Ken Berwitz

I do not own the words to describe my feeling when reading this story, excerpted from Fox News:

NEW YORK — Without fanfare, the United Nations this week elected Iran to its Commission on the Status of Women, handing a four-year seat on the influential human rights body to a theocratic state in which stoning is enshrined in law and lashings are required for women judged "immodest."

Just days after Iran abandoned a high-profile bid for a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council, it began a covert campaign to claim a seat on the Commission on the Status of Women, which is "dedicated exclusively to gender equality and advancement of women," according to its website.

Buried 2,000 words deep in a U.N. press release distributed Wednesday on the filling of "vacancies in subsidiary bodies," was the stark announcement: Iran, along with representatives from 10 other nations, was "elected by acclamation," meaning that no open vote was requested or required by any member states — including the United States. FOXNews.com learned of the press release only after being alerted to it by Anne Bayefsky director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust.

The U.S. currently holds one of the 45 seats on the body, a position set to expire in 2012. The U.S. Mission to the U.N. did not return requests for comment on whether it actively opposed elevating Iran to the women's commission.

Iran's election comes just a week after one of its senior clerics declared that women who wear revealing clothing are to blame for earthquakes, a statement that created an international uproar — but little affected their bid to become an international arbiter of women's rights.

And let's not forget that the Iranian government, just this week, has also ordered that women who are suntanned must be arrested and imprisoned for "defying islamic values".  So help me.

I have often characterized the UN as morally, spritually and ethically dead.  If this doesn't prove it to you, I give up.

And how do you like the US mission not responding when asked whether it opposed Iran for the women's commission?

What good do we think will come of this?  Wasn't it bad enough that we left the freedom protesters twisting in the wind last year, and won't act decisively to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear arms, which obviously puts Israel in grave danger? 

Now we're throwing women under the bus too? 

Does this administration even begin to know what it is doing?

Ken Berwitz

The latest data (subject to subsequent adjustment, as always) show our economy grew at a rate of 3.2%.

Is that great?  Good?  Not so good? Stagnant?  What?

Here Ed Morrissey's take on it, excerpted from hotair.com:

Er, come again?

The White House crowed endlessly about the 2009Q4 annualized GDP growth rate of 5.7% in January, even after most of it was shown to come from inventory adjustments. Now Barack Obama wants to treat today’s announcement of a 3.2% annualized GDP growth rate as a continuing improvement, when (a) it failed to meet analyst expectations of 3.5%, and (b) it’s a significant drop from the last report.

Obviously. A 3.2% annualized GDP growth rate is better than the -6.0% of a year ago, but it’s still not a figure that will create the kind of economic expansion that will move large numbers of Americans from unemployment rolls to payrolls. Even the White House acknowledges that much in its own projections of unemployment. Despite Obama’s claims above, we still aren’t at a level of net job creation, and the continuing status of initial jobless claims in the mid-400K range means we’re not even getting close to break-even yet.

Does Ed have a point?

You tell me.

Ken Berwitz

President Barack Obama, speaking from the Rose Garden, today:

“We're moving forward. Our economy is stronger.  That economic heartbeat is growing stronger.”

Vice President Joe Biden, speaking at a rally in Colorado, also today:

My grandpop used to have an expression….when a guy up in Dixon City, which is just north of Scranton is out of work, he said, it’s an economic slowdown.  He said when your brother in law is out of work it’s a recession.  And when you’re out of work it’s a depression.  And, ladies and gentlemen, it’s been a depression.  And still is.

Not for nothing do I call him Jackass Joe.

Ken Berwitz

Yesterday Charlie Crist announced he was leaving the Republican party and filing as an independent to run for the US Senate.

Well, here is what he said On Chris Wallace's Sunday Morning show just one month ago (on March 28th):

WALLACE:  Here is your chance to dispel all the rumors.  Are you willing to pledge, right here, right now, that you will run in the Republican primary for the US senate and not run as an independent?

CRIST:  I’m running as a Republican.  I’m very proud to be from the party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, others that really have stood up for the principles of our party, like Ronald Reagan.  Uh, this is a great party, it has a great future, we have a great opportunity to win in November, it’s important that we put a candidate up that can win in November…

WALLACE:  So are you ruling out that you will file as an independent by the April 30^th deadline?

CRIST:  That’s right, that’s right.  I’m running as a Republican.

WALLACE:  You will run, not for Governor, you’ll run for Senate, and you will run as a, in the Republican primary?

CRIST:  Chris, I’m running for the United States Senate.  I know that our country needs help.  I’m running as a Republican.  This man to my left is a friend, but I hope to defeat him on August the 24^th and I would encourage every Florida Republican to get out and vote.

WALLACE:  Will you support the winner of the GOP primary whether it’s you or Marco Rubio?

CRIST:  Of course I will, of course I will.  But I think before that decision is made…

MATTHEWS:  I’m gonna get…. I just want to say though, you are saying you are going to run in the Republican primary for the US senate, you will not run on the no party affiliation line.

CRIST:  That’s right, that’s right.

If you want to see this on video, just click here.

Oh, and the millions he got as a Republican candidate for the Senate?  Now that he isn't running Republican, and demands are being made from contributors that he give back the money?  Maybe he will and maybe he won't.  

This guy is some piece of sh...er, work.

What a liar.

Ken Berwitz

raul grijalva is an elected member of the house of representatives.  But his demeanor, his positions and his reaction to questions regarding illegal immigration make me wonder which country he thinks that house is in - the US or Mexico.

Click here to see an example of how he handles a question about the immense amount of drug trafficking across the Mexican border.

And this is by no means the only example of grijalva's attitude regarding the fact that - at least on paper - we have a border.

It makes me sick that he is an elected official of the USA.

Ken Berwitz

I blogged about this utter insanity last year.  But since Monica Showalter of Investors Business Daily has written an excellent piece about it today, I thought I would put up an excerpt to remind you of what is being done in the name of "environmentalism".

Ken Berwitz

The Today Show did a segment this morning about the dangers of texting (or playing with an iPod or doing other kinds of "multitasking" while driving). 

Last August, the UK put out a video that addressed this issue.  It was the single most realistic - and gruesome - and educational "warning" video I have ever seen in my life.

This would be as good a time as any to repost that blog.  So here it is below. 

And I warn you:  It is heart-wrenchingly real.

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

TEXTING WHILE DRIVING

Ken Berwitz Warning:  You'll need a strong stomach for this.  I'm not kidding. A video about texting while driving has been created in the UK.  I saw a small segment of it on The O'Reilly Factor last night.  But the full video runs about 4:15 minutes, and is so realistic, so harrowing, so wrenching, that you'll have to keep reminding yourself that the people are actors. Its intent is to get through to teens (and adults too) just how dangerous it is to text while driving.  Believe me, it does just that. You can see the video below - or, if you have trouble doing so, by clicking here.  Prepare to be emotionally affected by it.  Because you will be.

Ken Berwitz

Congratulations to Ann Curry of the Today Show.  She has jumped into the lead for the dumbest, most partisan "journalistic" question of the year.

Curry was interviewing Coast Guard Rear Admiral Sally Brice-O'Hara, who is involved in monitoring and addressing the awful oil spill which threatens, among other places, the Louisiana coastline. 

For a while the questions were reasonable and logical.  But this is Ann Curry and the Today Show.  So - how can you be surprised - we then got the following question:

"What are your orders from the President, from President Obama, given, as the Washington Post notes, he won election in part on the belief that he would do a better job than the previous administration did on Hurricane Katrina?"

What world does Ann Curry (and, for that matter, the Washington Post) exist in?  Not the same one I do.  Where is there a comparison between these two events? 

Help me out here.  Tell me how I'm wrong if I say that:

-Hurricane Katrina was a huge, immensely destructive storm that hit New Orleans and a wide area extending past Biloxi Mississippi with full force.  It flooded and decimated entire areas of those cities - especially New Orleans - leaving hundreds of thousands of people homeless and helpless.  And neither the Mayor of New Orleans nor the Governor of Louisiana did a thing to aid FEMA even though, on paper, they are supposed to be the first and second responders, with FEMA kicking in at #3 position;

-The oil spill was a single incident in a single place.  The weather has been perfect and presents no problem to any remedial efforts.  No neighborhoods have been destroyed and no people are homeless.  The government has had a week to strategize, prepare and address the oil slicks which, to this moment, have not so much as come to shore, let alone damaged anything there.  But when they do (which seems inevitable) there will have been ample time for everyone to calmly, deliberately get ready for them as best they can.

Do these two events look comparable to you?  Even remotely so?

Me neither. 

But they certainly gave the Today Show a chance to dump on President Bush and extol President Obama, didn't they?

Note to Ms. Curry:  Let me know how the Obama administration makes out the next time a hurricane takes New Orleans and Biloxi apart.  And try, along with your pals at the Today Show, to show some journalistic integrity. 

Ken Berwitz

Our pal West Coast Russ is at it again.

He sent me this just a little while ago:

It's Hell to be Old 

 

An 85-year-old man was requested by his doctor for a sperm count as part of his physical exam.

 

The doctor gave the man a jar and said, 'Take this jar home and bring back a semen sample tomorrow.'

 

The next day the old man reappeared at the doctor's office  and gave him the jar, which was as clean and empty as on the  previous day.

 

The doctor asked what happened and the  man explained, 'Well, doc,  it's like this -- first I tried with my right hand,  but nothing.  Then I tried with my left hand, but still nothing. 

 

'Then I asked my wife for help.  She tried with her right hand, then with her left, still nothing.  She tried with her mouth, first with the teeth in, then with her teeth out, still nothing. 

 

'We even called up the lady next door and she tried too,  first with both hands, then an armpit, and she even tried squeezin' it between her knees, but still  nothing.'

 

The doctor was shocked! 'You asked your neighbor?' 

 

The old man replied, 'Yep, none of us could get the jar open.' 

Where does he get this stuff?

Who cares.  It's funny.

Ken Berwitz

Here, excerpted from her latest column, is Ann Coulter's explanation of which party is in Wall Street's pocket - and the disconnect between fact and fiction on this subject:

In 2008, Goldman employees gave a record-breaking $1,007,370 to the Obama campaign.

This year, the "securities and investment" industry has already given twice as much money to the Democrats as to the Republicans.

ABC News reports that "the five biggest hedge fund donors all gave almost all their donations to Democrats." Among the biggest recipients of hedge fund money were Senators Harry Reid (Democrat), Chris Dodd (Democrat) and Charles Schumer (Democrat).

Even with the evidence right in front of their eyes, people still believe that it's the Republicans who are in Wall Street's pocket.

How out of touch with reality would a comedy writer have to be to write the following joke for Jay Leno this week: "The head of Goldman Sachs was going through security and was asked to empty his pockets -- and five Republican senators fell out."

Why didn't Barack Obama or Chuck Schumer fall out? Why not Rahm Emanuel, who worked for Goldman? Or Greg Craig, who used to work for Obama but just took a job with Goldman?

The fact that anyone laughed at that joke proves that Republicans have a serious PR problem.

Good for ABC News.  But what about the others?  What about the "comedy" writers of late night TV? 

So much easier to just pick the side you don't like and play lets-pretend.....

Ken Berwitz

This piece, from London's Daily Mail, gives us a glimpse into how the UK National Health Service (NHS) is handling things:

Her 'loyal and devoted' service as a Land Girl in the Second World War won her praise from Gordon Brown.

 

But this is the horrifyingly undignified state in which Clara Stokes had to live out her last days on an NHS ward.

 

Helpless and confused after suffering a stroke, the 84-year-old was left dehydrated, hungry and lying in her own faeces in a hospital bed for six hours. Relatives claim overworked nurses had ignored her.

 

 

 

 

 

Clara Stokes, 84, was left dehydrated, hungry and lying in her own faeces by overworked nurses at Luton and Dunstable Hospital

 

Her daughter, Elle Chambers, photographed her plight and kept notes on her treatment during daily visits to the Luton and Dunstable Hospital.

 

The hospital has foundation status  -  a title given to NHS flagships. But Mrs Chambers, 57, was so appalled by the 'inhumane' conditions her mother endured that she has written to the Prime Minister.

Take a good look.  Because this may well be our future.

When has government ever run anything better than or as well as the private sector?  Never, that's when.

But, despite virtually every poll showing the people of the United States did not want it, Barack Obama and his lopsidedly Democratic congress have handed us ObamaCare.

I hope against hope that this isn't what will happen here.  But I have no confidence at all that we will escape it.

A little something for you to think about this coming November....

Ken Berwitz

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown is on an apology tour because, after speaking to a woman with the cameras rolling and a mike attached to him, he got into a car - forgetting that the mike was still attached - and called her bigoted.

Guess what?  I watched their exchange and came to the same conclusion.  She sounded like she had it in for immigrants from Eastern Europe which, evidently, is exactly what Brown thought.

How ironic that, at least to me, his apology is far more egregious than what he said. 

Grow a set of balls, Mr. Brown.  Instead of grovelling, how about standing up for your honest reaction to what you (and I and, I strongly suspect, countless others) heard?  In a situation like this, you can gain a lot more votes by being honest than by pandering. 

Do you have a problem with being honest?

Ken Berwitz

Did Charlie Crist really try to contact Rahm Emanuel, presumably to see if he could get Emanuel's if he ran Independent for the Senate?

That's what Lyndsey Lewis says at www.sunshinestatenews.com:

Charlie Crist can't get a break. As the GOP turns up the heat on our beleaguered governor, Crist apparently decided it was time for some pillow talk with the other party.

Too bad top Dems don't have much interest in him, either.

The Atlantic reports that Crist's people tried to get in touch with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's people (you're not anyone these days without a posse). But Emanuel, famous for his no-nonsense attitude, wouldn't take the call.

Maybe Crist would have better luck getting in touch with Joe Lieberman.

Right now, Kendrick Meek - a lifelong Democrat - is the prohibitive favorite to win his party's primary and become the Democratic senate candidate.  Did Charlie Crist truly believe Rahm Emanuel would dump Meek for his cheerful countenance?

Look, Crist has every right to go Indie and try for a win.  But what a mistake if he loses, because it would pretty decisively cut his ties to the Republican Party, thus probably ending his chances for statewide office in the future. 

And the Democratic Party isn't much of an option since, though moderate to liberal by Republican standards, he is anathema to much of the Democratic crowd.  Can you picture, say, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz or Alan Grayson accepting him as one of their own?  I know I can't.

Frankly, unless Crist knows something about his independent prospects that is eluding me and a lot of other people, this doesn't appear to make a lot of sense.  Then again, maybe he does.

Will Crist actually take the plunge?  We'll know before the end of the day. 

But don't expect Rahm Emanuel to be at his side.

Ken Berwitz

On April 21st I wrote an email to Kenneth Bandler, the Director of Communications for the AJC (American Jewish Committee. 

It started by saying:

Mr. Bandler:

 

I just received my AJC Impact email.  And it mentioned that "AJC has applauded the 76 Senators and 333 Representatives who signed letters to Secretary of State Clinton reaffirming the unbreakable bond between the United States and Israel."

 

That's nice.  But has the AJC condemned, or criticized, or even made note of, the 24 senators and 99 Representatives who didn't sign those letters. 

 

Do you even know who they are?

And ended with:

If the AJC is a pro-Israel Jewish advocacy group, It is incomprehensible to me that this is being ignored. 

 

But if the AJC is at least as much a Democratic advocacy group as it is pro-Israel -- enough so that it will look the other way when over one-third of the entire Democratic house membership would not express support for Israel?  Then it is perfectly understandable.  

 

I strongly urge Mr. Harris and the people around him to decide what the AJC is, and just how far it will go to protect people who are telling them in so many words that they are against what the AJC purportedly stands for.

 

 

Sincerely

 

 

Ken Berwitz

At that time I told readers that I would report on whether or not Mr. Bandler responded to me.

It is now over a week later.  And the answer is no.  He did not.

What happened to the AJC anyway?  How did they become so distasteful?  Whatever the reason, I am ignoring their solicitations until the organization reverts back to being what it is supposed to be.

Ken Berwitz

That title is not meant to convey anger at polls in general.  It is meant to convey that some individual polls have an overly ripe odor to them.

Read these excerpts from Ed Morrissey's blog at hotair.com and see for yourself:

WaPo/ABC poll: Dems trusted more than Republicans …

posted at 8:48 am on April 28, 2010 by Ed Morrissey

Just five days ago, Gallup’s quarterly survey showed that the gap in partisan identification and leaners in the general American population had narrowed to a single point, down 12 points over the last year of Hope and Change. At the time, I wondered whether the media pollsters would get the message. I needn’t have wondered. Today’s Washington Post/ABC poll offers Democrats some bad news, but they’ve managed to artificially temper it by actually adding a point to the partisan gap in their sample since the last survey:

Why did Obama and the Democrats still manage to hold more trust over their GOP opponents?  The pollster talked to more of them, that’s how — and more of them than they did in the last poll, relative to Republicans.  In the March 26th poll, the WaPo/ABC sample had a D/R/I split of 34/24/38, giving Democrats a partisan advantage of 10 points in the poll.  This time, the sample’s split went 34/23/38, and even the independents split in favor of the Democrats, 19/17, up from 17/17 last month.  Just to give some perspective, the partisan gap from their November 2008 poll just before the election was nine points — and 26% of the sample was Republicans, compared to 23% now.

Given the expanding partisan gap shown in this poll, small wonder that Obama winds up with more trust than Republicans among respondents.  It’s also no mystery why the WaPo/ABC poll shows Obama adding to his job approval rating, 54/44, when every other pollster has Obama sinking.  That ten-point swing  in the sample makes quite a difference.

It also makes a big difference in the consolation news the Post and ABC offered Democrats.  The 46/32 split for Dems on trust by party shows that Democrats would be considerably narrower than the 14-point lead this survey shows.  The eleven point lead that Obama has over the GOP for trust on the economy would be completely gone, and the 4-point edge Obama enjoys over Republicans on the deficit would have more than reversed itself.

Consider the ten-point partisan gap fudge when looking at these numbers on the issues, too:

• Economy – 49/49 approval
• Health care – 49/49
• Federal deficit – 40/55
• Financial regulation – 48/48

One can see why the WaPo/ABC poll overcounts Democrats.  Without them, Obama’s numbers would utterly collapse.

There are many ways to cook polls.  And one of them is to oversample the group whose opinions you are rooting for.

Is that what the Washington Post did?  You (sniff, sniff) tell me.

Ken Berwitz

Excerpted from an article in USA Today:

It doesn't sound like President Obama is confident that Congress will tackle immigration before the November elections.

 

"I know there may not be an appetite immediately to dive into another controversial issue," Obama told reporters about Air Force One last night. "There's still work that has to be done on energy. Midterms are coming up."

My reaction:   Who do you think you're kidding, Mr. Obama?   If voters were in favor of your position, you would find that there is a voracious appetite to dive into this issue.

And if you think you can sic eric holder on Arizona without being seen as "diving into" the immigration issue, I suggest you think harder.  A lot harder.

Ken Berwitz

The latest data I have seen shows that about 4 million jobs have been lost since implementation of the so-called "stimulus package" and, simultaneously, the Obama administration is trying to take credit for creating 2.2 million new jobs.

These data do not match.  So let's see what the voters think.

The following is excerpted from Andy Barr's blog at politico.com:

Nearly two-thirds of Americans do not believe the $787 billion stimulus package the president passed last year has helped create jobs, according to a new Pew Research Poll.

 

Sixty-two percent of those polled said the stimulus hasn’t contributed to job creation while 33 percent said the package has.

 

Only a slight majority, 51 percent, of Democrats think the stimulus helped create jobs, 42 percent said it has not. Seventy-nine percent of self-identified Republicans said the stimulus didn’t aide job growth while 18 percent think it did.

The survey also showed that voters are mixed on whether the Troubled Asset Relief Program was effective in staving off a deeper financial crisis.

 

Forty-nine percent said TARP did not prevent a more severe crisis, compared to 42 percent who said it did.

If these data are correct, it should be interesting to see what happens when the Obama administration tries to run on how great it has been at creating new jobs and stimulating the economy.

Ken Berwitz

The Republican governor of Arizona, her patience exhausted after waiting and waiting for the federal government to do something about illegal aliens (including the estimated half million or so already sucking her state dry) has signed legislation aimed at removing at least some of the illegals already in her state and preventing more from coming across the Mexican border.

As might be expected, most of our wonderful "neutral" media are treating this as if it were some kind of affront to Mexicans and to immigration - both of which are untrue, since the law doesn't do a thing to law-abiding people of Mexican heritage who are in Arizona legally.

And as also might be expected, the "usual suspect" leftist groups - including groups who demand that there not be borders at all and, in several cases, that states like Arizona be removed from the USA and handed to Mexico in toto - are up in arms.  On May 1, we are told, these groups will mount huge demonstrations against Arizona's new law around the state and around the country:  demonstrations during there will be demands that illegals be given the same rights as people who are here legally.

Now the big question:  What do Democrats do about it?

Here is a hint, excerpted from John L. Work's article at newsrealblog.com:

Obama, Holder, Press Corps, ACLU And The Entire Leftist World Line Up To Crush Jan Brewer And The People Of The State Of Arizona

2010 April 29

 

by John L. Work

 

 Governor Jan Brewer and her constituents in the State of Arizona stand alone now against the amassed powers of the President of The United States, the United State Department of Justice, the American Civil Liberties Union, The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the National Immigration Law Center and other yet unnamed entities determined to break down and destroy our national sovereignty. 

 

It is already a felony to be in this country illegally, but the federal government, from the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and now Barack Obama,  have obstinately refused to protect and secure our borders.  The Arizona legislature, having given up after begging for help, and being rebuffed by the Obama administration, has taken a bold step aimed at saving the sovereignty of the State.

 The Los Angeles Times’ Teresa Watanabe and Anna Gorman filed the following report this morning:

 

 “As the furor over Arizona’s strict new immigration law escalates, immigrant advocates are preparing to move the fight to the courtroom, where their legal challenges have successfully sunk other high-profile laws against illegal migrants.

 

The American Civil Liberties Union, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the National Immigration Law Center are set to announce in Phoenix on Thursday plans to challenge the measure. U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric Holder said this week that he was considering a possible legal challenge to the law.

The law, which is set to take effect in midsummer, makes it a state crime for illegal migrants to be in Arizona, requires police to check for evidence of legal status and bars people from hiring or soliciting work off the streets…

 

 … “The entire country has been galvanized,” said Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center. “People within the legal community are trying to figure out what we can do…. We have seen an enormous amount of energy responding to this.”…

 

Yes.  We are to believe the entire country is galvanized to destroy itself, to commit suicide by leaving its doors open to unchecked invasion and its coffers open to plunder by the invaders.

 

The battle is for votes.  The political Left is determined to take apart and turn The United States into a Third World Socialist/Communist state, but they cannot do it without the votes of the millions of invaders who all studies have shown will side with the Democrat Party.  So, the lines are drawn.  It’s the government of The United States vs. Arizona’s will to survive.

 The Obama administration must crush this move by Arizona to save itself from economic and drug-cartel-related violent destruction before other States in the Union join the revolt and pass their own anti-illegal alien laws.  We will now see all the forces of the Obama Presidency, the submissive American lap-dog major television network media, the printed news outlets, and all the nations of the World who wish our destruction, lined up to assist in beating down this act of defiance in Arizona.

Suppose you are President Obama, and/or the leaders of the Democratic Party.  The mid-term elections are approaching, and a huge segment of the Democratic base is about to go to war against securing our borders and in favor of handing rights to illegal aliens. 

What do you do?

If the answer is to support eric holder and his left wing pals in a legal challenge to Arizona's new law, it is going to be a world-class disaster for the Democratic Party in November. 

It is a virtual certainty that such a position will result in the loss congressional seats. 

Polls show that a significant majority of voters favor serious efforts to secure the borders and remove illegals.  Further - let's be honest here - a disproportionate percentage of people who oppose the Arizona law are Democratic lifers, who would never vote for any other party.  If Democrats fight the Arizona law, therefore, they will not generate very many new votes for Democrats - but will infuriate a ton of voters who support it.  That could mean the loss of a number of congressional seats which otherwise might have been held..

But the alternative - looking the other way and not doing anything about the new Arizona law - will infuriate those same Democratic lifers.  This may not change their voting pattern, but it certainly could affect how many turn out on election day.  And, as in the previous scenario, that could also mean the loss of a number of congressional seats which otherwise might have been held.

You want to see a political minefield?  There's a beaut for you.

Ken Berwitz

How's this for a classic mistake?

By the way, there is no truth to the rumor that before becoming a Black Muslim, Malcolm X's name was Malcolm Ecks.

Ken Berwitz

How does Arizona feel about Governor Jan Brewer since she signed that seriously tough new illegal alien legislation? 

From the usually solid-left Talking Points Memo (www.talkingpoints memo.com):

Though the new immigration law she signed has led to criticism of Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) around the world, a new poll from Rasmussen taken since the bill was signed shows that many people in her state are nothing but appreciative.

Brewer's job approval rating stands at 56% in the poll, a huge bounce from the last Rasmussen poll taken two weeks ago. That poll showed Brewer with a 40% approval rating.

Previous polling shows Brewer's approval rating well below the new Rasmussen numbers. The TPM Poll Average (including the new Rasmussen poll) shows Brewer with an approval rating of 46.3% and a disapproval rating of 43.4.

Now you know.

Oh, by the way, when TPM claims there is "criticism of Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R)..." (note how quick they are to tell you Ms. Brewer's party affiliation), it neglects to mention that the criticism is mostly from politicians and activist groups.   As this poll shows, the people feel very different about it.

Musta been an accidental oversight.

And if you think this is just one pop poll from Arizona, how about the polling done for that liberal/left bastion the New York Times earlier this month (April 5 - 12)?  Here are the two key questions, and respondents' answers to them:

I rest my case.

Ken Berwitz

We just got a DNC email, sent under the name of  New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez (not "Bob" as he signed it - he's no friend of mine). 

It is titled "absurd", and starts with this sentence:

One Republican frontrunner opposes the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

I would love to call him out as a liar on this claim.  But I can only go part way. 

The "frontrunner" Mr. Menendez is referring to, ron paul is not a "frontrunner" of anything.  The fact that in a recent poll he runs about even with Barack Obama doesn't mean he has any chance of winning the Republican nomination for President, any more than he came anywhere near close in 2008.  All it means is that Obama is in an especially weakened state.  Menendez's claim, to use his own word, is "absurd".

But the problem is that Menendez' claim regarding ron paul and the 1964 Civil Rights Act is correct.  It must be, because ron paul voted against extending the act -- the one and only Republican who did so. 

ron paul may be a hero to a segment of misguided Republicans and libertarians, along with some elements of the Tea Partiers. 

Unfortunately, however, he is also a hero to White supremacist and nazi groups, like stormfront - for a good many more reasons than his vote on extending the Civil Rights Act.  That makes him a sack of putrefied excrement to me. 

paul is a serious problem for the Republican Party.

Ken Berwitz

To watch, listen to and read our wonderful "neutral" media's reaction to the new Arizona law regarding illegal aliens, you would swear that it gives the police carte blanche to walk up to anyone on the street and demand to see papers - like a scene right out of a WWII movie.

Well here, courtesy of an excerpt from Byron York's excellent article in the Washington Examiner, is what the law actually says.  The bold print is mine:

Critics have focused on the term "reasonable suspicion" to suggest that the law would give police the power to pick anyone out of a crowd for any reason and force them to prove they are in the U.S. legally. Some foresee mass civil rights violations targeting Hispanics.

What fewer people have noticed is the phrase "lawful contact," which defines what must be going on before police even think about checking immigration status. "That means the officer is already engaged in some detention of an individual because he's violated some other law," says Kris Kobach, a University of Missouri Kansas City Law School professor who helped draft the measure. "The most likely context where this law would come into play is a traffic stop."

As far as "reasonable suspicion" is concerned, there is a great deal of case law dealing with the idea, but in immigration matters, it means a combination of circumstances that, taken together, cause the officer to suspect lawbreaking. It's not race -- Arizona's new law specifically says race and ethnicity cannot be the sole factors in determining a reasonable suspicion.

For example: "Arizona already has a state law on human smuggling," says Kobach. "An officer stops a group of people in a car that is speeding. The car is overloaded. Nobody had identification. The driver acts evasively. They are on a known smuggling corridor." That is a not uncommon occurrence in Arizona, and any officer would reasonably suspect that the people in the car were illegal. Under the new law, the officer would get in touch with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to check on their status.

But what if the driver of the car had shown the officer his driver's license? The law clearly says that if someone produces a valid Arizona driver's license, or other state-issued identification, they are presumed to be here legally. There's no reasonable suspicion.

Is having to produce a driver's license too burdensome? These days, natural-born U.S. citizens, and everybody else, too, are required to show a driver's license to get on an airplane, to check into a hotel, even to purchase some over-the-counter allergy medicines. If it's a burden, it's a burden on everyone.

Still, critics worry the law would force some people to carry their papers, just like in an old movie. The fact is, since the 1940s, federal law has required non-citizens in this country to carry, on their person, the documentation proving they are here legally -- green card, work visa, etc. That hasn't changed.

Ok.  Now you know the real story. 

But God help you if you bring it up in a discussion with someone who "knows" that Arizona police can randomly pick on Mexicans at will.  Prepare to be called every name in the book.

Ken Berwitz

I am trying to post only excerpts from other people's blogs these days.  But this one is going to be posted verbatim**. 

Here is Michelle Malkin's latest column, which details how Mexico treats non-citizen visitors (not just illegals).  It is fully referenced, and is a textbook lesson in the hypocrisy that permeates this issue :

How Mexico treats illegal aliens
by Michelle Malkin

 

Mexican President Felipe Calderon has accused Arizona of opening the door “to intolerance, hate, discrimination and abuse in law enforcement.” But Arizona has nothing on Mexico when it comes to cracking down on illegal aliens. While open-borders activists decry new enforcement measures signed into law in “Nazi-zona” last week, they remain deaf, dumb or willfully blind to the unapologetically restrictionist policies of our neighbors to the south.

 

The Arizona law bans sanctuary cities that refuse to enforce immigration laws, stiffens penalties against illegal alien day laborers and their employers, makes it a misdemeanor for immigrants to fail to complete and carry an alien registration document, and allows the police to arrest immigrants unable to show documents proving they are in the U.S. legally. If those rules constitute the racist, fascist, xenophobic, inhumane regime that the National Council of La Raza, Al Sharpton, Catholic bishops and their grievance-mongering followers claim, then what about these regulations and restrictions imposed on foreigners?

– The Mexican government will bar foreigners if they upset “the equilibrium of the national demographics.” How’s that for racial and ethnic profiling?

 

– If outsiders do not enhance the country’s “economic or national interests” or are “not found to be physically or mentally healthy,” they are not welcome. Neither are those who show “contempt against national sovereignty or security.” They must not be economic burdens on society and must have clean criminal histories. Those seeking to obtain Mexican citizenship must show a birth certificate, provide a bank statement proving economic independence, pass an exam and prove they can provide their own health care.

 

– Illegal entry into the country is equivalent to a felony punishable by two years’ imprisonment. Document fraud is subject to fine and imprisonment; so is alien marriage fraud. Evading deportation is a serious crime; illegal re-entry after deportation is punishable by ten years’ imprisonment. Foreigners may be kicked out of the country without due process and the endless bites at the litigation apple that illegal aliens are afforded in our country (see, for example, President Obama’s illegal alien aunt — a fugitive from deportation for eight years who is awaiting a second decision on her previously rejected asylum claim).

 

– Law enforcement officials at all levels — by national mandate — must cooperate to enforce immigration laws, including illegal alien arrests and deportations. The Mexican military is also required to assist in immigration enforcement operations. Native-born Mexicans are empowered to make citizens’ arrests of illegal aliens and turn them in to authorities.

 

– Ready to show your papers? Mexico’s National Catalog of Foreigners tracks all outside tourists and foreign nationals. A National Population Registry tracks and verifies the identity of every member of the population, who must carry a citizens’ identity card. Visitors who do not possess proper documents and identification are subject to arrest as illegal aliens.

All of these provisions are enshrined in Mexico’s Ley General de Población (General Law of the Population) and were spotlighted in a 2006 research paper published by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Security Policy. There’s been no public clamor for “comprehensive immigration reform” in Mexico, however, because pro-illegal alien speech by outsiders is prohibited.

 

Consider: Open-borders protesters marched freely at the Capitol building in Arizona, comparing GOP Gov. Jan Brewer to Hitler, waving Mexican flags, advocating that demonstrators “Smash the State,” and holding signs that proclaimed “No human is illegal” and “We have rights.”

But under the Mexican constitution, such political speech by foreigners is banned. Noncitizens cannot “in any way participate in the political affairs of the country.” In fact, a plethora of Mexican statutes enacted by its congress limit the participation of foreign nationals and companies in everything from investment, education, mining and civil aviation to electric energy and firearms. Foreigners have severely limited private property and employment rights (if any).

 

As for abuse, the Mexican government is notorious for its abuse of Central American illegal aliens who attempt to violate Mexico’s southern border. The Red Cross has protested rampant Mexican police corruption, intimidation and bribery schemes targeting illegal aliens there for years. Mexico didn’t respond by granting mass amnesty to illegal aliens, as it is demanding that we do. It clamped down on its borders even further. In late 2008, the Mexican government launched an aggressive deportation plan to curtain illegal Cuban immigration and human trafficking through Cancun.

 

Meanwhile, Mexican consular offices in the United States have coordinated with left-wing social justice groups and the Catholic Church leadership to demand a moratorium on all deportations and a freeze on all employment raids across America.

 

Mexico is doing the job Arizona is now doing — a job the U.S. government has failed miserably to do: putting its people first. Here’s the proper rejoinder to all the hysterical demagogues in Mexico (and their sympathizers here on American soil) now calling for boycotts and invoking Jim Crow laws, apartheid and the Holocaust because Arizona has taken its sovereignty into its own hands:

 

Hipócritas.

Do not - repeat, do not - expect to see anything about this in our wonderful "neutral" media.  

If this clearly demonstrates to you just how one-sided our media have been in reporting the illegal alien issue - right down to its ignoring the violent protests against this law - something they would never ignore if it were, say, Tea Partiers - then congratulations.  You know one helluva lot more about the subject than most people. 

But don't expect to be given credit for your expanded knowledge if you discuss illegal aliens with them.  Expect, instead, to be dismissed as the ignorant one.  Because, more often than not, that is what will happen. 

Trust me, I've been there.

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

**In fairness to Ms. Malkin, I urge you to go to her web site, www.michellemalkin.com, and read all of her material.

Ken Berwitz

A riddle for you:  Why would a huge financial giant like Goldman Sachs, which has benefitted so richly from the economic downturn, come out in favor of the regulations that would be created by an administration it gives a ton of campaign money to (73% of Goldman Sachs donations went to Democrats last year)?

While you're thinking about that, here is the blog from www.thehill.com describing Goldman Sachs' agreement with the Obama administration - along with the first 7 comments made by its readers:

Blankfein supports financial reform legislation

By Vicki Needham - 04/27/10 06:45 PM ET

A financial regulatory reform bill has at least one supporter outside of Congressional Democrats, Lloyd Blankfein, the head of investment bank Goldman Sachs. 

"I'm generally supportive," Blankfein told the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. 

Wall Street will benefit from the bill because it will make the market safer, Blankfein said.

"The biggest beneficiary of reform is Wall Street itself," he said. "The biggest risk is risk financial institutions have with each other."

American consumers also would benefit from better regulations, he said. 

Blankfein said he didn't know all the bill's details and couldn't speak to provisions that affect community and consumer banks and mortgage originators because they are "remote" to our experience.  

Comments

Geee, this is s shocker. No corruption or incest here is there?

BY DaveT on 04/27/2010 at 20:02

OH, PLEASE DON'T THROS ME IN THE BRIAR PATCH, said Br'er Rabbit.

BY GonJoss on 04/27/2010 at 20:05

Of course he is backing the bill. He is nuts deep in the pocket of Obama and his agenda. Follow the money…how much does he and his firm stand to make in kickbacks for backing what is essentially the nationalizing of Wall Street? Bend over America, you are about to take it in the pooper AGAIN

BY Civilunrestnow on 04/27/2010 at 20:06

I am shocked! Lmao

BY GOLDNSQUID on 04/27/2010 at 20:07

More importantly, the Gangsters at Golden Slacks will benefit from the guarantee of the U.S. government, wich is implicit in this legislation. Who has benefitted more from bailouts and government interference than Golden Slacks, for whom their confederate gangsters in the U.S. Treasury Department drove their chief competitor (Lehman Bros.) out of business.

BY Diogenes on 04/27/2010 at 20:09

If the CEO of Goldman Sachs, the "vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity," is for it, I'm agin' it. The dirty secret of regulation is that large companies tend to love it: Its burdens drive out the little-guy competitors, who can't afford compliance as well as the big guys.

BY Thomas on 04/27/2010 at 20:10

Of course he does, He had dinner at least 4 times at the White House.

BY Khandoor on 04/27/2010 at 20:12

The left hand knocks you to the ground…and the right hand lifts you up…for a price. Wall Street is now in Chicago.

BY Spalding on 04/27/2010 at 20:13

Got that?  Blankfein generally supports the bill, which he does not know all the details of.  Why would he do that, unless he had a reason to believe that all that campaign $$$ flowing from his company to the Obama administration would take care of the matter?

Gee, I'm sorry.  I've just answered the riddle.

Ken Berwitz

What, if anything, can liberate the huge liberal/left/Democrat segment of the Jewish population? 

What if anything, can get them to realize what suckers they are being played for by a President who clearly sees them as little other than a bunch of moneybags, and joins his party in an increasingly anti-Israel posture (almost 4 in 10 Democrats refused to sign a letter expressing support for Israel just last month)?  

Paul Mirengoff of www.newsbusters.org thinks that a couple of relatively high-visibility Jewish critics might be a liberating factor, as seen in this excerpt from his latest blog:

President Obama's stridently anti-Israel policies have drawn criticism from some of his key Jewish political allies. Among the most prominent are Sen. Charles Schumer and Rep. Anthony Weiner.

Such criticism poses a serious threat to Obama's popularity among American Jews. Most mainstream Jews would rather silently suffer Obama's shabby, and dangerous, treatment of Israel than risk deviating from liberal orthodoxy. But once liberal giants like Schumer refuse to suffer silently, liberal Jews can feel free to criticize Obama without feeling that they have betrayed liberalism. The result could be quite liberating.

Is Paul right?  Is criticism by Charles Schumer and Anthony Weiner enough to wake up, to unmesmerize, a significant number of Jews within this segment?

Personally, I doubt it.  I think the Democratic Party's operative strategy is that it doesn't have to worry about Jews (or, for that matter, Blacks) because it owns them, lock stock and barrel.  And because this strategy has worked for a long time, it may very well continue to work.

But there's the argument.  You make your own call.

Ken Berwitz

Barack Obama's willing little sock puppet, Attorney General eric holder, is at it again.

Excerpted from an article at Fox News:

PHOENIX -- The U.S. government may challenge Arizona's new immigration law, Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday as Arizona officials blamed the Feds for forcing the state into passing its own immigration enforcement mechanisms.

Attorney General Eric Holder told reporters on Tuesday that he fears the new law is subject to abuse. He said that the Justice Department and the Homeland Security Department are in the midst of conducting a review of the state law.

The attorney general said a number of options are under consideration including the possibility of a court challenge. 

But it's the failure of the Obama administration to "secure our borders" that forced Arizona to pass the tough new law, Arizona Sen. John McCain said Tuesday.

Calling the situation in his state "the worst I've ever seen," McCain said drugs are pouring into the southwestern United States from Mexico because of ineffective border enforcement.

This is the same eric holder who declined to accept a default judgment against Black panthers who intimidated voters during the 2008 election.  That wasn't worth the effort. 

But when Arizona, faced with an estimated HALF MILLION illegal aliens who are sucking the state dry, decides to stop waiting for the feckless federal government to do something about it and passes serious anti-illegal legislation?  That rouses holder and his boss Barack Obama into action.  How dare Arizona expect that illegals be treated like.....illegals!

Every time I think I have a handle on just how pathetic this administration - especially eric holder - is, I realize I don't.  This is just the latest example of why.

Ken Berwitz

How does West Coast Russ come up with this stuff?

According to Russ, this is the first 35MM photography ever -- and it was shot just four days before the earthquake. 

Read his explanation and then, by all means, click on the link.  It is a genuine "wow!"

Check out this silent clip which was 'shot' after the turn of the
century ( indications were that it was 1906 ! )......

This film, originally thought to be from 1905 until David Kiehn with the
Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum figured out exactly when it
was shot. From New York trade papers announcing the film showing to the
wet streets from recent heavy rainfall & shadows indicating time of year
& actual weather and conditions on historical record, even when the cars
were registered (he even knows who owned them and when the plates were
issued!).. It was filmed only four days before the quake and shipped by
train to NY for processing. Amazing but true!

This film was "lost" for many years. It was the first 35mm film ever.
It was taken by camera mounted on the front of a cable car

The number of automobiles is staggering for 1906. Absolutely amazing!
The clock tower at the end of Market Street at the Embarcadero wharf is
still there. (I'm also wondering ... how many "street cleaning" people
were employed to pick up after the horses? Talk about going green!)

And no traffic lights, no cross walks, no painted lanes, no road signs,
no cell phones (!) AND NO RULES - yet folks seem to survive okay...!

Great historical film.

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=NINOxRxze9k

Ken Berwitz

This comes under the heading "You can't make this stuff u.....", er maybe it should be "You can make this stuff up".

Excerpted from The UK's Sun:

THE remains of Noah's Ark have been discovered 13,000ft up a Turkish mountain, it has been claimed.

 

A group of Chinese and Turkish evangelical explorers say they have found wooden remains on Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey.

They claim carbon dating proves the relics are 4,800 years old — around the same time the ark was said to be afloat.

 

 

Biblical tale ... Noah filled the ark with two of each animal species

 

Yeung Wing-Cheung, from the Noah's Ark Ministries International research team, said: "It's not 100 per cent that it is Noah's Ark, but we think it is 99.9 per cent that this is it."

He said the structure contained several compartments, some with wooden beams, that they believe were used to house animals.

The group of evangelical archaeologists ruled out an established human settlement on the grounds none have ever been found above 11,000ft in the vicinity, Yeung said.

They didn't, by any chance, find a very old guy with a very long beard muttering about the two rabbits going at it again, did they?.

Ken Berwitz

Michael Daly of the New York Daily News has written a genuinely ridiculous column, attacking Arizona Governor Jan Brewer for signing seriously tough new laws to protect the state from the flood of illegal aliens it has sustained, and continues to sustain.

First, Daly goes into a detailed account of Ms. Brewer’s forebears – apropos of nothing other than filling column space by proving he can read records.  Then he says:

One hundred and eighteen years after her great-grandmother arrived in America, Brewer stood in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, next in line for governor.

And it must have meant nothing at all.

For now that she is governor, Brewer has signed an immigration bill that spits in Lady Liberty's face.

The new law seeks to slam shut that golden door. It goes so far as to make it a crime not to carry papers proving you are not just some tempest-tossed soul who arrived in this country unbidden.

"Your papers, please!" is the talk of totalitarianism.

Brewer speaks dramatically of her father moving the family halfway across America, but says nothing of the great-grandmother who arrived the same year the Statue of Liberty became a symbol of welcome to all those seeking a new life.

Maybe I am misreading the public records.

Or maybe Brewer does not know her family's history.

Most likely, she imagines there is a difference between the Europeans who sought refuge here in times past and Hispanics who dare to cross into her state.

I cannot answer those questions because my inquires regarding her family's arrival in America were met with silence.

That's just a politician's silence, though.

The silence to listen to is the one invoked by the Statue of Liberty's inscription, the poem in which Emma Lazarus describes how Lady Liberty announces her invitation to the huddled masses.

"Cries she with silent lips."

The problem?  What Mr. Daly has written is a fraud and a lie.  No one is spitting in the Statue of Liberty’s eye except him.

The law Ms. Brewer signed is NOT against immigration.  That is absolutely, 100% false.  The law Ms. Brewer signed is against ILLEGAL immigration – a little something Daly conveniently forgets to mention.

And when Daly talks at great length about how Ms. Brewer’s ancestors came to this country (click on the link I’ve provided above and see), he neglects to mention that they did so LEGALLY.  The fact that he can look up those records, means there are records – i.e. Ms. Brewer’s family played by the rules.

So we see, again, that the key strategy utilized by people like Daly, who advocate for illegal aliens, is to simply ignore the issue of illegality.  When they do that, life becomes easy.  Suddenly Ms. Brewer and her supporters are a bunch of obtuse, unfair isolationists – probably racist and anti-Mexican to boot.  Boil ‘em in oil. Feed 'em to the fishes.

And the fact that, according to a poll this week, over 70% of all Arizona residents, including over 50% of Arizona Democrats, support the law right along with her?  Irrelevant’n’immaterial.

Bottom line:  I’m sure Michael Daly’s phony rant will wow ‘em at the next La Raza rally.  But among people who care about whether or not rule of law exists in this country, his views just might generate a slightly different reaction.

Ken Berwitz

Another day, another blatantly partisan performance by the Today Show.

This morning there was an interview segment concerning yesterday's senate vote which prevented debate on banking reform legislation.  As has been the case for most major legislation over the past year it was almost entirely a party line vote, with only Democrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska (who is in serious danger of losing his seat) breaking ranks.

Are you now expecting me to mention the Democrat and the Republican who were interviewed? 

I agree that makes a lot of sense.  Simple logic says there would be one of each, so viewers would be exposed to both sides of the argument. 

But I can't do it.  And the reason is very simple:  there wasn't any Republican. 

The one and only senator interviewed was Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri.  Unencumbered by anyone on the other side to challenge her, Ms. McCaskill was in fine form.  She accused Republicans of being on the side of Wall Street (which, it should be noted, gives more to Democrats than Republicans - especially Goldman Sachs, which gave about 3/4 of its donations to them), and said that their actions were nonsensical.

The conversation then moved to the Goldman Sachs hotshots who will be called on the carpet in DC today.  McCaskill attacked them for the mess they created over the past five years --- without noting that Democrats have held majorities in both houses for 3 1/2 of those years and didn't do squat about it, along with the fact that Goldman gives much more to Democrats than Republicans.

Hey, d'ya think those two facts might go together?

But then again, why bring that nasty stuff up?  With Matt Lauer doing the interviewing and no Republican around, it's not like anyone else is going to, so why not just let sleeping scandals lie.

And at the end of the interview, Matt Lauer's exact words to her were  "Senator Claire McCaskill.  Senator, good luck today, thanks for your time this morning"

Perfect.  A one-party discussion, ending with the interviewer wishing the person from that one party good luck.

Is it any wonder that I see Today as a ridiculously partisan show?

And is it any wonder that people are leaving mainstream media in droves? 

Ken Berwitz

Phil Gordon is the Jewish mayor of Phoenix.  I just watched Laura Ingraham interview him on the O'Reilly factor, and heard him compare Arizona's new law on immigration to naziism.

Jared Polis is a Jewish congressperson from Colorado.  According to Kasie Hunt at www.politico.com, Polis says Arizona is on its way to becoming a “police state” and its new immigration law is “reminiscent” of Nazi Germany.   “It is absolutely reminiscent of second class status of Jews in Germany prior to World War II when they had to have their papers with them at all times and were subject to routine inspections at the suspicion of being Jewish” 

Speaking as a Jew, all of whose ancestors came from Eastern Europe, these two are morons and they make me sick to my stomach.

The idea of comparing laws aimed at preventing illegal aliens from entering Arizona, to naziism - i.e. the mass murder of entire groups of people, including about 6 million Jews - is so beyond sanity that I do not have the words to define it.

Why don't these two morons just shut the eff up?

Ken Berwitz

It's bad enough that these four are members of Congressional Black Caucus - an overtly racist organization that refuses membership based on skin color - is allowed to exist at all.  And just as bad that they are lying about other people being racist.

Excerpted from Andrew Breitbart's blog at biggovernment.com:

Rep. Andre Carson wants to change the subject. I don’t blame him.

 

On April 13, 2010 he told AP reporter Jesse Washington, “I think we need to move toward a dialogue that explores why this kind of divisive and reprehensible language is still making it into our political debate.”

 

The “divisive and reprehensible language” that Rep. Carson is referring to is his claim that while he left the Cannon office building on March 20 with Rep. John Lewis, they were verbally assaulted by health care protesters hurling the “N-word” at them. He said the scene was so hostile he “expected rocks to come” when he was coming out of Cannon.

 

I wanted to see the evidence. I wanted the truth. In the course of our search we have actually uncovered further video evidence that casts serious doubt on Rep.Carson’s claims:

 

Now this story is much more important than the accusation of fifteen racists among the thousands of protesters that day. This is now about the accusers.

 

It’s not just that Congressmen Carson’s accusation of an extraordinary racist verbal assault by the tea party participants on March 20 doesn’t appear to have occurred, it’s that the accusers have now gone into the bunker and, having raised the incendiary subject, are doing everything they can to avoid the discussion. Why? What’s changed?

 

When the accusation was made, the mainstream media made it the number one topic on every news show. The Democratic Party was leading the discussion. But when confronted on the baseless accusation, without even a modicum of evidence that it actually happened, other than an assertion, the Democratic Party, and its symbiotic allies the mainstream media, want to have another “beer summit.”

 

We have spent the last three weeks searching for any evidence that might support the allegations, without any help from the accusers. The primary accuser, Congressman Carson, who audaciously claimed the crowd screamed the “N-word fifteen times,” would not return our call. So we have gone part way to try and piece together the events of March 20.

 

Not only is the audio devoid of any racial slur, but the scene at Cannon clearly shows the congressmen coming down the steps completely unobstructed, and with a clear path to the Capitol. And, when we juxtapose the audio accusation Rep.Carson made moments after the alleged event occurred with actual video footage of the moment Rep. Carson claims he first heard the racial slur, it is as plain as day that Congressman Carson was not isolated by a mob and facing a racist throng that could conceivably hurl rocks at him. As you can see for yourself.

 

The false accusation of racism grants left-wing hooligans carte-blanche to act out on their dehumanized Tea Party counterparts. That’s what the intention was with the false accusation. That was the game plan. It ties together with the similar strategy as employed by Pres. Clinton and Richard Trumka to compare tea partiers and the environment they are creating to a petri dish of hate that will spawn the next Timothy McVeigh or Lee Harvey Oswald.

 

As long as this false narrative lives to fuel the hatred of the activist left, which has on many occasions been acted out against Tea Party activists and other law abiding protesters, we will keep this story at the editorial forefront.

 

It is a slander with real-world repercussions.

 

The absence of a real investigation by a press that played up the accusations is a more-than-tacit admission that they were hoping the allegations were true. When I mentioned the lack of response to the $100k offer to Politico’s Ben Smith, he messaged me on Twitter: ‘I think you’ve pretty much won this one, no?’

 

The power of the propaganda. The power of the repeated accusations. The power of the relentless race-based line of questioning. They are all adding up to the liars and slanderers getting exactly what they wanted. The Tea Party is marred by racism charges while Congressman Carson, at the least, should be facing an ethics investigation, and a civil rights legend should be asking for forgiveness for allowing for the hateful lie to stand.

 

Congressman Carson refuses to respond to our requests because he can’t answer questions that deserve answers. The press is drawing a line in the sand for those that are doing the job the press should be doing: “Are you calling a civil rights legend a liar?”

 

Unfortunately, I am. And the mainstream media are as complicit in this lie as Congressman Lewis.

The congresspeople who said they were repeatedly called "nigger" are liars.

The congresspeople (John Lewis among them) who did not say it happened, but have remained silent knowing that it didn't, are just as bad as the liars.

And our wonderful "neutral" media, most of which had no problem whatsoever propagating this lie without any evidence, and most of which have never retracted the lies or held the liars to account?  They are the biggest liars of them all.

Then they wonder why people are fleeing mainstream media for alternative sources of information.

Ken Berwitz

Excerpted from an article in today's issue of Ha'aretz:

Israel is getting ready to share technology and skills with African countries struggling to sustain agricultural output due to increasingly unreliable rains, said Agriculture Minister Shalom Simhon.

Simhon said sharing know-how, especially in irrigation and water management, was his focus on a tour of Senegal, Ivory Coast and Gabon.

His trip comes as some 10 million people in West and Central Africa face food shortages due to failed rains.

 

"We are not arriving here in Africa to take resources from the African countries. We are coming here in order to give know-how and abilities to these countries to develop," Simhon told Reuters in Senegal over the weekend.

"Israel is the only country in the world that has been able to conquer the desert. More than 50 percent of our exports are coming from semi-arid areas. This is our strength - this we would like to bring here."

Simhon said Israel could help Senegal reduce dependence on imports, which currently account for around 80 percent of food needs. "Senegal's traditional agriculture is one crop a year. We know how to do three and four crops a year. We can teach that."

The minister would not give any figures on proposed Israeli aid to African farming or detail the role of Israeli companies in such programs. Senegal already hosts several Israeli-funded projects looking at using low-pressure drip irrigation to increase productivity.

Israeli farmers have been heavily involved in modern developments in irrigation, including drip irrigation systems and water recycling methods.

Some experts believe these techniques could become invaluable in Africa's arid growing regions, which risk becoming increasingly vulnerable to climate change.

"One of the most important things is the water technology and usage. The world is drying up. There is less water, there is less rain days," Simhon said.

"In Israel we are using recycled water, desalinated water, rain water, salty water, which almost anywhere in the world we will not have any use for (but) we (use to) make the sweetest tomatoes," he added.

Simhon said advances in technology had allowed Israeli farmers to use 30 percent less water while almost doubling output over the last decade, leaving the country with a 150 percent food surplus.

Now, tell me:  How much desperately-needed agricultural technology (or, for that matter, anything else) has come to Africa from Israel's neighbors? 

What does the world lose if it loses Israel?  This is another of the many, many answers.

Ken Berwitz

Are judgeships for sale in the Obama administration?

Read this excerpt from a blog by Ed Morrissey at hotair.com  -- better yet, use the link and read it all.  Then you tell me:

On the surface, there isn’t much doubt why Barack Obama selected John J. McConnell Jr. as his nominee to the US District in Rhode Island.  McConnell has had a long career as a litigator in cases that would thrill any advocate on the Left, suing manufacturers over lead paint, asbestos, and tobacco.  However, it may have been McConnell’s ability to turn those cases into cash for the Democratic machine that got him his nomination, as the Providence Journal reports:

John J. McConnell Jr., President Obama’s choice for the U.S. District Court in Rhode Island, is one of the top election campaign contributors among the nearly 1,500 nominees to the federal courts since the late 1980s.

McConnell, 51, a Providence lawyer, has given at least $432,456 to Democratic House, Senate and presidential campaigns since the 1990 election cycle, according to a Providence Journal analysis of reports to the Federal Election Commission.

Over the years, McConnell contributed tens of thousands of dollars in total to the campaign funds of major Democratic presidential candidates and of Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse. The Rhode Island senators last April recommended McConnell for a seat on the court. McConnell is also a substantial contributor to the party campaign arm that helps elect Democrats to the Senate, whose members must vote on whether to seat him on the federal bench.

That total obscures McConnell’s more recent efforts. The Journal notes that McConnell donated over $120,000 in the 2008 cycle alone

Let's review.  John J. McConnell Jr. is a long-time litigator of left wing causes, who has given almost a half million dollars to the Democratic Party.  And - amazing coincidence here - he is nominated for a District Court judgeship.

Well, President Obama promised transparency, didn't he?  And, in a sense, this proves that he's delivering.  Because it doesn't get more transparent than this.  

The 2010 elections cannot come fast enough.

And that goes double for 2012.

Ken Berwitz

Is President Obama keeping his promise to unite us?

Well, watch this video that was released today by the Democratic National Committee and decide for yourself:

Nice, Mr. President. 

First you say:

"Today I'd like to talk with you about the important role each of you will play in 2010"

That sounds pretty inclusive to me. 

But then you say:

"It will be up to each of you to make sure that the young people, African Americans, Latinos, and women, who powered our victory in 2008 stand together once again"

In other words, you ask for the support for everyone except White males who would not classify as "young" (that would be 30 years of age or older, maybe even 25 or older), and gays.  Evidently they need not apply. 

Quite an appeal to unity you have there, Mr. President.

And that's before we get to the part where you list out your two major pieces of legislation and make claims about them that are unsupportable because they are untrue. 

-ObamaCare - which has not helped anyone yet; not one person.  All we have is your comment that it was "desperately needed".  If that is so, how come virtually every major poll shows that most people didn't want it?

-And the "Recovery Act" (also known as the "stimulus package") - which has been a bust, with unemployment going from the 8% it was supposed to cap at, to over 10%, and currently to 9.7%.  We have had just one month of positive job growth since the "stimulus package" passed, and even that was driven primarily by temporary census jobs which won't even exist in a few months.

Let me say it straight (I better not say it gay, because evidently that would exclude me):  If the voters fall for this load of what a bull produces after meals, our country is beyond hope.

Ken Berwitz

There's an old saying that "great minds think alike" --to which I usually add "so do idiots, but we won't talk about that"

With this in mind, I thought I would first post an excerpt from Ross Douthat's column in today's New York Times....

Across 14 on-air years, there’s no icon “South Park” hasn’t trampled, no vein of shock-comedy (sexual, scatalogical, blasphemous) it hasn’t mined. In a less jaded era, its creators would have been the rightful heirs of Oscar Wilde or Lenny Bruce — taking frequent risks to fillet the culture’s sacred cows.

In ours, though, even Parker’s and Stone’s wildest outrages often just blur into the scenery. In a country where the latest hit movie, “Kick-Ass,” features an 11-year-old girl spitting obscenities and gutting bad guys while dressed in pedophile-bait outfits, there isn’t much room for real transgression. Our culture has few taboos that can’t be violated, and our establishment has largely given up on setting standards in the first place.

Except where Islam is concerned. There, the standards are established under threat of violence, and accepted out of a mix of self-preservation and self-loathing.

This is what decadence looks like: a frantic coarseness that “bravely” trashes its own values and traditions, and then knuckles under swiftly to totalitarianism and brute force.

....and then post an excerpt from the blog I wrote yesterday on the same subject:

There is an old saying about why dogs lick their, er, private parts.  The answer is "because they can".

 

I sometimes (well, more than sometimes) think that is why those courageous paradigms of social commentary at places like Comedy Central and various talk shows - not to mention a host of other media - are so happy to bash Christianity and Judaism (or, more specifically anything that the state of Israel does).  They can.  They can crap all over Christians and Israelis, then sleep like a baby that night.

 

Ever wonder why they don't do the same when it comes to Islam?  I'm pretty sure you already know the answer but, if not, read this excerpt from Jamie Griswold's piece at mynorthwest.com and I'm sure you'll get it:

 

The answer - again, I assume most readers already know this, but I'm posting it pro forma - is that they are very brave when it comes to religions and places which present no threat to them.  But they cower under a bush when it comes to anyone who might actually do something about it.

 

And South Park is far from the only example.  Heck, it's far from the only example even on Comedy Central.

Are we great minds, idiots, or something else?  You decide. 

And please keep it as clean as possible.

Ken Berwitz

Is ObamaCare as good as the administration claims or as bad as its critics claim?  The answer, not surprisingly, lies somewhere in between.  But, as detailed in the following excerpts from Grace-Marie Turner's article in National Review, the lean is pretty substantially to the negative:

Not one of its major programs has gotten started, and already the wheels are starting to come off of Obamacare. The administration’s own actuary reported on Thursday that millions of people could lose their health insurance, that health-care costs will rise faster than they would have if the law hadn’t passed, and that the overhaul will mean that people will have a harder and harder time finding physicians to see them.

1. People losing coverage: About 14 million people will lose their employer coverage by 2019, as smaller employers terminate their plans and workers who currently have employer coverage enroll in Medicaid. Half of all seniors on Medicare Advantage could lose their coverage and the extra benefits the plans offer.

2. Huge fines for companies: Businesses will pay $87 billion in penalties in the first five years after the fines trigger in 2014, partly because they can’t afford to offer expensive, government-mandated coverage and partly because some of their employees will apply for taxpayer-subsidized insurance.

3. Higher costs for consumers: Tens of billions of dollars in new fees and excise taxes will be “passed through to health consumers in the form of higher drug and devices prices and higher premiums,” according to Foster. A separate report shows small businesses will be hit hardest.

4. A program created to fail: The new “CLASS Act” long-term-care insurance program will face “a significant risk of failure,” according to Foster. Indeed, he finds, “there is a very serious risk that the problem of adverse selection will make the CLASS program unsustainable.”

5. Spending increases: Under the new law, national health spending will increase by $311 billion over the coming decade. And instead of bending the federal spending curve down, it will move it upward “by a net total of $251 billion” over the next decade.

6. “Free-riders”: An estimated 23 million people will remain uninsured in 2019, roughly 5 million of whom would be undocumented aliens; the remainder would be the 18 million who decline to get coverage and who will pay the penalty.

7. Spending reductions are fiction: Estimated reductions in the growth rate of health spending “may not be fully achievable” because “Medicare productivity adjustments could become unsustainable even within the next ten years, and over time the reductions in the scope of employer-sponsored health insurance could also become an issue.”

8. You can’t keep your doctor: Fifteen percent of all hospitals, nursing homes, and other providers treating Medicare patients could be operating at a loss by 2019, which will “possibly jeopardize access to care for beneficiaries.” Doctors are threatening to drop out of Medicare because cuts in Medicare reimbursement rates mean they can’t even cover their costs.

9. Coverage but no care: A significant portion of those newly eligible for Medicaid will have trouble finding physicians who will see them, and the increased demand for Medicaid services could be difficult to meet.

This is an objective report by administration actuaries that shows this sweeping legislation has serious, serious problems.

The question now is whether these disastrous realities will find their way to the consciousness of average voters.

If those two paradigms of fair and balanced information, the New York Times and the Today show, are any indication, the answer is pretty iffy.  Neither the Times nor Today had a story on the ObamaCare report this morning; not even a little one. 

But the Times did have a front page story on how much New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg likes to go to Bermuda.  And Today did have features on picking your favorite dog and teen girls' desire to be skinny.

On the other hand, that's only fair.  I mean, what is more important:  the the fact that the Obama administration's own people are now admitting there are huge problems with its health care legislation, Mayor Bloomberg's opinion of Bermuda or who your favorite dog is?

Ken Berwitz

This morning's Today show had a feature of about 3:45 minutes on what Matt Lauer introduced as "a new kind of millionaire's club; wealthy Americans using their own money to fund their own political campaign".  This was followed with a feature by Jamie Gangel.

That stopped me in my tracks. 

-Did Lauer ever hear the name Kennedy? 

-Or Jon Corzine who self-funded his senate and gubernatorial elections in New Jersey (and his loss for a second term as well)? 

-Or Mark Dayton, who self-funded his senate win in Minnesota? 

-Or Maria Cantwell, who self-funded her senate win in Washington? 

-Or Ned Lamont, who self-funded his primary win over Joe Lieberman in Connecticut and is now running for Governor of the state - something I will talk more about just a bit further on?

You may have noticed that every example I just provided is of a Democrat. That is not because Republicans have not done the same - they certainly have.  My reason for showing only Democrats is to demonstrate that there were plenty of them to pick from .

But - surprise, surprise - the only two politicians whose party affiliation was cited by Gangel were Republicans:  Connecticut senatorial candidate Linda McMahon and  Connecticut gubernatorial candidate Tom Foley (not to be confused with Washington state's Tom Foley who was Democratic speaker of the house).

And how about Democrat Ned Lamont, running against Foley - and as rich as Croesus?  No mention of him by name or party.  Just a quick picture of him, as part of a visual montage of self-funders from both parties who you would only know if you recognized their faces during a showing of what appeared to be less than one second..

Nice.  Very evenhanded.

Then we come to the main thrust of the report:  the "David and Goliath" battle that Mark Boughton, a former social studies teacher and current Mayor of Danbury, CT, is waging to win his party's primary. 

The Boughton segment ran from about 1:10 to 2:35 - more than one-third of Gangel's entire report - then another :10 later on.  But never once did she mention that Boughton, like McMahon and Foley, is a Republican.  If you caught a fleeting glance of one of his campaign posters in the background, you might know.  But certainly not because Gangel mentioned it. 

Bottom line: 

-First Matt Lauer tells us that rich people self-funding their political campaigns is something new, which it is not.  However, claiming it is a new phenomenon eliminates the need to mention all those rich, self-funding Democrats from previous years.  How convenient.

-Then Jamie Gangel tells us there are a couple of rich Republicans running in Connecticut:  this is guaranteed to perpetuate the image of Republicans as the rich people.  But she does not mention the names or party affiliation of the rich Democrats also running for office in Connecticut (like Ned Lamont):  this is guaranteed to perpetuate the image of Democrats as the "little guys".    

-Gangel then does a segment-within-a-segment about Tom Boughton, a man of limited means who is running a quixotic primary race for governor.  But she does not mention that he also is a Republican:  which therefore cannot result in viewers perceiving that Republicans are sometimes the "little guys" too.

Then they wonder why people call them biased.......

Ken Berwitz

Technically, the Korean war never ended.  Technically there is a tenuous, grim truce in effect and no final agreement has been reached.  But realistically the north and south have not been engaged in a hot war for 57 years.

Is that about to change?

Excerpted from an article in the Wall Street Journal:

SEOUL—South Korea's top military official said Sunday that a torpedo likely exploded under the South Korean patrol boat that sank a month ago near the maritime border with North Korea, bringing Seoul closer to declaring it was attacked by the North and hastening a delicate decision about what to do next.

The finding puts South Korea and its ally the U.S. in a bind in confronting the nuclear-armed totalitarian state. Seoul faces several constraints in penalizing Pyongyang, starting with the prospect that a military response could escalate into a war that very few here want.

It's nice that "very few here want" war.  But what if the South determines to their certainty that North Korea sank one of its military craft?  Can anyone guarantee there won't be a war then?

And what will we do about it?  What can we do about it?  Which countries will take up with which side?  Will it spread beyond the Korean peninsula?  Will nuclear weapons be used?

I hope President Obama and his people have thought long and hard about this.  Every possible scenario.  Because, not to be a scare merchant, but Korea literally could put the world in danger of nuclear conflict.

If ever there was a front burner issue - at least until we are satisfied the north and south can settle things relatively peacably - this is it.

Ken Berwitz

I don't like who and what Al Sharpton is.  But I have always given him credit for being intelligent and perceptive.

His latest stunt, however, is making me wonder.

Excerpted from the Associated Press:

The Rev. Al Sharpton says he will challenge Arizona's new immigration bill in court and on the streets.

Sharpton is joining Lillian Rodriguez Lopez from the Hispanic Federation to announce a legal challenge to the bill. They say activists are also prepared to commit civil disobedience to fight the Arizona immigration bill.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed the bill Friday. It requires police to question people about their immigration status — including asking for identification — if they suspect someone is in the country illegally.

Has sharpton thought about whose jobs illegals are taking?  Who is hurt most by people who are willing to work for appreciably less than what it costs to hire legals, thus driving down salaries for entry level and manual labor work?

Maybe he ought to start.

Ken Berwitz

Boob-baiting is not restricted to the general run of gullible people.  Some times it has elements of niche marketing.

As a case in point, read this, from Philip Klein's blog, which can be found at www.spectator.org:

Weiner Joins Schumer in Criticizing Obama's Israel Policy

By Philip Klein on 4.23.10 @ 4:32PM

Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer made waves yesterday, when he blasted the Obama administration for its "counter-productive" Israel policy that he said "has to stop."

Today, fellow New York Democrat Anthony Weiner echoed this criticism, saying:

“Israel is our closest ally in the region, yet they continue to receive more criticism than deserved and less support than is required.”

“Instead of continuing to lash out publicly at our closest ally, the Obama Administration should be listening to what Senator Schumer says. Schumer is right, and the White House is wrong on Israel.”

This is supposed to impress me?  Yeah, ok.  Right.  Sure.

What these two politicians - wait, let me emphasize that word more fittingly - POLITICIANS - are doing, is blatantly pandering, primarily to their Jewish constituents, by pretending that they have found a reason to break with Barack Obama on behalf of Israel.

What neither is telling those constituents, however, is that they, like anyone else with a functioning mind, knew there was a problem with Obama and Israel long before he was elected. 

-Barack Obama spent 18 years in the Trinity United Church of Christ in south-side Chicago, with  "reverend" jeremiah wright, who insulted, belittled and condemned Israel every chance he got.  But Obama remained a member.

-In 2007, wright made career anti-Semite/Israel hater louis farrakhan the church's "man of the year" and wrote, in the Church newsletter, that farrakhan "epitomized greatness".  But Obama remained a member. 

And now, as the mid-term elections approach, Schumer and Weiner are acting as if they have suddenly discovered that Barack Obama has an Israel problem?   As if they didn't know it all the time? 

What unbelievable frauds they are.  And how little they think of the people they're trying to sell this to.

Simply stated, Schumer and Weiner are telling their constituents - especially their Jewish constituents - that they either are a bunch of gullible idiots who can be boob-baited into buying this ripe pile of BS, or they are so completely and unconditionally liberal-left that it won't matter whether it is BS because, against all logic and common sense, they will come up with some half-baked rationale to believe it anyway.

How sad that, for at least some of these constituents, Schumer and Weiner are 100% right.

Ken Berwitz

There is an old saying about why dogs lick their, er, private parts.  The answer is "because they can".

I sometimes (well, more than sometimes) think that is why those courageous paradigms of social commentary at places like Comedy Central and various talk shows - not to mention a host of other media - are so happy to bash Christianity and Judaism (or, more specifically anything that the state of Israel does).  They can.  They can crap all over Christians and Israelis, then sleep like a baby that night.

Ever wonder why they don't do the same when it comes to Islam?  I'm pretty sure you already know the answer but, if not, read this excerpt from Jamie Griswold's piece at mynorthwest.com and I'm sure you'll get it:

After Comedy Central cut a portion of a South Park episode following a death threat from a radical Muslim group, Seattle cartoonist Molly Norris wanted to counter the fear. She has declared May 20th "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day."

Norris told KIRO Radio's Dave Ross that cartoonists are meant to challenge the lines of political correctness. "That's a cartoonist's job, to be non-PC."

Producers of South Park said Thursday that Comedy Central removed a speech about intimidation and fear from their show after a radical Muslim group warned that they could be killed for insulting the Prophet Muhammad.

The group said it wasn't threatening South Park producers Trey Parker and Matt Stone, but it included a gruesome picture of Theo Van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker killed by a Muslim extremist in 2004, and said the producers could meet the same fate. The website posted the addresses of Comedy Central's New York office and the California production studio where South Park is made

The answer - again, I assume most readers already know this, but I'm posting it pro forma - is that they are very brave when it comes to religions and places which present no threat to them.  But they cower under a bush when it comes to anyone who might actually do something about it.

And South Park is far from the only example.  Heck, it's far from the only example even on Comedy Central.

Look, I'm not sure about what Ms. Norris is doing.  I don't much care for disrespect of the kind she has proposed. 

But I do hope she doesn't suffer for it.  And I applaud her for having a far larger set of what dogs lick than the people at South Park (did you hear of them fighting to keep the Islamic material on their show?), The Daily Show, and a raft of others.

Ken Berwitz

I am trying to excerpt my sources of information these days.  But I have to make an exception here, given that the Washington Examiner (www.washingtonexaminer.com) editorial on President Obama's (massive) credibility problem is so short and fact-filled that I can't find anything to eliminate.   

Here it is (the bold print is mine):

Obama's credibility crisis

Examiner Editorial
April 25, 2010

Hard on the heels of that shocking Pew Research Center survey finding that four out of five Americans don't trust government comes a blitz of new revelations about the Obama administration that amount to a full-fledged credibility crisis. The latest disclosures are especially damaging because they concern President Obama's possible misrepresentation of his relationships with former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and convicted felon Tony Rezko, his administration's misleading statements about Obamacare costs, and questions about improper manipulation of government-owned General Motors and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Blagojevich revelations were no less serious for being accidental. Blagojevich's defense attorneys filed a federal court motion to subpoena Obama concerning charges that the former governor tried to sell the U.S. Senate seat formerly occupied by the chief executive. Improper formatting of the heavily redacted public version of the motion contained evidence that Obama spoke to Blagojevich about the Senate appointment a week before telling White House reporters that he had not done so. The document also revealed that federal prosecutors are withholding from Blagojevich's attorneys documents describing what Obama told investigators about conversations with Rezko on the appointment or his financial ties to the Chicago developer who was one of his key fundraisers.

On Obamacare, the president and his appointees said repeatedly over the last year that it would reduce government health care spending. Yet now comes Kathleen Sebelius, Obama's Department of Health and Human Services secretary, confessing that "We don't know how much it's going to cost." Why is Sebelius only now saying this when her own department just made public a report obviously months in preparation that projected government health care costs overall will go up, not down? That same HHS report also said Obamacare's Medicare cuts could put 15 percent of all hospitals out of business, making treatment harder to get and more expensive, especially for seniors.

Finally, General Motors claimed in national advertisements this week that it repaid its Troubled Asset Relief Program loans, plus interest, five years early. But the TARP inspector general said GM used other TARP funds to repay its original TARP loans, so the ads were fundamentally dishonest. Recall here that White House adviser Carol Browner told GM and other automakers to "write nothing down" about their dealings last year with administration officials on fuel economy standards. So it seems entirely appropriate to ask if GM's repayment claims were "suggested" by somebody in the Obama White House. That would be the same White House that is also now suspected of improperly influencing the SEC to file fraud charges against Goldman Sachs just as Congress debates Obama's financial reform proposal. As the Obama administration will learn, plummeting public trust eats away at the fundamental credibility of government and undermines its ability to carry out even its most basic duties.

What a cesspool of dishonesty this administration is. 

But the only people we have to blame are ourselves.  We elected this unqualified, unethical dishonest Chicago machine politician.  And we gave him the huge Democratic majorities in both houses which enable him to do what he is doing.

Have we wised up enough to start changing this awful situation?  Right now the polls say yes.  But a) polls can be wrong and b) in any event it is a long, long time from April to November.

I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Ken Berwitz

Here's a shocker for you:  ObamaCare isn't going to save money, it's going to cost money.  Tons of it.

Read this excerpt from an article in Friday's New York Times - a paper which did everything it could to facilitate passage of this fraudulent "cost saving" legislation - and see for yourself:

A government analysis of the new health care law says it will not slow the overall growth of health spending because the expansion of insurance and services to 34 million people will offset cost reductions in Medicare and other programs.

 

The study, by the chief Medicare actuary, Richard S. Foster, provides a detailed, rigorous analysis of the law.

In signing the measure last month, President Obama said it would “bring down health care costs for families and businesses and governments.”

But Mr. Foster said, “Overall national health expenditures under the health reform act would increase by a total of $311 billion,” or nine-tenths of 1 percent, compared with the amounts that would otherwise be spent from 2010 to 2019.

Did you have any doubt?  Could anyone in his/her right mind believe that adding over 30 million people, including a disproportionate percent who cannot pay and/or are at high health risk, would lower the cost - or even keep it anywhere near where it otherwise would be?

Well, Mr. Obama and his flying monkeys fooled us once on the "stimulus package" that stimulated our unemployment from 8% up to 10%.  And he's fooled us again on health care.

Can he do it again before the mid-term elections?  Just how big a bunch of suckers are we?

Those elections cannot come fast enough.  And that goes double for 2012.

Ken Berwitz

What a stupid question that is!  We all know the 2008 bank crash was caused by that idiot, bumbling, inept dufus George Bush, right?

Well, right?

Uh, maybe the answer just might be a tad more inclusive than that.

Here are excerpts from Noel Sheppard's fascinating blog, at newsbusters.org, which gives us considerable insight about who else was orchestrating this macabre little financial dance:

In the past 20 months, liberal media members have routinely blamed 2008's financial crisis on George W. Bush, Republicans, Wall Street, and greed.

Someone that has hardly ever been accused of having a hand in what led to the tumult is former President Bill Clinton.

As NewsBusters has been reporting almost since the crash began, it was Clinton who signed into law two key bills -- the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 -- that ushered in the malfeasance that almost toppled the world economy.

On Saturday, a former editorial page editor for the Wall Street Journal, George Melloan, made the connection even stronger as he pointed a finger at someone most in the media have shamelessly given a pass for his involvement in this crisis (h/t @RLMcMahon):

 

To promote "affordable" housing, Bill Clinton had excused the two giant government-sponsored housing finance agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, from normal banking rules, allowing them leverage ratios far in excess of the limits on ordinary lenders. Banks were forced to write risky mortgage loans, a large number of which were then folded into mortgage-backed securities that Fannie, Freddie and others sold internationally with triple-A ratings.

This business seized up, crippling banks throughout the world, when holders began to realize that the assets that backed the securities, home mortgages, were going under water at an alarming rate.

Now that puts a somewhat different light on things, wouldn't you say?

I urge you to click on the link I've provided above and real Noel's entire piece.  Then you'll have a far better idea of the real answer.  And a huge leg up on the people who "know" it was Bush and Bush alone -- which, unfortunately, appears to include a very large percentage of our wonderful "neutral" media.

Ken Berwitz

That title is from National Review editor Rich Lowry's latest column, which is excerpted below.  And does it ever blow the lid off the absolutely, unequivocally BS claim that Wall Street is some kind of Republican enterprise (the bold print is mine):

April 23, 2010 12:04 A.M.

The Wall Street Democrats
Pro-business does not mean pro-market.

When President Barack Obama’s vast new regulatory state is completed, Wall Street firms ought to have a competition over the naming rights.

Will it be the CitiDeal? Or the Goldman Society? Or the UBS/J.P. Morgan Joint Initiative for the Establishment of a Social Democracy?

The Democratic majority was bought and paid for by Wall Street and corporate money. The Masters of the Universe helped give us the Masters of the Beltway, in a synergistic exercise that would have dumbfounded even Lenin. When he famously said capitalists would sell the rope to hang them with, he was at least talking of a commercial transaction — not maxing out to a campaign committee.

Democrats beat Republicans in the Wall Street money chase in 2006, and kept on going. In the 2008 election cycle, Democrats garnered 73 percent of the political donations of Goldman Sachs, as well as the majority of donations from other financial giants such as UBS and Citigroup. They soaked up most of the hedge-fund money, and won the battle for donations from industries as varied as health care, defense, and law.

Wall Street has its share of ideologically motivated liberals who wouldn’t blink if Obama called for nationalizing the banks, so long as he continued to support abortion on demand. Goldman Sachs alum Jon Corzine is emblematic of the breed; he made a bundle on Wall Street before devoting himself in all earnestness to bankrupting New Jersey.

Then, there’s fear and greed. The more Washington does, the greater the need to protect yourself, and the greater the opportunities for profit. A writer for the Huffington Post reported on carve-outs in the financial-reform bill. “Obtaining a carve-out isn’t rocket science,” a Republican financial-services lobbyist told the website. “Just give Chairman [Chris] Dodd and Chuck Schumer a [expletive denoting a lot] of money.”

That’s the Democratic appeal writ large. They are running a protection racket. No matter how bad a “reform” is, it could be worse. This is how they bought off the drug companies in the health-care debate — by threatening worse. It is why the insurance companies were conflicted. Yes, they were maligned. But they’d live to fight another day, and in the meantime, the government would mandate that people buy their product.

I urge you use the link I've provided and read every word of Lowry's exposé (that's certainly what it is to me). 

Then you will understand what a farce Barack Obama's "reform" of Wall Street is - and who the real beneficiaries are.

Ken Berwitz

For the last couple of months, the left has settled on a strategy of calling out people and groups to their right as uncivil; and as dangerous - because incivility ramps up lunatics who then might engage in violence against whomever these people and groups are being uncivil towards. 

Radio and TV hosts, such as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, etc. are among the strategy's prime targets.

Personally, I find there is a great deal of incivility on both sides of the political aisle, with incidents of left wing incivility substantially outnumbering those from the right. 

For this reason, I have started blogging about instances of left wing incivility - which our wonderful "neutral" media don't seem able to find quite as easily as I can.

Here is the latest example, taken from Brian Maloney's radioequalizper.blogspot.  It is a transcript from the radio talk show of ed schultz, who also has a TV show on (where else?) MSNBC.

Read how he speaks to a caller who has joined the Tea Party movement and expresses dissatisfaction with the Democrats' health care legislation:

CALLER (51:46): My reason for being with the tea party is is this whole health care stuff. I remember hearing President Obama talking about how it was going to be open and transparent, it was going to be on C-SPAN, we were going to know what's in the bill and that's just not the way it worked.

SCHULTZ: Oh, you're an idiot, Jason.

CALLER: How am I an idiot?

SCHULTZ: Because everything you just said is wrong! MY GOD, I'M LOSING MY COOL! I'M SORRY, I'm sorry, I'm acting like this right now! My God, he had an open meeting! It was all over the Internet! Did you pick up the damn bill and read it?! YES OR NOT?!

CALLER: Did you read the bill?

SCHULTZ: YES, I READ TWO FREAKIN' BILLS!

CALLER: You read the bill ...

SCHULTZ: My God! I cannot (crosstalk), everything you just said to me is false! Everything, everything you just said to me is false! Get this idiot off my radio show! My God, I mean, sooner or later you gotta call these people out! President Obama couldn't have been any more transparent!

He couldn't have been any more open! He brought these nitwit Republicans in for a televised (pause) shindig at the Blair House. Or did you miss that?

God, go pick up your gun and march if it makes you feel better because you're too stupid to read!

Now there's civility for you.

Brian also points out that schultz has recently  "advocated ripping out Dick Cheney's heart, pushed ballot-stuffing in Massachusetts and called for "socialism" in American broadcasting via a federal government takeover"

I'll provide more examples of "civility" from the left in the future, which I will select from the increasingly voluminous number of examples there are to choose from.

Ken Berwitz

How can an administration top the claim that it "created or saved" almost two million jobs in 2009, when the country actually lost 4 million jobs?  How do you top that kind of a lie?

Well, don't say Joe Biden isn't trying.

Here, via an excerpt from Reuters, is his (thus the administration's) latest gambit:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Vice President Joe Biden predicted on Friday the U.S. economy would create 100,000 to 200,000 jobs next month, with a rise to 250,000 to 500,000 jobs per month soon afterward, according to a press pool report.

"We caught a lot of bad breaks on the way down. We're going to catch a few good breaks because of good planning on the way up," Biden told a political fundraiser in Pittsburgh, the pool report said, as he hailed the Obama administration's recovery efforts.

Wait a minute.

Bad breaks on the way down?  I thought the "bad breaks" was the Bush administration.  How come that isn't being passed off as the reason the way it has been since Barack Obama and Joe Biden took office?

Maybe it is because we are over a year into the Obama administration, and this phoney-baloney excuse has worn so thin that he can't use it anymore.  If so, they've got to find some other excuse;  some other reason besides their own failure to perform.  So now they're blaming it on "bad breaks".  

I wonder if passing a "stimulus package" which put us almost a trillion dollars more into debt, and resulted in a 25% INCREASE in unemployment, qualifies as a bad break.

Ken Berwitz

Excerpted from an Associated Press article:

The Supreme Court has turned down ACORN’s request for help in its lawsuit claiming Congress was wrong to shut off the activist group’s federal funding.

The high court on Friday refused to throw out a decision by the federal appellate court in New York City. That court had decided to freeze a judge’s determination that Congress acted unconstitutionally in yanking the group’s funding.

 Is this good news?  It sure is to me.  I consider ACORN is a thoroughly corrupt, racist organization.

But is it stopping ACORN's activities?  The answer to that question, I am sorry to say, is almost certainly negative.

ACORN is not going away.  Instead, ACORN appears to be reincorporating under different names, with the same players doing the same things that brought this slimy organization down.  And I have no doubt that they will be richly funded by the federal government - which means by the taxpayers - just as before.

So don't expect to see me popping any corks over the demise of ACORN.  Because I don't think there actually is a demise.

Boy do I hope I'm wrong about that.

Ken Berwitz

Yesterday, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed what clearly is the toughest anti-illegal legislation in the country.  It will force immigrants to carry documentation with them at all times, and it gives the police increased latitude in detaining people suspected of being in the country illegally. 

Does it go too far?  Frankly, it probably does.  The idea of police being able to stop people and demand to see their papers has a very unsettling feel to it.  A little too World-War-II-Europe for me.  Maybe a lot.

But there is another side to this. 

What was Governor Brewer supposed to do, when every avenue of preventing illegal aliens from streaming into Arizona was either non-existent or not being enforced? 

President Obama said that he would tackle tough new immigration policies within the first 100 days of his administration.  But that was another of the countless in-your-face lies he has told us. Mr. Obama has been in office for over 15 months - more than 400 days - and hasn't done a damn thing about illegal aliens, except to criticize Governor Brewer for what she did. 

That is pathetic. 

Note to President Obama:  Ms. Brewer does not govern Illinois, which is in the middle of the country, and she doesn't govern Washington DC, which is over a thousand miles from Mexico.  She governs Arizona.  ARIZONA.  Where the illegals are coming in. 

It is Ms. Brewer who has to deal with a state being flooded with illegals who have no right to be in the country, who utilize taxpayer funded services that they didn't pay for, who strain the emergency rooms of hospitals to the breaking point to get free care - again on the backs of taxpayers - and who often take below-minimum-wage jobs, which deny legals the ability to get those jobs with legitimate wages and benefits.

Then there is the matter of a wholesale killing and kidnapping epidemic going on in northern Mexico, in which the drug cartels are literally at war with what passes for Mexican authorities - and which has started to spill into US border states like Arizona.  If the federal government is not going to act definitively to stop this carnage, what should Ms. Brewer do?  Issue a proclamation thanking President Obama?   Or sign serious legislation that gives her state a fighting chance?

So, as uncomfortable as I personally am with parts of what Governor Brewer has signed, I understand that she was painted into a corner, due to the dereliction of duty in Washington DC by President Obama (and the Presidents who preceded him, let's not forget.  Their inaction brought us to this point as well).

Now, having signed Arizona's new immigration legislation it into law, Governor Brewer is guaranteed to be called every name in the book.  Racist, anti-Latino, neanderthal, right winger, nazi, fascist, etc. etc. etc. - by many of the same people who are perfectly happy that there have been no serious efforts to curb illegals all these years.

I suggest she wear them as a badge of honor.

Ken Berwitz

The moon must be in the seventh house and Jupiter aligned with Mars.  Or Uranus.  Or something.

Here is my second "Guess who said it" in less than 24 hours.  And, yes, you will be very surprised.

First the quote, from his op-ed piece in today's New York Times:

For centuries, Europeans in Africa kept close to their military and trading posts on the coast. Exploration of the interior, home to the bulk of Africans sold into bondage at the height of the slave trade, came only during the colonial conquests, which is why Henry Morton Stanley’s pursuit of Dr. David Livingstone in 1871 made for such compelling press: he was going where no (white) man had gone before.

 

How did slaves make it to these coastal forts? The historians John Thornton and Linda Heywood of Boston University estimate that 90 percent of those shipped to the New World were enslaved by Africans and then sold to European traders. The sad truth is that without complex business partnerships between African elites and European traders and commercial agents, the slave trade to the New World would have been impossible, at least on the scale it occurred.

 

Advocates of reparations for the descendants of those slaves generally ignore this untidy problem of the significant role that Africans played in the trade, choosing to believe the romanticized version that our ancestors were all kidnapped unawares by evil white men, like Kunta Kinte was in “Roots.” The truth, however, is much more complex: slavery was a business, highly organized and lucrative for European buyers and African sellers alike.

 

The African role in the slave trade was fully understood and openly acknowledged by many African-Americans even before the Civil War. For Frederick Douglass, it was an argument against repatriation schemes for the freed slaves. “The savage chiefs of the western coasts of Africa, who for ages have been accustomed to selling their captives into bondage and pocketing the ready cash for them, will not more readily accept our moral and economical ideas than the slave traders of Maryland and Virginia,” he warned. “We are, therefore, less inclined to go to Africa to work against the slave trade than to stay here to work against it.”

 Ok.  Now, who said it?

Take a guess.

You probably think it's a Black person, right?  Because I said you'd be surprised, right?

Well, that is correct.  It is a Black person.  But which Black person?

The answer is......

Henry Louis Gates Jr.  Yes, the same Henry Louis Gates Jr. who was involved in that bizarre event in Boston last year, when police stormed his house believing there was a break-in.  The same Henry Louis Gatets Jr. who sat down to have a beer, as part of a ridiculous photo-op with one of the cops, President Obama and Joe Biden.

Geez loueez;  how long is the moon going to be in this phase, anyway?

And what's next?  Will we see Barney Frank leave his lover and run away with Michele Bachmann?

Now that would be some moon phase!

Ken Berwitz

Have you seen the ads for Volkswagen minivans, where people see them and punch the person next to them?

If not, you probably think I'm either telling a joke or exaggerating.  Well, I'm not.

I just saw a new one (to me, anyway) this morning.  A guy takes his children on a drive through the neighborhood with their blue Volkswagen minivan.  Every time someone sees it he/she punches the person next to them in the arm and says "there's a blue one". 

And at the end of the commercial, the children beg to take another drive just like it - presumably to see how many other people will be punched.

My congratulations to Volkswagen for truly impactful advertising.  We will be looking at cars later this year and Volkswagen was in the running.  Now now it isn't.

Ken Berwitz

Here is today's editorial from the Washington Times, concerning how we are taxed, how much we are taxed, how little we trust the current government, and how amazingly disconnected politicians (mostly Democrats) are to how we are reacting to it. 

I can't excerpt this one, because every paragraph is important -- so here is the entire editorial:

Friday, April 23, 2010

EDITORIAL: Big-government extremism

 

The rising wave of popular activism in the United States is ritually derided by liberal commentators, politicians and academics as fringe-movement politics. But recent polling reveals that skepticism about government is broad and deep. Discontent with Washington has become the mainstream position; those who defend big government are the real extremists.

 

The annual Pew Research Center survey on trust in government released this week found "a perfect storm of conditions associated with distrust of government - a dismal economy, an unhappy public, bitter partisan-based backlash and epic discontent with Congress and elected officials."

 

The details are sobering. Fifty-six percent of Americans are frustrated with government, and an additional 21 percent are "angry." Anger at government has doubled in the past 10 years and now is equal with the percentage of people who are basically content. As well, 30 percent identify the federal government as a major threat to their personal freedom.

 

The Obama administration has the lowest average trust rating of any administration in the 50 years of the survey. Discontent with Congress is also at record levels. The percentage of Americans desiring smaller government with fewer services has risen from 42 percent to 50 percent since Barack Obama was elected president, while the number desiring more big-government solutions has declined from 43 percent to 39 percent.

 

In another survey, the Rasmussen organization reported that two-thirds of Americans think they are overtaxed, a belief surprisingly more prevalent among lower-income voters. Three-quarters think 20 percent is a fair rate of taxation, and most think the average American pays 30 percent or more. This is a good estimate. The most recent report from the Tax Foundation pegs the total tax burden from all levels of government at almost 27 percent in 2010. This figure rises to almost 39 percent when the increased debt from massive deficit spending is included. This is almost twice the tax burden most Americans consider fair.

 

Complaining about taxes is an American custom, but now there is a serious disconnect between the people and Washington power brokers. Eighty-one percent of mainstream Americans think the country is overtaxed, but three-quarters of the political class think tax levels are just fine. This could help explain the results of another Rasmussen survey, from January, that showed just 4 percent of Americans tend to trust political leaders more than the public at large.

 

Politicians ignore growing public dissatisfaction at their professional peril. Discontent of this scale was last seen in 1994, which contributed to the watershed congressional election that year in which Democrats lost a net 54 seats in the House and eight in the Senate. But President Obama and the congressional Democratic leadership are determined to double down on the very big-government programs the public is rejecting.

 

Sen. Claire McCaskill, Missouri Democrat, draws the lesson from the Pew survey that "both sides are guilty" and public frustration is not the result of high taxes and soaring deficits but of "promises made but not promises kept." If the senator's state of denial represents the general view of Democrats, 2010 is likely to be another watershed election year. Mrs. McCaskill is lucky her term isn't up for another two years. Many in her party aren't so fortunate.

 The Tea Party movement wasn't dreamed up by a couple of political operatives (like the phony Coffee Party "movement" is).  It is a largely spontaneous reaction by average, everyday citizens who were pushed over the edge by President Obama's apparent intent to turn what is left of our capitalist republic into an ersatz European social state. 

Am I wrong about this?  Is it just a bunch of fringe group people?  Is it going to just calm down and go away in a short period of time?

Good questions.  See me in November, and we'll discuss them a bit more knowledgeably.

Ken Berwitz

Do you remember ahmed hasheem abed, the subhuman murdering terrorist who killed four Americans?

Do you remember that he claimed the three navy seals who captured him roughed him up - specifically that he was punched, either in the stomach or in the mouth?

Do you remember that, although there was no evidence other than the subhuman murdering scumbag's claim, the three seals were charged with offenses and subjected to a court martial?

If you are outraged by this insanity, we are most assuredly on the same page.  At the time this ugly story broke, I wrote about it here and here  - see for yourself.

However, there is good news tonight.

One of the court martials is over.  Navy seal Julio Huertas was acquitted of the charges in about two hours (which, I am told, is the speed of light for a court martial).

I have no doubt at all that the other two, Matthew McCabe and Jonathon Keefe, also will be acquitted, and just as fast.

I am, of course glad that this has happened.  But am I happy with how it came to be?  No I am not.

These court martial proceedings should never have taken place.  They are a disgrace;  so great a disgrace that it is beyond my ability to put it in words

Did Major General Charles Cleveland, the officer responsible for this decision, think that the only way to credibly dismiss these ridiculous, unsubstantiated charges was to go through an idiotic, unbelievably unfair charade like the one these three men have been put through?  Or has he just taken leave of his senses altogether?

These men are HEROES.  They risked their lives to capture the terrorist murderer abed.  They should be getting the eternal gratitude of their country, and a medals for bravery.  Instead, the terrorist murderer accuses them.  Of what?  Of punching him?  The guy who either personally, or by his order, murdered four Blackwell security guards, probably torturing them as well, and then burned their bodies and hung what was left of them from a bridge?  SCREW him.  I'm sorry they didn't remove his bodily organs, one by one, with a rusted pair of pliers.

For the sake of simple fairness, get these other two court marials over with, let McCabe and Keefe join Huertas in being acquitted, and then personally thank them for their heroism -- and apologize to them in writing. 

It's the least they deserve.

Ken Berwitz

Brilliant is a word I sometimes use derisively.  But not this time.

Here is an absolutely brilliant 5-minute video by the "Axis of Awesome" (whom I have never heard of until now), which "proves" that all hit songs use the same four chords.

I guarantee that, despite a few instances of bad language, you will enjoy it - maybe even love it.

(if you have trouble viewing the video, just click here):

Ken Berwitz

Here is a quote.  Read it through and try to guess who said it. 

The answer is at the bottom.  But try not to peek.  I promise you will be more than a little surprised:

“I’m just old enough to have heard a number of Hitler’s speeches on the radio, and I have a memory of the texture and the tone of the cheering mobs, and I have the dread sense of the dark clouds of fascism gathering…”

 

The level of anger and fear is like nothing I can compare in my lifetime. Ridiculing the tea party shenanigans is a serious error. For over 30 years, real incomes have stagnated or declined…The bankers, who are primarily responsible for the crisis, are now reveling in record bonuses while official unemployment is around 10 percent and unemployment in the manufacturing sector is at Depression-era levels. The financial industry preferred Obama to McCain. They expected to be rewarded and they were.

 

Then Obama began to criticize greedy bankers and proposed measures to regulate them. And the punishment for this was very swift: they were going to shift their money to the Republicans.

 

So Obama said bankers are ‘fine guys’ and assured the business world: ‘I, like most of the American people, don't begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free-market system.’

 

People see that and are not happy about it. People want some answers. They are hearing answers from only one place: Fox, talk radio, and Sarah Palin.

Ok, which right wing, fire breathing nut job (a little james carvillian material for you there) would have said something as anti-Obama and, more generally, anti-left than that?

The answer is.......

so help me........

that it was said by none other than Noam Chomsky, on April 8th of this year, at the University of Wisconsin - Madison.

Yeah, I'm scratching my head too.

Ken Berwitz

Ever hear of lance baxter?  Sounds like a cheesy made-for-the-movies name from the 30's, doesn't it?

Well, actually lance baxter (who is also known as d.c. douglas) is - or, more exactly, was - a voiceover for some of those neverending GEICO television commercials.  But he has been fired.

The reason for baxter's firing was a voice message he left at FreedomWorks, an organization headed by former congressperon Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe, which describes itself as advocating for "less government, lower taxes and more freedom" and is deeply involved with the Tea Party movement. 

Here is what baxter said:

Hi there. I`m doing a paper about FreedomWorks and I was wondering if somebody could give me a call back. I`m wrapping up and I just have one more piece of information I need to get from you guys -- just need to know what the percentage is of people that are mentally retarded who work for the organization, and are members of it. And oh -- and one final thing, wondering what your plans are, how to spin it when one of your members does actually kill somebody, wondering how, if you`ve got an actual P.R. spinning routine planned for that or are you just going to take it when it happens. Just curious. So, give me a call when you get a chance. Thanks so much. 

Brilliant.  just brilliant.  In just a few sentences baxter managed to insult the Tea Party movement, to insult people with a mental disability by equating them to the movement he despises, and to suggest that the Tea Party movement's activities will result in someone being killed.  Civility personified.

When GEICO was made aware of what baxter did, they quickly fired him.  Try to imagine how little sleep I will lose over this firing.

Oh, one other thing:  baxter has since issued a press release which justifies his stupid, insulting, voice message by saying it was a reaction to the anti-gay and anti-Black slurs used against members of congress during their march through a Tea Party crowd to vote on the health care bill. 

Tell me:  have you heard the audio tape or seen the video of any such slurs being tossed at these congresspeople?  The answer is no, because THEY DO NOT EXIST.  With all the recording equipment being used every step of that march, not one device picked them up.  Not even one.

This, I am disgusted to say, is another example of what happens when a story is fabricated, then passed along and then relentlessly repeated by media as if it were true.  The lance baxters of the world crawl out from under their rocks and do what he did.

I wonder what these media, and the baxters of the world, will say if someone decides that voice messages aren't enough, and takes a potshot at one or more members of FreedomWorks.  Will they be happy or unhappy about it?

Maybe "proud" is the right word.

Ken Berwitz

Want to see how far the "civil" opposition to Tea Partiers is going to defame them? 

This is excerpted from FreedomWorks CEO Matt Kibbe's blog today at www.biggovernment.com:

The Left is escalating their attacks against Republicans, conservatives and the Tea Party movement. The movement that the Left and the media have laughed off for over a year now as a radical fringe of racists, bigots, homophobes, and domestic terrorists has come to pose a serious threat to the entitlement establishment and to the agenda that the Democrats promised their base. Now, they’re lashing out. They’re fabricating stories which are later disavowed. There is talk of infiltrating upcoming events. Attacks on organizations and individuals have increased.

To provide an example, the FreedomWorks office recently received this postcard in the mail (offensive language):

The return address listed Kim Hendren. Kim Hendren is a Republican in the Arkansas state legislature who is running for US Senate in 2010. To state the obvious, it would bring stupid to a new level to send something like this on an open postcard and list your name and address – especially if you were running for office. After we received a second installment of the hate-filled postcards, the FreedomWorks staff did some digging. We contacted Kim Hernden’s office and questioned him about it, and he filled us in on the smear campaigns against him. He’s been on the receiving end of relentless political attacks throughout his campaign, and was honestly not surprised that someone had taken to writing hate-speech in his name.

The attacks on the good people that are showing up are being used to change the subject. This is race baiting in reverse, and it needs to stop. The Democratic machine has smeared the Tea Party from the very beginning, saying that these people aren’t real and are driven by race and hate. Nancy Pelosi even went as far as suggesting that they were Nazis. These tactics are damaging to the fabric that holds us all together as a country

And this is not an isolated incident, nor anywhere near it.

When do mainstream media start talking about what actually is happening?  When do they get off the meme that Tea Partiers are racist (no evidence), right wing (they're to the right of Obama, which hardly necessitates being right wing in any real sense of the word), and inciting violence (absolutely no basis for this whatsoever)? 

Put another way, when do mainstream media start acting like professionals, and not lapdogs for one side of the political spectrum?  Do they agree with the ever-"civil" james carville that Tea Partiers are "fire-breathing nut jobs?"  And if so, do they really think their ad hominem dislike of/disdain for the Tea Party movement qualifies as professional journalism?

Sadly, it seems that a lot of them do.

Ken Berwitz

Here, from the party that complains about incivility, is its latest fundraising email, from James Carville.

Please note the civility level:

First there was Sarah Palin. Now we can add another Republican reptile from the past trying to help the GOP win House races this year – former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum.

Last weekend, Santorum whipped up a crowd of thousands of tea party extremists over the upcoming May 18th special election for the Pennsylvania House seat that was held by the late, great Congressman Jack Murtha.

Even worse, national Republicans just dropped a whopping $247,000 to spread lies and fear-mongering attack ads in this race. I need your help to fight back so we can keep this critical House seat blue. He needs just another $25,000 more for his rapid response efforts before Monday to keep pace.

Contribute $5, $10 or more to help Democrat Mark Critz win the critical special election to succeed the late Congressman Jack Murtha in PA-12.

Support Mark Critz for Congress

We need your help in the next 48 hours so Critz can fund his rapid response before it’s too late.

Ever since all those fire-breathing tea party nut jobs scored their upset win in the Massachusetts Senate election, they’ve been looking for a new race to target.

Santorum and his fellow nut jobs on the right-wing lunatic fringe know that another Republican win in a special election like this will send the media into a tizzy about how it’s all over for President Obama’s agenda and how the GOP has all the momentum this year.

We can’t let it happen.

Let's see: 

-Sarah Palin and Rick Santorum are reptiles. 

-Tea partiers are extremists. 

-Republicans are putting out lies and fear-mongering attack ads. 

-Tea partiers are fire-breathing nut jobs. 

-Santorum is a nut job, and part of the right wing lunatic fringe. 

Yep.  The very essence of civility.

Now, grow old waiting for our wonderful "neutral" media to call Carville and the Democratic Party out on their breathtakingly flagrant hypocrisy.

Ken Berwitz

From CNN yesterday:

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced last Friday that it is pursuing civil fraud charges against Goldman Sachs, a powerful investment bank with a long history of ties to the government. The announcement by the Wall Street watchdog came just a day before Obama personally led the charge of Democrats' full frontal assault on Republicans for their objections to some aspects of the current reform bill.

Related: Top Democrat held Wall Street fundraiser

Notwithstanding the coincidental timing, Obama said the SEC made the decision on its own.

"The SEC is an entirely independent agency that we have no day-to-day control over and they never discussed with us anything with respect to the charge that would be brought. The notion that somehow there would be any attempt to interfere in any independent agency is completely false," the president said.

From www,mcclatchydc.com today:

WASHINGTON — While Goldman Sachs' lawyers negotiated with the Securities and Exchange Commission over potentially explosive civil fraud charges, Goldman's chief executive visited the White House at least four times.

White House logs show that Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein traveled to Washington for at least two events with President Barack Obama, whose 2008 presidential campaign received $994,795 in donations from Goldman's political action committee, its employees and their relatives. He also met twice with Obama's top economic adviser, Larry Summers.

Now what do you suppose they talked about?  The weather?  Who plays for the Chicago White Sox?

It mystifies me that anyone would believe a word that comes out of Barack Obama's mouth.

Ken Berwitz

Lloyd Marcus is a Black conservative. 

It isn't easy to be that - especially when so many Black people, and liberals, and leftists and mainstream media, stereotype Blacks as oppressed, incapable of being able to succeed without being given things, and therefore a wholly owned property of the Democratic Party.

Astonishingly, a great many of the folks who think this way call others racist and intolerant.  A little like the pot calling the kettle black (I'll bet someone will make a racist story out of that too).

Here is an excerpt from Mr. Marcus's latest blog entry.  You'll quickly see what I'm talking about:

Blacks, the Media, & the Tea Parties

April 22nd, 2010

I am exhausted. I returned home after performing at tea parties in 42 cities, from Searchlight, NV to Washington, D.C., in nineteen days while on the Tea Party Express III tour. I’m black conservative singer/songwriter, entertainer, author, and spokesperson Lloyd Marcus.

I wish to share with you how the liberal mainstream media has dealt with my participation on the Tea Party Express III tour.

Liberal mainstream media all but call me an Uncle Tom. Their reports imply that I am a token black too stupid to realize that I am being used by the tea party movement. In typical liberal mainstream media arrogance, they are totally blind to the blatant racism of their reporting.

Because I do not fit the liberal mainstream media’s “all blacks must vote Democrat and believe that America is racist and unjust” template, I must be an idiot. As a matter of fact, because I am a black man who loves his country and proclaims that America is the greatest land of opportunity on the planet for all who choose to go for it, much of the liberal media consider me dangerous and even wish me harm.

The liberal mainstream media are relentless in their quest to portray the tea party patriots as racist. And yet, I have performed my song, “American Tea Party Anthem,” at over 150 tea parties, been treated like a rock star, and have even seen signs which read, “Lloyd Marcus for President!” Not one tea party attendee has ever called me the N-word.

Meanwhile, a Google search will reveal numerous liberal websites and blogs which freely and excessively call me an f-ing stupid N-word. The reason for their over-the-top anger and outrage against me: I express love for my country and refuse to be a hyphenated American.

The same liberals who accuse white conservative Republicans of being mean-spirited, racist, and intolerant are the hate-filled black and white Democrats who use the N-word every other word when writing about me and have even threatened me with physical harm.

Amazing, isn't it, how much racism and intolerance emanate from people who profess to be against both.

If I said that Black people were undereducated, ignorant, prone to unemployment, criminality and sexual promiscuousness, I would immediately be branded as a racist.  And I would deserve to be, because I would be stereotyping an entire group based on the behavior of some within it.

But what if I said all those things, and then added that these behaviors were due to oppression and racism, therefore White America must treat Blacks as a dependent class, and must provide a wide range of government-initiated programs and services to atone for what it has perpetrated on them?  Then I would be celebrated by many, probably most, of the same people who would call me a racist in the previous paragraph. 

For doing what?  For parlaying a stereotype of Black people into stereotypes of both Black and White people. 

Sad, but true. 

I congratulate Lloyd Marcus.  Not for his specific views:  he is entitled to have any kind of views at all, no matter what they are.  I congratulate him for having the strength and character to think for himself and not be beaten down by people who clearly believe that he is a Black man who doesn't know his place. 

Ken Berwitz

Excerpted from an article at www.marketwatch.com - the bold print is mine:

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) - General Motors Co. said Wednesday it has paid back $8 billion in emergency loans to the U.S. and Canada, a move aimed at rebuilding some of the respect it lost during last year's taxpayer bailout.

"GM's ability to pay back the loans ahead of schedule is a sign that our plan is working, and that we are on the right track," GM Chairman and CEO Ed Whitacre said in a statement. "It is also an important first step toward allowing our stockholders to reduce their equity investments in GM."

The $6.7 billion from the U.S. government, which had to be repaid within five years, was only a fraction of the $50 billion GM received in total.

The U.S. Treasury still holds $2.1 billion in preferred stock and owns 61% of the common equity, which it plans to unload once GM goes public.

Earlier this month, GM reported a $4.3 billion loss for its post-bankruptcy era from July through December but said it could turn a profit in 2010, a key step toward its initial public offering.

Did you ever see, or smell, a bigger pile of BS than this?

-GM received $50 billion dollars. 

-In the first half year after coming out of bankruptcy it lost 4.3 billion dollars (at that pace it will lose 8.6 billion for a full year). 

-But it has paid back 6.7 billion dollars "ahead of schedule". 

Paid it back with WHAT?  Not with money GM is earning, since it continues to lose money hand over fist.  Is it not reasonable to conclude that GM paid off the 6.7 billion dollars with some of the other 43 billion it took from the taxpayers? 

And if that's where the money came from, why is this man bragging about how quickly he paid back a small percentage of the money taxpayers are on the hook for?  GM didn't pay us back, WE paid us back with money that WE supplied.

This, folks, is a lie.  It is a fake and a fraud.  A cynical shell game at our expense.  It is the same kind of in-your-face chicanery we saw when President Obama told us his so-called "stimulus package" had saved or created almost 2 million jobs , even as we saw a net loss of four million jobs for the year.

They lie to us, and our wonderful "neutral" media don't call them out on the lie.  That keeps as many of us as ignorant as possible for as long as possible.

How little they must think of us, to pull this phony charade.  How ignorant and stupid and sheeplike they must think we are.

And y'know what?  For a lot of us, they're right.

Don't you be one of them.

Ken Berwitz

In the gripping, unsettling movie "The Kite Runner", there is a scene in which a boy who was apparently taken from an orphanage for sex, is brought out to dance for his abusers' enjoyment.

Was that just an overdramatized scene from a fictional story?  Read this excerpt from Phylis Chesler's latest column at www.frontpagemag.com and find out otherwise (the bold print is mine):

Last week, in Quetta, Pakistan, a homicide bomber attacked a prominent Shiite bank manager—and when his friends and relatives followed him to the hospital emergency room, another bomber attacked them, killing eight. The police assume that this was a “sectarian” (Muslim Sunni vs Muslim Shia) attack. This is nothing new; this is the template, the pattern. For example, also in 2009, in Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan, a Shiite Muslim leader was shot down; the next day, at his funeral, a homicide bomber killed himself and 28 mourners. Again, the police described this as “sectarian” violence. In 2008, in the same town, after the shooting death of a Shiite Muslim cleric, both the hospital and the funeral were subsequently attacked either by a homicide bomber or by a “planted” device. These Muslims take no prisoners. Yesterday, the deputy mayor of Kandahar, in Afghanistan (123 miles away from Quetta), was shot to death while he was praying in a mosque.

What mercy might such people show to infidels, women, or children, including their own?

None. None at all. Westerners are so confused about this—not only because they are brainwashed and do not want to be called “racists,” but also because these people tend to have such charming and “sincere” faces.

Last night, I watched the saddest little movie, a brave Frontline documentary about the “Bacha Bazi,” the underage “dancing boys” of Afghanistan. These children are sex slaves to older, powerful Afghan men–in this instance, former Northern Alliance warlords, who have purchased them from their impoverished families or, as orphans, simply taken them off the street. When they try to escape, they are found and punished—or they are murdered.

“Dagastir,” a former Northern Alliance warlord, who today has hundreds of police officers at his disposal, has an impassive, even a kind face. He does not look or sound ashamed or guilty about what he does. Yes, of course, he is married and has two young sons.

Human Rights Watch, cited by Amnesty International, first broke this story in 1997. They cited it as a Taliban-abuse. I write about this in my book The Death of Feminism. Now UNICEF says that this practice “has to be eradicated.” The documentary narrative admits that, although such sex slavery is illegal, the police will not make arrests, and that the rare jail sentence is quickly commuted. The police themselves often comprise the all-male audiences who enjoy the dancing boy performances.

That, I am truly appalled to say, is today's Afghanistan.  Killing is rampant, children are conscripted into sex slavery and often killed and discarded like yesterday's leftovers......

......and it is the place that President Obama thinks he can turn arouned on a dime, maybe even democratize, by sending more and more troops there.

President Bush knew better.  President Bush understood that Afghanistan as a country is about as hopeless as it gets, and the only logical objective of our military was to keep the taliban from ruling the few cities (Kabul, Kandahar, Herat, Mazari Sharif) where there is any semblance of law or defined social structure.

President Obama does not know better, and is determined to make us linear descendants of the USSR troops that failed so miserably there.

And he is doing it with the tacit approval of our wonderful "neutral" media, which can't seem to find enough time to do stories on the hopelessness of this strategy, even as it plays out in front of the world day after day after day.

Remember that billboard we heard about just a few weeks ago?  The one with a smiling face of George Bush and the words "Miss me yet?".

I have a feeling that more and more people do.

Ken Berwitz

From the Washington Examiner, we have the words of former ACORN head Bertha Lewis, speaking to a group of Young Democratic Socialists (that's the group's name, not my characterization):

Any of these groups that says, "I'm young, I'm Democratic, and I'm a socialist," is okay with me. You know that's no light thing to do -- to actually say, I'm a socialist. You've got to know, actually, we are living in a time that's going to dwarf the McCarthy era. It is going to dwarf the internment of World War II. We are right now in a time that is going to dwarf the era of Jim Crow and segregation.

 

They are coming. And they are coming after you. And they are going to be brutal and oppressive. They've already shown it. ... This is not rhetoric or hyperbole -- this is real. ... This tea party so-called movement -- a bowel-movement in my estimation -- and this blatant uncovering and ripping off the mask of racism...

You know you've been insulted when the former head of a thoroughly corrupt, racist group (see where the vast majority of their voter registration efforts concentrated) uses that language against you.

But remember that old axiom, that you can be defined by your enemies. 

If I were a tea partier, I would be very proud today.

Ken Berwitz

In answer to the question "Who????", Kenneth Bandler is Director of Communications for the AJC (American Jewish Committee).

I contacted Mr. Bandler because the AJC just sent me one of their emails, in which they enumerate the organization's activities.

The item that caught my attention was:

AJC has applauded the 76 Senators and 333 Representatives who signed letters to Secretary of State Clinton reaffirming the unbreakable bond between the United States and Israel.

Here is what I wrote in response:

Mr. Bandler:

 

I just received my AJC Impact email.  And it mentioned that "AJC has applauded the 76 Senators and 333 Representatives who signed letters to Secretary of State Clinton reaffirming the unbreakable bond between the United States and Israel."

 

That's nice.  But has the AJC condemned, or criticized, or even made note of, the 24 senators and 99 Representatives who didn't sign those letters. 

 

Do you even know who they are?

 

When the senate letter was made public, I spent weeks trying to find out which 24 senators declined to sign that letter.  To this day, I still have not been able to get the names.  Has the AJC got the names?  Has it even tried to get them?

 

But I had better luck with the House of Representatives letter, because the great columnist - and staunch Israel supporter - Jeff Jacoby was able to find out who did and didn't sign it. 

 

And it turns out that well over 90% of the representatives who declined to sign were Democrats (91 out of 98). 

 

From Jacoby's column of April 11th: 

 

...it is true that 333 US House members, a hefty bipartisan majority, endorsed the robustly pro-Israel Hoyer-Cantor letter to Clinton. But there were only seven Republicans who declined to sign the letter, compared with 91 Democrats — more than a third of the entire Democratic caucus. (Six Massachusetts Democrats were among the non-signers: John Olver, Richard Neal, John Tierney, Ed Markey, Michael Capuano, and Bill Delahunt.)

Just 4% of all Republicans (9 of 178) refused to sign a letter of support for Israel, compared to 36% of all Democrats (91 of 253) who refused to sign.  The difference is absolutely enormous.

 

If the AJC is a pro-Israel Jewish advocacy group, It is incomprehensible to me that this is being ignored. 

 

But if the AJC is at least as much a Democratic advocacy group as it is pro-Israel -- enough so that it will look the other way when over one-third of the entire Democratic house membership would not express support for Israel?  Then it is perfectly understandable.  

 

I strongly urge Mr. Harris and the people around him to decide what the AJC is, and just how far it will go to protect people who are telling them in so many words that they are against what the AJC purportedly stands for.

 

 

Sincerely

 

 

Ken Berwitz

I will be particularly interested in whether I get a response.  If I do (come to think of it, even if I don't) I will let you know.

Ken Berwitz

Excerpted from an Associated Press article:

Hawaii lawmakers are moving closer to passing a measure allowing the state to ignore repeated requests for President Barack Obama's birth certificate.

 

A conference committee unanimously voted Tuesday to advance the bill to final votes in the House and Senate.

Hey, I have a great idea.  One that would avoid the need for legislation because it would end the requests for Barack Obama's birth certificate (the real one, not the Certificate of Live Birth, which has been dishonestly portrayed as his real birth certificate but is not).

Why doesn't President Obama ASK FOR, RECEIVE, AND SHOW US HIS ORIGINAL BIRTH CERTIFICATE?

Why is this so problematic?  Why have literally millions of dollars been spent by Obama's lawyers to keep it from us? 

Why, if the original, long-form birth certificate says what Mr. Obama claims it says, is it being withheld -- along with his passport, his college transcripts and just about everything else that would give us some idea of who we elected President of the United States?

I've said it before and I'll say it again:  Barack Obama could make a five minute telephone call and pay a processing fee of less than 20 bucks to get his birth certificate. Then he could show it to us and, if it definitively proves he is a natural born citizen as he claims, the issue dies right then and there. 

But instead, he has spent upwards of $2 million dollars on an army of lawyers to fight his birth certificate ever being made public.   

Does this make me suspicious of what is on that birth certificate?  Of course it does.  How could it not make me suspicious?

And how could I not be furious with mainstream media, which spent untold time and money trying to prove that President Bush may have missed a few national guard meetings 35 years before, but has exactly zero interest in seeing proof that the President of the United States is legally able to hold the office.

For the past two years, people who have asked these questions and come to these conclusions have been ridiculed as some kind of lunatic fringe.  And it is true that at least some of them are (as there are lunatic fringe elements on both sides of just about every issue).  But how does that change the validity of the questions themselves?

It seems to me that asking to see the original birth certificate of someone whose job depends on what it says, is nothing more than basic common sense. 

Ken Berwitz

From Vicki Needham's article at www.thehill.com:

President Barack Obama is brushing off suggestions that the White House influenced the timing of fraud charges against Goldman Sachs.

In an interview set to air Wednesday on CNBC, Obama said the White House had nothing to do with the Securities and Exchange Commission's decision to file fraud charges Friday against Goldman Sachs.

"This notion somehow that there would be any atttempt to interfere with an independent agency is completely false," Obama said.

Obama said the SEC is an independent agency "that we have no day-to-day control over" and that it never discussed with the White House "anything with respect to the charges" that were brought.

My response?  I don't believe him.

He lies about everything else.  Why not this too?.

Ken Berwitz

Do you remember that story a couple of weeks ago about some unprincipled moron who decided he would very publicly state his intent to disrupt and destroy the tea party movement for daring to have a different political view than his?

Do you remember the unprincipled moron's name -- Jason Levin?

Are you aware that Levin is, of all things, a schoolteacher in Oregon; entrusted with shaping impressionable young minds?

Well here is how the Oregon tea party crowd is handling this, via excerpts of an article from Fox News (which, I'm sure, Levin hates):

The Tea Partiers are taking the high road. Just because Oregon middle school teacher Jason Levin has publicly denounced them as a bunch of "racists, homophobes and morons," they say that's no reason for him to lose his job.

All Levin really needs, they say, is some sensitivity training and some anger management therapy.

Levin, who declared his mission to "dismantle and demolish" the Tea Party on his "Crash the Tea Party" website, was placed on administrative leave last week while a state education board and his school district investigate whether the technology teacher promoted identity theft against Tea Party activists and misused school property.

But the Oregon Tea Party seems to be sipping chamomile. It doesn't want his neck -- just an apology from Levin and the Beaverton School District.

"We don't want to see Jason Levin fired, we want to see him helped," said Oregon Tea Party founder Geoff Ludt. "We want to reach out to him and we want to use his actions to create a teachable moment."

Call me a hopeless pessimist, but I doubt very seriously that Levin will appreciate the spirit of forgiveness being shown by tea partiers.  I would bet just about anything that he hates them every bit as much and, if he had the chance, would destroy them in a minute if he could.  I hope I'm wrong about this, but doubt it very much.

And do you think our wonderful "neutral" media will be doing as many feature stories on the tea party reaction to Levin as they do condemnatory stories on the tea party's "racism" (that nobody can find any evidence of, but which has been talked about relentlessly for weeks)?

Let me know when you've stopped laughing.....

Ken Berwitz

Earlier today I blogged about kwame kilpatrick, the dissolute former Mayor of Detroit.  Within my blog, I posted Tom Blumer's blog from www.newsbusters.org -- with full attribution, of course (I never use anyone else's work without doing this).

Shortly thereafter I received a message from Mr. Blumer asking me to refrain from using entire blogs of his, and of other writers at www.newsbusters.org.  He asked that I excerpt the material and provide a link so that Newsbusters will get the traffic it might generate.

This has caused me to realize a) that he is, of course, right and b) that I should be doing the same for other sources as well.

I have apologized to Mr. Blumer and will, in the future, only use excerpts from his (and everyone else's) blogs. 

This not only appears to be proper blogging protocol (which I didn't know until today), but, as an extra added attraction, it will shorten my own blogs (thank you for the spontaneous applause). 

Ok, back to politics.

Ken Berwitz

The latest fraud concerning ACORN is that, contrary to its fraudulent claims - which were seconded by a dutifully acquiescent media on its behalf, the organization is not closing shop and going away.  Not now and not any time soon.

From Matthew Vadum of www.newsrealblog.com (the bold print is mine):

ACORN On “Life Support”; Shouldn’t It Be Dead Already?

2010 April 21

by Matthew Vadum

Didn’t ACORN just say a few weeks ago it was going belly up?

It even picked April 1 –April Fool’s Day– as a shutdown date, and yet it’s still alive.

Just yesterday ACORN thug-in-chief Bertha Lewis told a reporter that the radical advocacy group is “on life support.”

Is this criminal monstrosity ever going to die?

Not if Lewis has her way. She’s busy trying to bring in fresh donations by posing as a victim and pretending that ACORN has fallen victim to a vast right-wing conspiracy.

Writes Lewis in a new fundraising email:

ACORN is not dead!

ACORN is alive because you are alive and still fighting for justice. Over the past 40 years, ACORN members have been through a lot in the fight to empower working families and families of color — and it has been the commitment of people like you, regular folks doing extraordinary things, that has made it possible.

In the email the perennially truth-averse Lewis, whose lies throughout the undercover video saga are well documented, continues to play the victim card arguing that ACORN, dozens of whose employees have been convicted of election-related crimes, was set up by shadowy corporate forces.

Nathan Henderson-James, director of ACORN’s online campaigns, already admitted ACORN isn’t really going away.

ACORN will probably run out of money and fold by year’s end but a dozen ACORN state chapters reincorporated to seem like new, independent organizations will spring up to carry on ACORN’s business, his leaked email suggested. At least a dozen of the group’s state chapters have already broken away under new names.

Meanwhile, the Obama Department of Justice finally got around to asking a federal appeals court in New York to stay a judge’s ruling that prevents the federal government from de-funding ACORN. Renegade federal judge Nina Gershon of the Eastern District of New York ruled it was an unconstitutional bill of attainder (punishment without trial) for Congress to cut off funding for ACORN.

The DOJ action came despite the fact that the Obama administration has already restored full funding to ACORN, which used to employ President Obama.

In a March 16 memo Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director Peter Orszag quietly ordered federal agencies to resume funding the group whose employees were caught on hidden camera videos last year condoning a variety of crimes including child prostitution and tax evasion.

Confused about the federal government’s position on ACORN? You’re not the only one.

If you are a regular reader, you may be saying to yourself:  "Didn't Ken tell me this was going to happen?  Didn't he blog that ACORN would just change its name and continue on with the Obama adminstration's blessing"? 

If so, thank you for remembering.  But don't be too impressed.  Anyone could have seen this coming a mile away.  I'll bet you did too.

Fraud is fraud.  And when the two parties are ACORN and the Obama administration, you literally have fraud squared.

Now, what do you think the Democrat-majority congress is going to do about it, besides change the subject?

The 2010 elections cannot come fast enough.  And that goes double for 2012.

Ken Berwitz

This blog is for anyone who thinks that what Barack Obama and his henchm...er, administration are proposing will in any way hurt Goldman Sachs, the company whose people gave him about one million dollars in campaign donations last year.

It comes to us from John Hinderaker at www.powerlineblog.com:

Regulate Us--Please!

April 20, 2010 Posted by John at 9:03 PM

Scoop Jackson used to be known as the Senator from Boeing; maybe Barack Obama should be called the President from Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs executives and employees contributed more money to Obama's 2008 campaign than a single company has raised for any politician since the dawn of campaign finance reform.

Does Goldman regret its unprecedented support for Obama and the Democratic Party? Not at all. Tim Carney explains the facts of life at the Examiner. Notwithstanding the populist Goldman-bashing the Democrats are now engaging in, the company enthusiastically supports heightened federal regulation of its business. A Goldman lobbyist explained: "We're not against regulation. We're for regulation. We partner with regulators." That pretty much says it all. In the meantime, Goldman is partnering with the Democrats to pass a permanent bailout bill.

Government regulation is almost always good for dominant firms like Goldman Sachs. It is smaller competitors, innovators and start-ups who tend to get squashed. That's bad for consumers, but if you're already on top, the government will help you stay there. As Carney notes, "every competitor [of Goldman Sachs] is smaller." Still, companies like Goldman take no chances. When Obama's first White House counsel, Greg Craig--an unreconstructed liberal and Democratic partisan--left the administration, who hired him? Goldman Sachs, of course.

A footnote: we've seen this pattern a thousand times, but it bears noting that one of Goldman's lobbyists is Dick Gephardt, former Presidential contender and for many years organized labor's most reliable spokesman in Washington.

This administration promised to be transparent and ethical.  It is instead thoroughly opaque and thoroughly unethical.

I wonder how many Democratic congresspeople will run from Obama & Co. during the election campaign in an effort to save their jobs.  My guess?  Plenty of them already, and more to come.

Ken Berwitz

This bizarre little story (or maybe not so little, I didn't look) comes to us from BBC News:

Surgeon cut off testicle 'by mistake' at Bury hospital

A patient lost a testicle during an operation because the surgeon cut it off by mistake, a General Medical Council (GMC) hearing has been told.

Dr Sulieman Al Hourani was only supposed to cut out a cyst, but removed the whole right testicle instead.

Dr Al Hourani was a locum surgeon at Fairfield General Hospital in Bury, Greater Manchester, at the time of the surgery in September 2007.

He is accused of misconduct and also of stealing medication.

It is alleged the doctor, who is now practising in Jordan and was not present at the hearing, also injected himself with a drug meant for a patient.

Sarah Prichard, counsel for the GMC, said the mistake was made as a nurse helping the surgeon turned her back to get a stitch.

When she turned around the testicle had been removed.

Doctor dismissed

Ms Prichard said: "Literally as the nurse turned away to get a transfixion stitch, the incident occurred and the testicle was removed.

"Such was the level of concern they immediately realised it could be a serious medical incident and took steps to complete the relevant documentation."

A month later it is alleged that the doctor, who qualified after studying at Jordan University of Science and Technology, stole two boxes of dihydrocodeine from a treatment room on a ward at the same hospital.

An investigation was launched and the doctor was dismissed by his employer, Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, which ran the hospital.

The GMC was told of another incident in August 2006, when Dr Al Hourani had consulted a colleague and was advised to inject a patient with 10 milligrams (mg) of midazolam, a powerful sedative drug.

He then gave the patient 8mg and injected himself with the other 2mg, the hearing was told.

The case against Dr Al Hourani is being heard in his absence as he was notified of the hearing but chose not to "engage" with the GMC or appoint lawyers to represent him.

The case, scheduled to last three weeks, was adjourned until Tuesday.

This doctor is now practicing in Jordan?   The medical people there must have some set of balls to allow it.

If this doctor ever operates on the same patient again, he'd better make out his last will and testicle.

There is no truth to the rumor that Sandra Bullock hired him to operate on Jesse James.  I think.

Ok, enough bad humor.  You'll have to come up with a few yourself.  And, if you'll pardon one more reference to that anatomical area, I doubt that it will be hard.

Ken Berwitz

How much of a double standard do media have in this country?  L. Brent Bozell gives us considerable insight in his latest column:

Bill Clinton, Still Smearing Conservatives

by Brent Bozell

 

They suggest that "news" shows don't go into reruns. But it certainly seemed that way when Bill Clinton marked the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing by repeating the same reprehensible smear from 1995. "Anti-government talk" emanating from conservatives naturally, inevitably led to 168 lives snuffed out in the wreckage of the Murrah Federal Building.

On the night of April 16, ABC substitute anchor Elizabeth Vargas red-carpeted Clinton's latest attack with the title "Watch Your Words" on the screen. Vargas identified talk radio and tea partiers as the culprits: "There is a lot of attention tonight on comments made by former President Bill Clinton, who has weighed in on the angry anti-government rhetoric, ringing out from talk radio to tea party rallies. He warns that sometimes firing people up with caustic comments can have unintended and dire consequences."

The New York Daily News was even more explicit, with the headline "Bubba: Tea Party Ticking Time Bomb." Clinton said in his speech that "This tea party movement can be a healthy thing if they are making us justify every dollar of taxes we raise and every dollar of money we've spent. But when you get mad, sometimes you end up producing the exact opposite result of what you say you are for."

 

Clinton tried to express that there's nothing wrong with protest -- but then suggested that these protests lead to domestic terrorism and mass murder. Reporters suggested Clinton "warned about incendiary language" -- not that his words were incendiary, mind you.

Where was President Clinton when liberal partisans took to the streets with real violence -- the kind that generates riot police, mayhem and oh, yes, injuries? Throughout all those years of ultra-left civil disruption, there was complete silence from Clinton. So hypocritical. So ... Clinton.

The most maddening thing about this repeated phenomenon is that the Clinton-adoring media helpfully paint these speeches as the plea of a unifier, a humanitarian voice for sanity and civility. Why can't they acknowledge that asserting your enemies are encouraging terrorism is not unifying, nor does it define civility?

Back on April 25, 1995, The New York Times reported that Clinton flew to Minneapolis to savage conservative talk radio: "We hear so many loud and angry voices in America today whose sole goal seems to be to try to keep some people as paranoid as possible and the rest of us all torn up and upset with each other."

Clinton added to the paranoia theme: "I'm sure you are now seeing the reports of some things that are regularly said over the airwaves in America today. Well, people like that who want to share our freedoms must know that their bitter words can have consequences, and that freedom has endured in this country for more than two centuries because it was coupled with an enormous sense of responsibility."

Now compare that last concept to his 2010 speech: "One of the things that the conservatives have always brought to the table in America is a reminder that no law can replace personal responsibility. And the more power you have and the more influence you have, the more responsibility you have."

Translation: the more "influence" you have in conservative circles, the guiltier you are of encouraging violence and death. Keith Olbermann was only being clearer when he said, "Rush, you have … blood on your hands." Joe Klein was being only being more craven when he charged conservatives were edging "right up close to being seditious."

Our alleged defenders of civility in the media elite can only provide their usual hosannas for Bill Clinton. But no one blinked in 2005, when we marked the 10th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing and Republicans were in the White House. Clinton granted no interviews to warn about anti-government talk. He issued no civility warnings. These attacks on "anti-government talk" are only relevant when the president is a Democrat. We live in "crazy" anti-government times only when protesting the government is seen as standing in the way of progress, not opposing the government schemes of "neocons" and "warmongers."

Within months of the 10th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, Cindy Sheehan would sit outside of President Bush's ranch in Texas proclaiming, "George and his indecent bandits traitorously had intelligence fabricated to fit their goal of invading Iraq." By the end of 2005, the media elite were excoriating Bush as "Big Brother" and a "dictator," but no one warned that this intemperate language could lead to violence.

Bill Clinton wants to surpass Jimmy Carter and be declared the greatest ex-president by the liberal media. But while George Bush and his namesake son quietly toil without any harsh smearing of the Left, Clinton and Carter shout their smears from the rooftops. All the media have to offer is a microphone and a kiss on both cheeks.

Ken Berwitz

This installment of "Name That Party!" comes to us from Tom Blumer, writing for www.newsbusters.org:

In Kilpatrick's Latest Capers, Former Detroit Mayor's Party, Obama Association Unmentioned

 

By Tom Blumer
Wed, 04/21/2010 - 00:22 ET

 

Just call it "journalism as usual."

 

One thing you can say about the Associated Press's and most of the rest of the establishment media's treatment of former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick during the past two-plus years is that they've been almost totally consistent. They pretend not to know or care what political party Kilpatrick represented throughout his political career, and fail to acknowledge Barack Obama's fondness for him before his legal and criminal troubles began.

 

The latest episode in this bizarre soap opera/insult to the taxpaying public has Kilpatrick, who now lives with his wife in Dallas, accused of violating his probation by not remitting monies received that he had agreed to pay to the City of Detroit to help take care of an acknowledged $1 million debt to the city. The cliffhanger is: Will he or won't he be sent to jail again?

 

Today, the AP continued following its two-year pattern (see related March 2008 post at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), this time as written by reporters Ed White and Corey Williams, of avoiding any mention of Kilpatrick's status as a Democratic politician when he was mayor of Detroit. Here are several paragraphs from the pair's prose: 

Judge says ex-Detroit mayor violated probation

 

Former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick violated terms of his probation by failing to report assets and turn over tax refunds, a judge ruled Tuesday, strongly suggesting he may send him to jail when he's sentenced next month.

 

Wayne County Circuit Judge David Groner said Kilpatrick could remain free on bond pending his sentencing on May 25, and ordered state corrections officials to prepare a pre-sentence report by May 18.

 

Kilpatrick pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice in 2008 after sexually explicit text messages became public, showing he had lied under oath about an affair with a staff member in a whistle-blowers' lawsuit. The 39-year-old resigned, served 99 days in jail, agreed to give up his law license, repay the city $1 million, and stay out of politics for five years.

 

Prosecutors claim Kilpatrick hasn't paid enough toward the $1 million he owes Detroit. He has been making monthly payments of $3,000 while living in the Dallas area and working as a salesman for information-technology company Covisint. But prosecutors learned Kilpatrick and his wife have had other money, including $240,000 in loans, live in a rented mansion and drive fancy SUVs.

 

"I think these entire proceedings have made it clear the defendant has no desire to pay," Assistant Prosecutor Athina Siringas told Groner.

 

... In an interview, Siringas said there's "no question" she will argue for "significant time" in custody. Defense lawyer Michael Alan Schwartz said jail or prison would be extreme.

 

"What's important - punishing the guy or getting money for the city?" Schwartz told The Associated Press. "He's already lost his position as mayor. He's lost his license to practice law. ... Is additional punishment going to achieve any positive good? The answer is no."

 

In January, Groner said Kilpatrick had been untruthful about his finances and ordered $320,000 in accelerated payments, much of it due by Tuesday. His lawyers say he can't afford it on top of his regular monthly payments. Relatives and supporters paid $40,000 on his behalf in February. 

So Detroit's ex-mayor supposedly deserves a stay-out-of-jail card because he's too valuable to be allowed to languish there, even though the remainder of his debt, assuming a current balance of $900,000 (which may be low), won't be paid for 25 years, and even though he by all accounts is living pretty large in Dallas. Who says crime doesn't pay? If this were a loan with a 5% interest rate instead of a $1 million apparently interest-free assessment, Kilpatrick's $3,000 monthly payments wouldn't even cover the interest.

 

As to Kilpatrick's previous association with Barack Obama, here is a transcript what the president had to say about him during the early stages of his presidential campaign (video is at link; transcript is below): 

I want to, uh ... I want to first of all acknowledge your great mayor, uh Kwame Kilpatrick, who has been on the front lines (pause during applause) ... has been on the front lines, uh, doing an outstanding job of, uh, gathering together, uh, the leadership at every level in Detroit to bring about the kind of renaissance that all of us anticipate, uh, for this great city.

 

And, uh, he is a leader not just here in Detroit, not just in Michigan, but all across the country people look to him. Uh, we know that he is going to be doing astounding things, uh, for many years to come.

 

And I-I'm grateful to call him a friend and a colleague. And I'm looking forward to, uh, a lengthy collaboration in terms of making sure that Detroit does well in the future. 

Well, at least former fan Obama was right about Kilpatrick "doing astounding things."

Don't worry, Mr. Obama.  Did you think you'd be treated like, say, President Bush was for his friendship with Enron's Ken Lay? 

Not a chance.  You're home free.  This is our wonderful "neutral" media in action.

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

Ken Berwitz

I watched the Today Show this morning.  Kelly O'Donnell did a major feature on the Obama administration's well-timed attempt to move toward nationalizing our financial services industry.  She portrays Democrats as crusading reformers, and Republicans as united in their efforts to "slow down", even block such legislation.

Not one word about the millions and millions of dollars pumped into the 2008 Obama presidential campaign by Goldman Sachs (almost a million dollars to Obama), Citicorp. J.P. Morgan, USB, Morgan Stanley (all of which gave $500,000 to $700,000 to Obama).  Let me say that again, loudly.  Not one word.

Then then wonder why people like me (and maybe you) call them biased?  Un frigging believable.

Ken Berwitz

From J. P. Friere of the Washington Examiner:

Is Goldman Obama's Enron? No, it's worse

By: J.P. Freire
Associate Commentary Editor
04/20/10 1:41 PM EDT

Campaign contributions from Goldman Sachs employees to President Obama are nearly seven times as much as President Bush received from Enron workers, according to numbers on OpenSecrets.org.

President Bush's connections to Enron were well-hyped during the company's accounting debacle that rippled through the economy. Time magazine even had an article called, "Bush's Enron Problem." The Associated Press ran with the headline, "Bush-backing Enron makes big money off crisis." David Callaway wrote that Enron for Bush was worse than Whitewater for Clinton.

But the mere $151,722.42 (inflation adjusted) in contributions from Enron-affiliated executives, employees, and PACs to Bush hardly add up to Obama's $1,007,370.85 (inflation adjusted) from Goldman-affiliated executives and employees. That's also not taking into account how much Goldman contributed to Obama cabinet member Hillary Clinton ($415,595.63 inflation adjusted), which was itself almost three times as much as Bush received as well.

It would be fair to say that the total amount the Obama administration has received from those affiliated with Goldman Sachs is ten times that of what Bush received from Enron.

Goldman is being sued for civil fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission for deliberately putting unwitting clients on the wrong side of a mortgage security trade that had been designed to fail.

Hmmmmm.

Does this mean our journalistic bulldogs, the ones who ran roughshod over Bush & Co., will be that much more aggressive when it comes to President Obama? 

I'll wait and see.  But I'm just about 100% sure I already know the answer.  And so do you.

More on this over the next couple of days.

Ken Berwitz

Nathaniel Stuart must be a miracle worker.

He went to the DC Tea Party event, and was able to tape a number of Black attendees and get their reasons for being there.  That has to be a miracle because, If you believe our wonderful "neutral" media, there is no such thing as a Black Tea Party person.

The video is shown below.  But before you see it I want to show you two especially insightful quotes.  One comes at about :45:

“Black Americans have been following Democrats off of a cliff for the last 40 years” 

And the other can be found at about 3:10:

”If anyone wants to call someone an Uncle Tom, first read the book.  Uncle Tom was a heroic figure.  Uncle Tom stood up against the Democrat, Simon Legree, who wanted to enslave those people.  He stood up, he fought and he was willing to die for freedom.  So anyone who wants to call me or any other African American an Uncle Tom, doesn’t know what they're talking about, because you don’t know what an Uncle Tom is.  You’re a Sambo.  You’re a Quimbo.  You’re working for the Democrats.  That’s the party of slavery and you’re continuing the enslavement of our people.”

If you read Uncle Tom's Cabin, you may recall that Sambo and Quimbo were Simon Legree's Black helpers -- the equivalent of Jewish "capos" who helped the nazis in the concentration camps.   I doubt that you need me to tell you it isn't a very complimentary reference.

Here is the video:

Maybe a few of the mainstream media, who are busy falling all over each other to paint Tea Parties as all-White racist events, would be interested in seeing this video.

Or maybe they are holding their ears.  And closing their eyes.  Isn't that what children do in the playground, when they don't want to face something?

Oh, one other thing:  Sambo and Quimbo, both of whom helped Simon Legree beat Tom to death, were filled with remorse afterwards.  I wonder how many media people who have lied about the "racism" of the Tea Party movement will ever be remorseful about it?

Ken Berwitz

How ignorant is Barack Obama about the realities of the middle east?   And how knowledgeable is Moshe Ya'alon?

Let's find out. 

From Scott Johnson of www.powerlineblog.com:

An interview with Moshe Ya'alon

April 20, 2010 Posted by Scott at 7:30 AM

The Jerusalem Post has published an extremely interesting interview with Israel's Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe "Bogie" Ya'alon. Ya'alon is the former head of Military Intelligence, Israel Defense Forces OC Central Command, and chief of the IDF General Staff. Jerusalem Post interviewers David Horovitz and Herb Keinon point out that Ya'alon speaks about Israel's current challenges vis-à-vis the Palestinians, Iran and the Obama administration from a position of knowledge and experience.

In the question and answer session with which President Obama concluded his closing remarks at the nuclear summit in Washington last week, Obama aimed in part at formulating the national interest of the United States in the resolution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict: "It is a vital national security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts because whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower, and when conflicts break out, one way or another we get pulled into them. And that ends up costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure." Here is a particularly pointed exchange with Ya'alon that alludes in part to this proposition and others circulated among the left insofar as Israel is concerned:

JP: How concerned are you by the argument heard increasingly in the US that we are endangering the lives of US soldiers?

MA: That is first and foremost a manipulation, and a lie. The truth is the complete opposite. If we are seen as standing firm against the jihadists, against Hamas and Hizbullah, that serves the US interests. And if we are seen as weak, whether in Lebanon, Gaza, or in Judea and Samaria, that harms US interests.

It is clear to us that the central threat today, and the thing that needs to be the highest priority for the world, is not the Israeli-Palestinian issue, but rather the Iranian one. Even before Iran has nuclear capability, it nourishes terrorism, supports it, and pays for it. It also does this in the US's backyard, in South America. The link between Chavezism and jihadism is crawling, but has now spread to five states.

When it comes to the Iranian nuclear threat, it is clear that what is needed is steadfastness from the west. It is not Israel vs Iran, which unfortunately I see in headlines on CNN. It is America, Western civilization vs Iran.

We think the Iranian government should long ago have had to face this dilemma: the bomb or survival. That is the dilemma, and it should be created before you deploy a military option. But it has to be based on Western determination, Western unity, diplomatic isolation, economic sanctions and in the background a credible military option.

The interview shows Minister Ya'alon holding a substantially firmer grip on the security issues facing the United States than does the president. The interview also provides an important glimpse into the thinking of Israel's government on issues of current concern.

You be the judge:  who makes more sense?  A lot more?

And whose fault is it that we have a President who is so uncomprehending?  The answer is, it is our own fault.  We elected him.  We put a Chicago machine politician with no presidential qualifications into the oval office.  And we iced the cake by handing him a lopsided majority in both houses of congress to second his motions, no matter how obtuse they are. 

The 2010 election cannot come fast enough.  And that goes double for 2012.

Ken Berwitz

Maybe this was the wrong guy to select as a state liquor commissioner.

From WMUR Channel 9 news, New Hampshire:

GILFORD, N.H. -- Gov. John Lynch fired the state liquor commissioner on Monday after the commissioner was charged with driving while intoxicated.

 

Liquor Commissioner Richard Simard was arrested and charged with DWI in Gilford late Saturday night, police said.

 

Gilford police received a report that Simard, 67, of Manchester, was driving erratically toward Gilford in his 2010 BMW.

 

Police pulled him over at about 11:50 p.m. on Lakeshore Road and conducted a field sobriety test, which police determined he failed. Simard refused a Breathalyzer, according to police.

 

He was taken to Belknap County Jail where he released on $1,000 personal recognizance bail.

 

Simard was charged with driving while intoxicated and speeding.

 

Gov. John Lynch removed Simard as liquor commissioner on Monday. The governor said that Simard is innocent until proven guilty, but he should not have refused to take the Breathalyzer test.

 

“It is simply unacceptable for a liquor commissioner, stopped by the police on suspicion of driving under the influence, to refuse a Breathalyzer test," Lynch said in a written statement. "Under the circumstances, Richard Simard’s continued presence on the Liquor Commission would compromise the integrity of the commission."

 

Simard’s term had expired in July 2009, but he continued to serve as a commissioner at the will of the governor, in accordance with state law.

 

Lynch said he would act quickly to nominate a replacement liquor commissioner.

DWI - driving while intoxicated - is bad enough.  But DWI WC - driving while intoxicated while commissioner?  It seems to me that's a tad worse.

Maybe Governor Lynch and Richard Simard can sit down together and hash this out over a couple of dr...er, forget that.  Bad idea.

Ken Berwitz

Of all the cable news network on-air personalities I have seen, Joy Behar is the least prepared and asks the least intelligent questions.  Is it asking too much to expect that she won't also lie to us about something she said less than five minutes before?

From Brad Wilmouth of www.newsbusters.org:

Behar Links Racist Signs to Tea Partiers, Then Denies Mentioning Race, ‘Scared to Go’ to Events

By Brad Wilmouth
Tue, 04/20/2010 - 06:39 ET

 

On Monday’s Joy Behar Show on HLN, when guest Mark Williams of Tea Party Express complained to Behar and fellow guest Ari Melber of the Nation about Tea Party activists being smeared as racist, the HLN host claimed that she had not brought up race during the segment, even though she opened the discussion by referring to stereotypes about Tea Party activists as she cracked that perhaps public opinion "might drive people to stop making racist signs and wearing hats made of teabags." Behar introduced the segment: "The anti-government sentiment that has driven the Tea Party movement seems to be working as four out of five Americans say they don’t trust the government. I wonder if these same sentiments might drive people to stop making racist signs and wearing hats made of teabags."

 

But Behar and Melber later developed amnesia as Behar claimed, "We didn’t mention race":

 

MARK WILLIAMS, TEA PARTY EXPRESS: Is there anything that either of you have ever encountered you don’t see as racist? Joy, you called "Black Friday" racist. You call the term "black sheep" racist. Everything is racist in your mind.

 

ARI MELBER, THE NATION: You know, it’s funny. This is such a great example because this entire segment we haven’t heard one reference to race.

 

WILLIAMS: Everything is racism, in your mind.

 

MELBER: We haven’t heard one reference to race except by you. I didn’t bring up race.

 

JOY BEHAR: We didn’t mention race.

 

MELBER: Joy didn’t mention of race. And now you’re here saying everything is racist. It’s weird.

A bit earlier, after Williams complained about Behar for commenting that there is "a lot of anger in the Tea Party movement," the HLN host cited television as her source of information about the movement and asserted that "I’m scared to go" to an event:

BEHAR: There seems to be a lot of anger in the Tea Party movement. Don’t deny it.

 

WILLIAMS: Have you been to any of our events?

 

BEHAR: I’ve seen it on television.

 

WILLIAMS: We have music acts.

 

BEHAR: I’m scared to go.

 

WILLIAMS: Victoria Jackson, Jimmy Labriola, we have-

 

BEHAR: Jimmy Labriola? I did standup with Jimmy Labriola. No brain trust, trust me.

You can read a transcript of the complete segment by clicking here.  And, yes, the rest of it is as pathetic as the segment above.

Behar seems to think that, since putting on a patronizing smirk of a smile and barfing out standard left wing platitudes makes her hot stuff on The View, it works for primetime too. 

And, hey, Headline News gave her a show, didn't they?  Not a very well watched one (currently she is fighting Larry King for last place in her time slot), but a show.

Even Glenn Beck, who I can't watch at all because he acts like such a putz, has a dramatically greater command of facts than Behar.

To me she is a liar and a loser.  Not a great combination.

Ken Berwitz

I'm not a big fan of Rush Limbaugh's, and rarely quote him here.

But, his comments about the Obama administration's attempted takeover of our financial institutions (you call it what you want, that's what I call it)?  Consider him quoted.

From yesterday's show:

I played golf yesterday afternoon with some guys that are for all intents and purposes Wall Street guys.  They don't live on Wall Street or work there but they're in the financial business.  And they said, "Rush, a dirty little secret, this debt's never going to get paid down.  It's gotten to the point where everybody knows we can't pay it down.  There's no way to pay this debt down."  There's no way California is going to retire its debt. There's no way California is going to make up for the unfunded or underfunded pensions, and one of the reasons is it's precisely because it's so big.  It's gotten so big on purpose there's not even a pretense of paying it down.  The only thing that has to happen is for leaders to appear responsible in managing it.  And they said, "Rush, how do you appear responsible in managing debt?  You do it by raising taxes."  This will get the approval of leftists around the world, other governmental leaders, the ChiComs and others, people who hold our debt, they'll be happy when they see we're trying to manage it and deal with it, after they've run it up to the point of stealing the wealth of future generations three and four generations down the road.  

I said to them, "I understand what you're saying, but this is all going to collapse at some point, it's unsustainable.  You're talking about tax increases of the sort that are going to prevent economic growth.  Look at Greece, look at a lot of these European Union nations.  At some point it does come due.  At some point the debt has to be paid down.  At least you have to get started paying it down.  If the attitude is it's so big everybody knows we'll never pay it down, that you'll never even start, then we've got even more problems than I thought we had."  Then we got around to talking about Goldman Sachs.  And, you know, it's amazing.  These are very, very smart guys, brilliant, but they were hearing for the first time my theory that this whole thing was organized, with Goldman probably involved in it.  I mean, here's Obama seeking another pillar in his agenda, financial regulatory reform, he's gotta demonize Wall Street.  The Democrats are out saying, Van Hollen and the others are out saying that is their plan going into the November elections.  They're going to demonize Wall Street again.  They're gonna blame the Bush policies again for being responsible for where we are economically right now.  

Lo and behold, after nine months of investigation, this SEC investigation, nine months, miraculously, by one of the most profound coincidences, they announce the results of the investigation, that there has been fraud at Goldman Sachs involving mortgage-backed securities, derivatives and all this sort of thing, the day after Obama makes his big pitch for financial regulatory reform and Chris Dodd's on the floor of the Senate, and, lo and behold, by Friday and Saturday we had stories, and I've got 'em here in the Stack of Stuff, talking about how this might be a propitious event.  I mean the State-Run Media is right in there as though this is totally accidental, totally coincidental.  And I was saying to these guys yesterday, "Goldman would be happy to pay whatever civil fine here," if there even is one, they'll be happy to pay a little civil fine here and take the PR hit in exchange for being in bed with the Obama administration for the next ten years or eight years or however long it's going to be, six years is what they're planning on.  How many ex-Goldman people are in government?  Hank Paulson was Treasury secretary.  Robert Rubin, an ex-Goldman guy.  There's no coincidence, especially on the Democrat Party side and with the American left.  There aren't any coincidences in politics.  

So we have the weekend.  Goldman Sachs, rotten to the core, meaning Wall Street's rotten to the core, meaning the regime has to come in here to save the day, protect us, the little guy, from these bandits on Wall Street, when in fact the government caused the problem in the first place.  It was a government-caused problem.  This happens frequently.  Government goes in, causes the problem, and then sits back and says, "Whoa, look at how unfair and rotten the private sector is. Look at how bad capitalism is.  Why, why, we have to go in there and fix this mess.  You just can't trust these people in Wall Street. You can't trust these people in the private sector. I mean all this unfettered economic activity going on out there," like Obama said.  We are the most regulated economy for a supposed free society that I've ever seen.

Ken Berwitz

Add this to the list of Republicans who have been threatened by Democrats - otherwise known as the threats network news and the major dailies don't bother to report:

DEM DONOR Arrested for Threatening to Kill GOP Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite

Posted by Jim Hoft on Monday, April 19, 2010, 6:15 AM

 

Dem Donor Arrested- Threatened to kill Republican Representative–

 

FBI agents arrested a Spring Hill man late Sunday for threatening to kill Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite (R-FL).
The Orlando Sentinel reported:

 

FBI agents and officials with the Hernando County Sheriff’s Office say they have arrested a Spring Hill man on a charge of threatening harm against U.S. Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite.

 

The Brooksville Republican’s office received a “telephonic threat” on March 25 from an unidentified male, authorities said.

 

Late Sunday, FBI agents and Hernando deputies arrested Erik Lawrence Pidrman, 66, at his Spring Hill home in connection with the threat. The charge is “threatening to assault or murder a US official,” according to FBI Special Agent Dave Couvertier.

 

Hernando deputies and the FBI started a joint investigation after Brown-Waite’s Brooksville office received a telephonic threat.

 

This investigation is ongoing and the United States Attorney’s Office, Middle District of Florida, will handle the prosecution.

 

Brown-Waite’s office released a text of the voicemail soon after it was received March 25.

 

The caller stated: “Just wanna let you know I have 27 people that are going to make sure that this [expletive deleted] does not live to see her next term. Good-bye.”

 

Brown-Waite contacted the Capitol Police and the Hernando County Sheriff after receiving the message.

 

Hat Tip Kyle

 

Pidrman was arrested on drunk driving charges in 2006.

 

Pidrman gave $250 to Hillary’s campaign in 2008.

 

By the way… Bill Clinton today warned of “a slippery slope from angry anti-government rhetoric to violence like the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.” Maybe he should preach to his wife’s donors first.

We heard about the Democrats ASAP.  But here is another Republican threatened the same way - on March 25th - and this is the first I even know of it.  How about you?

Then they wonder why people call them biased......

Ken Berwitz

Here is an excerpt from a front page article in this morning's New York Times:

Democrats Seize on Financial Oversight After Goldman Suit

By JACKIE CALMES

Published: April 18, 2010 

WASHINGTON — With the Senate scheduled to begin debate on a financial overhaul bill this week, the fraud suit against the Wall Street titan Goldman Sachs has emboldened Democrats to ratchet up pressure on Republicans who oppose the Obama administration’s proposal.

 

In a sign of the Democrats’ increasing confidence that they have the better of the argument in an election year defined by voter anger at big banks and bailouts, White House officials said Sunday that President Obama would take his campaign for a regulatory overhaul on the road in coming weeks — starting on Thursday at the Cooper Union in New York City, where, as a presidential candidate in 2008, six months before the financial crisis hit, Mr. Obama outlined a program for tightening oversight.

Obviously the Goldman Sachs scandal is a disaster for Republicans, right?  That is certainly what Ms. Calmes is leading you to think, isn't it?

Ok, now look at this interesting headline at www.drudgereport.com right now (it's about 6:20PM), complete with a link:

WILL OBAMA RETURN $994,795 IN GOLDMAN SACHS CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS?

And Goldman Sachs ain't the only one either.  This table comes from www.opensecrets.com.  It shows Barack Obama's largest contributors to his presidential campaign.  Please note the financial institutions I've put in bold print:

University of California	$1,591,395
Goldman Sachs	$994,795
Harvard University	$854,747
Microsoft Corp	$833,617
Google Inc	$803,436
Citigroup Inc	$701,290
JPMorgan Chase & Co	$695,132
Time Warner	$590,084
Sidley Austin LLP	$588,598
Stanford University	$586,557
National Amusements Inc	$551,683
UBS AG	$543,219
Wilmerhale Llp	$542,618
Skadden, Arps et al	$530,839
IBM Corp	$528,822
Columbia University	$528,302
Morgan Stanley	$514,881
General Electric	$499,130
US Government	$494,820
Latham & Watkins	$493,835

(We'll save that half-million from GE, which is NBC and MSNBC's parent company, for another blog -- along with the academic institutions and the international law firms which make up most of the rest of the list.)

So tell me:  Which party should be on the hook for this scandal? 

Now let's see how our wonderful "neutral" media report it.

Ken Berwitz

Charles Blow is a recent addition to the New York Times' roster of columnists. 

He is also a genuine embarrassment to this once-great and now-fallen newspaper.

Read, and listen to, Laura Ingraham take Blow apart on his idiotic, unfounded, unevidenced racial claim about the Dallas Tea Party event.

Here is a partial transcript of Ingraham's interview with Blow, which I pulled from Noel Sheppard's piece at www.newsbusters.org.  You can hear the entire segment by clicking here and starting about 3:30 of the way in:

LAURA INGRAHAM, HOST: So, what was the worst display of overt racism that you witnessed?

 

CHARLES BLOW, NEW YORK TIMES: I didn't say I had witnessed any overt...

 

INGRAHAM: You called it a minstrel show, Charles. Those are kind of loaded terms, don't you think?

 

BLOW: Did I say that I had witnessed any overt racism at...

 

INGRAHAM: What's a minstrel, what's a minstrel show?

 

BLOW: What is racism to you, Laura?

 

INGRAHAM: No, the other way around where racism is someone...

 

BLOW: What is racism to you, Laura?

 

INGRAHAM: You know what I think is racism? I think racism is someone who judges another person based on the color of his or her skin without knowing anything about the individual, without talking to the individual, without interviewing the individual, without having a conversation with the individual.

From here, Blow for some reason moved on to Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele's interview with GQ magazine. Ingraham was having none of it:

INGRAHAM: Why are we on GQ magazine? Why aren't we on the Tea Party. I'm interested in how you came to the conclusion that this was a minstrel show and you're avoiding the topic by going to a Michael Steele interview. Why?