
“Despite these assurances from Senator Sessions and despite Stephanie’s willingness to answer questions by the Judiciary Committee, it’s clear to me that a further delay in the confirmation is not good for Colorado or the office of U.S. Attorney.
Stephanie has made a decision in the best interests of the office she hoped to serve, and I respect her for it.”
Did AmeriCorps official lie about possible First Lady link to IG firing? (Washington Examiner)
Congressional investigators looking into the abrupt firing of AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin have discovered that the head of AmeriCorps met with a top aide to First Lady Michelle Obama the day before Walpin was removed.
According to Republican investigators, Alan Solomont, then the chairman of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which oversees AmeriCorps, had denied meeting with Jackie Norris, at the time the First Lady's chief of staff.
But recently-released White House visitor logs show that Solomont met with Norris on June 9 of this year (as well as on two earlier occasions).
President Obama fired Walpin on June 10 after an intense dispute over Walpin's aggressive investigation of misuse of AmeriCorps money by Obama political ally Kevin Johnson, the mayor of Sacramento, California.
After being presented with the visitor logs, investigators say, Solomont explained that he met with Norris to discuss Corporation business but did not discuss the Walpin matter.
When pressed, Solomont said he might have made an offhand comment, or a mention in passing, about the Walpin affair, but that he and Norris did not have a discussion about it.
EDITORIAL: Black Panther battle intensifies- Is the Justice Department against civil rights? (WASHINGTON TIMES)
The dispute between the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the Justice Department is starting to look like the legal equivalent of World War II's Anzio campaign, which represented a major escalation late in the war.
The battleground is the controversy about the department's decision to drop voter-intimidation cases against members of the New Black Panther Party.
The commission is mounting a massive legal assault; Justice is refusing to be budged; and the casualties could be high.
The shame of it is that the department itself would be well-served if it would merely cooperate. That's what it would do if it were confident its decision was correct.
For six months, various members of Congress and the commission have been asking for cooperation from the Justice Department.
The basic questions are simple enough: On what legal basis did Justice drop these cases, which it effectively already had won?
Who were all the officials at Justice (and possibly the White House) who were involved in the decision? And does the decision represent a shift in enforcement policy concerning voting rights?
The Justice Department stonewalled at almost every turn or provided false information.
For instance, department official Portia Robinson wrongly claimed that New Black Panther defendant Jerry Jackson "was a resident of the apartment building where the polling place was located" (and thus presumably had more of a right to loiter there).
If the department can't even figure out that Mr. Jackson, a visibly fit age 53, doesn't live in a senior assisted-living facility, its overall reliability surely is questionable.
Editor & Publisher, R.I.P. (Investors.com)
Media: By now the decline of the newspaper industry has become, well, yesterday's news.
Small wonder the industry's own trade publication would eventually close its own doors. But there's a little more to the story.
Last week Editor & Publisher magazine, aged 125, finally ended its run as newspaperdom's principal trade pub when owner Neilsen Business Media announced it no longer fit in with the company's reformulated plans.
Journalists who had long since ceased reading the print edition offered nostalgic tributes — online.
That their posts appeared on the Internet itself tells much of the story.
In recent years both circulation and advertising revenues have migrated to the newer media as eyeballs preferred screens atop keyboards to inky pages. Only the most innovative newspapers survive.
E&P reflected a bygone era when publishers thumbed through its pages in search of the latest press equipment and itinerant reporters, on the prowl for more attractive and better-paying jobs, flipped to its classifieds.
The magazine, which a few years back shifted from weekly to monthly while developing a daily Web site, never positioned itself as the guardian of High Church Journalism, as the Columbia Journalism Review and other critical journals would.
And yet, it did its part in creating a pantheon of Fourth Estate saints — from John Peter Zenger through Woodward and Bernstein — all the while genuflecting to the First Amendment.
Feds (workers) owe Uncle Sam $3Billion in unpaid taxes (WTOP.com Washington) timmy and charlie lead the way!
At a time when the White House is projecting the largest deficit in the nation's history, Uncle Sam is trying to recover billions of dollars in unpaid taxes from its own employees.
Federal workers owe more than $3 billion in income taxes they failed to pay in 2008. According to Internal Revenue Service documents, 276,300 federal employees and retirees owe $3,042,200,000.
The IRS tracks the voluntary compliance rate of federal employees and retirees each year, and each year feds come up short.
The one bright spot in this year's report is that after several years of a steady increase, the amount owed by feds is down from the previous year.
Federal employees and retirees owed $3,586,784,725 in unpaid income taxes in 2007.
The documents show delinquent employees from nearly every federal agency with more than 25 employees.
Based on percentages, the Department of The Treasury, which includes the IRS, has the best compliance rate. Fewer than 1 percent of Treasury employees didn't pay their taxes in 2008.
The IRS is the only federal agency where employees can be fired for not paying their taxes. The non-compliance rate for IRS employees in 2008 was 0.76 percent -- down from 0.89 percent in 2007.
The agency with the most tax scofflaws is the U.S. Postal Service, with 28,913 employees who owe $297,933,756.
But that is still a dramatic improvement from 2007 when more than 54,000 employees owed more than $407 million.
Job Market Worsens For Recent College Graduates (67% Voters 18-29voted for Dear Leader) (LATimes) Welcome to the world of Obamanomics, kids. I sense a whole lot of young Republicans in the making. Nothing shakes one’s liberalism like a cold dose of reality!
Reporting from Washington - The unemployment rate dropped last month for men and women, blacks and whites, lifting hopes that the long dry spell in the jobs market may be coming to an end.
But for recent college graduates and other young adults, the labor situation didn't just remain dire -- it got worse.
For 20- to 24-year-olds, the jobless rate rose four-tenths of a percent to 16% in November, even as unemployment nationally slipped to 10% from 10.2%.
And data from the Labor Department show that the unemployment figure for college graduates in that age group was 10.6% in the third quarter -- the highest since early 1983 and more than double the rate for older college-educated workers.
Kyle Daley, 22, of Walnut Creek, Calif., provides a grim case study. In June, Daley graduated from UCLA, one of the country's best universities.
He received a degree in political science. His grade-point average: a solid 3.5.
Since January, he has applied for about 600 jobs, mostly entry-level positions such as office assistant, junior analyst and marketing associate.
He has reached out to small firms and Fortune 500 companies in aerospace, entertainment, finance and government, from Alabama to Washington state.
And kids, remember that it is important to know what the candidate actually stands for.
This is best determined by looking at his or her PAST record, not what he or she says he WILL do.
It is also good to vote for a candidate who wants to promote industry, not punish it.
Also young folks, it is probably best to vote for the candidate who actually loves America and wants to see better days for this country, not the candidate who seems to be COOL.
Lastly, vote for a candidate based upon his character, not the COLOR OF HIS SKIN! But, but...“We got to vote for the cool black guy and be a part of an historic election!”
Obama Gives Britain the Cold Shoulder (Wall Street Journal)
Britain is the only European country President Barack Obama can really count on to respond positively to his plea for NATO to provide extra forces for Afghanistan.
So why is it, then, that the Obama administration can barely conceal its disdain for a nation that, by its deeds, time and again proves itself to be America's staunchest and most reliable ally?
Shortly before Mr. Obama's Afghan policy speech at West Point earlier this month, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced Britain was sending another 500 troops to that beleaguered country, bringing the total number of British troops to around 10,000
Yet the president never mentioned Britain's support—even though, unlike most other European countries, British soldiers are prepared to undertake combat operations, and have incurred significant casualties in so doing.
Cindy Sheehan Writes Letter To Obama (Wants some of his Nobel Prize money) (peaceoftheaction.org)
Dear Mr. Obama,
I hear that you were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize recently in Oslo, Norway and that, in addition to that spiffy medal, it comes with 1.4 million tax-free dollars that you are going to "donate to charity."
I just want to let you know that there are still some of us in the US who oppose the wars, even though you are president, and its nothing personal, but I vehemently oppose your wars and especially oppose the escalation of troops to Afghanistan and the fact that there has been no de-escalation from Iraq.
It has been super-tough being a peace activist since you took office, because a lot of my colleagues supported your candidacy and gave you a "wait and see"and "give him a chance," while I have been working against these policies since Bush was president and have never stopped.
But why is it Now The State Run Media’s love affair with Cindy is now long over?
Remember when she was a star on NBC? Remember when NBC says she has the moral authority over Bush?
OHHH those days...thrown under the bus.
Barack Obama Gives Himself a B+ For Tripling Deficit & Nearly Doubling Unemployment in One Year (GatewayPundit)
So what would an “F” look like?
Barack Obama told Oprah Winfrey last night that he deserved a B+ for the year.
After all...Obama and Democrats only tripled the national deficit in less than one year.
Obama increased the national debt to $12 Trillion.
And he nearly doubled the unemployment rate since the Bush years with his failed Stimulus Plan.
If his goal was to destroy the US economy then a B+ would fit.
Rasmussen: ObamaCare support at 40%; 56% Oppose (19% strongly support, 46% strongly oppose)
Fifty-six percent (56%) of U.S. voters now oppose the health care plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats.
That’s the highest level of opposition found - reached three times before - in six months of polling.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 40% of voters favor the health care plan.
Perhaps more significantly, 46% now Strongly Oppose the plan, compared to 19% who Strongly Favor it.
Obama’s -19 crash: a tale of two Rasmussens one America’s leading pollster, one a Euroweenie (The Collins Report)
Barack Obama’s Copenhagen trip reminds us there are two Rasmussens.
Both are talking about Obama, but one counts to real Americans the other only to socialists in and out of the media trying to destroy America.
Rasmussen One is Scott Rasmussen. He’s telling the world Americans don’t like their hero so you have to search to find his reports.
Rasmussen Two is a Euroweenie trying to get his hand into our pocket so media types love him and show him on television.
RASMUSSEN ONE:
America’s Rasmussen tracks the approval levels of Obama as determined by American voters, which is a powerful indicator of his actual status.
Rasmussen One compares Obama’s “strongly approve” versus “strongly disapprove” numbers and reports Obama has slipped to a -19 points since his +25 high in January.
He also says among Independent LIKELY voters from January to today Obama’s approval rating has capsized falling from 55/42 to 35/65.
RASMUSSEN TWO:
In Copenhagen this week Obama is in his element surrounded by fellow Leftists. He’s the prize pig in an international butt kissing hoedown, meeting and greeting clammy handed Leftists begging for American dollars.
The generally anti American media has been eagerly showing a video of Rasmussen Two, the Danish Prime Minister puckering up for a “twofer” and saying, “Compared to the last presidency, I must say that the new American president has, .., changed gear and made huge progress..”
Obama may appeal to this butt mooching socialist with his obligatory swipe at George Bush for resisting Europe’s attempts to fleece America with the Climate change fraud, but in the end he doesn’t count for squat.
So there you have it: two Rasmussens, One is kicking Obama’s rear end, the other kissing it.
Is there any wonder we hear about Rasmussen Two but nothing about Rasmussen One?
RASMUSSEN POLL: Obama Job Approval Falls to New Low at 44%... Developing... (Drudge)
Shocker… Liberals Dominate in Top 10 Most FAIL Moments of 2009(GatewayPundit)
Democratic and liberal kooks dominated the years Top 10 Most FAIL moments.
Kanye “George Bush Doesn’t Care About Black People” landed on the top of the list this year for stealing the moment from country singer Taylor Swift at the MTV Video Music Awards.
Top 10 Most Memorable FAIL Moments of 2009:
1. Kanye West’s Outburst at the Video Music Awards 37%
2. Bolivian Newscast Airs “Lost” Scene as Flight 447’s Last Moments 13%
3. Richard Heene’s Balloon Boy Hoax 11%
4. Photo Opportunity for Air Force One Mistaken for Terrorist Attack 8%
5. Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich Tries to Sell Obama’s Senate Seat 7%
6. Northwest Flight to Minneapolis Overshoots Airport by 150 Miles 7%
7. Gordon Brown’s Hand Shake Fail 4%
8. Christian Bale’s Freak Out on Terminator Set 3%
9. South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford Affair with Argentinean 3%
10. White House Crashers Michaele and Tareq Salahi 2%
They forgot Barack Obama’s entrance into the White House window.
New GMA Host George Stephanopoulos Lobbies for More Taxes; Axelrod Points Out George’s Lib Roots (NewsBusters) Just like McClatchy, liberal media for liberal viewers
On his first day as the new co-anchor of Good Morning America, former Clinton aide turned journalist George Stephanopoulos lobbied for a windfall profits tax on the bonuses of bankers.
Also on Monday’s program, senior White House advisor David Axelrod reminded viewers of Stephanopoulos’ liberal background. [Audio available here.]
After the rookie GMA host asserted that Axelrod "has an office right next to the President," the Obama official retorted, "Used to be your office, George." A laughing Stephanopoulos quickly spun, "That’s right. A long, long time ago."
The journalist clearly hasn’t lost the habits of a Clinton-era Democrat.
He pressed Axelrod for new taxes on the bonuses of bankers: "David, why not tax the bonuses? Britain last week announced that they're going to have a big windfall tax, a one-time tax on these big bonuses this year because the banks got so much help.
Why not do that?"
Charlie Gibson Says He's Leaving Because Objectivity's Passe -- But He Loved Puffing Ted Kennedy? (NewsBusters)
Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz presented quite a paradox in a Charlie Gibson profile Monday.
The retiring ABC World News anchor said that "it’s time to move on" since objectivity is "less of a marketable commodity." (WTF)
But Kurtz also underlined how Gibson dared to keep airing live coverage of Ted Kennedy’s funeral until they were able to broadcast the reading of Ted Kennedy’s letter to Pope Benedict.
These passages came late in the article:
Gibson worries whether broadcast networks will be able to support sizable editorial staffs in an era of declining audiences, when cable news channels are louder -- and more profitable.
"Objectivity -- or the extent to which we strive for objectivity -- is less of a marketable commodity," he says.
"People seem to want to hear news presented according to their own beliefs, and I don't understand that."
"I'm so much of a traditional, over-the-air broadcaster. I'm aware that it's changing, and I'm not adapting fast enough with it.
Having hit the perfect arc of this business, I think it's time to move on."
A few paragraphs before was this Gibson tidbit of "defiance" to insure more glowing, dramatic tributes to Ted Kennedy:
As a political junkie, the highlight of his tenure was chronicling the 2008 campaign.
While he also liked John McCain, Gibson says that for Barack Obama, "there was just a tide of history in the election, extraordinary to behold and to cover."
He recalls the day of Ted Kennedy's burial, when the evening procession crawled toward Arlington National Cemetery and he was left with 90 minutes to fill.
It was too dark to see much when the casket reached the burial site, and his producers "were screaming, 'Get off! Get off!' Why would you get off when you've just done this hour-and-a-half preamble? So I just stayed on.
They can't cut you off in mid-sentence." Gibson felt vindicated when his defiance led to the network airing the dramatic reading of the late senator's letter to the pope.
The reading was performed by former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. I doubt Gibson would have balanced that liberal spectacle with the Vatican official quoted in Time magazine: "Here in Rome, Ted Kennedy is nobody."
This is hardly the way he acted when it was his turn to be a Palin-terrogator.
For a review of other episodes of Gibson's liberal bias, see our Profile in Bias page.
Al Gore arrives in Copenhagen (Politico)
COPENHAGEN — As international climate talks appeared in danger of disintegrating, Al Gore arrived to a rock star’s welcome in Copenhagen today.
If Copenhagen is the enviros' Woodstock, then Gore is The Who, the Grateful Dead and Creedence Clearwater Revival as a one-man band.
The former vice president drew such a big crowd that security had to shut down access, with hundreds of unhappy activists left outside.
Inside the mobbed room, Gore watched as Danish and Norwegian officials presented a new scientific report that the sea levels are rising much faster than previous estimates.
snip
The former vice president has scrapped a $1,200-a-head fundraiser for 3,000 guests scheduled for later in the week, to the dismay of Danish organizers.
Inconvenient truth for Al Gore as his North Pole sums don't add up (UK Press Catches Gore in a Fib) (TimesOnline.com (UK)
There are many kinds of truth. Al Gore was poleaxed by an inconvenient one yesterday.
The former US Vice-President, who became an unlikely figurehead for the green movement after narrating the Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, became entangled in a new climate change “spin” row.
Mr Gore, speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, stated the latest research showed that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years.
In his speech, Mr Gore told the conference: “These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.”
“It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,” Dr Maslowski said. “I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”
Mr Gore’s office later admitted that the 75 per cent figure was one used by Dr Maslowksi as a “ballpark figure” several years ago in a conversation with Mr Gore.
The embarrassing error cast another shadow over the conference after the controversy over the hacked e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, which appeared to suggest that scientists had manipulated data to strengthen their argument that human activities were causing global warming....
Gore at climate talks: Polar ice may go in 5 years AP
…The Arctic Ocean sea ice has shrunk dramatically, to record low levels, the past several summers.
Scientists blame global warming, which has raised temperatures twice as fast in the far north as elsewhere.
Gore said polar scientists told him Sunday that the latest data "suggest a 75 percent chance the entire polar ice cap will melt in summer within the next five to seven years."
Billion people's water at risk from melting ice: Gore (AFP)
If the ice doesn’t melt, they won’t have any water Al. But then you said, the center of the earth is millions of degrees—what do you expect, you total idiot.
COPENHAGEN — Climate guru Al Gore warned UN climate talks Monday that record melting of Polar and Himalayan ice could deprive more than a billion people's access to clean water.
Adding to an avalanche of bad scientific news over the last two years, the former US vice president cited new research showing that the Arctic ice cap may have shrunk to record-low levels last year.
"2008 had a smaller minimum, probably, than 2007," Gore said at the release of a report he co-sponsored with the Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store, called Melting Snow and Ice: A call for Action.
"These figures are fresh, I just got them yesterday," Gore said, alluding to work led by Wieslaw Maslowski of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.
Does Avoidance of ClimateGate Reporting Represent MSM Suicide?
(NewsBusters)
Notice how the mainstream media pretty much avoids the inconvenient scandal of ClimateGate?
Although this scandal seems to mark the end of blind faith in the global warming dogma, it could also represent the final act of the long MSM suicide that has been going on for the past few years.
That is the assertion made by author, broadcaster, and columnist Gerald Warmer in a fascinating UK Telegraph article:
Climategate is a global household name. No cat has ever emancipated itself more completely from the bag.
It is a world-wide scandal – thanks to the internet. Yet, as its ramifications proliferate and dominoes continue to fall, the most repeatedly asked question online is: how can the mainstream media ignore this?
Well, we know the answer to that: the MSM are in thrall to the leftist consensus. End of story.
Global Warming? Snow Falls Down Under During Australian Summer (NewsBusters)
Paging Al Gore!
The global warming alarmists are claiming that 2010 could be the warmest year on record. Perhaps they better inform Mother Nature about this since she seems to be having other plans leading into the new year.
Not only is the U.S.A. experiencing unusually cold weather but, almost unbelievably, Australia has just had some snowfall two weeks into their summer which officially began on December 1.
Here is a report from the Australian Weather Zone about the summer snow:
Most people consider summer a time to wear shorts and thongs wherever one pleases, with little thought of ski jackets or snowboards.
However Victoria's Mount Baw Baw saw a light dusting of snow, and it's already two weeks into summer.
In Touting 'Climate Justice' Protesters, Networks Oblivious to Communist Participation (NewsBusters)
Network journalists who were quick to see racists, haters and extremists amongst the “tea party” protesters were oblivious on Saturday to communists in the “climate justice” march in Copenhagen whose cause they trumpeted -- even as the video they showed included brief shots of marchers waving red flags displaying the Soviet Union's hammer and sickle.
“The streets were filled today with tens of thousands of protesters from around the world, demanding action to stop global warming,” NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt announced before Anne Thompson marveled: “An extraordinary sight in front of Denmark's parliament building:
35,000 protesters filling the square, stepping off on a slow march with an urgent plea: Save the planet.”
On the CBS Evening News, anchor Jeff Glor touted how “around the world tonight, protesters are creating heat over climate change.
In Copenhagen, where UN talks on global warming are under way, police estimate 40,000 activists marched, mostly peacefully, to demand an agreement that produces real change.”
Reporter Sheila MacVicar began: “From India to Australia, from China to Copenhagen, tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets.”
Neither Thompson nor MacVicar mentioned the communist participation obvious from the video that producers ran with their narration, though a Financial Times article included the less-appealing parts of the coalition:
“The protesters were a mix of environmental campaigners, church groups and ordinary Danes, many with children, as well as anarchists and communists.”
In a post for the Santa Barbara Independent, Ethan Stewart noted: “From Communist groups and Greenpeace to radical vegetarians and a pro-Iranian crew, there were not many activist sub groups without representation in the march.”
Holt introduced the Saturday, December 12 NBC Nightly News story:
Now to Copenhagen. The streets were filled today with tens of thousands of protesters from around the world, demanding action to stop global warming.
Their demonstrations were mostly peaceful, but still hundreds were arrested. Our report tonight from chief environmental affairs correspondent Anne Thompson in Copenhagen.
From the top of Thompson's report:
An extraordinary sight in front of Denmark's parliament building: 35,000 protesters filling the square, stepping off on a slow march with an urgent plea: Save the planet.
The four-mile trek to the site of the climate talks was part street theater, part political theater....The marchers have a simple message for the delegates.
Stop talking and start acting.
[A Danish man] pushed his 10-month-old son, worried about his future and the future of those elsewhere in the world.
MAN: I definitely want them to, to make an agreement that's fair also in the third-world countries.
THOMPSON: That's what the marchers call climate justice. They want rich countries to help poor countries already dealing with the affects of disappearing natural resources by creating $100 billion fund. But at the negotiating table, rich countries are only talking about a quick-start $10 billion fund....
From the CBS Evening News, Jeff Glor set up MacVicar:
Around the world tonight, protesters are creating heat over climate change. In Copenhagen, where UN talks on global warming are under way, police estimate 40,000 activists marched, mostly peacefully, to demand an agreement that produces real change. Here is Sheila MacVicar.
MacVicar:
From India to Australia, from China to Copenhagen, tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets. Their point, to drive home demands for binding global agreement on climate change as negotiators, scientists and activists head into the final week of the climate conference.
Today, former presidents, top models and a retired arch bishop lent their voices in support of an agreement, any agreement....
Good Bye Gitmo, Hello Thomson, Illinois (Via Chicago Sun)
WASHINGTON -- The White House will announce Tuesday that President Obama will seek to acquire the Thomson Correctional Center in northwestern Illinois to house detainees now held at the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.
//religious intolerance can be found throughout the literature of the left. often disguised as concerns for the "separation of church and state"//
Right, John. No need to be concerned about separation of church and state. There was so much more tolerance in the Middle Ages, when religious leaders appointed political leaders, and vice versa. And what on earth were the founding fathers drinking when they approved the U.S. Constitution's take on religious freedom?
Amazing how LeftieTroll has to refer to the middle ages to prove his case, but, can't remember the lessons learned from Mao, Stalin, Carter or Allah.
How about responding to the message instead of attacking the messenger?
You have no message. You babble juvenile talking points that have relevant basis or bearing on anything being discussed. Come up with some original thought for a change instead of trolling all day and night.
11:15, that pretty well sums up everything on MW, doesn't it?
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