Ken Berwitz

It's quite a combination:  Hillary Clinton lies, and Hillary Clinton blames Bush for anything and everything.

Sort of like hitting for a daily double of BS.

From Paul Mirengoff of www.powerlineblog.com - and please pay special attention to the part I've put in bold print:

October 31, 2009

No class, bad memory

 October 31, 2009 Posted by Paul at 4:17 PM

 

Hillary Clinton continued her farcical visit to Pakistan today by blaming Obama's failure to make any progress with respect to Israeli-Palestinian relations on George W. Bush. Clinton told a group of Pakistani journalists

I think that, look, we all know that the Israeli-Palestinian issue is one that is a very serious and difficult problem that we are working hard also to try to resolve. We inherited a lot of problems. If you remember, when my husband left office, we were very close to an agreement because he worked on it all the time. The next administration did not make it a priority and did not really do much until toward the end. And unfortunately, we are trying to make up for some lost time, in my opinion.

Clinton's statement goes beyond the usual, ungracious Obama administration mantra that everything is Bush's fault. Here, Clinton has affirmatively misstated history. Thus, her comments are much closer to the administration's patently false claim that the Bush White House did no planning regarding Afghanistan.

It is true that Israel and the Palestinians appeared to be close to an agreement during the tail end of the Clintion administration. But the appearance of closeness does not even count in horseshoes. When Clinton left office, the parties were not only nowhere near an agreement, the Palestinians were conducting a robust terror campaign inside the state of Israel. This was the fruit of Clinton's years, which culminated with Arafat, Clinton's peace partner, unleashing the terror on the theory, or perhaps the pretext, that Clinton had not extracted more concessions from Israel than he had.

In short, Bush inherited a mess (as the Obama folks like to say) from his predecessor -- at least from the perspective of those who care about the security of Israel, as Hillary has claimed, at times, she does.

Bush, though, didn't publicly blame Bill Clinton for this parlous state of affairs. Instead, he supported the government of Israel in its eventually successful efforts to end the Palestinian terror campaign.

In addition, as Rick Richman points out, Bush endorsed the creation of a Palestinian state if the Palestinian Authority would renounce terrorism; developed the "road map" to piece; urged Israel to withdraw from Gaza (which it did); and helped arrange for the election of a successor to Arafat, one regarded by Clinton and Obama as a moderate and a viable peace partner.

All of this happened in Bush's first five years in office.

Frankly, I regard Bush's steps towards "peace" as a mixed bag, at best. But it is simply not true that Bush "did not really do much until toward the end." Nor is it true that "we were very close to an agreement" when Bill Clinton left office.

President Obama doesn't understand much when it comes to foreign policy. However, he appears to understand that Hillary Clinton is not ready for prime time diplomacy. Let's hope he acts on this insight.

It's bad enough that Hillary Clinton is a serial incompetent who never seems to get anything done successfully.  It's bad enough that she is (thanks Bill Safire) a congenital liar.  It's bad enough that instead of acknowledging that the Obama administration is getting nothing done in that part of the world, she blames President Bush as if he were still in office.

Now you're waiting for a "But......." with me writing something after it, aren't you? 

Nope, it's not coming.  Hillary Clinton is bad enough without mentioning any more.

Ken Berwitz

Just a quick thought:

-Suppose you were appointed the commanding General of a war by the administration.

-Suppose you told the President you needed 40,000 more troops, without them the troops already there were in greater danger, and without them the war could be lost.

-Suppose the President ignored your request for two months.

-Suppose, after those two months, the President sought out the recommendations of other generals, not in command of your troops, for the purpose of finding a course of action that you do not think is adequate.

Would you resign your command?

I wonder when General McChrystal will do so.  Any day he packs it in will not surprise me.

Ken Berwitz

From Fox News:

Republican state Assemblywoman Dierdre Scozzafava has suspended her campaign for upstate New York's 23rd Congressional seat, leaving Democratic nominee Bill Owens and Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman in the race that will conclude Tuesday.

 

The move comes on the heels of a new poll that showed Scozzafava had fallen behind her two competitors in a race too close.

 

The Siena College poll has Owens picking up 36 percent of the vote, while Hoffman has 35 percent. Scozzafava has 20 percent, with nine percent of voters undecided.

It's a turnaround from the first Siena poll on the race in September, which had Scozzafava leading, followed by Owens and Hoffman.

Is this a surprise?  To me it is - but only a mild one.  The surprise is how fast and how far Scozzafava fell in this race.

I would think the Republican geniuses who decided to run Ms. Scozzafava - whose party designation may say "Republican" but whose positions, one after the other, are liberal Democrat - must be wondering what hit them.

Let me help out.

What hit them was that, while some (certainly these) party apparatchiks may think that Republican voters want anyone who can win, regardless of his/her politics, the voters have made it eminently clear that they want someone who is more than a Republican in name only.  They want someone who actually is a Republican.

Ironically, it is not at all clear whether Scozzafava's exit is going to help conservative Republican Douglas Hoffman or hurt him.  It can be argued that Scozzafava's dramatic falloff in the past couple of weeks was comprised of disaffected Repbublicans who wished Hoffman had been the candidate in the first place - and that her remaining support might therefore include a lot of people with Democratic positions who felt she was a good alternative to Bill Owens, the Democratic candidate.  With her out of the race, those votes would probably go to Owens.

What a Tuesday this is going to be! 

Ken Berwitz

It's a pretty good bet that you don't know who Jason Shih is, so let me tell you that he is a 25 year old "assistant deputy campaign director" for New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine.

Here is what Mr. Shih is up to these days, courtesy of ABC news (and almost no one else):

EAST RUTHERFORD, NJ (WABC) --

 

Jason Shih, an Assistant Deputy Director to the campaign of NJ Gov. Jon Corzine was arrested last night on drug charges.

 

East Rutherford police say they pulled over the 25-year-old on Route 17 for driving while using a cell phone.

Police say they found 19 ecstasy pills and several hundred glassine envelopes.

 

He was charged with possession of a controlled narcotic and paraphernalia that is used for distribution.

He was released on $15,000 bail.

What does this have to do with Jon Corzine?  Frankly nothing.  He has no way of knowing the drug proclivities of a low-to-mid-level operative in his campaign (who knows if he has even met Jason Shih).

But -- if this story is not reported by the media which cover the New Jersey campaign, and the lack of coverage becomes an issue on the internet, and/or is discussed Monday night on the cable talk shows (like, for example the Fox shows, which all have seven figures worth of viewers)?   Then it can hurt Corzine in Tuesday's election.

(FYI:  As of now, on the first two pages of google, the one and only reference to Jason Shih's arrest is what you just saw from ABC.)

Is it fair to Jon Corzine?  No it is not.  But it is reality. 

We'll see how this story plays out.

Ken Berwitz

From today's New York Post.  You decide if it makes sense:

The Pelosi-Reid tranwreck

 

Last Updated: 4:47 AM, October 31, 2009

Posted: October 31, 2009

 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi unveiled a 2,000-page health-care bill Thursday -- complete with a "public option" -- cobbled together from competing versions passed by separate committees.

 

At this point, she and her Senate counterparts are crafting their bills in ways to secure votes for passage rather than to produce good policy. But their attempts may backfire on both fronts.

 

Fiscally conservative Dems in the Blue Dog coalition, for example, quickly demanded more proof that the bill -- which spends $1.055 trillion over 10 years -- will lower health-care costs in the long run.

 

And that comes after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's ObamaCare bill met major resistance from Independent Democrat Joe Lieberman, who said he'd back a GOP filibuster.

 

Government-run health insurance -- even with an opt-out provision, as Reid proposes -- "creates a whole new government entitlement program for which taxpayers will be on the line," said the Connecticut senator.

 

And that, he added, "is just asking for trouble -- for the taxpayers, for the premium payers and for the national debt."

 

How right he is.

 

Combined with growing skepticism from other Senate Democrats, that could leave Reid short of the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster.

 

Reid & Co. also lost the support of Maine Republican Olympia Snowe, who says she's "deeply disappointed" that the majority leader included a public option, notwithstanding its opt-out for states.

 

Why? For one thing, no one can say how that opt-out would work. For another, it fails to address a key problem with a government plan: With Washington writing the rules and providing funding, a public plan would enjoy an unfair edge over private ones.

 

Meanwhile, Democrats have already significantly weakened various cost-containment provisions proposed by Republicans in both the House and Senate bills.

 

And OMB Director Peter Orszag admitted this week: "It is . . . difficult to quantify precisely how these steps will work together to promote quality and reduce cost growth."

 

That's because Dems keep promising the moon, claiming they can provide universal coverage, better care and steeply declining prices -- all without blowing new holes in the federal budget.

 

And anytime a skeptic crunches their numbers, they just move the goal line, saying it's a "work in progress."

 

But as House Minority Leader John Boehner said Thursday, some things about the bill are already clear: "It will raise the cost of Americans' health-insurance premiums; it will kill jobs with tax hikes and new mandates, and it will cut seniors' Medicare benefits."

 

Seems the old adage still makes sense: If it sounds too good to be true, it is.

Ken Berwitz

This excerpt from an article in the Times of London  is a concise - and chilling - demonstration of what Sarah Palin and others may have meant by using terms like "death panels" to describe what will happen under ObamaCare.  Please pay very special attention to the last paragraph, which I have put in bold print:

From The Times

October 31, 2009

Patients who wait too long will get private care on the NHS

Patients who do not get the treatment that they need from the NHS within 18 weeks are to be given the legal right to free private care.

The Cabinet agreed this week that the legislation, placing maximum waiting times on the statute book for the first time, should be rushed through Parliament before the next election.

Cancer patients, in particular, will receive funding for private treatment if they have not seen an NHS specialist within two weeks of GP referral.

“This will send a strong ‘no turning back message’ to voters,” a senior government source said. “David Cameron will have to decide whether he wants to repeal this measure and take rights away from patients.”

The Tories have promised to phase out all NHS targets, including those for waiting times, saying that patients should make “informed choices” about their care without hospitals being forced into a straitjacket of government regulation. “Labour always focuses on the process while we think what really matters is whether you are better after your treatment,” a Conservative spokesman said.

Patients are currently offered a choice from a range of NHS, independent and private provision only at the outset of their treatment. They are obliged to stick with that decision even when their treatment is delayed beyond the existing target time limits.

The new rules will allow people to switch to a different hospital, including those in the private sector, if they have been made to wait longer than 18 weeks for treatment by a specialist after seeing their family doctor.

According to the latest figures from August, about 37,000 patients had not received treatment from an NHS specialist within 18 weeks of their GP referral. There are legitimate clinical explanations for some — and others are caused by patients cancelling their own operations to go on holiday — but officials believe that about half have been “failed by the system”.

Andy Burnham, the Health Secretary, told Cabinet colleagues this week that the new legislation would mean that underperforming hospitals would lose funding from patients going elsewhere and “act as a powerful challenge for them to raise their game”.

Jennifer Dixon, of the Nuffield Trust, said the plans could be seen as “Tory-proofing” the NHS. “It would not only give patients enforceable health care entitlements but it would also prevent managers and clinicians from controlling waiting times as a way of limiting demand and saving money,” she said. “In the past requirements to make financial savings often resulted in hospitals stopping routine surgery for a couple of months before the end of the financial year.”

"...prevent clinicians from controlling waiting times as a way of limiting demand and saving money"?  "In the past requirements to make financial savings often resulted in hospitals stopping routine surgery for a couple of months before the end of the financial year"?

Maybe, just maybe, that is what is meant by "death panels". 

And maybe, just maybe, given that health care providers here will be under the same kinds of financial restraints, that is what would happen under ObamaCare.

And maybe, just maybe, the oldest of our citizens - the ones with fewer years left - will be at the front of the line when it comes to saving the money by withholding procedures.

So maybe, just maybe, Sarah Palin and the others have it right.

You tell me.

Ken Berwitz

As I said in the previous blog, there is a treasure trove of commentary ridiculing the "job creation/saving" claims of the Obama administration - very much including usually deferential news venues.

Here's one more:  A report on Katie Couric's newscast by White House correspondent Chip Reid:

October 30, 2009

CBS: Admin's Trillion-Dollar Stimulus Claims "Hard to Believe"

 

 

The CBS "Evening News" aired a report Thursday night on the jobs claims already made by the White House.

The piece cites an Associated Press analysis that the Administration has overstated by thousands the number of jobs created or saved. One fiscal watchdog adds that at worst, these numbers are next to useless. House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) notes that there is no factual basis for the White Houses claims.

That's right, Chip.  "Hard to believe".  Which, in this case, is a highly sanitized version of "absolutely, positively full of s#!t".

I wonder if this blatant insult to the intelligence of voters (or even precocious 3rd graders) will have an affect on the competitive elections on Tuesday - such as the New Jersey gubernatorial race, or the congressional districts in New York and California that are up for grabs (Virginia seems a safe Republican pickup, which in and of itself is damaging to the Obama people). 

On paper, Democrats should handily be winning all three.  New Jersey is a blue state, the New York congressional race is in a Republican area but two candidates are splitting the Republican vote, and the California race is in the bay area, which is to Republicans roughly what the Zionist Organization of America is to hamas.

But every one of them is competitive.  And the effrontery of passing off these job numbers just might turn the tables.

We'll find out soon enough. 

Ken Berwitz

The Obama administration's claims of job creation (and saving - whatever that means) are so preposterous that, in the past several days, there has been a treasure trove of commentary ridiculing them.

Let's see what Investor's Business Daily has to say about it:

Phantom Jobs

Economic Recovery: The White House says it "created or saved" 650,000 to 1 million jobs through its stimulus. Maybe so, but only if you count the jobs that never existed in the first place.

The administration's claim is as laughable as any in recent memory. There is no actual count of jobs; it's all based on phony math. While it was at it, it could just as well have said 2 million or 3 or 4.

No question, this has been a hard recession in terms of jobs. Since it began in December 2007, we've lost 7.2 million of them — 4.1 million this year alone — despite a promise that passage of the $787 billion stimulus would yield 3.5 million new ones by the end of 2010.

Knowing the number was unreachable, the White House's ever-eager-to-please economists came up with a guess — one that can serve as a down payment on the 3.5 million jobs they need to show by 2011.

"We're solidly on track to create 3.5 million jobs by the time this (stimulus) program winds down," White House economist Jared Bernstein told CNN Friday. "There's a lot more ammunition in that Recovery Act. The stimulus package is absolutely working, both in GDP terms and in terms of saving or creating jobs."

True, GDP increased 3.5% in the third quarter, but that was a no-brainer. Last December the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates to a record 0% and flooded the banking system with nearly $1 trillion in liquidity. Such massive monetary stimulus always leads to a rebound six to 12 months later.

In addition to the Fed's stimulus, GDP got a boost from one-time spending by the Cash for Clunkers program and by the $8,000 first-time homebuyers credit.

As we have noted, Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Christina Romer told Congress on Oct. 22: "Most analysts predict that the fiscal stimulus will have its greatest impact on growth in the second and third quarters of 2009. By mid-2010, fiscal stimulus will likely be contributing little to growth."

In other words, stimulus is dead. This moment of honesty makes it tough for White House officials to pretend the best is yet to come. And if they can't show real results, they can't make a case for a second stimulus — as the White House and Congress want.

Suppose for a minute they're right. They've spent $150 billion of the $787 billion in "stimulus" to create 650,000 jobs. That comes out to $230,000 per job. That's not stimulus; it's waste.

The problem, again, is that none of these numbers is real. No one has gone out and counted actual jobs. It's all made up. In a scathing critique, the nonpartisan Americans for Tax Reform wrote:

"The data will show that the bulk of the jobs 'saved/created' are government jobs, mostly jobs in the unproductive sector of the economy furthering no economic growth, and preventing necessary streamlining of an already bloated bureaucracy."

Precisely. So don't be fooled. No jobs are being generated by the stimulus, but a lot are being lost — along with the wealth of an entire generation. What a waste.

What a bitter pill this must be to swallow - especially for a President who has been treated so deferentially throughout his election campaign and well over a half year of his administration.

Virtually no one is buying Mr. Obama's new math.  Not even his biggest pals.  And that is as it should be, because the administration's "facts" are so obviously ridiculous.

Then again, they are no more ridiculous than the administration's "facts" about health care - for example, that 30 - 50 million more health care patients, with the same number of doctors, will not result in lower quality care or rationing of care.  An average third grader would be shaking his/her head at that whopper. 

Simply stated, they are telling us that they think we are a bunch of idiots, devoid of even basic brain function.  But we aren't (well, most of us, anyway).  It took some time, but a lot of the country - including some of the mainstream media - is finally unmesmerizing and seeing things as they really are.

Better late than never.

Ken Berwitz

Here, from the Frasier Institute, via Doug Bandow at www.americanspectator.org, are the latest waiting times for medical procedures in Canada:

Canadian Waiting Lists Are Down!

By Doug Bandow on 10.30.09 @ 4:32PM

Now you only wait four months on average to see a doctor!  That's a week better than last year!  Reports the Fraser Institute:

The Fraser Institute's nineteenth annual waiting list survey found that Canada-wide waiting times for surgical and other therapeutic treatments decreased in 2009. Total waiting time between referral from a general practitioner and treatment, averaged across all 12 specialties and 10 provinces surveyed, fell from 17.3 weeks in 2008 to 16.1 weeks in 2009. This nation wide improvement in access reflects waiting-time decreases in 5 provinces, while concealing increases in waiting times in Alberta, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland & Labrador. The total waiting time in British Columbia was unchanged.

Among the provinces, Ontario achieved the shortest total wait in 2009, 12.5 weeks, with Manitoba (14.3 weeks), and Quebec (16.6 weeks), next shortest. Newfoundland & Labrador exhibited the longest total wait at 27.3 weeks; the next longest waits were found in Prince Edward Island (26.7 weeks) and New Brunswick (25.8 weeks).

The fall in waiting time between 2008 and 2009 results from a decrease both in the first wait-the wait between visiting a general practitioner and attending a consultation with a specialist-and in the second wait-from the time that a specialist decides that treatment is required to treatment.

What's four months among friends?  (More than six months in Newfoundland, but who's counting?!)  I am looking forward to Nancy Pelosi delivering my health care!

There you have it.  The vaunted Canadian health care system we are supposed to be so envious of.

Is there any doubt why Canadians stream into the United States to get health care?  Is there any doubt why they pay the money for treatment here, over "free" Canadian health care.

Take a good look.  Because what you are seeing in this report now, may well be our future.

Health Care For Clunkers.  Think about it.

Ken Berwitz

This must be a test, by God, to see just how gullible people are.

From Rod Hotakainen of the Sacramento Bee:

Schwarzenegger: Profanity in veto was 'wild coincidence'

By Rob Hotakainen
Published: Friday, Oct. 30, 2009 - 11:35 am
Last Modified: Friday, Oct. 30, 2009 - 11:42 am

 

WASHINGTON ---- It may be highly improbable mathematically, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Friday that the encoded profanity contained in one of his veto messages was "a wild coincidence."

 

Speaking to reporters at the White House, the Republican governor said: "That was a total coincidence. It was one of those wild coincidences."

 

The first letter in seven lines of the message, when read from top to bottom, combine to spell out "F• you."

 

Schwarzenegger sent the letter to Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, who earlier had told the governor to "kiss my gay a• ."

 

Stephen Devlin, the chair of the math department at the University of San Francisco, told the San Francisco Weekly that the odds of the letters appearing in proper order in seven consecutive lines to spell out the profanity was one in 10 million.

 

"Not surprisingly, it's virtually impossible for this to happen," Devlin told the newspaper.

Ammiano tells Schwarzenegger to kiss his gay ass, then Schwarzenegger sends him a seven line message with the first letter of each line, vertically, spelling "fuck you".  And he's telling us that it is a coincidence.

Yeah.  Right.

As they say on the streets of Brooklyn (my home town):   Ah-nuld.  Boobie.  Fuggedaboudit.  Yaw busted.

But, then again, what can you expect from a man who can't pronounce his own state without mentioning two animals. 

Maybe that's the way they do it in Collie-fawn-ya.

Ken Berwitz

This gets more and more bizarre.

Now it is, of all people, Katie Couric questioning the fantasy numbers being put out by the Obama administration:

From Noel Sheppard of www.newsbusters.org:

CBS Says White House Is Fudging Stimulus Jobs Numbers

By Noel Sheppard (Bio | Archive)
October 30, 2009 - 11:53 ET

 

When Katie Couric and the folks at CBS start doubting what the Administration says about how effective February's economic stimulus package was, you know President Obama is in trouble.

 

Consider that on Thursday's CBS "Evening News," Chip Reid began a segment with the following startling statement about a jobs report card to be released by the White House Friday:

 

Well, Katie, that report is going to claim that the stimulus has already created or saved hundreds of thousands of jobs, but if the administration`s first effort at counting stimulus jobs is any guide, tomorrow`s numbers could be hard to believe.

 

Readers are advised to make sure youngsters are out of the room, for watching Katie and the Gang say the White House might be fudging numbers could be way too frightening for minors.

 

KATIE COURIC, HOST: Now lets get back to that $787 billion stimulus Anthony mentioned. Earlier this year, the president claimed it would create or save three million jobs. There are some questions about how many it may have created so far. Chip Reid is at the White House tonight. And, Chip, I know the administration is putting out a jobs report card tomorrow. What can you can tell us about that?

 

CHIP REID, CBS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Katie, that report is going to claim that the stimulus has already created or saved hundreds of thousands of jobs, but if the administration`s first effort at counting stimulus jobs is any guide, tomorrow`s numbers could be hard to believe.

 

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

 

REID: At a small college in Georgia, $100,000 in stimulus funds paid for trucks for students to practice for commercial driver`s licenses. Another $100,000 went for a modular classroom. The school reported to the government that 280 jobs were created.

 

In reality, not even close. That`s the number of students who benefited. It has nothing to do with jobs.

In Cocoa, Florida, a childcare center reported 129 jobs created by a stimulus grant. In fact, no jobs were created. The money was really used to increase the compensation and benefits of 129 existing employees.

Overall, it turns out the administration`s initial stimulus jobs report contained hundreds of errors as first reported by the Associated Press. Critics say if the kinds of errors found in that earlier report are repeated in Friday`s much more extensive job creation survey, it won`t be worth the paper it`s printed on.

 

CRAIG JENNINGS: We have, I think, a rough estimate at best. And at worst, these numbers are next to useless.

REID: The White House says the errors have already been corrected, that tomorrow`s jobs report has been double- and triple-checked for weeks, and that it will give an accurate, detailed look at the early success of the stimulus.

 

Republicans in Congress, though, predict the report will be a world- class example of government obfuscation.

 

REP. JOHN BOEHNER (R), OHIO: There is no factual way of determining how many jobs were saved or created.

 

(END VIDEOTAPE)

 

REID: Those Republican critics also say they don`t understand how some stimulus projects will create any jobs. For example, half a million dollars to study social networks like FaceBook, and $219,000 to study the sex lives of female college freshmen. Katie.

 

COURIC: Chip Reid reporting from the White House tonight. Thanks, Chip.

 

Makes you wonder if White House communications director Anita Dunn is going to file a complaint with CBS.

After all, she didn't think it was right for Fox News's Chris Wallace to fact check the Adminstration.

 

Why should Katie and crew get to do it?

Is it possible to be more pathetic than this?  If so, how?

I think my favorite part is where they claim that $100,000 for trucks to practice driving and $100,000 for a modular classroom resulted in 280 new jobs.  I would absolutely love an explanation of how it did so?  Would the trucker candidates not have practiced without them?  Would all the kids in that modular classroom have been unemployed if they were in a different classroom?   What types of jobs were created?

No one is going to believe this utter BS.  Not even the Obama flaks stuck with pretending that it makes any sense.

They pee on your head and tell you it's raining.  Don't believe them.  It's pee.

Ken Berwitz

Barack Obama promised that if he were elected we would have transparent government.

Here, from Steve Gilbert at www.sweetness-light.com, is what he appears to have been talking about:

Dozens (Of Dems) Under Ethics Inquiry

October 30th, 2009

From an outraged (at the leak) Washington Post:

Dozens in Congress under ethics inquiry

AN ACCIDENTAL DISCLOSURE
Document was found on file-sharing network

By Ellen Nakashima and Paul Kane
Friday, October 30, 2009

House ethics investigators have been scrutinizing the activities of more than 30 lawmakers and several aides in inquiries about issues including defense lobbying and corporate influence peddling, according to a confidential House ethics committee report prepared in July.

The report appears to have been inadvertently placed on a publicly accessible computer network, and it was provided to The Washington Post by a source not connected to the congressional investigations. The committee said Thursday night that the document was released by a low-level staffer.

The ethics committee is one of the most secretive panels in Congress, and its members and staff members sign oaths not to disclose any activities related to its past or present investigations. Watchdog groups have accused the committee of not actively pursuing inquiries; the newly disclosed document indicates the panel is conducting far more investigations than it had revealed…

The 22-page "Committee on Standards Weekly Summary Report" gives brief summaries of ethics panel investigations of the conduct of 19 lawmakers and a few staff members. It also outlines the work of the new Office of Congressional Ethics, a quasi-independent body that initiates investigations and provides recommendations to the ethics committee. The document indicated that the office was reviewing the activities of 14 other lawmakers. Some were under review by both ethics bodies…

Many of the broad outlines of the cases cited in the July document are known — the committee announced over the summer that it was reviewing lawmakers with connections to the now-closed PMA Group, a lobbying firm. But the document indicates that the inquiry was broader than initially believed. It included a review of seven lawmakers on the House Appropriations defense subcommittee who have steered federal money to the firm’s clients and have also received large campaign contributions. [John Murtha and friends?]

The document also disclosed that:

– Ethics committee staff members have interviewed House Ways and Means Chairman Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) about one element of the complex investigation of his personal finances, as well as the lawmaker’s top aide and his son. Rangel said he spoke with ethics committee staff members regarding a conference that he and four other members of the Congressional Black Caucus attended last November in St. Martin…

– The Justice Department has told the ethics panel to suspend a probe of Rep. Alan B. Mollohan (D-W.Va.), whose personal finances federal investigators began reviewing in early 2006 after complaints from a conservative group that he was not fully revealing his real estate holdings…

– The committee on June 9 authorized issuance of subpoenas to the Justice Department, the National Security Agency and the FBI for "certain intercepted communications" regarding Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.). As was reported earlier this year, Harman was heard in a 2005 conversation agreeing to an Israeli operative’s request to try to obtain leniency for two pro-Israel lobbyists in exchange for the agent’s help in lobbying House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to name her chairman of the intelligence committee…

The committee did not detail the two newly disclosed investigations. However, according to the July document, Rep. Maxine Waters [D-CA], a high-ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, came under scrutiny because of activities involving OneUnited Bank of Massachusetts, in which her husband owns at least $250,000 in stock.

Waters arranged a September 2008 meeting at the Treasury Department where OneUnited executives asked for government money. In December, Treasury selected OneUnited as an early participant in the bank bailout program, injecting $12.1 million.

The other [California Democrat], Rep. Laura Richardson [D-CA], may have failed to mention property, income and liabilities on financial disclosure forms.

The committee’s review of investigations became available on file-sharing networks because of a junior staff member’s use of the software while working from home, Lofgren and Bonner said in a statement issued Thursday night. The staffer was fired, a congressional aide said.

The committee "is taking all appropriate steps to deal with this issue," they said, noting that neither the committee nor the House’s information systems were breached in any way…

Since everyone mentioned as being investigated is a Democrat, our watchdog media is sure to focus on the impropriety of this report being made public.

(Firing the congressional aide won’t be enough.)

After all, they believe it is vital that all secrets must be kept. Unless they can hurt our national security or a Republican or conservative.

In other words, the only reason we saw this is that a "low level staffer" accidentally made it public.  And that staffer has been fired.

If those were Republicans instead of Democrats, do you think this information would have been hidden?  Do you thik the staffer would have been fired?

That, folks, is the "transparency" of this administration.  How do you like it?

Ken Berwitz

You would have to be a brain stem to believe this.  But in the interests of showing all sides, I will post the latest job-creation (or saving, whatever that is supposed to mean) lies from the Obama administration, via Agence France Presse:

Stimulus plan created one million jobs: US officials

By Stephen Collinson (AFP) – 5 hours ago

 

WASHINGTON — US officials said Friday that President Barack Obama's stimulus plan has saved or created at least 650,000 jobs, and likely more than a million, as they battle a momentous unemployment crisis.

 

New data, to be released later in the day, provides the first solid evidence from employers on job creation spawned by the 787-billion-dollar Recovery Act passed in February despite stiff opposition from Obama's Republican foes.

 

The latest measure of the economy's struggle to emerge from the crisis comes a day after government statistics showed 3.5 percent GDP growth in the third quarter after a painful year of contraction.

Republicans, however, accused the administration of making up job creation numbers "out of thin air" to disguise the failure of Obama's economic policies.

 

The officials said the data to be posted on Recovery.gov, the website of the independent panel overseeing the stimulus measure, would show 650,000 jobs were directly saved or created up until September 30.

 

Since the survey data only accounts for half the spending during that time, officials say the true number of jobs created is over a million.

 

The figures "confirm government and private forecaster's estimates that overall Recovery Act spending has created and saved at least one million jobs," an administration official said on condition of anonymity.

 

The president has vowed that the economic recovery package would save or create 3.5 million jobs over two years, and officials argue Friday's figures will show them on pace to meet that goal.

 

The statistics were provided by tens of thousands of state and local governments, private firms and universities and detail how around 150 billion of 339 billion dollars have been spent.

 

They related to jobs created on projects like infrastructure projects, construction on highways and account for education jobs saved or created with the use of stimulus money.

 

Unemployment remains a key hurdle to sustained recovery, with the latest monthly figures in September pushing the jobless rate to a new 26-year high of 9.8 percent, with job losses accelerating to 263,000.

 

Government data showed Thursday that the US economy had emerged from the deepest recession in decades, but the White House continues to battle crushing unemployment of just under 10 percent.

 

The numbers apply to jobs directly created with Recovery Act funds, but officials say more jobs are also created indirectly, for instance in the retail sector, when these people spend their wages.

 

The official release ignited a new row between the White House and its political foes.

 

"What is quite certain is that since the stimulus passed in February, over 2.6 million American jobs have been lost," the Republican Party said in a statement.

 

"The Obama administration is either living in a fantasy world or using these reports to have a public argument with the facts.

 

For Republicans, "it is clear that President Obama's stimulus has failed our economy and the American people," it added.

 

Christina Romer, chair of Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, warned Thursday that the US unemployment rate is likely to remain "severely elevated" for some time even as the economy recovers from recession.

 

The recession's impact on employment has been massive, making it difficult to recoup lost jobs, she told a congressional panel.

Reality check:  The unemployment rate has gone from 8% when the so-called "stimulus package" was enacted to 9.8% today.  That is a loss of about 2,700,000 jobs - according to the government's own figures.

These people think you are idiots.  They think you are so ignorant, so ill informed, so owned and operated by Barack Obama, that you will believe anything they toss at you, including blatant lies like these.

And, for some people, this will be true.  Some people are exactly what the Obama people think they are.

Are you one of them?  For your sake, I sure hope not.

Ken Berwitz

Michael Gerson, writing for www.realclearpolitics.com, has given us an excellent analysis of why Barack Obama's guy in the Virginia Governor's race is losing so badly.  Here is its key segment (bold print is mine):

It is difficult to remember now, but Obama was elected largely for his tonal, not ideological, appeal. His announcement speech in Springfield, Ill., denounced "the smallness of our politics." At the time, Obama adviser David Axelrod explained, "If you can inspire people and if you can give them something real to believe in, you can advance your campaign without tearing everybody else down." During the primaries, Obama ended up benefiting from the contrast to Hillary and Bill Clinton's wrecking crew.

But the tonal candidate also had a conventionally liberal policy agenda. And as that agenda has run into resistance -- on spending, health care and climate legislation -- the president's tone has utterly changed.

The Obama administration has gone after both Rush Limbaugh and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce -- showing an inability to distinguish between the burning of heretics and the burning of bridges. It has courted insurance companies, then publicly demonized them for showing independence. Obama has tended to define all opposition, particularly on health care, as resulting from fear, cowardice and selfishness -- instead of admitting genuine disagreement. At a recent fundraiser, he mocked Republicans as robots who "do what they're told." He has engaged in consistent, classless, self-excusing criticism of his predecessor. Other presidents have been known for a war on totalitarianism or a war on terror. Obama is known for a war on Fox News.

"The campaign," say Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen in Politico, "underscores how deeply political the Obama White House is in its daily operations -- with a strong focus on redrawing the electoral map and discrediting the personalities and ideas that have powered the conservative movement over the past 20 years." Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander -- a conservative, but not normally an angry one -- describes these tactics as behavior "typical of street brawls and political campaign consultants." It is also behavior typical of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who called town hall protesters "evil-mongers," and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who labeled them as "simply un-American."

There are many reasons why Obama, according to Gallup, has suffered the largest decline in approval, at this portion in his term, of any elected president since 1953 -- and why more Americans believe in UFOs than approve of the job done by Congress. But one reason is surely the bitter, brittle tone of the new Democratic establishment -- highlighted by the promise they have raised and disappointed.

 

How did the tonal candidate become so tone-deaf? We have always known that there are two Obamas. One is the thoughtful, Niebuhr-quoting professor, who listens to every side and speaks inspiring words of unity. The other Obama comes from Chicago, and suffers from an excess of Chicagoans around him. Many Democrats seem to like the street-brawling side of Obama and his team. Many independents and Republicans seem less enthusiastic that Mr. Hyde has moved in his furniture and clearly plans to stay.

America in 2008 and Virginia in 2009 show that tone is an underestimated factor in American politics. Positive candidates in these races have looked like leaders and winners. Negativity has seemed trivial. Virginians seem to be deciding that Deeds is too small to be governor. Obama seems intent on proving that he is too small to be an effective president.

Excellent.  Right on the money.

And, in all likelihood, likely to fall on deaf ears in the White House.

Ken Berwitz

Just because President Obama is dithering and dawdling on Afghanistan, while pulling out troops fom Iraq on a timetable that is clearly being exploited by our enemies there, doesn't mean he isn't fighting wars.

There are a number of them.

There is a hot war going on against Fox News.  And Rush Limbaugh.  And Sean Hannity.  And congressional Republicans. And insurance companies. Etc. etc. etc.

Well, here is still another one.

Yesterday, Edmunds - the criterion company for measuring new and used car sales - issued a fact-filled analysis that showed the "cash for clunkers" program was a big, fat, costly bust.

The Obama administration answered by immediately attacking Edmunds. 

Ok, the battle lines are drawn.  But now, enter www.businessinsider.com.  Here is there take on this latest Obama-against-everyone-else melee:

Edmunds.com Fights Back After White House Attack

Joe Weisenthal|Oct. 30, 2009, 6:54 AM | 1,829 | 19

Last night we were shocked to see that The White House was using its blog to tear into car website Edmunds.com over some analysis it did of Cash-For-Clunkers. To recap: Edmunds.com says the program was a gigantic waste with little effect. The White House disagrees.

Anyway, Edmunds is sticking by its analysis, and it put out the following press release:

 SANTA MONICA, Calif. — October 29, 2009 — Today the Department of Transportation and White House chose to respond to an analysis Edmunds.com released Wednesday that looked at auto sales this year and what sales volumes would have been had the popular Cash for Clunkers program never existed.

At issue is one point of the analysis showing the taxpayer cost for every incremental vehicle sold was $24,000. To be clear, Edmunds.com is not disputing the government's statements regarding total voucher applications, vehicles sold or voucher values. The key question is how many of these sales would have occurred anyway.

Apparently, the $24,000 figure caught many by surprise. It shouldn't have. The truth is that consumer incentive programs are always hugely expensive when calculated by incremental sales — always in the tens of thousands of dollars. Cash for Clunkers was no exception.

The White House claims that our analysis was based on car sales on Mars and that on Earth, the marketplace is connected. We agree the marketplace is connected. In fact, that is exactly the basis of our analysis.

It is also claimed we missed the possibility that Cash for Clunkers generated excitement and consumers bought vehicles even if they didn't qualify for the program -- a claim that has been widely supported by anecdote but by little analysis. It does, after all, seem a bit odd that masses of consumers would elect to buy a vehicle because of a program for which they don't qualify -- doubly so when you add in the fact that prices shot up during Cash for Clunkers, creating a disincentive to buy.

Finally, the White House claims that the increase in fourth-quarter production reported by the car manufacturers can be attributed to Cash for Clunkers. But here is a better reason: the economy is recovering accompanied by improved car sales. No manufacturer increases production -- a decision with long-term consequences -- based on the 30-day sales blip triggered by an event like Cash for Clunkers.

With all respect to the White House, Edmunds.com thinks that instead of shooting the messenger, government officials should take heart from the core message of the analysis: the fundamentals of the auto marketplace are improving faster than the current sales numbers suggest.

Isn't this a piece of good news we can all cheer?

We're on Edmunds side here. We haven't seen any evidence that the program was a massively expensive way of pulling demand forward, with little long-term to show for it.

An employee of a car dealership left this comment on the last post:

As an employee of a car dealership I will tell you first hand that the whole program was VERY temporary. Yes we broke every record we had ever set before. Sales are now lower than before due the the Cash for Clunker program. It was a great program and it did draw a bunch of people into the market that probably wouldn't have bought until this winter. The problem is: now we won't have the sales we would have had this winter. Everyone in the car business will tell you that November-February are the worst months for sales. Probably 30% of the sales that we made during the program wouldn't have happened until those bad months.

We're eager to see if The White House responds again.

What we are witnessing, is the Chicago way of conducting politics.  Fight every vestige of dissent, hold nothing back, take no prisoners -- and never, ever admit you are wrong about a thing.

If you don't like this, don't complain.  We voted for it.  We elected Barack Obama, along with a huge majority for his party in both houses of congress.  We have brought this on ourselves.

That sais, don't you find it fascinating that almost none of our wonderful "neutral" media have commented on this staple tactic of the Obama administration?  Aren't these the same folks that pilloried President Bush for never admitting that he did anything wrong?

But listen to them squeal like stuck pigs if you call them biased.

Ken Berwitz

This one doesn't need any comment from me.  It comes to us from Noel Sheppard of www.newsbusters.org:

Rush 'Divisive', Snoop Dogg OK for ESPN Sunday NFL Countdown

 

By Noel Sheppard (Bio | Archive)

 

October 30, 2009 - 00:18 ET While NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell was calling conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh too "divisive" to own a professional football team, rapper Snoop Dogg was appearing in television ads for ESPN's "Sunday NFL Countdown."

 

I guess Goodell and other higher-ups within the league weren't concerned with having a man possessing multiple felony charges against him including murder do commercials for the highly-watched Sunday pre-game show on the nation's leading sports cable network.

 

Maybe Goodell should have looked at Snoop's rap sheet before he derided Limbaugh right out of an ownership position with the St. Louis Rams (ESPN commercial embedded below the fold along with Wikipedia highlights of the rapper's legal issues, h/t NB reader Shekhar Jain): 

 

While recording Doggystyle in August 1993, Snoop Dogg was arrested in connection with the death of Phillip Woldemariam, a member of a rival gang who was shot and killed by Snoop's bodyguard, McKinley Lee; Snoop was charged with murder along with Lee as he was driving the vehicle from which the shooting had commenced. Snoop was defended by Johnnie Cochran, with his bodyguard McKinley Lee.^[46] Both Snoop and Lee were acquitted; Lee was acquitted on grounds of self-defense, but Snoop Dogg remained entangled in the legal battles around the case for three years.^[47] In July 1993, Snoop was stopped for a traffic violation and a firearm was found by police while conducting a search of his car. In February 1997, he pled guilty to one count of being an ex-felon in possession of a handgun and was ordered to record three public service announcements, pay a $1,000 fine, and serve three years' probation.^[48] Twice, in May 1998 and October 2001, Snoop Dogg was fined and arrested for misdemeanor marijuana possession.^{[49] [...]}

 

Snoop Dogg, Tha Dogg Pound, and The Game were sued for assaulting a fan on stage at a May 2005 concert at the White River Amphitheatre in Auburn, Washington. The accuser, Richard Monroe, Jr., claimed he was beaten by the artists' entourage while mounting the stage.^[51] He alleged that he reacted to an "open invite" to come on stage. Before he could, Snoop's bodyguards grabbed him and he was beaten unconscious by crewmembers, including the rapper and producer Soopafly; Snoop and The Game were included in the suit for not intervening. The lawsuit focuses on a pecuniary claim of $22 million in punitive and compensatory damages, battery, negligence, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.^[52] The concerned parties appeared in court in April 2009.

 

On April 26, 2006, Snoop Dogg and members of his entourage were arrested after being turned away from British Airways' first class lounge at Heathrow Airport. Snoop and his party were not allowed to enter the lounge because some of the entourage were flying first class, other members in economy class. After the group was escorted outside, they vandalized a duty-free shop by throwing whiskey bottles. Seven police officers were injured in the midst of the disturbance. After a night in prison, Snoop and the other men were released on bail on April 27, but he was unable to perform at the Premier Foods People's Concert in Johannesburg on the same day. As part of his bail conditions, he had to return to the police station in May. The group has been banned by British Airways for "the foreseeable future."^[53][54] When Snoop Dogg appeared at a London police station on May 11, he was cautioned for affray under Section 4 of the Public Order Act for use of threatening words or behavior.^[55] On May 15, the Home Office decided that Snoop Dogg should be denied entry to the United Kingdom for the foreseeable future due to the incident at Heathrow as well as his previous convictions in the United States for drugs and firearms offenses.^{[56][57]  [...]}

 

Snoop Dogg was arrested again on October 26, 2006 at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, California while parked in a passenger loading zone. Approached by airport security for a traffic infraction, he was found in possession of marijuana and a firearm, according to a police statement. He was transported to Burbank Police Department Jail, booked, and released on $35,000 bond. He faced firearm and drug possession charges on December 12 at Burbank Superior Court.^[62] He was again arrested on November 29, 2006, after performing on The Tonight Show, for possession of marijuana and a firearm.^[63] [...]

 

On April 26, 2007, the Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship banned him from entering the country on character grounds, citing his prior criminal convictions. He had been scheduled to appear at the MTV Australia Video Music Awards on April 29, 2007.^[66] Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship lifted the ban in September 2008 and had granted him visa to tour Australia. DIAC said "In making this decision, the department weighed his criminal convictions against his previous behaviour while in Australia, recent conduct - including charity work - and any likely risk to the Australian community ... We took into account all relevant factors and, on balance, the department decided to grant the visa."^[67]

 

Snoop Dogg's many legal issues forced San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom to withdraw his plan to issue a proclamation to the rapper.^[68]

 

Despite all this, Snoop does commercials for ESPN's "Sunday NFL Countdown."

 

But Rush Limbaugh is too "divisive" to be a minority owner of a team.

 

Any questions? 

.

Ken Berwitz

Congratulations to the Obama administration for leading the charge and overturning Honduras' demonstration of how a democracy is supposed to work.

From the Times of London:

From Times Online

October 30, 2009

Manuel Zelaya to return as Honduras President

 

The interim government of Honduras has yielded to international pressure and agreed to allow the return to power of Manuel Zelaya, the ousted President who was toppled in a military coup four months ago.

 

The breakthrough came after renewed pressure from senior US officials who travelled to Honduras this week for a last-ditch effort to end the crisis.

 

"It is a triumph for Honduran democracy," said Mr Zelaya after the rival sides agreed to a deal under which he may be reinstated as President within days.

 

Roberto Micheletti, the president of the interim government that took power after the coup on June 28, announced that he had agreed to reinstate his political rival.

 

"I am pleased to announce that a few minutes ago my negotiating team signed an agreement that marks the beginning of the end" of the four-month stand-off, Mr Micheletti said in a statement from the presidential palace.

 

Mr Zelaya was sent into exile at gunpoint on June 28 but returned secretly to Honduras last month where he has taken refuge in the Brazilian embassy.

 

Mr Micheletti said that Mr Zelaya could return to office after a vote in Congress that would be authorised by the country's Supreme Court. He said that the deal would require both sides to recognise the result of a presidential election due to take place on November 29 and would transfer control of the army to the top electoral court.

 

The United States, the European Union and Latin American leaders had all demanded that Mr Zelaya be allowed to finish his presidential term, which ends in January. They had said that they might not recognise the winner of the November election unless democracy was first restored.

 

A US team led by Assistant Secretary of State Tom Shannon and Dan Restrepo, Washington's special assistant for Western Hemisphere affairs, sat in on talks earlier in the day and warned that time was running out to reach a deal.

Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, praised the agreement.

 

"We were very clearly on the side of the restoration of the constitutional order, and that includes the elections," Mrs Clinton told reporters during a visit to Pakistan.

 

Mr Zelaya had angered many in Honduras by becoming an ally of the socialist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Critics also alleged that he was seeking backing to extend presidential term limits, a claim he denies.

 

Human rights groups have documented major abuses by the de facto government and say that free and fair elections would be impossible after Mr Micheletti curbed civil liberties and temporarily shut down pro-Zelaya news organisations.

 

US President Barack Obama cut some aid to Honduras after the coup but had been criticised by some Latin American countries for not doing more to force the de facto government to back down.

 

The collapse of talks last week prompted Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to dispatch the US delegation to push again for a negotiated settlement.

manuel zelaya was removed from office because he ignored the Honduran constitution and illegally tried to run a referendum that would enable him to stay President.  Honduras' supreme court voted unanimously to remove him as President and was supported by the country's congress.  He was replaced by the next in line, Roberto Micheletti - a member of zelaya's own party.

That is not a "coup" as media insist on calling it.  That is democracy in action.

The obama administration immediately sided with zelaya - who, by the way, is an implacable enemy of the United States, and something of a protege of hugo chavez - another USA hater.  Obama & Co. led the charge to overturn the removal of zelaya, thus subvert Honduras' democratic process.

And what is the payoff of this great "victory" for a rogue would-be dictator?  The elections will be held on November 29, so in less than a month he will be a lame duck. And for the 3-4 weeks he is reinstated, he will be powerless because a) the congress, which agreed to oust him in the first place, will turn their backs on him and b) the reinstatement agreement disallows him from controlling the army.

Brilliant.  Just brilliant.

This is what the USA gets for electing a Chicago machine politician with no qualifications for the presidency, and a hard-left background. 

We deserve this.  We voted him into office, didn't we?  And we gave him a lopsided majority in both houses of congress to back up just about anything he wants to do.

The 2010 elections cannot come soon enough.

Ken Berwitz

I have blogged some number of times about Hillary Clinton's remarkable career of incompetence.  It is one of the most amazing stories in recent political history.

But this latest episode, in Pakistan, is special even by Ms. Clinton's (virtually non-existent) standards.

From John Hinderaker at www.powerlineblog.com:

Undiplomatic Diplomacy

 

October 29, 2009 Posted by John at 2:06 PM

 

Isn't a diplomat supposed to be--you know--diplomatic? Secretary of State Hillary Clinton doesn't seem to think so. On her current visit to Pakistan, she managed to insult both her own government and Pakistan's in the space of a few minutes.

 

The Associated Press has reported on interviews and a Q and A session that Clinton gave in Islamabad. I came across it via The Corner, where John Hannah was appalled by this partisan attack by Clinton on her own government:

 

As a way of repudiating past U.S. policies toward Pakistan, Clinton told the students "there is a huge difference" between the Obama administration's approach and that of former President George W. Bush. "I spent my entire eight years in the Senate opposing him," she said to a burst of applause from the audience of several hundred students. "So to me, it's like daylight and dark."

 

One can only agree with Hannah's comment:

 

Does anyone advising President Obama and the secretary of state really believe that this kind of partisanship and trash-talking abroad about another American president is going to buy us much long-term goodwill among either our friends or our adversaries? Do they imagine that this sort of thing really helps to advance U.S. national interests?

 

Interestingly, that paragraph has now been deleted from the version of the AP account to which Hannah linked, although it can still be found elsewhere. But the linked version adds this report of Clinton slandering the government of Pakistan, which is equally appalling, but for different reasons:

 

While U.S. officials have said they believe Osama bin Laden and senior lieutenants have been hiding in the rugged terrain along the border with Afghanistan, Clinton's unusually blunt comments went further as she suggested that Pakistan's government has done too little to act against al-Qaida's top echelon.

 

"I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn't get them if they really wanted to," Clinton said in an interview with Pakistani journalists in Lahore. "Maybe that's the case. Maybe they're not gettable. I don't know."

 

Is it really the position of the U.S. government that Pakistan's leaders could kill or capture bin Laden et al. if they wanted to, but they have chosen not to do so? That is an explosive charge, and one that to my knowledge is false. Moreover, Clinton doesn't seem to make the charge seriously, as she immediately sort-of-retracted it by saying "Maybe they're not gettable. I don't know." So was she just idly musing when she accused Pakistan's government of deliberately harboring al Qaeda's top leadership?

 

Does either of the above instances represent how a competent, professional diplomat would behave? I don't think so.

Simply stated, Hillary Clinton is a disgrace on legs.

What a complete incompetent loser.

Ken Berwitz

How big of a clunker was the "cash for clunkers" debacle? 

From www.money.cnn.com (the bold print is mine):

Auto sales analysts at Edmunds.com say the pricey program resulted in relatively few additional car sales.

By Peter Valdes-Dapena, CNNMoney.com senior writer

Last Updated: October 29, 2009: 12:59 PM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- A total of 690,000 new vehicles were sold under the Cash for Clunkers program last summer, but only 125,000 of those were vehicles that would not have been sold anyway, according to an analysis released Wednesday by the automotive Web site Edmunds.com.

Still, auto sales contributed heavily to the economy's expansion in the third quarter, adding 1.7 percentage points to the nation's gross domestic product growth.

Is the economy really getting better?

 

The Cash for Clunkers program gave car buyers rebates of up to $4,500 if they traded in less fuel-efficient vehicles for new vehicles that met certain fuel economy requirements. A total of $3 billion was allotted for those rebates.

The average rebate was $4,000. But the overwhelming majority of sales would have taken place anyway at some time in the last half of 2009, according to Edmunds.com. That means the government ended up spending about $24,000 each for those 125,000 additional vehicle sales.

"It is unfortunate that Edmunds.com has had nothing but negative things to say about a wildly successful program that sold nearly 250,000 cars in its first four days alone," said Bill Adams, spokesman for the Department of Transportation. "There can be no doubt that CARS drummed up more business for car dealers at a time when they needed help the most."

In order to determine whether these sales would have happened anyway, Edmunds.com analysts looked at sales of luxury cars and other vehicles not included under the Clunkers program.

Using traditional relationships between sales volumes of those vehicles and the types of vehicles sold under Cash for Clunkers, Edmunds.com projected what sales would normally have been during the Cash for Clunkers period and in the weeks after.

Edmunds.com's estimate of the ultimate sales increase generally matches what industry experts had thought, said George Pipas, a sales analyst with Ford Motor Co (F, Fortune 500). But that misses the point, he said.

"The whole purpose of the program was to provide some kind of catalyst to kick-start the economy," he said, "and by all accounts the extra production that was added this year was a boost to the economy."

It cost the taxpayers (that's us) $24,000 for each sale?  They might as well have just given away $20,000 cars for free, and saved $4,000 a unit.

This, folks, is the same government that wants to take over the health care system.

Think about that when you go to bed tonight.  Have a restful sleep..............

Ken Berwitz

Do you think it's playful, rather than malicious, for a TV show to have someone urinating on a picture of Jesus Christ?  Do you think it's playful, rather than malicious, to show two devout Christian women, convinced that the urine is, in reality, tears from the picture, kneel down and pray to the urine-soaked Christ?

If so, you'll probably agree with HBO's position, which I have excerpted from a Fox News article:

Comedian Larry David is under attack from critics who say he pushed the mocking of religion and Christian belief in miracles over the edge in the latest episode of his HBO series "Curb Your Enthusiasm," which the cable network defended as "playful." 

On the show's most recent installment, which aired Sunday, David urinates on a painting of Jesus Christ, causing a woman to believe the painting depicts Jesus crying.

Deal Hudson, author and publisher of InsideCatholic.com, said he doesn't find any humor in the episode.

"I don't think it's funny," Hudson told Foxnews.com. "Why is it that people are allowed to publicly show that level of disrespect for Christian symbols? If the same thing was done to a symbol of any other religions -- Jewish or Muslim -- there'd be a huge outcry. It's simply not a level playing field."

Hudson said an apology from the show's producers and writing team should be issued.

"Somebody should [apologize]," Hudson said. "When is it going to stop? When is common sense going to dictate that people realize this willingness of artists to do to Christianity what they would never do to Judaism or Islam?"

In a statement to Foxnews.com, HBO downplayed the controversy.

"Anyone who follows Curb Your Enthusiasm knows that the show is full of parody and satire," the statement read. "Larry David makes fun of everyone, most especially himself.  The humor is always playful and certainly never malicious."

Tell you what:  The day that there is a "Curb Your Enthusiasm" episode with Larry David pissing on a copy of the Koran and having two devout Muslims believing it is a sign from Allah, let me know.

Until then, pardon me if I assume that this is the latest in an ongoing series of sickening, vile attacks on Christianity by elitists who think it is a laugh riot to insult people they arrogantly dismiss as their inferiors. 

You will never see anything like this directed at Muslims, because the Larry Davids and HBO executives of the world are scared out of their minds by what might happen to them if they did it.  But since they have no fear at all of Christians, it's open season all year long.

That isn't acting playful.  That is acting like a bunch of malicious, hate-filled, elitist cowards. 

Ken Berwitz

Can Douglas Hoffman beat the Democrat, the Republican and the Republican establishment too?

From today's dailykos (which ain't exactly rooting for him):

NY-23: Hoffman surges at Scozzafava's expense

by kos

Thu Oct 29, 2009 at 10:38:21 AM PDT

Research 2000 for Daily Kos. 10/26-28. Likely voters. MoE 4% (10/19-21 results)

Scozzafava (R) 21 (30)
Owens (D) 33 (35)
Hoffman (C) 32 (23)

Scozzafava is down nine, and Hoffman is up nine. While Scozzafava got 46 percent of Republicans a week ago, she's down to 34 percent this week. Hoffman is up to 41 percent of Republicans this week, compared to 27 percent last week.

What's more, we asked Hoffman supporters who'd they support if Hoffman wasn't in the race, and 6 percent said Scozzafava, 5 percent said Owens, 28 percent wouldn't vote, and 61 percent would be undecided. I'm not sure what to make of that.

If Scozzafava's fade continues, Hoffman will win this thing. Democratic chances hinge on halting the Hoffman surge, which is why the DCCC has trained its guns on the conservative party candidate.

Can Hoffman win?  You see what I see.

Stay tuned.....

Ken Berwitz

Sometimes the Associated Press surprises us.  In the last few months it has, at least to some degree, broken from most of our wonderful "neutral" media and started talking truth to BS about what is happening under Barack Obama's administration.

And today is no exception.

Here, excerpted from today's article, is the truth about job creation under the so-called "stimulus package":

WASHINGTON (AP) - A Colorado company said it created 4,231 jobs with the help of President Barack Obama's economic recovery plan. The real number: fewer than 1,000.

 

A child care center in Florida said it saved 129 jobs with the help of stimulus money. Instead, it gave pay raises to its existing employees.

 

Elsewhere in the U.S., some jobs credited to the stimulus program were counted two, three, four or even more times.

 

The government has overstated by thousands the number of jobs it has created or saved with federal contracts under the president's $787 billion recovery program, according to an Associated Press review of data released in the program's first progress report.

 

The discrepancy raises questions about the reliability of a key benchmark the administration uses to gauge the success of the stimulus. The errors could be magnified Friday when a much larger round of reports is released. It is expected to show hundreds of thousands of jobs repairing public housing, building schools, repaving highways and keeping teachers on local payrolls.

 

The White House seized on an initial report from a government oversight board weeks ago that claimed federal contracts awarded to businesses under the recovery plan already had helped pay for more than 30,000 jobs. The administration said the number was evidence that the stimulus program had exceeded early expectations toward reaching the president's promise of creating or saving 3.5 million jobs by the end of next year.

 

But the 30,000 figure is overstated by thousands—at the very least by nearly 5,000, or one in six, based on AP's limited review of some of the contracts—because some federal agencies and recipients of the money provided incorrect job counts. The review found some counts were more than 10 times as high as the actual number of jobs; some jobs were credited to stimulus spending when, in fact, none were produced.

 

In one major miscount found by the AP review, Colorado-based Teletech Government Solutions had worked with the Federal Communications Commission to come up with a job count for its $28.3 million contract for call centers fielding consumer questions about conversion of televisions to receive digital signals. The company reported creating 4,231 jobs—the highest number listed in the first stimulus accounting—even though 3,000 of those workers received a paycheck for five weeks or less.

 

The Toledo, Ohio-based Koring Group also received two FCC contracts to help people make the switch to digital television. The company reported hiring 26 people for each of the two contracts, bringing its total jobs to 54 on the government's official count.

 

But the company cited the same 26 workers for both contracts, meaning the same jobs were counted twice. The job count was further inflated because each job lasted only about two months, so each worker should have counted as one-sixth of a full-time job.

 

The FCC spotted the problem and called company owner Steve Holland, who now says the actual job count is closer to five, not 54.

 

"We're just trying to be accurate. All of this has happened so fast," Holland said. "It is a little confusing. We're new to government contracting."

 

The AP's review identified nearly 600 contracts claiming stimulus money for more than 2,700 jobs that appear to have similar duplicated counts.

 

DeSeve said he's pleased that the FCC and other agencies are working with businesses to fix the errors.

 

Barbara Moore, executive director of the Child Care Association of Brevard County in Cocoa, Fla., reported that the $98,669 she received in stimulus money saved 129 jobs at her center, though the cash was used to give her 129 employees a 3.9 percent cost-of-living raise. She said she needed to boost their salaries because some workers had left for better paying jobs.

 

"They were leaving because we had not been able to give them a raise in four years," Moore said.

 

How pathetic is this?  Or, put another way, how could it be more pathetic? 

Incidentally, what if the numbers were correct?  What in the world would that mean anyway?

Barack Obama told us that if we passed the so-called "stimulus" package, unemployment would cap at 8% and 3,500,000 - 4,000,000 new jobs would be created by the end of next year - which, days later, changed to created or saved - an Obama-friendly little revision that our media almost never mention.

But it has been 8 months since the "stimulus package" took effect.  That's a touch more than one-third of the time from when it was enacted to the end of next year.  And  two things have happened:  1) Unemployment blew past that 8% cap and is currently at 9.8% (that's 22.5% higher than 8%).  2) Even if we pretend the amount of job creation was not as dishonestly inflated as it was, it still totals just 30,000. 

That's it?  30,000 jobs?????   

As my wife used to say, whoopee doo and yippee excrement (yeah, she used a different word for excrement). 

Projecting this stellar performance through the end of 2010, that would be less than 90,000 jobs in total.  Can we agree that 90,000 is a far cry from 3,500,000 - 4,000,000?  Good.

Oh, wait.  But what about the 2,700,000 jobs that have been lost since enacting the "stimulus package"?  Hmmmmm

Lessee, how does the math go?  We were promised a gain of  3,500,000 to 4,000,000 jobs by the end of next year.  But we've lost 2,700,000.  So to make good on the promised gain, we actually need 6,200,000 - 6,700,000.   And we're going at a rate that will get us 90,000.

That leaves us a shortfall of about 98.5% of the jobs promised.

Thank you to the Associated Press for showing us this information.

And thank you to most of the rest of our media for conveniently looking the other way on behalf of the Obama adminstration.

You're quite the professionals.

Ken Berwitz

The President Obama Afghanistan D&D (Dither & Dawdle) index is at two months and counting.

Here, from the Chicago Sun-Times, is Mr. Obama's schedule for today:

9:30AM Pool Call Time

11:50AM THE PRESIDENT delivers remarks on the Administration's plan to help small businesses

EEOB South Court

Pooled Press (Pre-Set 11:00AM - Final Gather 11:25AM - Stakeout Location)

1:45PM THE PRESIDENT meets with Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore

Oval Office

Pool spray at the top (Gather Time 1:40PM - Briefing Room)

2:40PM THE PRESIDENT meets with Senator Patrick Leahy

Oval Office

Closed Press

3:15PM THE PRESIDENT signs the Girl Scouts USA Centennial Commemorative Coin Act

Oval Office

Closed Press

3:45PM THE PRESIDENT meets with senior advisors

Oval Office

Closed Press

5:05PM THE PRESIDENT meets with representatives of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Congressional Black Caucus, Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus

Will any of this result in Mr. Obama making a decision on whether to send the additional troops that his commanding General, Stanley McChrystal, says are imperative for the war in Afghanistan? 

Every day that Barack Obama dithers and dawdles away without acting endangers our men and women in uniform - and brings us closer to losing this war.

His press secretary, Robert "Baghdad Bob" Gibbs, tells us the President needs more time to make his decision.

Will signing a girl scout commemorative coin act or meeting with a group of different political and racially/ethnically segregated congressional caucuses move that decision along?  Are they more important than acting as commander in chief to protect our troops?

We deserve this.  We elected a Chicago machine politician without any qualifications for the Presidency, and handed him a lopsided majority in both houses to back his actions up.

But does our volunteer army deserve this --  especially those who are at risk in Afghanistan? 

Mr. President, when are you going to DO SOMETHING?

Ken Berwitz

I would hope you already know that the way a question is asked has an affect on how it is answered.

And if you know that, you should also know that pollsters can alter their results by how they word their questions.

With that in mind, please read the following piece by Jay Cost, of www.realclearpolitics.com.  Then we'll talk....

RealClearPolitics HorseRaceBlog

By Jay Cost

« Why Is the White House Courting Olympia Snowe? | HorseRaceBlog Home Page

October 28, 2009

The Public Option in the NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll

Last week I argued that question wording might be influencing polling outcomes on the public option - generally skewing the results closer to the Democratic side of the ledger because of contested buzzwords like "choice," "competition," and "option."

I noted at the time that the best way to test this theory was via an apples-to-apples scenario in which we can hold the pollster, the methodology, and the time of the poll constant. That's why I thought the Rasmussen results were significant: Rasmussen changed the wording of questions on the public option and found markedly different results.

The new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, conducted by Hart/McInturff, gives us another such opportunity. They split their sample into two groups (A and B), and ask each subsample a different version of a public option question.

Here's the first version, asked of subsample A.

And thinking about one aspect of the debate on health care legislation…

33.  In any health care proposal, how important do you feel it is to give people a choice of both a public plan administered by the federal government and a private plan for their health insurance – extremely important, quite important, not that important, or not at all important?

                                      10/9    9/9     6/9

Extremely important           45%    48%    41%

Quite important                 27      25      35

Not that important              8       8       12

Not at all important            15      15      8

Not sure                            5       4       4

This is your typically tilted question. The idea of a "choice" is referenced - again, Republicans would hotly dispute this. In this specific wording, respondents are asked how they feel about "(giving) people a choice," forcing opponents of the public option to play the part of Ebenezer Scrooge. Unsurprisingly, this wording produces some good results for public option advocates. Another potential factor driving these results: opponents of the public option might not have a category to register their opposition here. Can they say "not at all important?" Perhaps, but does that accurately reflect their views? A lot of opponents of the public option think it is quite an important issue.

Here's the second version of the public option question, asked of subsample B.

34. Would you favor or oppose creating a public health care plan administered by the federal government that would compete directly with private health care insurance companies?

                                      10/9    9/9     6/9     7/9

Favor                               48%    46%    43%    46%

Oppose                             42       48      47       44

Not sure                           10         6      10       10

This one is less tilted to the Democratic side, although Republicans would still dispute the idea that a health care marketplace with a public option will actually generate competition. Still, the removal of the highly loaded phrase "(giving) people a choice" makes this less tilted overall - also, this time people have an opportunity to register support or opposition. And notice the big change. A majority of respondents are either uncertain or in opposition.

So, this is another apples-to-apples comparison. As with Rasmussen, NBC/WSJ finds that changes in question wording on the public option can produce big changes in the poll results.

Ok, Cost has a perfectly valid point.  Change the question and change the results.

But there is a little more to it.

Let's start with the fact that these are not different versions of the same question.  These are different questions. 

-The first asks how important it is to have a choice between public and private options, without specifying how either would work.  It is 100% blue-sky. 

-The second specifically asks whether respondents would favor or oppose a government health care plan, and gives a specific element of the plan (i.e. it would compete directly with private health care) - one that may or may not be true.    

Next, let's deal with that true or not true issue.  Since the first question asks for an opinion on a very general question, the truth part of things only applies to how the results are presented (which I'm not going into here).

But the second question is instructing respondents about what the health care plan is.  And this health care plan cannot be explained in a single sentence. 

That, of course, is before we get to whether it is fair to say that it competes directly with private companies.  It is not.  ObamaCare would be created by the people who make the rules for both public AND private health care.  And, because it is sucking off the government teat, it doesn't have to worry about profitability. 

How in the world can any reasonable person equate a private company that has to worry about profit-and-loss, with a government entity that a) is making the rules and b) can lose billions without going out of business? 

I could go on (results are also materially affected by the order of questioning, who is questioned, the day of the week, the time of day and a ton of other stuff that Mr. Cost is not factoring in), but the point - I would hope - is pretty clear by now.

Do not - repeat, do not - take "polls" at face value.  And do not assume that one poll is no more or less valid than another, even if the number of respondents is similar.  There is a lot more to this than most people realize.

Ken Berwitz

Here is a short, but superb analysis of what appears to be Democratic thinking on the war in Afghanistan (and Iraq).  It comes to us from Paul Mirengoff of www.newsbusters.org:

It's all a big circle for the Democrats

October 28, 2009 Posted by Paul at 9:51 PM

 

Senator John Kerry seems to be emerging as President Obama's go-to person for foreign policy advice on critical issues. This must be rather galling for Vice President Biden and especially Secretary of State Clinton. Biden at least gets to trot out ideas about major matters, such as his "Pakistan First" notion for dealing with the deterioration of our position in Afghanistan. Clinton apparently does not even have that consolation.

 

But Kerry's approach to Afghanistan is a little more serious than Biden's and thus will likely receive more consideration. Speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations, Kerry put his finger on the main problem with Biden's "Pakistan First" concept -- major gains by the Taliban in Afghanistan will "put Pakistan at risk." However, Kerry argued against a troop surge in Afghanistan unless three conditions are met: better Afghan governance, a bigger civilian development effort, and a supply of reliable Afghan security forces to work with U.S. troops.

 

This sounds sensible. But those who advocate a surge counter that these conditions cannot all be satisfied when we are losing militarily, as now seems to be the case, and Obama's commander on the ground seems to agree. As James Dobbins, who served as a special envoy to Afghanistan during the Bush administration put it, Kerry is basically saying, "we're not going to send more troops until we start winning, which seems to be an inversion of the usual sequence."

 

In the end, Kerry's position looks like just another in a long line of excuses offered by Democrats for not fighting to win. First, we shouldn't fight to win (indeed, shouldn't fight at all) in Iraq because the important mission was defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan. Then, we shouldn't fight to win in Afghanistan until the situation in Pakistan is dealt with. Or we should fight in Afghanistan, but only against al Qaeda (which has fled the country), not the Taliban.

 

Now, says Kerry, we shouldn't fight to win in Afghanistan until the Afghan government and military get their acts together.

 

But if the Afghan government and military got their acts together, the Democrats then would no doubt argue that our presence is no longer needed. Come to think of it, this eventually became part of the rationale for phasing out of Iraq.

Well said!

I wonder how Vice President Biden and Secretary of State Clinton - especially Secretary of State Clinton - feel about John Kerry leapfrogging over them as the go-to guy for foreign policy?

So far mainstream media, for the most part, have avoided pointing out the humiliating, eviscerating treatment Ms. Clinton has gotten from President Obama.  Will they ever screw up enough courage - and/or integrity - to talk about this?  It certainly is right in front of their faces.

Ken Berwitz

This is truly amazing 

Some - by no means all, but some - proponents of public-option health care  are not even trying to use Harry Reid's consummately fraudulent "opt-out" compromise ( i.e. states can either pay for ObamaCare and get it, or pay for ObamaCare and not get it.  Either way they pay.  That's the "compromise")  as cover for what they want.  They are literally gloating, out loud, about how the phony ruse works.

From Michael Graham of the Boston Herald, a columnist and frequent cable news guest (the bold print is mine):

Obfuscation off ObamaCare
Thursday, October 29, 2009 - Added 17h ago

If you’re familiar with this column, you won’t be surprised that last Tuesday night I appeared on a cable news show where the host ranted about how Sen. Harry Reid’s “opt-out” plan is a scam to foist the public option - and eventually socialized medicine - on the American people.

 

But you might be surprised to learn I was on MSNBC at the time. With a host who is a self-described “progressive” and hard-core supporter of ObamaCare.

 

I was on “The Ed Show”, hosted by the painfully earnest “Big Ed” Schultz, doing my part as the “token right-wing nut.” (That’s the unofficial MSNBC euphemism for people whose favorite political philosopher isn’t Chairman Mao).

 

I was prepared to argue that Reid’s “opt-out public option” was a fake, a fig leaf to provide cover for wavering moderates so they could give President Barack Obama what he and the far left really want - a government-run program that would inevitably lead to a European-style single-payer system.

 

But before I could make my case, Big Ed made it for me.

 

“Harry Reid has given Senate Democrats all the cover they need!” he screamed - Ed always screams - at the camera. “This is great move by the Democrats. This is calling out Senate moderates who aren’t too sure about the public option. It’s great move by Harry Reid to put it this way. And it is the first step to single payer. That’s what we progressives want. This is just taking the road to get there.”

 

When the camera turned my way, all I had to say was “Amen.”

 

Because there it was, Team Obama’s entire con, laid out for all to see. And it wasn’t exposed by Glenn Beck or a investigative reporter from The Wall Street Journal. It was a liberal host on MSNBC, bragging to anyone who would listen. Which, in MSNBC’s case, alas, is a rather small group.

 

Still, is a con still a con if you admit it up front? Would Bernie Madoff be in jail today if he had just told everyone upfront: “Look, nobody can get these kinds of returns for you and we all know it. It’s a Ponzi scheme - you want in or not?”

 

For weeks, opponents of ObamaCare like myself have been telling anyone who will listen that a government-run, so-called “public option” was a Trojan horse. When Reid came up with this convoluted “opt out” scheme, I thought liberals would use it to obfuscate even more.

 

Instead, I’m listening to liberals like Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown brag about it. There he was on MSNBC confirming Big Ed’s analysis on national TV. “Even with an opt out, most states aren’t going to opt out. Once you give something to someone, they’re not going to give it back.”

 

They sound like dealers telling their street hoods how to sell crack:

 

“Just get the voters hooked. Once they’re on it, they’ll pay and pay and never get off!”

 

All this in the face of the latest Gallup poll showing a mere 20 percent of Americans consider themselves liberals - half the number who are conservatives. This is a center-right nation with a far-left government which is going to remake America regardless of whether we actual Americans like it.

 

You almost have to admire their breath-taking brazenness. As the old saying goes, we know what they’re doing down our leg. I just long for the days when they went to the trouble to tell us it was raining.

At first blush it seems surprising that more Democrats do not take the opportunity given them by Harry Reid to pull the wool over voters' eyes.   But the more you think about it, the more you realize that a lot of congresspeople in what passes for the "moderate" segment of the Democratic Party these days, have to fear that those voters will very quickly (translation:  before the 2010 elections) realize what a scam this is and how badly they've been had. 

Frankly, the only reason we don't already have ObamaCare in place is the remarkable incompetence level of speaker of the house Nancy Pelosi and senate majority leader Harry Reid.  With a 257-177 majority in the house and a 60-40 majority in the senate (59, plus Lieberman who is an independent but aligns with the Democrats) this should have been a piece of cake.  Pretty much any legislation should be.

Now Reid demonstrates his ham-handedness and overall lack of capability again, by proposing a phony opt-out offer.  And we have at least some Democrats proudly commending him for his attempt to hoodwink voters.

The 2010 elections cannot come fast enough. 

Ken Berwitz

My sister sent this proverb to me.  I thought you might find it entertaining and instructive:

John was in the fertilized egg business.

 

He had several hundred young layers (hens), called 'pullets, and ten roosters to fertilize the eggs.

 

He kept records, and any rooster not performing went into the soup pot and was replaced.

 

This took a lot of time, so he bought some tiny bells and attached them to his roosters.

 

Each bell had a different tone,  so he could tell from a distance, which rooster was performing.

 

Now, he could sit on the porch and fill out an efficiency report by just listening to the bells.

 

John's favorite rooster, old Butch, was a very fine specimen.

 

But this morning he noticed old Butch's bell hadn't rung at all! 

 

When he went to investigate, he saw the other roosters were busy chasing pullets, bells-a-ringing, but the pullets, hearing the roosters coming, could run for cover.

 

To John's amazement, old Butch had his bell in his beak, so it couldn't ring.

 

He'd sneak up on a pullet, do his job and walk on to the next one.

 

John was so proud of old Butch, he entered him in the Renfrew County Fair and he became an overnight sensation among the judges. 

 

The result was the judges not only awarded old Butch the No Bell Piece Prize, but they also awarded him the Pulletsurprise as well.

 

Clearly old Butch was a politician in the making.

 

Who else but a politician could figure out how to win two of the most highly coveted awards on our planet by being the best at sneaking up on the populace and screwing them when they weren't paying attention.

 

Vote carefully next year, the bells are not always audible.

I'm pretty sure this didn't actually happen.  But when you think politics, especially these days, you never know.....

The 2010 elections cannot come fast enough.

Ken Berwitz

How do you feel about being spoken to as if you were 6 year old with below-average intelligence?

If you're not particularly fond of it, you probably won't like what you are about to read.

Excerpted from an article in today's Newark Star-Ledger:

Corzine's money fuels his comeback

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Josh Margolin and Claire Heinin

STATEHOUSE

AND CLAIRE HEININGER

Gov. Jon Corzine continues to tap into his personal fortune to dramatically outspend his opponents in a comeback bid for a second term, reports released yesterday show.

Corzine, a former Wall Street executive, has spent $23.6 million on the general election, compared to Republican Chris Christie's $8.8 million and independent Chris Daggett's $1.2 million, according to the state Election Law Enforcement Commission.

Corzine donated or loaned his general election campaign $22.6 million of its $24.1 million, writing checks to cover TV ads, several pollsters and a $15,000 hall rental for President Obama's visit to Fairleigh Dickinson University.

The Democrat has now dedicated more than $120 million of his own money in his campaigns. He spent a combined $100 million on successful bids for U.S. Senate in 2000 and governor in 2005.

The governor dismissed questions about his spending yesterday, saying "I have no idea" whether the financial advantage enabled him to pull even in recent polls.

Corzine says he has no idea of whether outspending his opponent, $23.6 million to $8.8 million (a disparity that will surely grow in this last week of the campaign) has had an effect on the campaign?

That is talking to New Jersey voters as if we are a bunch of 6 year olds with below-average intelligence. 

And what about the fact that almost 95% of Corzine's entire campaign is self-funded?  Does anyone contribute to this guy except himself? 

Christie, who is a pauper by comparison, is getting his chump change (relatively speaking) from donations and matching funds.  In other words, the people are funding him, not the bonuses Corzine raked in at Goldman-Sachs before he decided to buy elections.

Let me say, as I have before, that I'm not that hot to trot on Christie.  But, given his success as a prosecutor, combined with the disparity in campaign funding and that enormously insulting comment by Corzine, I would vote for him 100 times out of 100.

He'll get one of my 100 next Tuesday.

Ken Berwitz

I've said it before and I'll say it again.  There are a lot of things about Ann Coulter that I do not like.  But sometimes she just plain nails an issue.

And the so-called "opt out option" - as phoney-baloney a fraud as you will ever come across - is one of them.

Here is her latest column - the bold print is mine:

That's a lot to think about.

I suggest we all do a lot of thinking.

Ken Berwitz

From www.yidwithlid.blogspot.com:

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Obama Appoints Another Israel-Hating Adviser: Chuck Hagel

 

President Obama is adding to his anti-Jew crew. Former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel has been  named co-chair of President's Intelligence Advisory Board.  Hagel will be charged with overseeing the work of the intelligence agencies for the president and investigating violations of law by the clandestine community. Hagel joins Anti-Israel appointees such as Samantha Power and General Jones on the President's "anti-Jew" crew.

Steve Clemons, foreign policy head of George Soros' New America Foundation, announced Hagel's move at the Tuesday evening gala dinner hosted by the Anti-Israel organization J Street as part of their first annual conference.

How Anti-Israel is Chuck Hagel? Well, don't take my word for it, in an attempt to be bi-partisan below is what the the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC), said about  Sen. Hagel's lousy record on Israel last year:

 

·          In August 2006, Hagel was one of only 12 Senators who refused to write the EU asking them to declare Hezbollah a terrorist organization.

 

·         In October 2000, Hagel was one of only 4 Senators who refused to sign a Senate letter in support of Israel.

 

·         In November 2001, Hagel was one of only 11 Senators who refused to sign a letter urging President Bush not to meet with the late Yassir Arafat until his forces ended the violence against Israel.

 

·         In December 2005, Hagel  was one of only 27 who refused to sign a letter to President Bush to pressure the Palestinian Authroity to ban terrorist groups from participating in Palestinian legislative elections. 

 

·         In June 2004, Hagel refused to sign a letter urging President Bush to highlight Iran's nuclear program at the G-8 summit.

 

I don't want to leave you with the impression that everyone hates Hagel's record on Israel. The same NJDC article did cite one group that supported Hagel's Middle East efforts--CAIR, a group shown to support Hamas during the Holy Land terrorist funding case.

 

“Potential presidential candidates for 2008, like Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Joe Biden and Newt Gingrich, were falling all over themselves to express their support for Israel. The only exception to that rule was Senator Chuck Hagel …” [Council on American-Islamic Relations, 8/28/06]

Then there was that nice little speech he made during the Senate debate about the surge where he seemed to justify terrorism by the Palestinians "who have been chained down." (see video below).

Folks, think about this long and hard. President Obama has been throwing Israel under the bus since right after election day, this is only one more example. Obama can show such disdain for Israel, by publicly dissing Israel at every opportunity while making no demands of the Palestinians, supporting the division of Jerusalem and adding advisers with a strong Anti-Israel stance, like Chuck Hagel to his administration.  It is clear that Obama's attitude is the opposite of former Secretary of State James Baker, who exclaimed F**K the Jews, they wont vote for us anyway.  Obama's version is F**K the Jews, they WILL vote for us anyway. Lets hope he will be surprised in the next election.

One additional point to be made:  When James Baker said "F#*k the Jews, they won't vote for us anyway" he was right.  Whatever his feelings for or against Israel (and my remembrance is that he was no fan), it was his political view that money put against a group so deeply owned and operated by the Democratic Party was wasted.  Personally, I would have come to the same conclusion.

Sadly, however, Sammy Benoit (who writes yidwithlid.com) is spot-on in his assessment about Obama.  As with the virtually monolithic Black vote, Democrats can screw pro-Israel Jews over time and time again.  And for reasons that become harder and harder to understand, he will still wind up with a huge majority of their votes anyway.

In the last election, exit polls indicated that 78% of the Jewish vote went to Barack Obama.  I hope those people are happy with what they got.

Speaking as one of the other 22%, I can assure you that I am not.

Ken Berwitz

West Coast Russ just sent me a bunch of proverbs, supposedly from Larry the Cable Guy (a character I am not at all taken with).

Some are funny, some are not.

Here, at least in my view, are the 10 funniest:

  1. A day without sunshine is like night.

  2. Remember, half the people you know are below average.

  3. Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.

  4. The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese in the trap.

  5. A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.

  6. How many of you believe in psychokinesis?  Raise my hand.

  7. OK, so what's the speed of dark?

  8. Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

  9. What happens if you get scared half to death, twice?

10. Why do psychics have to ask you your name?

Ken Berwitz

Dear Geniuses of Major League Baseball:

Please read this excerpt from the Denver Post, and think about the fact that Colorado could have been in the World Series this year:

By Tom McGhee and Victoria Barbatelli
The Denver Post

Posted: 10/28/2009 01:00:00 AM MDT

Updated: 10/28/2009 05:53:20 AM MDT

Weather observers could be measuring snowfall in feet in parts of Colorado over the next two days, with as much as 18 inches expected in parts of metro Denver.

 

The alarming early-season forecast placed local governments and airlines at Denver International Airport on notice. City vehicles were fitted with plows Tuesday in advance of the storm, and some airlines offered limited fee waivers to travelers worried about possible flight cancellations.

 

In the foothills, up to 24 inches of snow is possible. Higher elevations could get 3 feet.

And remember:  The Bronx and Philadelphia can get snow this time of year also.  Even if they don't get snow, they can get snow-cold temperatures.

When I was growing up, October 28th meant the world series was over about 3 weeks ago.  But in 2009, October 28th is when they start.  And if the series goes to seven games, it will end on November 5th.  Baseball in New York and Philadelphia in November.

Could you guys maybe rethink this? 

Thank you.

Ken Berwitz

Here is a column from the (Rupert Murdoch-owned) Wall Street Journal that strongly attacks the (Rupert Murdoch-owned) Fox News Channel.  It is written by Thomas Frank, and pulls no punches.

I won't excerpt this piece, you should read every word, so that the anti-Fox position gets a full hearing:

Obama Is Right About Fox News

But the criticism was clumsy.

By THOMAS FRANK

Journalism has a special, hallowed place for stories of its practitioners' persecution. There is no higher claim to journalistic integrity than going to jail to protect a source. And the Newseum in Washington, D.C., establishes the profession's legitimacy with a memorial to fallen scribes, thus drawing an implicit connection between the murdered abolitionist editors of long ago and the struggling outfit that gave you this morning's page-one story about cute pets in Halloween costumes.

But no journalistic operation is better prepared to sing the tragedy of its own martyrdom than Fox News. To all the usual journalistic instincts it adds its grand narrative of Middle America's disrespectful treatment by the liberal elite. Persecution fantasy is Fox News's lifeblood; give it the faintest whiff of the real thing and look out for a gale-force hissy fit.

As the Obama administration has discovered by now. A few weeks ago, after Fox had scored a number of points against administration figures and policies, administration spokesmen decided it was time to start fighting back. Communications Director Anita Dunn called the network "a wing of the Republican Party," while Obama himself reportedly dismissed it for following "a talk radio format."

The network's moaners swung instantly into self-pitying action likening the administration's combative attitude to Richard Nixon's famous "enemies list."

They should remember that it wasn't just the keeping of a list that made Nixon's hostility to the media remarkable. Nearly every president—and probably just about every politician—has criticized the press at some point or other. What made the Nixon administration stand out is that it also sued the New York Times to keep that paper from publishing the Pentagon Papers. It schemed to ruin the Washington Post financially by challenging the broadcast licenses for the TV stations it owned. It bugged the office of Joseph Kraft, a prominent newspaper columnist. One of its most notorious henchmen was G. Gordon Liddy, who tells us in his autobiography that under certain conditions he was "willing to obey an order to kill [columnist] Jack Anderson."

 

It is interesting to note that Mr. Liddy, that friend of the First Amendment, appeared frequently in 2006 on none other than the Fox News network. In fact, the network sometimes seems like a grand electronic homage to the Nixonian spirit: Its constant attacks on the "elite media," for example, might well have been inspired by the famous pronouncements on TV news's liberal bias made by Mr. Nixon's vice president, Spiro Agnew.

And, of course, the network's chairman, Roger Ailes, was an adviser to Mr. Nixon in the 1968 presidential campaign; his signature innovation back then was TV commercials in which Mr. Nixon answered questions from hand-picked citizens in a town-hall style setting.

Although they cry persecution today, the network and its leading lights have not really distinguished themselves on the issues surrounding clashes between the government and the press. When Mr. Ailes was on the other side of the politician/press divide, making ads for the presidential campaign of George H. W. Bush, the Washington Post once found out in advance where one of the commercials was going to be filmed. According to an article that appeared in that paper in 1988, Mr. Ailes was moved to comment thusly on the situation: " 'These leakers!' he told an inquiring reporter the night before the planned event. 'I think they should all be executed and tortured.'"

Mr. Ailes was joking on that occasion. But faced with one of the biggest First Amendment cases of our own time—the New York Times's 2005 story on the George W. Bush administration's domestic wiretapping program—how did Fox News react? By impugning the motives of the Times, of course, with different Fox personalities speculating that the Times deliberately published the story when it did in order to dissuade the U. S. Senate from reauthorizing the Patriot Act.

To point out that this network is different, that it is intensely politicized, that it inhabits an alternate reality defined by an imaginary conflict between noble heartland patriots and devious liberals—to be aware of these things is not the act of a scheming dictatorial personality. It is the obvious conclusion drawn by anybody with eyes and ears.

Still, one wishes that the Obama administration had taken on Fox News with a little more skill. As cultural criticism goes, this was clumsy, plodding stuff. What the situation required was sarcasm, irony, a little humor. Simply feeding Fox a slice of raw denunciation was like dumping gasoline into a fire. It did nothing but furnish the network with a real-world validation of its long-running conspiracy theories—and a nice bump in its ratings.

You may or may not agree with Mr. Frank's commentary.  But let's give credit to the Murdoch people who allowed this critique to be published.

Now grow old waiting for anything like it from NBC about MSNBC.

Ken Berwitz

Here is another example of a school administration using policy as a substitute for using its heads.

Here is the story, from KCCI-TV in Des Moines, Iowa.  Be sure to have a pillow under your jaw, because it probably will drop wide open:

Student Suspended Over Show-And-Tell Souvenir

POSTED: 4:33 pm CDT October 27, 2009
UPDATED: 6:10 pm CDT October 27, 2009

DES MOINES, Iowa -- A Des Moines girl was suspended after school officials said she violated their weapons policy.

 

Jazmine Martin, 12, brought an empty shotgun shell to school on Monday, a souvenir from a summer vacation to South Dakota. The shell was empty and had the word "blank" written on the front.

 

"We went to South Dakota and went to the Circle B Ranch," said Chenoa Martin, Jazmine's mother. "There's a show of the old West -- a stampede. Had a gun shoot-out and stuff like that. When they fire their rifles, they do it into the crowd. It posed no risk."

 

"We went around the building to look for them and they said they don't care if we have them so we picked up all of them," said Jazmine Martin.

 

"They picked up the shells as souvenirs of that event -- it was wonderful," said Chenoa Martin.

 

"I wanted to show it to my science teacher because he's into stuff like this," said Jazmine Martin.

 

Jazmine Martin said she never got the chance to show her teacher. During fourth period last week, she got pulled out of class and was questioned about her summer souvenir.

 

"They called me to the office and when I was walking through the hallway I am like 'what did I do?'" said Jazmine Martin.

 

"This young lady brought a bag of shell casings and shared them with other kids," said Randy Gordon, Brody Middle School principal.

 

Gordon said that even though they were empty, the shell casings are considered ammo, which violates the school's weapon policy.

 

"Well, it's kind of like toy gun problems schools have had. We suspend kids for bringing toy guns also. We want to make it clear to kids not confusing at all that anything with weapons, guns, it doesn't belong in school," said Gordon.

 

"I called the principal and asked about this and he said it was something that posed a risk," said Chenoa Martin. "I thought it was the most absurd thing I'd heard because it's empty and it says 'blank' right on the shell itself."

 

School officials said the one day suspension will go on Jazmine's school record.

 

Jazmine's mother said she plans to appeal to the school board to keep it off her permanent record.

Got that?  She saw an enactment of a wild west shootout, in which blanks were fired.  She brought some of the used, blank shells to school to show her science teacher.  And she was suspended for bringing ammunition into the school.

Again:  The "ammunition" consisted of some used shells, that were blanks to begin with, that she collected after a show.

That is the equivalent of suspending a student for bringing in the bladeless handle of a toy knife.

Are these people determined to act like idiots? 

Or are they so devoid of common sense and rudimentary brain function that they will hide behind a "no ammunition" policy to justify the suspension of a 12 year old girl who didn't bring any ammunition to school in the first place? 

Oh, wait, that would be acting like idiots, wouldn't it?

And these are the ones entrusted with educating children?

Yikes.

Ken Berwitz

The President Obama Afghanistan D&D (Dither & Dawdle) index is at two months and counting.

Here, from CBS News, is Mr. Obama's schedule for today:

10:00AM: President Obama departs Miami, Florida en route Sarasota, Florida

10:50AM: President Obama arrives in Sarasota, Florida

12:10PM: President Obama tours DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center

12:25PM: President Obama delivers remarks

2:05PM: President Obama departs Sarasota, Florida en route Norfolk, Virginia

3:50PM: President Obama arrives in Norfolk, Virginia

4:55PM: President Obama delivers remarks at rally for Creigh Deeds

6:05PM: President Obama departs Norfolk, Virginia en route Andrews Air Force Base

6:50PM: President Obama arrives at Andrews Air Force Base

7:05PM: President Obama arrives at The White House

Will any of this result in Mr. Obama making a decision on whether to send the additional troops that his commanding General, Stanley McChrystal, says are imperative for the war in Afghanistan? 

Every day that Barack Obama dithers and dawdles away without a decision endangers our men and women in uniform - and brings us closer to losing this war.

His press secretary, Robert "Baghdad Bob" Gibbs, tells us the President needs more time to make his decision.

Will touring a solar energy plant and campaigning for Creigh Deeds move that decision along?  Are they more important than acting as commander in chief to protect our troops?

We deserve this.  We elected a Chicago machine politician without any qualifications for the Presidency, and handed him a lopsided majority in both houses to back his actions up.

But does our volunteer army deserve this --  especially those who are at risk in Afghanistan? 

Mr. President, when are you going to DO SOMETHING?

Ken Berwitz

There is an old joke about a guy taking a certain liberty with his date.  The punch line is that his presumably outraged date notices how what he is doing feels, and says "I'm warning you...you have 20 minutes to stop doing that!"

Tell you what, though;  that's funny as a joke, but it isn't funny as an FDA strategy to prevent people from getting sick. 

Excerpted from an Associated Press Article:

FDA to ban raw Gulf oysters unless treated for bacteria; proposal would take effect in 2011

By The Associated Press

October 27, 2009, 2:55PM

 

 

NEW ORLEANS -- Federal officials plan to ban sales of raw oysters harvested from the Gulf of Mexico unless the shellfish are treated to destroy potentially deadly bacteria -- a requirement that opponents say could deprive diners of a delicacy cherished for generations.

 

The plan has also raised concern among oystermen that they could be pushed out of business.

 

The Gulf region supplies about two-thirds of U.S. oysters, and some people in the $500 million industry argue that the anti-bacterial procedures are too costly. They insist adequate measures are already being taken to battle germs, including increased refrigeration on oyster boats and warnings posted in restaurants.Federal officials plan to ban sales of raw oysters harvested from the Gulf of Mexico unless the shellfish are treated to destroy potentially deadly bacteria _ a requirement that restaurants say could deprive diners of a delicacy cherished for generations. The plan has also raised concern among oystermen that they could be pushed out of business.

 

About 15 people die each year in the United States from raw oysters infected with Vibrio vulnificus, which typically is found in warm coastal waters between April and October. Most of the deaths occur among people with weak immune systems caused by health problems like liver or kidney disease, cancer, diabetes, or AIDS.

 

"Seldom is the evidence on a food-safety problem and solution so unambiguous," Michael Taylor, a senior adviser at the Food and Drug Administration, told a shellfish conference in Manchester, N.H., earlier this month in announcing the policy change.

 

Some oyster sellers say the FDA rule smacks of government meddling. The sales ban would take effect in 2011 for oysters harvested in the Gulf during warm months.

Am I missing something here?  What the FDA appears to be telling us is that there is a clear and immediate danger of eating untreated oysters harvested from the Gulf of Mexico.  So they must be treated for bacteria (side note:  don't they mean treated against bacteria?) to assure that people don't get sick or even die.

But go ahead and eat them, untreated, until 2011, which is over a year from now.

That, friends, is how agencies of the federal government work.  The same federal government that, if we let them, is going to take over health care in this country.

Think about it.

Ken Berwitz

Did you really think ACORN would stop getting taxpayer money? 

Forget about it.  This is the Obama administration and a Democrat-majority congress - both houses of it.  So you may think that ACORN is shut out, but they will find ways to funnel money to this sorry, corrupt, partisan organization.

Here's one, uncovered by Chelsea Schilling of www.worldnewsdaily.com (and no doubt available to more mainstream media; but try and find a story about it there):

JUST PLAIN NUTS
ACORN affiliate listed as federally approved charity
Government employees may donate portion of paychecks directly to group

---

Posted: October 27, 2009
10:43 pm Eastern

By Chelsea Schilling
© 2009 WorldNetDaily

 

The federal government has listed an ACORN  affiliate in its catalog of approved charities – allowing federal employees to set up payroll deductions and donate a portion of paychecks directly to the group.

 

The ACORN Institute, an affiliate of the national umbrella organization of ACORN, is featured in the Office of Personnel Management's 2009 CFC list of participating national and international organizations.

 

The government's annual workplace charity campaign allows federal employees to contribute to qualified charities with cash, checks or payroll deductions.

 

According to a Washington Post report, ACORN transferred millions of dollars in charitable contributions meant for the poor to arms of ACORN that have political and even profit-making missions in 2006. Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, released a report warning, charities "are being used to raise monies which are then funneled to other charities or to other organizations for purposes other than what the donor may have intended. . . . Dollars raised for charitable [purposes] appear to be used for impermissible lobbing and political activity."

 

Grassley asked that the ACORN Institute and other ACORN affiliates be taken off the list of approved charities.

"The acts perpetrated by ACORN employees were impermissible and should not be supported with CFC dollars," Grassley wrote in a Sept. 22 letter to Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry.

 

ACORN is under investigation for voter registration fraud, embezzlement and other charges. As WND reported, independent filmmaker James O'Keefe and student Hannah Giles ran an undercover sting on ACORN, revealing a multitude of recommendations from employees of the community organizers on how to facilitate underage prostitution and avoid taxes. The stings resulted in both houses of Congress voting to stop funding ACORN and both the U.S. Census Bureau and the IRS cutting off their partnerships with the group.

 

Berry replied to Grassley's letter on Oct. 17, stating that the ACORN Institute is the only ACORN affiliated group listed in the CFC catalogue of charities.

 

"[T]he activities of certain offices of ACORN that have been reported in the media do not provide legal basis for excluding the Institute from the CFC," he wrote. "Nor is such a basis provided by the recent continuing resolution which prohibits Federal funding of ACORN or its affiliates, because the ACORN Institutes does not receive Federal funds by virtue of its participation in the CFC."

 

He also said the ACORN Institute is a legally separate organization from ACORN, holding 501(c)(3) status.

 

"While Federal monies are, of course, used to accomplish the mission and operations of OPM and other agencies as they execute payroll allotments and perform duties related to the CFC, Federal monies are not 'provided to' the ACORN Institute, Inc., within the meaning or scope of the CR [Congressional resolution]," Berry said.

 

According to the Post report, Grassley responded in a statement: "The Combined Federal Campaign is a federal program for federal employees. By keeping ACORN charities on the list, the federal government is giving its seal of approval to a group that advised people to lie to the IRS. And this position is inconsistent with congressional intent, as well as the IRS and Census Bureau's stand that they no longer want to do business with ACORN."

Executive director Brennan Griffin told the newspaper that the ACORN Institute has received less than $50,000 from the CFC since it applied to join in January 2007.

 

The ACORN Institute website states, "The ACORN Institute operates a countrywide network of ACORN Centers which provide free tax preparation, benefits enrollment, and foreclosure prevention services. In partnership with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), our network of ACORN Centers aims to create community and family stability in low- and moderate-income communities by putting more money into the local economy and allowing individuals to gain access to appropriate resources needed to take care of their families."

 

The group also works with ACORN to provide leadership development and training.

 There you have it.  A story that has been developing for over a month, about a corrupt organization the public thinks has been dropped by the federal government but, in reality, has not.  And do we see it in the mainstream media?  No we do not.  It takes an internet web site for us to read about it. 

But listen to them squeal like stuck pigs if you call them biased.

Ken Berwitz

I watched a few minutes of "Countdown" tonight.  And one of keith olbermann's "worst people (or, in this case newspapers) in the world" was The New York Post.  Among the reasons olbermann gave, in his smirky, snarky obnoxious, insulting way, was that, in a story today about cable news ratings, the Post combined the viewership of CNN and its sister network HLN. 

In attacking the Post, using his standard (i.e. vicious and offensive) tone, olbermann made it seem for all the world that combining the two networks was the Post's idea  His exact words:  "The Post created a new ratings statistic, "The combined audience for CNN and HLN in prime time among 25-54 year olds...".

But that is untrue.  100% untrue.

Here is the relevant segment of the Post's article:

"The trend of viewership declining at CNN has been going on for quite a while, so it was only a matter of time before this happened," said Andrew Tyndall, whose Tyndall Report monitors television network news programming. Tyndall said CNN thrives when news breaks but doesn't function nearly as well as a day-in/day-out news destination.

The average audience figures are based solely on the 25- to 54-year-old demographic in primetime. CNN ranks ahead of MSNBC and HLN to trail only Fox News in ratings for the full programming day.

For Time Warner, which owns both CNN and HLN, the ratings results aren't as bad as they seem. While the declines at CNN are alarming, the gains at HLN are encouraging.

"Put the ratings from the two networks together and they are still competitive," Tyndall said.

Indeed, the combined audience for CNN and HLN in primetime among 25-54 year-olds would equal 421,000 viewers, leapfrogging MSNBC into second place, but still trailing Fox News by 267,000 viewers.

 

As you can see, the combination of CNN and HLN was not the Post's idea at all.   It was Andrew Tyndall's.  The Post's contribution was doing the addition, to show readers how many CNN/HLN viewers there would be in Tyndall's model. 

So olbermann was full of what a bull produces after dinner.  Again (and again and again and again).

The saddest part is that there still is an audience of olbermann loyalists who actually think he is telling them the truth, instead of defrauding them.

Too bad.  Maybe one day they'll realize.

=============================================================================

Oh, one other thing:

Yesterday, congressperson alan grayson of Florida was excoriated by both Republicans and Democrats for calling one of Ben Bernanke's female staffers a "K Street whore".

Not to be outdone, last night keith olbermann referred to congressperson Dr. Paul Broun as "a streetwalker for the insurance cartel". 

olbermann is second to no one in being disgusting.  Not alan grayson, not anyone.

Ken Berwitz

Yesterday I watched part of Hannity's show and two of his guests - Dick Morris and a second one who is not immediately coming to mind (I'm getting old, I guess) said that they thought Chris Christie would defeat Jon Corzine and become New Jersey's Governor.

I thought that was surprising, given a combination of New Jersey's recent, nearly all-blue, history along with the fact that a poll had come out during the day (The Suffolk Poll, whatever that is) which showed Corzine opening up a 9% lead.

Well, here is another voice of cautious optimism:  Jim Geraghty of National Review:

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

HORSERACE

A Slight Sense of Momentum for Chris Christie

As noted yesterday, the Suffolk poll showing Democrat Jon Corzine up 9 is garbage; you can't presume that turnout will be 93 percent.

Two polls out today have much brighter news for Republican Chris Christie; Rasmussen puts him up by 3 percentage points, while Public Policy Polling puts him up by 4 percentage points. What's more, PPP notes:

There are several indications within the numbers that Christie is in a better position than Corzine one week out from the election. 95 percent of his supporters say they will definitely vote for him, compared to 79 percent of Corzine's. Daggett's support continues to be pretty malleable, with only 57 percent of his voters saying they are strongly committed to him. 42 percent of Christie's voters are very excited about voting this fall to 29 percet of Corzine's who express that sentiment. The comparative excitement levels could have implications for which candidate is better able to get his supporters out.

I know some people have doubts about Rasmussen's robo-pollsters, but coupled with the PPP result, it does give some sense of momentum; every poll in the past month, besides Suffolk, has put the race within four percentage points. It appears that Christie's ads hitting Daggett are having an effect, and the wave for the independent has crested.

If PPP's numbers are accurate, Chris Christie and his supporters can feel good in this final week. But many of my readers fear that in a close race, the Apparition-American vote* will remain active after Halloween to vote Democrat. If Christie's got any more tricks up his sleeve, now's the time to use them.

* UPDATE: A reader fears this comment, meant to refer to voter fraud with ballots cast by dead voters, will somehow be construed as racially insensitive. (sigh) Lest anyone think I meant to offend, feel free to refer to these voters as casting "Eternally Absentee Ballots."

Could it be?

Ken Berwitz

The great Thomas Sowell has written a superb column which was published today (what other kind does he ever write?).  It explains in clear, concise terms, what President Obama is doing to our country.

Here it is, without further comment - because you don't improve on Thomas Sowell.  But I will put a couple of especially salient parts in bold print:

Dismantling America

By Thomas Sowell

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |

Just one year ago, would you have believed that an unelected government official, not even a Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate but simply one of the many "czars" appointed by the President, could arbitrarily cut the pay of executives in private businesses by 50 percent or 90 percent?

Did you think that another "czar" would be talking about restricting talk radio? That there would be plans afloat to subsidize newspapers — that is, to create a situation where some newspapers' survival would depend on the government liking what they publish?

Did you imagine that anyone would even be talking about having a panel of so-called "experts" deciding who could and could not get life-saving medical treatments?

Scary as that is from a medical standpoint, it is also chilling from the standpoint of freedom. If you have a mother who needs a heart operation or a child with some dire medical condition, how free would you feel to speak out against an administration that has the power to make life and death decisions about your loved ones?

Does any of this sound like America?

How about a federal agency giving school children material to enlist them on the side of the president? Merely being assigned to sing his praises in class is apparently not enough.

How much of America would be left if the federal government continued on this path? President Obama has already floated the idea of a national police force, something we have done without for more than two centuries.

We already have local police forces all across the country and military forces for national defense, as well as the FBI for federal crimes and the National Guard for local emergencies. What would be the role of a national police force created by Barack Obama, with all its leaders appointed by him? It would seem more like the brown shirts of dictators than like anything American.

How far the President will go depends of course on how much resistance he meets. But the direction in which he is trying to go tells us more than all his rhetoric or media spin.

Barack Obama has not only said that he is out to "change the United States of America," the people he has been associated with for years have expressed in words and deeds their hostility to the values, the principles and the people of this country.

Jeremiah Wright said it with words: "G0d damn America!" Bill Ayers said it with bombs that he planted. Community activist goons have said it with their contempt for the rights of other people.

Among the people appointed as czars by President Obama have been people who have praised enemy dictators like Mao, who have seen the public schools as places to promote sexual practices contrary to the values of most Americans, to a captive audience of children.

Those who say that the Obama administration should have investigated those people more thoroughly before appointing them are missing the point completely. Why should we assume that Barack Obama didn't know what such people were like, when he has been associating with precisely these kinds of people for decades before he reached the White House?

Nothing is more consistent with his lifelong patterns than putting such people in government — people who reject American values, resent Americans in general and successful Americans in particular, as well as resenting America's influence in the world.

Any miscalculation on his part would be in not thinking that others would discover what these stealth appointees were like. Had it not been for the Fox News Channel, these stealth appointees might have remained unexposed for what they are. Fox News is now high on the administration's enemies list.

Nothing so epitomizes President Obama's own contempt for American values and traditions like trying to ram two bills through Congress in his first year — each bill more than a thousand pages long — too fast for either of them to be read, much less discussed. That he succeeded only the first time says that some people are starting to wake up. Whether enough people will wake up in time to keep America from being dismantled, piece by piece, is another question — and the biggest question for this generation.

Thank you, sir.

Ken Berwitz

Here is Noel Sheppard's incredulous blog about how two far-left women have skewered keith olbermann for his vile attack on Michelle Malkin and his unending screed about health care reform - even though the attacks are against what olbermann considers the right wing.

Air America Calls Out Olbermann for Sexist Attack on Michelle Malkin

By Noel Sheppard October 27, 2009 - 15:00 ET

Here's something you don't see every day: a far-left media outlet calling out one of the far-left's heroes to defend one of the far-left's most hated conservatives.

Yet that's what happened a few weeks ago when Air America's editor of news and politics took on MSNBC's Keith Olbermann for sexist and misogynistic comments he made about conservative author Michelle Malkin.

As NewsBusters' Brad Wilmouth reported on October 13, Olbermann on "Countdown" that evening called Malkin "a big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it."

Air America's Megan Carpentier was quite displeased at this sexist display (h/t NB reader Joseph McMahon):

Olbermann starts with a recitation of Malkin's emails, belittling her voice and putting on a "Valley Girl" accent--i.e., an unintelligent female voice. But it's only after that unfortunate display of sexism that Olbermann hits it out of the misogynist park. [...]

For the record, on average, once every 24 minutes in this country, a woman does become a "mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it." Nearly 1.3 million American woman will be a victim of domestic violence this year, and one in four women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime.

A liberal, progressive critique of Malkin need not and should not resort to an attack on her looks or her gender or rely on silly stereotypes or imagery that brings to mind victims of domestic violence.

By attacking MIchelle Malkin's politics with an assault on women of every political persuasion, and then indicating a desire to see her physically harmed, a person might understandably get the idea that Keith Olbermann only respects women if they agree with him.

And if they don't? They're obviously just stupid Valley girls who deserve a good beating.

Wow. Amazingly, this was the second time in less than a week a far-left woman went after Olbermann, for as NewsBusters' P. J. Gladnick reported October 8, Randi Rhodes wrote quite a piece the previous day criticizing the MSNBC host for his one hour "Special Comment" about healthcare reform.

It's nice to see some people on the left becoming as sick of this man as virtually everyone on the right is.  

Simply stated, the reason a lot of people are getting sick of keith olbermann is that he is sickening. 

The only thing that distinguishes olbermann from a pathologically hate-filled, viciously personal, barroom loudmouth is that he uses more polysyllabic words than a pathologically hate-filled, viciously personal, barroom loudmouth does. 

Other than that?  Clones.

By the way, I tuned in for a short time last night and heard him refer to "tea partiers" (I think that was the term he used) instead of "tea-baggers".  I suspect that the network finally caught enough hell over his use of the "tea-baggers" term (which, in case you are unaware, refers to an explicit sexual act that a man might perform on a straight female or gay male partner) and told him to stop.

It only took a few MONTHS. 

How proud MSNBC must be to put his show on every weekday night.

Ken Berwitz

Newt Gingrich, who is a conservative Republican most of the time, is tenaciously clinging to support of Dede Scozzafava in New York's remarkably competitive 23rd district.special congressional election.

His reasoning makes sense - if the one and only goal is to have someone with an -R after his/her name, regardless of that person's actual political positions.  If there is any goal beyond that, it makes no sense at all. 

Michelle Malkin has written an excellent rebuttal of Gingrich's position today, which I thought you might want to see:

Yes, Newt, the GOP should be “purged” of left-wing saboteurs

By Michelle Malkin  •  October 27, 2009 11:32 AM

 

Newt Gingrich continues to “Alinsky” his conservative critics and hide behind straw men.

 

He took to the airwaves last night to decry what he called a “purge” of the GOP by opponents of his chosen candidate, radical leftist Republican congressional candidate Dede Scozzafava, in the NY-23 special election:

 

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) late Monday had some choice words for Republicans supporting Conservative Party party candidate Doug Hoffman (N.Y.), accusing them of conducting a “purge” of the GOP…

The former Speaker faced a push-back from the right after his announcement but he upped the ante on Monday.

“This idea that we’re suddenly going to establish litmus tests and all across the country we’re going to purge the party of anybody who doesn’t agree with us 100 percent; that guarantees Obama’s reelection, that guarantees Pelosi as Speaker-for-life,” he told Fox News last night.

 

100 percent unadulterated nonsense on a stick.

 

Scozzafava isn’t just “anybody who doesn’t agree with us 100 percent.”

 

She’s an ACORN-Friendly, Big Labor-Backing, Tax-and-Spend, Margaret Sanger Award-Winning Radical in GOP Clothing — a left-wing saboteur who seeks to marginalize mainstream conservatism with conservatives’ own money.

As for Gingrich’s attack on conservative candidate Doug Hoffman’s supporters outside of New York…

 

“So I say to my many conservative friends who suddenly decided whether they’re from Minnesota, or Alaska, or Texas, they know more than the upstate New York Republicans? I don’t think so,” he added.

 

…I’ll repeat what the New York Post editorial board said today in its endorsement of Hoffman:

 

New York’s 23rd Congressional District lies near Canada, far to the north — but next week’s special election merits attention throughout the state.

 

That’s because the Republican candidate in that race, Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava, is the product of an obscenely corrupt political bargain by GOP bosses that sells out their party — and New Yorkers generally.

 

Because of that, and because so many of her positions ill-serve the interests of New York and the nation, The Post today endorses businessman Doug Hoffman, the Conservative Party nominee.

 

No, Republicans needn’t toe the conservative line without any deviation. Moderate GOPers like Rudy Giuliani have managed to stray on some issues without wholly betraying their party.

 

But a Republican should adhere to certain minimum GOP principles. Scozzafava is just too far to the left too often.

And not only on social matters, like same-sex marriage and abortion. In Albany, Scozzafava has been such a profligate tax-and-spender, she can almost make Speaker Sheldon Silver blush.

 

With the backing of the ACORN-allied Working Families Party, she supports Big Labor’s favorite organizing bill — card-check — as well as the federal stimulus, opposed by every House Republican.

 

Hoffman, by contrast, understands the dangers of unchecked spending, monster deficits and ever-higher taxes — i.e., concerns of average working Americans.

 

And I’ll repeat what I said last week: “One thing is guaranteed at the conclusion of the NY-23 special congressional election: The Beltway Republicans who endorsed radical leftist Dede Scozzafava are going to have indelible egg stains on their faces. And GOP establishment fund-raising organizations will be the poorer for it.”

Ms. Scozzafava may be a lot of things, which you may like or dislike.  But, that -R after her name notwithstanding, she ain't a Republican.  And Douglas Hoffman, despite that -I (or is it -C) after his name, is.

I can argue for and against a Republican voting for Hoffman.  But I have a great deal of trouble finding a viable argument for a Republican to vote for Scozzafava, whose positions would put her somewhere near the Barney Frank wing of the Democratic Party - a party that, given her positions, she might very well change to if she were to win the election.

But I don't think a win is in the cards.  I suspect it is now between Democrat Owens and Independent-Conservative Hoffman - with Scozzafava a distant third.

We'll know for sure a week from now.

Ken Berwitz

My pal Bob put me onto this.  He found it at www.canadafreepress.com.  Read it and be outraged, because you ought to be.

Recession, Depression, What Michelle Worry?

First Lady requires more than twenty attendants By Dr. Paul L. Williams  Tuesday, July 7, 2009

By the staff of thelastcrusade.org

Update: First Lady Now Requires 26 Servants

“The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it”
—Albert Einstein

“In my own life, in my own small way, I have tried to give back to this country that has given me so much,” she said. “See, that’s why I left a job at a big law firm for a career in public service, “ Michelle Obama

No, Michele Obama does not get paid to serve as the First Lady and she doesn’t perform any official duties. But this hasn’t deterred her from hiring an unprecedented number of staffers to cater to her every whim and to satisfy her every request in the midst of the Great Recession. Just think Mary Lincoln was taken to task for purchasing china for the White House during the Civil War. And Mamie Eisenhower had to shell out the salary for her personal secretary.

How things have changed! If you’re one of the tens of millions of Americans facing certain destitution, earning less than subsistence wages stocking the shelves at Wal-Mart or serving up McDonald cheeseburgers, prepare to scream and then come to realize that the benefit package for these servants of Miz Michele are the same as members of the national security and defense departments and the bill for these assorted lackeys is paid by John Q. Public:

1. $172,2000 - Sher, Susan (CHIEF OF STAFF)
2. $140,000 - Frye, Jocelyn C. (DEPUTY ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT AND DIRECTOR OF POLICY AND PROJECTS FOR THE FIRST LADY)
3. $113,000 - Rogers, Desiree G. (SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT AND WHITE HOUSE SOCIAL SECRETARY)
4. $102,000 - Johnston, Camille Y. (SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT AND DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS FOR THE FIRST LADY)
5. Winter, Melissa E. (SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT AND DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF TO THE FIRST LADY)
6. $90,000 - Medina, David S. (DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF TO THE FIRST LADY)
7. $84,000 - Lelyveld, Catherine M. (DIRECTOR AND PRESS SECRETARY TO THE FIRST LADY)
8. $75,000 - Starkey, Frances M. (DIRECTOR OF SCHEDULING AND ADVANCE FOR THE FIRST LADY)
9. $70,000 - Sanders, Trooper (DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF POLICY AND PROJECTS FOR THE FIRST LADY)
10. $65,000 - Burnough, Erinn J. (DEPUTY DIRECTOR AND DEPUTY SOCIAL SECRETARY)
11. Reinstein, Joseph B. (DEPUTY DIRECTOR AND DEPUTY SOCIAL SECRETARY)
12. $62,000 - Goodman, Jennifer R. (DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF SCHEDULING AND EVENTS COORDINATOR FOR THE FIRST LADY)
13. $60,000 - Fitts, Alan O. (DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF ADVANCE AND TRIP DIRECTOR FOR THE FIRST LADY)
14. Lewis, Dana M. (SPECIAL ASSISTANT AND PERSONAL AIDE TO THE FIRST LADY)
15. $52,500 - Mustaphi, Semonti M. (ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR AND DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY TO THE FIRST LADY)
16. $50,000 - Jarvis, Kristen E. (SPECIAL ASSISTANT FOR SCHEDULING AND TRAVELING AIDE TO THE FIRST LADY)
17. $45,000 - Lechtenberg, Tyler A. (ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF CORRESPONDENCE FOR THE FIRST LADY)
18. Tubman, Samantha (DEPUTY ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR,SOCIAL OFFICE)
19. $40,000 - Boswell, Joseph J. (EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TO THE CHIEF OF STAFF TO THE FIRST LADY)
20. $36,000 - Armbruster, Sally M. (STAFF ASSISTANT TO THE SOCIAL SECRETARY)
21. Bookey, Natalie (STAFF ASSISTANT)
22. Jackson, Deilia A. (DEPUTY ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF CORRESPONDENCE FOR THE FIRST LADY)

I guess this is Michelle Obama's personal stimulus package.

What a complete outrage.  Not just the staffers and the cost, but the fact that I had to go out of the country to find the list. 

Thank you, thank you, thank you to our wonderful "neutral" media.

Ken Berwitz

How ironic that this comes out just after Steve Phillips is fired by ESPN for consorting with a young female staffer

From www.tmz.com:

Ex-Letterman Writer Claims Sexual Favoritism

Posted Oct 27th 2009 12:01PM by TMZ Staff

A former Letterman writer claims Dave's show was a "hostile, sexually charged atmosphere" -- and "sexual politics" played a role in why she eventually quit the job.

The woman making the claim is Nell Scovell, who spent roughly 5 months working for Dave back in 1990.

In an article for Vanity Fair, Scovell claims during her employment, she was well aware that Dave and other high-level male employees were having sexual relations with female staffers.

Scovell also claims those female staffers were "benefiting professionally from their personal relationships."

She adds, "Did that make me feel demeaned? Completely. Did I say anything at the time? Sadly, no."

But she's talkin' now.

In the article, Scovell claims she's not looking to take any legal action against Dave or the show -- and she never identifies any of the alleged staffer-bangers by name.

Maybe Letterman can do another comedy routine posing as an apology. 

Then he can go back to bashing Sarah Palin for what he considers to be her deficiencies.

Robert Burns said it well, over 200 years ago:

"O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us!"

The amazingly ironic name of the poem that line comes from?  "To A Louse".  So help me.

Ken Berwitz

My sister just sent this to me.  As you can see it is attributed to Newt Gingrich.

I don't know if Gingrich actually said it and, frankly, he's not my favorite guy in the world.  But whoever said it has a damn good point:

"As an American I am not so shocked that Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize without any accomplishments to his name, but that America gave him the White House based on the same credentials." - - Newt Gingrich

Ken Berwitz

Here's a classic "you can't make this stuff up" story. 

Man who threw feces in courtroom draws 31-year sentence for robbery

By Dana Littlefield

Union-Tribune Staff Writer

5:45 p.m. October 26, 2009

SAN DIEGO – A man who sneaked a small bag of feces into a courtroom during his robbery trial, smeared the contents on his lawyer and threw it at jurors, was sentenced Monday to 31 years and four months in prison.

Weusi McGowan, 38, pleaded guilty to robbery and residential burglary in connection with the original case, and two assault charges in connection with the feces-flinging incident.

San Diego Superior Court Judge Frank Brown recommended that McGowan be housed at California State Prison in Lancaster, which a defense attorney said was better suited to handle McGowan's mental health needs.

McGowan was tried in January on charges stemming from an October 2007 robbery in Barrio Logan. According to court documents, McGowan demanded money from a 54-year-old man and hit him with a rock that was inside a sock.

During jury selection, McGowan asked the trial judge to declare a mistrial because he believed members of the jury had seen him in restraints while being escorted into the courtroom, according to court documents.

Judge Jeffrey Fraser spoke to the four jurors in question, then dismissed them from the proceedings. He then allowed the selection process to continue.

According to court records, McGowan “became very boisterous and somewhat belligerent” after his request was denied. At one point, he told sheriff's deputies, “You better put the chains back on before I do something.”

Three days later when the trial was under way, the jurors stood for a mid-morning break. As they began to file out of the courtroom, McGowan pulled out a bag of feces he'd hidden in his clothing, rubbed excrement on his lawyer and threw it at the jury.

It did not hit anyone in the jury box, but some landed on a computer case that belonged to one of the jurors.

Fraser declared a mistrial and a new defense attorney was picked to handle McGowan's case.

On Monday, Deputy District Attorney Christopher Lawson said in court that McGowan clearly has mental health issues, but he committed an intentional act when he threw the feces.

Brown, who took over the case after the mistrial, ordered McGowan to pay $129 restitution to replace the juror's computer case.

After the hearing, attorney Stephen Cline – who did not represent McGowan at trial – said his client is “very moody” and suffers from bipolar disorder. He was not taking his medication

“When he hits the bottom, he gets angry when he is mistreated or when he feels he is mistreated,” Cline said.

There are so many bad puns here that I refuse to start pumping them out.  You don't need me to do this, you can find plenty of your own.

Other than noting that Brown may have taken over the case after the mistrial, but that's a pretty good description of the last guy too....

And that this is hardly the first time that S#!+ has been thrown around in a courtroom...

Whoops, sorry, I said I wouldn't do that.

Ken Berwitz

October is not over yet.  But it already is the single most deadly month in our 8 year involvement in Afghanistan.

Excerpted from an Associate Press article at www.yahoonews.com:

KABUL – Eight American troops were killed in two separate insurgent attacks Tuesday in southern Afghanistan, making October the deadliest month of the war for U.S. forces since the 2001 invasion to oust the Taliban.

 

In one of the insurgent assaults, seven Americans were killed while patrolling in armored vehicles, U.S. forces spokesman Lt. Col. Todd Vician said. He said an Afghan civilian died in the same attack. The eighth American was killed in a separate attack elsewhere in the south, also while patrolling in a military vehicle, he said.

 

The military issued a statement saying the deaths occurred during "multiple, complex" bomb strikes. It said several troops were wounded and evacuated to a nearby medical facility, but gave no other details.

 

Capt. Adam Weece, a spokesman for American forces in the south, said both attacks occurred in Kandahar province. In Washington, a U.S. defense official said at least one was followed by an intense firefight with insurgents who attacked after an initial bomb went off. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to release the information.

 

The deaths bring to 55 the total number of American troops killed in October in Afghanistan. The previous high occurred in August, when 51 U.S. soldiers died and the troubled nation held the first round of its presidential elections amid a wave of Taliban insurgent attacks.

In August, commanding General Stanley McChrystal - an Obama administration appointee - has been begging for increased troops.  He has told President Obama in so many words that the too-low troop total endangers our soldiers, that we could literally lose the war because of it.  And for two months - and still counting - President Barack Obama has dithered and dawdled and done nothing.

How many of these casualties are a direct consequence of his dithering?  We'll never know, but what do you think?

Is Barack Obama waiting for the elections so that his decision to send more troops will not alienate the hard-left base before they help his candidates?  Is he deliberately putting our troops at increased risk for political purposes?

President Bush, hated though he was by these people, made the tough decisions - and spent almost 8 years being tarred and feathered every day for it. 

That is the difference between courage and cowardice.  That is the difference between principles and politics. 

The next elections cannot come fast enough.

Ken Berwitz

It's a pretty good bet that, unless he unloads a major chunk of his personal fortune, Alan Grayson will be a one-term-and-out congressperson. 

Graysonbarely won in 2008, as a Democrat in a usually-Republican district who was swept in with Obama.  But his big, vile, viciously offensive mouth makes enemies every time he opens it.

Here is the latest affront to good taste and adult behavior:

 Alan Grayson's camp defends 'whore' remark

A spokesman for Rep. Alan Grayson is defending the Florida Democrat’s use of the word “whore” to describe a female official at the Federal Reserve, pointing to a secondary dictionary definition to argue that Grayson meant only that the woman had sold her soul for financial gain.

“The attack was on her professional career, not her personal life,” Grayson spokesman Todd Jurkowski wrote in an e-mail to POLITICO. “The second definition of ‘whore’ in the American Heritage Dictionary is 'A person considered as having compromised principles for personal gain.’

“I think a reasonable person could believe that a person who was paid to promote and defend Enron has 'compromised principles for personal gain.'”

Jurkowski was responding to the outrage – from both sides of the aisle – that came after Republicans circulated a clip Monday of Grayson calling Linda Robertson, an aide to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, a “K Street whore” in a radio interview last month.

Robertson lobbied for Enron, the Clinton Treasury Department and Johns Hopkins University before going to work for Bernanke; Jurkowski said his boss was simply making a point about Robertson’s prior work.

"She had the audacity to attack a congressman who used to be an economist. She's a career lobbyist who used to work for Enron and advocates for whatever she gets paid to promote," Jurkowski said.

The online version of the American Heritage Dictionary actually lists three definitions for the word “whore”: “1. A prostitute. 2. A person considered sexually promiscuous. 3. A person considered as having compromised principles for personal gain.”

It's the second time in recent weeks that a Grayson aide has cited a less-incendiary meaning for a word to try to put out a political fire Grayson lit by using strong language.

In a House floor speech earlier this month, Grayson blamed Republicans for the current state of the health care system, which he referred to as a "holocaust in America."

He was rebuked by the Anti-Defamation League and offered an apology for his remarks, but staff for Grayson, who is Jewish, insisted he was using the small-h "holocaust" rather than the capital-h "Holocaust" that refers to the Nazis’ murder of 6 million Jews.

Several of Grayson's colleagues, including House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) have said his comments about Robertson were uncalled for.

Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) called them "a bit extreme and rather sexist."

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) said Monday night that Grayson is "one fry short of a Happy Meal," but changed his tune a bit after speaking to his Florida colleague about the matter.

"Alan Grayson is a friend and an extraordinary member of Congress. No obviously playful comment from me should distract from the important role Rep. Grayson has played in focusing on the true and tragic costs of our broken health care system," Weiner said in a statement e-mailed to POLITICO. "He is a leader and a patriot."

Todd Jurkowski can dissemble all he wants.  So can any other jurkowski who would speak for what Grayson said.  But it is what it is.

I have a great idea.  Maybe Alan Grayson can consider the possibility that if he would just shut that vile, filth-laden mouth of his a little more he wouldn't need some jurkowski to lamely try explaining his vile filth away.

Ken Berwitz

Here, courtesy of Sammy Benoit at www.yidwithlid.blogspot.com, is another example of Robert "Baghdad Bob" Gibbs trying to stumble, jumble and mumble through another lie on behalf of the administration he flaks for:

Monday, October 26, 2009

CHENEY VINDICATED: Press Secretary Gibbs Admits Obama Got Bush's Afghan Review

Two weeks ago, Obama's hit men Axelrod and Emanuel went after the Bush administration on Afghanistan claiming the Bush team's efforts were adrift, they did not ask any key questions about the war in Afghanistan, and that Obama officials had to form a strategy from scratch.

Emanuel told CNN that the president is "asking the questions that have never been asked on the civilian side, the political side, the military side and the strategic side."

"It's clear that basically we had a war for eight years that was going on, that's adrift, that we're beginning at scratch, just at the starting point…and that there's not a security force, an army, and the types of services that are important for the Afghans to become a true partner."

 

 Last week Cheney fought back:

 

Recently, President Obama’s advisors have decided that it’s easier to blame the Bush Administration than support our troops. This weekend they leveled a charge that cannot go unanswered. The President’s chief of staff claimed that the Bush Administration hadn’t asked any tough questions about Afghanistan, and he complained that the Obama Administration had to start from scratch to put together a strategy.

 

In the fall of 2008, fully aware of the need to meet new challenges being posed by the Taliban, we dug into every aspect of Afghanistan policy, assembling a team that traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan, reviewing options and recommendations, and briefing President-elect Obama’s team. They asked us not to announce our findings publicly, and we agreed, giving them the benefit of our work and the benefit of the doubt. The new strategy they embraced in March, with a focus on counterinsurgency and an increase in the numbers of troops, bears a striking resemblance to the strategy we passed to them. They made a decision – a good one, I think – and sent a commander into the field to implement it.

 

Real Clear Politics is reporting today that the Bush administration did indeed present a totally revamped Afghanistan Plan to the Obama Team:

Gibbs Tries to Defuse Rahm's Bomb. He Fails.
Posted by Tom Bevan 

In the press gaggle aboard Air Force One this afternoon, White House Press Secretary Gibbs admitted the Obama administration received and was briefed on the Bush team's review of Afghanistan.

 

Gibbs said he can't talk about it because the review is top secret -except to say that "some of the information was helpful" to President Obama. Gibbs concluded by saying the existence of the review wasn't the real issue anyway.
Here's the exchange:

 

Q    The Afghan review that the Bush administration -- or Cheney says was handed off to your administration, you said last week you would go and look at that.  What did you find when you did that, when you went and looked for the report?  Did they hand it off, and what did it say?

 

MR. GIBBS:  Well, I -- well, it's top secret, so I appreciate the opportunity to get into what it says.  Many members of our administration briefed people on the review's existence.  I don't think what was -- I don't think what's --

Q    Was your administration briefed?

MR. GIBBS:  With people that -- it's been public that we got these reviews.  I mean, we can show articles where these things are discussed.

While some of the information was helpful, the President obviously found it instructive to do a review of his own, and that's what Bruce Riedel did in the spring, which led to the President signing off on additional forces that went to Afghanistan.

I don't think it's the existence of the reviews that seems to be an issue here, Jon.  I think it's a focus on one area of the world at the expense of another.

 

For the record, this is what Emanuel told John King on October 18:

 

And when you go through all the analysis, it's clear that basically we had a war for eight years that was going on, that's adrift. That we're beginning at scratch, and just from the starting point, after eight years.

 

And:

 

You have literally got into a situation, is there another way you can do this? And the president is asking the questions that have never been asked on the civilian side, the political side, the military side, and the strategic side. What is the impact on the region? What can the Afghan government do or not do? Where are we on the police training? Who would be better doing the police training? Could that be something the Europeans do? Should we take the military side? Those are the questions that have not been asked. And before you commit troops, which is -- not irreversible, but puts you down a certain path -- before you make that decision, there's a set of questions that have to have answers that have never been asked. And it's clear after eight years of war, that's basically starting from the beginning, and those questions never got asked.

 

All emphasis added.  Contra Gibbs, it's pretty clear Emanuel was saying that Bush's team hadn't done squat on Afghanistan: they hadn't asked any tough questions or conducted any analysis of tactics and strategy. They basically threw the problem in Obama's lap, forcing him to "start from scratch." It's also pretty clear, as we now know, that just wasn't true.

Another blatant lie.  And another instance of our wonderful "neutral" media aiding and abetting the lie. 

Like the title of this blog says...(YAWN).  It appears to be media's ongoing policy that Barack Obama and his people can lie to their heart's content.  No problem at all.

But listen to them squeal like stuck pigs if you call them biased.

Ken Berwitz

How do you feel about illegal aliens having not just the same rights and latitudes as legals, but more of them?

If you oppose this idea, we are in agreement - no matter where you live.  But if you happen to live in San Francisco, you must be spitting blood altogether.

Columnist Debra J. Saunders explains:

 License To Drive While Unlicensed

A Commentary By Debra J. Saunders

 

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Mayor Gavin Newsom's office has argued that San Francisco's "sanctuary city" policy protects undocumented immigrants who are otherwise law-abiding residents.

 

But as The Chronicle's Phil Matier and Andrew Ross reported Monday, San Francisco has a new policy starting on Nov. 1 that prevents city cops from automatically impounding cars driven by giving never-licensed drivers 20 minutes to find someone with a valid license to drive their car. Only if an unlicensed driver is caught again within six months, is there an automatic 30-day impound, which can cost around $2,500.

 

So otherwise law-abiding residents now refers to people who only violate federal immigration law and the state law that requires that drivers have valid licenses. (And auto insurance.)

 

Consider it a sop to the pro-illegal immigrant lobby, which has been angered by the Newsom decision to allow SFPD to notify federal immigration officials when illegal immigrant juveniles are arrested on felony charges. After all, Newsom is running for governor.

 

"We recognize that this is a problem within the Hispanic community, where people working here can't get a driver's license because of their immigration status," Police Chief George Gascon told Matier and Ross.

 

Gascon told me that the new policy should not be confused with a get-out-of-jail free card. Unlicensed drivers will be cited and subject to fine. "We're stopping them from driving. We're replacing a licensed and uninsured driver with a licensed and insured driver," said the chief.

 

Except that they'll be letting unlicensed drivers keep their cars -- after they have been chauffeured home by a licensed pal.

 

Gascon also argued that the new policy should discourage unlicensed drivers from fleeing the scene of an accident. He also believes that locals will buy better vehicles -- not "throwaway cars" -- if they believe they can keep them.

 

Great. Now cross your fingers and hope that you aren't in an accident with an unlicensed driver. The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety updated its study of fatal accidents last year and found that from 2001 through 2005, 20 percent of fatal car crashes involved one or more unlicensed or improperly licensed drivers. In California, 29 percent of fatal crashes involved an unlicensed or invalidly licensed driver. Now, 1,964 those drivers had their licenses suspended or revoked, but 1,802 were simply unlicensed, while 1,200 were unknown -- which often means they fled the scene. Those folks should not have been behind the wheel.

 

Gascon asserts that the new policy "has nothing to do with immigration per se" -- as it also could apply to people who can't afford to get a license or undergo driver training. "It's a much broader population."

 

OK, but there is another "broader" population -- people who ride the bus. If this were the desert, you might understand the argument that people need their cars to get to work. But this is San Francisco -- with BART, cable cars and Muni. If Newsom and company don't think people without licenses should be limited to the bus, then why spend more than $700 million on public transit each year?

 

Talk to City Hall about how expensive it is to park, and city solons will tell you there is no right to drive. But if you break federal immigration law, they'll work on it.

Isn't that special?  If you're an illegal and you decide to drive without a license you have a go-free pass, courtesy of Mayor Gavin Newsom and those wonderful folks at San(ctuary) Francisco.

That means the illegals who have no right to be there and who either are taking jobs that legals could have gotten or siphoning off social services at taxpayers' expense, can also drive cars without licenses, and they don't have a care in the world about doing so.

I have a question for Mayor Newsom and the other geniuses who are in on this policy:  Forgetting the apparently trifling matter of legality, does it occur to them that people without drivers' licenses may not know how to drive?  May not know the rules of the road?  May do things in a car that someone who has gone through driver training would not do?  And that those actions might be responsible for a great many of the accidents and casualties associated with illegals who drive?

I do not wish a car accident or an injury - possibly even death - on anyone.  Let me say that again:  I do not wish a car accident or an injury - possibly even death - on anyone.

BUT, if it is going to happen, let it happen to one or more of the people who inflicted this policy on San Francisco, its citizens and its legal visitors.  They're the ones who sanctioned it; let them be the ones to suffer its consequences.

Ken Berwitz

Here is the first part of a terrific piece by Josh Gerstein, writing for www.politico.com.  It talks about how different press coverage for Barack Obama is, compared his predecessor, George Bush:

What if George W. Bush had done that?

 By JOSH GERSTEIN | 10/27/09 5:02 AM EDT

A four-hour stop in New Orleans, on his way to a $3 million fundraiser.

Snubbing the Dalai Lama.

Signing off on a secret deal with drug makers.

Freezing out a TV network.

Doing more fundraisers than the last president. More golf, too.

President Barack Obama has done all of those things — and more.

What’s remarkable is what hasn’t happened. These episodes haven’t become metaphors for Obama’s personal and political character — or consuming controversies that sidetracked the rest of his agenda.

It’s a sign that the media’s echo chamber can be a funny thing, prone to the vagaries of news judgment, and an illustration that, in politics, context is everything.

Conservatives look on with a mix of indignation and amazement and ask: Imagine the fuss if George W. Bush had done these things?

And quickly add, with a hint of jealousy: How does Obama get away with it?

“We have a joke about it. We’re going to start a website: IfBushHadDoneThat.com,” former Bush counselor Ed Gillespie said. “The watchdogs are curled up around his feet, sleeping soundly. ... There are countless examples: some silly, some serious.”

Indeed, Bush got grief for secret meetings with the oil industry, politicizing the White House and spending too much time on his beloved bike. But it’s not just Republicans who notice. Media observers note that the president often gets kid-glove treatment from the press, fellow Democrats and, particularly, interest groups on the left — Bush’s loudest critics, Obama’s biggest backers.

But others say there’s a larger phenomenon at work — in the story line the media wrote about Obama’s presidency. For Bush, the theme was that of a Big Business Republican who rode the family name to the White House, so stories about secret energy meetings and a certain laziness, intellectual and otherwise, fit neatly into the theme, to be replayed over and over again.

Obama’s story line was more positive from the start: historic newcomer coming to shake up Washington. So the negatives that sprung up around Obama — like a sense that he was more flash than substance — track what negative coverage he’s received, captured in a recent “Saturday Night Live” skit that made fun of his lack of accomplishments in office.

“There may well be almost an unconscious effort on the part of the media to give Obama a bit more slack because he is more likable, because he is the first African-American president. That plays into it,” said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political analyst at the University of Southern California.

Democrats find the complaints of Obama “getting a pass” hard to stomach in light of the way the press treated Bush — particularly on the single biggest mistake of his presidency, relying on the faulty intelligence leading up to the war in Iraq. Now, Obama’s aides say, the positive coverage simply reflects the fact that their efforts are succeeding.

“As our administration makes progress on the agenda that Washington has ignored for too long, we expect we’ll get some news coverage of that progress that we like and some tough coverage that we don’t,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. “It’s not unlike the New Orleans Saints, who are getting lots of good coverage of their perfect record so far — certainly better coverage than the [2-5] Redskins — but it doesn’t mean the Saints have liked every story that’s been written about them since training camp.  It goes with the territory.”

I love it.  These guys are telling us that Barack Obama's almost unbroken chain of positive news coverage (until a few minor chinks developed just recently) isn't media bias, it is that he has just been that good.

In addition to the list provided by Josh Gerstein: 

-We're trillions more into debt, the unemployment rate that the debt was supposed to stop in its tracks is up 20%;

-Violence in Iraq has increased significantly (now that the enemy knows we are leaving and has been given a timetable for it);

-Violence in Afghanistan is up significantly (as President Obama dithers for months on sending the troops his own commanding general told him were imperative to the war effort);

-Health care is a political catastrophe;

-Cap and trade is virtually dead until next year;

-The swine flu vaccine we were assured was in plentiful supply is, in reality, woefully short. 

Are these the "successes" Democrats are talking about?

I don't know about you, but I don't much like it when someone pees on my head and tells me it's raining.  And when these guys tell us that Barack Obama's ridiculously positive press coverage is because he has been successful so far, they are peeing on my head and telling me it's raining.

Maybe the elections next month, few though they may be, will give our wonderful "neutral" media a more tangible hint that, even if they're still hot and heavy, the voters' love affair with Barack Obama is on the skids.

We'll see.

Ken Berwitz

What does Bob Lonsberry have in common with Cass Sunstein?

The answer is that both have belief sets that are far from mine (Lonsberry to the right, Sunstein to the left) but both have at least one position that I strongly agree with.

Last week I talked about how much I agreed with Sunstein's position on government involvement in marriage (he and I both feel government should not be in the marriage business at all).  Today I want to show you Lonsberry's excellent column on the "Public Option" fraud that is about to be foisted on what Democrats hope is an unsuspecting, wholly gullible nation. And they may be right, too.

Here is the column:

OPT OUT IS A SENATE CON

What a con.

 

The opt-out clause they’re putting on the public option in the Senate, what a bald-faced con. This is a fraud with a capital F.

 

I’ll explain, but first let me define the terms.

 

The “public option” is Democratspeak for the government getting into the insurance business. It taxes you, it collects a premium, and then it gives you crappy health care -- after a long wait. “Opt out” is something new they thought of over the weekend. It says that the public option would be, well, an option, and that individual states could opt out of it. They could decide, by a vote of their legislature, that they don’t want their residents to be clients of the federal public option.

 

The opt-out provision lets Democrat senators from moderate or conservative states go home and tell their constituents that they didn’t vote for the public option for their particular state. These senators can pretend to oppose it while simultaneously supporting it.

 

But like I said, it’s all a con. Nothing more than a shell game intended to pull the wool over the eyes of the American people. If the opt-out option goes forward, it is the same as imposing the public option on the entire country.

There are three reasons why I say that.

 

The first is that while a state may choose not to benefit by the public option, it may not choose not to pay for the public option. The operating deficits of the public option -- and there will be operating deficits -- will be made up out of the public treasury. Residents of all the states pay income taxes which go into the public treasury. The same is true of all other federal taxes, on individuals, businesses and transactions. It all goes into one pot.

 

So everybody pays for the public option, even if they or their state choose not to benefit by it.

 

The second reason is like the first.

 

The public option is essentially a false insurance plan offered by the federal government. False in that, unlike real insurance, it won’t be a shared-risk pool, it will be an indemnification. It won’t have to balance its books, it won’t have to operate in the black. It will be playing by a different set of rules -- most significantly the rule that it can suck money out of the treasury any time it wants. It will quack like a duck, but bite like a tiger -- especially if you’re a real insurance company.

 

The public option won’t compete with real insurance companies, it will undercut them. It will “sell” health-care coverage at a loss and destabilize the real insurance companies that try to match its premiums.

 

And that’s no good. First, because most of us rightly trust our insurance company more than we trust our government. Second, because the insurance-company money lost in the opt-in states will have to be made up in the opt-out states.

 

So in an opt-out state, not only will you have to pay taxes to support a program you don’t use, you’ll have to pay higher insurance premiums to bolster a company being gutted by the public option.

 

Thus far, opt-out is a lose-lose -- and we haven’t even gotten to the Constitution yet.