Ken Berwitz

For the poll lovers in the house....

Here are the results of a Rasmussen poll, taken Monday and Tuesday night:

-Question:  "Does the United States have a clearly defined military mission in Libya"? 

-Answer:  Yes:  21%       No:  56%       Don't Know:  23%

According to Rasmussen, the results before and after President Obama's speech came out about the same.

If these data are accurate, therefore, people did not think the administration had a clearly defined military mission before President Obama's speech, and the speech did not change their minds.

Make of it what you will.

Ken Berwitz

What do you do when, just after you've ditched a writer whose views you despise on the grounds that he has breached your high standards, a different writer, whose views you love, makes far worse comments?

Last week, Andrew Breitbart - one of the few right-of-center contributors to the decidedly left-of-center huffingtonpost.com - was unceremoniously shown the door.  Why?  Because, in an article for a different web site, he called President Obama's ill-fated Green Czar, van jones, a "commie punk", "human toxin" and "cockroach".  

That fact that jones is a self-described communist?  Irrelevant and immaterial.  According to huffingtonpost.com's Mario Ruiz, Mr. Breitbart "violates the tenets of debate and civil discourse we have strived for since the day we launched".

If you know anything about the huffington post, reading that description of its standards should make you launch:  namely, anything you've eaten in the last 12 hours. 

But Ruiz said what he said.  And that should have ended the matter ---- were it not for the fact that, very shortly thereafter, bill maher, also a huffingtonpost.com contributor, referred to Sarah Palin as a "dumb twat" and a "bimbo" and a "cunt". 

Unlike the van jones case (and certainly not surprisingly), Ms. Palin does not describe herself in these lowest-of-low terms; terms that are enormously demeaning to women.

I think most people would agree that calling a woman a "dumb twat" and a "cunt is a tad more severe than calling anyone a "human toxin" and a "cockroach"

So huffingtonpost.com has immediately bounced maher out of its roster of contributors, right?

Wrong.  He's still there in good standing.

As you might expect, this has been a source of both confusion, and amusement for people on the right side of the fence. 

One such person is Noel Sheppard, of newsbusters.org.  He decided to "call the huffington post's bluff" and try getting an explanation of why what Andrew Breitbart said about van jones was worse than what bill maher said about Sarah Palin.

If you click here, you can read Mr. Sheppard's letters to Ruiz and find out where they got him.  It is well worth your while. 

But I have a feeling you already know the answer - i.e no matter how many times Mr. Sheppard contacted Ruiz he got the same response:  no response at all.

I certainly hope none of this surprises you.  But I just thought you'd like to know........

Ken Berwitz

As we continue to bomb Libya, wouldn't it be a good idea to find out who the $%#& we are it bombing for?

In that regard, here are a few excerpts from Karen DeYoung and Greg Miller's article for today's Washington Post:

In Libya, CIA is gathering intelligence on rebels

The Obama administration has sent teams of CIA operatives into Libya in a rush to gather intelligence on the identities and capabilities of rebel forces opposed to Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi, according to U.S. officials.

The information has become more crucial as the administration and its coalition partners move closer to providing direct military aid or guidance to the disorganized and beleaguered rebel army.

Several lawmakers briefed by Clinton, Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said they were told that the United States is still trying to put together a full picture of the Libyan rebellion but believes that it does not contain large numbers of radical Islamic militants.

“Nobody had detected any significant presence, although they knew there were some people,” said Rep. Gary L. Ackerman (D-N.Y.). But “nobody’s vouching for resumes” at the moment, Ackerman said.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), said he heard nothing in the briefing that turned him in favor of arming the rebels. Calling it a “horrible idea,” Rogers said: “We know what they’re against. We don’t really know what they’re for.”

Regular readers of this blog certainly have seen my comments about "the rebels" before.  But for anyone who has not.....this article is telling readers that we have been bombing Libya without knowing who "the rebels" really are, or whether they are any better than - maybe even worse than - moammar qaddafi.

How nice of the writers to defer to the Obama administration by not mentioning that, almost a week ago, rebel leader abdel-hakim al-hasidi told London's Daily Telegraph that he was recruiting, and accepting al qaeda forces.  His reason?  Because "members of al-Qaeda are also good Muslims and are fighting against the invader". 

Simply stated, anyone who doesn't wonder about - and worry about - who we are helping, is probably beyond reason.  And anyone who doesn't wonder about - and worry about - how a major newspaper could possibly leave the rebels' al-qaeda sympathies out of a story involving who the rebels are, is even further gone.

But they do say that information on who we are bombing for "has become more crucial", don't they?  

Incredible!  Can someone tell me when it was not crucial? 

We are breaching a sovereign country's air space and bombing its military targets, on behalf of people whose motives - other than getting rid of qaddafi - are unknown to us.  But those motives have only now "become more crucial"???? 

Here's a question for the authors of this article - and the Obama administration:  What if "the rebels" want to replace qaddafi with a regime sympathetic to al-qaeda?.  What if they welcome osama bin laden (assuming he is even alive anymore) and/or his cohorts to the new Libya, and encourage them to train their operatives there? 

In other words, what if our bombing results in Libya essentially becoming pre-9/11 Afghanistan, with massive oil revenues?

Is that ok with you?  Because it isn't ok with me.  And the very real possiblity that we are in the process of installing such a regime stands the hairs on my neck.

Does anyone in this administration have even the slightest clue about what they're doing?

Ken Berwitz

Here is a dissertation on President Obama, by that wonderful, tolerant paradigm of humanitarianism, malik zulu-shabazz.

In case you didn't know, shabazz heads the "new Black panther party", whose members intimidated voters in Philadelphia during the 2008 election - oh, excuse me, they didn't do anything terrible; eric holder told us so.

Lovely. 

Maybe holder and the Department of Justice he has perverted, would now like to rethink its BS dismissal of the Philadelphia outrage - seeing as how zulu shabazz no longer appears to be supporting Barack Obama.

Or, on the other hand, maybe holder assumes that, come 2012, the new Black panther party will have to support Obama, because the other choice is likely to be a White person.  In that case, he's home free.

Isn't it inspiring to see how completely race politics has receded since Mr. Obama took office?

Ken Berwitz

Dear Obama administration and Libya coalition:  Welcome to Israel.

Excerpted from today’s article at Reuters:

ROME (Reuters) - At least 40 civilians have been killed in air strikes by Western forces on Tripoli, the top Vatican official in the Libyan capital told a Catholic news agency on Thursday, quoting witnesses.

"The so-called humanitarian raids have killed dozens of civilian victims in some neighborhoods of Tripoli," said Giovanni Innocenzo Martinelli, the Apostolic Vicar of Tripoli.

"I have collected several witness accounts from reliable people. In particular, in the Buslim neighborhood, due to the bombardments, a civilian building collapsed, causing the death of 40 people," he told Fides, the news agency of the Vatican missionary arm.

Libyan officials have taken foreign reporters to the sites of what they say were the aftermath of Western air strikes on Tripoli but evidence of civilian casualties has been inconclusive.

Western powers say they have no confirmed evidence of civilian casualties from air strikes, which they have carried out under a U.N. mandate to protect civilians caught in conflict between Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's forces and rebels.

"It's true that the bombardments seem pretty much on target, but it is also true that when they hit military targets, which are in the middle of civilian neighborhoods, the population is also involved," Martinelli said. 

So, how does it feel to kill civilians because the enemy has placed military assets among them?

How does it feel to make a choice of either allowing the enemy to fire and kill at will, or taking out the military capability where it is sure to kill civilians as well?

How does it feel to be murderers of innocent women and children, whose only “crime” is their proximity to what the enemy is doing?

Do you feel that being called murderers in this situation is unfair, given that you have no choice but to do what you have done?  Is it exasperating?  Infuriating? 

Like I said:  Welcome to Israel. 

Maybe this will finally teach you something.

Ken Berwitz

Wondering how the so-called "stimulus package" is making out these days?

Read this excerpt from an article by Michael Hinkelman of the Philadelphia Daily News, and see for yourself:

WHEN OFFICIALS at the U.S. General Services Administration in Washington were deciding what to do with billions in federal stimulus funds, spurring job growth and making federal buildings more energy-efficient was at the top of the agenda.

Rather than being a boon for jobs, though, one high-profile project here may turn out to be a boondoggle for taxpayers.

The GSA, which provides office space to more than 1 million federal workers in 9,600 facilities around the country, awarded $22.7 million to renovate the William J. Green Federal Building and James A. Byrne U.S. Courthouse complex, bounded by 6th, 7th, Market and Arch streets in Center City.

Local GSA officials claim the improvements, to be finished by year's end, will reduce the agency's energy bill for the two aging buildings, built in 1975, by more than $827,000 a year.

But the project has created or saved just 53 full-time jobs, and it will take more than a quarter-century - 26.5 years, in fact - for the projected energy savings to pay back taxpayers for the initial cost of the improvements, GSA said.

Economists said they were surprised that almost $23 million of taxpayer spending didn't produce a bigger jobs bonanza.

"It looks kind of meager," said (Professor William) Stull, adding that "job creation is more important than energy savings."

And the jobs were also pricey: Taxpayers ponied up $428,302 for each job created.

$23 million dollars for 53 jobs?  $428,302 for each job created?

No wonder our wonderful "neutral" media are jumping all over this outra.......oh, wait.

Ken Berwitz

The Libya mess wasn't bad enough already? 

Now, according to Reuters, President Obama has signed off on a secret war. 

Here are the particulars, via the following excerpt from today's article by Mark Hosenball:

Exclusive: Obama authorizes secret support for Libya rebels

By Mark Hosenball

WASHINGTON | Wed Mar 30, 2011 4:54pm EDT

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorizing covert U.S. government support for rebel forces seeking to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, government officials told Reuters on Wednesday.

Obama signed the order, known as a presidential "finding", within the last two or three weeks, according to four U.S. government sources familiar with the matter.

Such findings are a principal form of presidential directive used to authorize secret operations by the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA and the White House declined immediate comment.

Can this possibly be true?

Because, if it is, we are not "bombing for humanitarian purposes", and this is not a "kinetic military action" - the absurd euphemism barfed out by deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes.

It is a war.  Obama's war. 

And whose side are we taking in this war?  "The Rebels", that's who.

And who are "The Rebels"?  We don't know.  All we know is that a) they are against qaddafi and b) they seem to have no problem incorporating al qaeda and jihadists into their ranks.

So we are quite possibly going to war for the purpose of removing a murderous scumbag who hates the USA....and replacing him with murderous scumbags who hate the USA.

This is insane.

Ken Berwitz

This truly disgusting story comes to us via the following excerpt from Don Walker, writing for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

Members of Wisconsin State Employees Union, AFSCME Council 24, have begun circulating letters to businesses in southeast Wisconsin, asking them to support workers’ rights by putting up a sign in their windows.

If businesses fail to comply, the letter says, “Failure to do so will leave us no choice but (to) do a public boycott of your business. And sorry, neutral means 'no' to those who work for the largest employer in the area and are union members."

Jim Parrett, a field representative of Council 24 for Southeast Wisconsin, confirmed the contents of the letter, which carries his signature. But he added that the union was also circulating letters to businesses thanking them for supporting workers’ rights.

Parrett said that since the letters were sent out, he has received threatening phone calls as well as calls from people supporting the state workers.

"I've gotten a lot of threatening phone calls," Parrett said.

Parrett referred questions to Marty Beil, the head of the Wisconsin State Employees Union. Beil was not immediately available for comment.

Translation:  If you put up the sign you're ok with the union.  If you don't put up the sign you're going to be boycotted (and who knows what else).

This, folks, is the protection racket.  And if you're surprised that Wisconsin AFSCME would engage in thug tactics like this, you haven't been following events there too closely.

I hope you're not waiting for the Department of Justice to step in........

Ken Berwitz

A very quick blog, with a very simple question:

First, we have Barack Obama, talking about his decision to bomb Libya, as reported by mediaite.com:

“I do a lot of praying. Absolutely. Every night, right before I go to bed. You know, and I am praying that – I’m making the best possible decisions, and that I’ve got the strength to serve the American people well.”

Now that simple question:  How would our media have reacted if it were George Bush talking about Iraq or Afghanistan?

Keep in mind that the above quote is nothing unusual; President Obama constantly talks about how often he prays and of his Christianity. 

Now, what's your answer?

Ken Berwitz

Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner, today, on the Democrat-majority senate's performance regarding this year's budget:

“The House has passed our bill and it’s been nearly 40 days and yet we’ve seen nothing pass the United States Senat.  It’s time for Senate Democrats to act on a bill. We know that reducing spending will lead to a better environment for job creators to create jobs in America. We’ve done our job.”

“Now the Senate says, ‘we have a plan.’ Well, great! Pass the damn thing, all right, and send it over here and let’s have real negotiations instead of sitting over there rooting for a government shutdown.”

In November, 1995, Bill Clinton and the then-Republican congress (both houses) were at an impasse over the budget.  Neither gave in, and there was a "government shutdown" for 6 days (then a second one which lasted, in part, until April, 1996). 

Despite the shutdown being due to a disagreement between the Republican congress and the Democrat President, most of our wonderful "neutral" media - which were then in the middle of their (continuing) love affair with Bill Clinton, made sure the public "knew" it was exclusively the fault of Republicans.

John Boehner apparently feels that the current gamesmanship being utilized by Senate Democrats is being done in the hope that they can recreate those happy days of 1995-1996 and cause a shutdown which media  - now in the middle of their (continuing) love affair with Barack Obama - might blame on Republicans again.

Does he have a point?  You decide.

Ken Berwitz

I am strongly in favor of alternative energy, and strongly support its development ASAP. 

But I am fully aware that alternative energy, as a substitute for oil, is a long way off.

Oil works now.

With that in mind, please read the following excerpt from an article in today's New York Times - and pay special attention to the last part, which I've put in bold print:

The president, in a speech to be delivered at Georgetown University, will say that the United States needs, for geopolitical and economic reasons, to reduce its reliance on imported oil, according to White House officials who provided a preview of the speech on the condition that they not be identified. More than half of the oil burned in the United States today comes from overseas and from Mexico and Canada.

Mr. Obama will propose a mix of measures, none of them new, to help the nation cut down on its thirst for oil. He will point out the nation’s tendency, since the first Arab oil embargo in 1973, to panic when gas prices rise and then fall back into old gas-guzzling habits when they recede.

He will call for a consistent long-term fuel-savings strategy of producing more electric cars, converting trucks to run on natural gas, building new refineries to brew billions of gallons of biofuels and setting new fuel-efficiency standards for vehicles. Congress has been debating these measures for years.

The president will also repeat his assertion that despite the frightening situation at the Fukushima Daiichi reactor complex in Japan, nuclear power will remain an important source of electricity in the United States for decades to come, aides said.

He will respond to members of Congress and oil industry executives who have complained that the administration has choked off domestic oil and gas production by imposing costly new regulations and by blocking exploration on millions of acres of potentially oil-rich tracts both on shore and off.

This is the same President Obama who avidly supports Brazil's offshore drilling, so we can buy oil from them and therefore become even more dependent on foreign countries for our energy.

Make sense of this.  I dare you.  I double dare you.

The 2012 elections cannot come fast enough.

Ken Berwitz

It isn't often I get to quote Gomer Pyle in a blog title.  But - in keeping with Pyle's character - this one is a no-brainer.

As I blogged days ago, General Electric, the parent company of NBC, earned 14.2 billion dollars last year, over 5 billion of it in the USA, and paid federal taxes of.......$0.  Nothing.  Not one penny.

But NBC - self-righteous NBC - holier than thou NBC, when it comes to "the rich" paying their "fair share"?  Not one word about it in the network's national news. 

Excerpted from an article by Paul Farhi in yesterday's Washington Post:

It’s the kind of accountability journalism that makes readers raise an eyebrow, if it doesn’t raise their blood pressure first. General Electric Co., reported the New York Times last week, earned $14.2 billion in worldwide profits last year, including $5.1 billion in the United States — and paid exactly zero dollars in federal taxes.

 

The front-page story drew widespread commentary in newspapers and on many Web sites. ABC News and Fox News, among others, were all over it.

 

But the story was conspicuously absent from the reportage of one news organization: NBC.

 

During its Friday broadcast, “NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams” had no time to mention that America’s largest corporation had essentially avoided paying federal taxes in 2010. Or its Saturday, Sunday or Monday broadcasts, either.

 

Did NBC’s silence have anything to do with the fact that one of its parent companies is General Electric?

NBC News representatives say that it didn’t. “This was a straightforward editorial decision, the kind we make daily around here,” said Lauren Kapp, spokeswoman for NBC News. Kapp declined to discuss how NBC decides what’s news or, in this case, what isn’t.

What frauds.  What amazingly dishonest hypocrites.

Are you sur-prahzed, sur-prahzed?  I hope not. 

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

Ken Berwitz 

If ever there was a disconnect from reality, this is it. 

Read these two quotes, and please note their dates.

Four days after a rebel leader tells us, in so many words, that he is recruiting al qaeda because "members of al-qaeda are also good Muslims and are fighting against the invader", the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO tells us there are "flickers" of "potential" al qaeda (and hezbollah too). in an effort to minimize their importance.

Is he brain dead?

It does not matter how many al qaeda have been recruited so far.  It does not matter that, if 25 were recruited in one place as of a week ago, the total number of al qaeda recruited by "the rebels" is almost certain to be dramatically higher now.

What matters is that al qaeda is a welcome addition to "the rebels" in Libya.  That if they prevail, al qaeda is going to be a valued component and have a seat at the table.

We, literally, are bombing the murderous scum qaddafi, so that we can install the murderous scum al qaeda.  And maybe hezbollah too, for good measure.

Does this make any sense to you?

What in god's name are Obama and Clinton doing?  Do they have even the slightest clue?

And what kind of an idiot is commanding the NATO forces, which Obama and Clinton are handing the responsibility for Libya over to?

Ken Berwitz

This eminently fair investigation should end all doubts about how the Department of Justice handled the Philadelphia Black Panther case.

Excerpted from an Associated Press article:

In a case that has drawn strong criticism from Republican conservatives, the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility has found no evidence that politics played a role when department attorneys dismissed three defendants from a voting rights lawsuit against the New Black Panther Party.

 

OPR, which investigates allegations of attorney misconduct, concluded that the government lawyers' work on the lawsuit in 2009 was based on a good-faith assessment of the law and the facts and had a reasonable basis.

 

"We found no evidence of improper political interference or influence from within or outside the department" and the government attorneys acted appropriately in the exercise of their supervisory duties, OPR said in a letter Tuesday to the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas.

 

"We found no evidence to support allegations — which were raised during the course of our investigation — that the decision-makers, either in bringing or dismissing the claims, were influenced by the race of the defendants," OPR's letter added.

There you go.  The Department of Justice has done a thorough investigation of the Department of Justice, and found no wrongdoing whatsoever.

That should settle things.............if you have an IQ of 43 or lower.

Do they think we're complete idiots?  Obviously, the answer is yes.

Ken Berwitz

Here, from (of all places) the New York Times, is writer Jennifer Steinhauer's insight into the creation of a talking point concocted by Senate Democrats.

On a Senate Call, a Glimpse of Marching Orders

By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

Um, senators, ever heard of the mute button?

Moments before a conference call with reporters was scheduled to get underway on Tuesday morning, Charles E. Schumer of New York, the No. 3 Democrat in the Senate, apparently unaware that many of the reporters were already on the line, began to instruct his fellow senators on how to talk to reporters about the contentious budget process.

...Mr. Schumer told them to portray John A. Boehner of Ohio, the speaker of the House, as painted into a box by the Tea Party, and to decry the spending cuts that he wants as extreme. “I always use the word extreme,” Mr. Schumer said. “That is what the caucus instructed me to use this week.”

A minute or two into the talking-points tutorial, though, someone apparently figured out that reporters were listening, and silence fell.

Amazingly, Ms. Steinhauer goes on to point out that, knowing the reporters heard them concoct this claim, the Senate Democrats barfed out their pre-planned talking points anyway.  Click here to read the entire article and see for yourself.

Are Republicans given similar marching orders when it comes to spewing the party line?  Quite possibly they are - and if an example is found I certainly will post it here. 

But that is only conjecture. 

We now know that Democrats do it, and we now know that "tea party" and "extreme" are not sincere attacks, they are strategic initiatives.

I wonder who, besides Ms. Steinhauer, will publicize this incident.  How about one of the reporters who were on the line when Schumer said it and therefore know first-hand that it is what Democrats were doing?

I'm waiting.....but I'm not real hopeful.

Ken Berwitz

From Barac...er, Alice In Wonderland:

'Let the jury consider their verdict,' the King said, for about the twentieth time that day.

'No, no!' said the Queen. 'Sentence first - verdict afterwards.'

'Stuff and nonsense!' said Alice loudly. 'The idea of having the sentence first!'

'Hold your tongue!' said the Queen, turning purple.

'I won't!' said Alice.

'Off with her head!' the Queen shouted at the top of her voice. Nobody moved.

'Who cares for you?' said Alice, (she had grown to her full size by this time.) 'You're nothing but a pack of cards!'

Who are "the rebels", and are they any better than - or even as desirable as - moammar qaddafi?  Wouldn't it make more sense to know the answer before we bomb on their behalf, not afterwards?

I have been asking these questions for days.  And, today, Ed Morrissey of hotair.com is asking as well.  Excerpted from his blog at hotair.com:

Eleven days after the West started bombing Libya’s armed forces, the man who will take charge of the effort at NATO says that the US has detected “flickers” of al-Qaeda involvement in the rebel forces assisted by the bombing campaign.   NATO will now perform some “due diligence” to ensure that we’re not helping our terrorist enemies capture an entire, oil-producing nation:

Admiral James Stavridis, commander of NATO and overall chief of U.S. and coalition forces in the Libyan war, says American intelligence agents are “examining very closely” the rebel forces for whom U.S. forces have gone to war.  So far, Stavridis says, the U.S. has discovered “flickers” of the presence of al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, although Stavridis calls the opposition leadership “responsible.”

Appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Stavridis was asked by Republican Sen. James Inhofe to comment on “reports about the presence of al Qaeda among the rebels, among those with whom we are associated.” “As you can imagine, we are examining very closely the content, composition, the personalities, who are the leaders in these opposition forces,” Stavridis responded.  “The intelligence that I am receiving at this point makes me feel that the leadership I am seeing are responsible men and women who are struggling against Colonel Gadhafi.  We have seen flickers in the intelligence of potential al Qaeda, Hezbollah, we’ve seen different things, but at this point I don’t have detail sufficient to say that there is a significant al Qaeda presence or any other terrorist presence in and among these folks.  We’ll continue to look at that very closely.  It’s part of doing due diligence as we move forward on any kind of relationship.

A “flicker”?  It’s been four days since the Italian newspaper Il Sole de 24 Ore reported on the background of one rebel leader in western Libya, Abdul Hakim al Hasadi.  US forces captured Hasadi in 2002 while fighting in Afghanistan for the Taliban, and eventually turned him over to Gaddafi.  Hasadi won his release in 2008 thanks to a deal cut between Gaddafi and an alliance of Islamist terror groups.  If that’s a “flicker,” then Waziristan must be just a 40-watt bulb of terrorism.

The administration now says it’s trying to fill the gaps on intelligence:

At Monday’s Pentagon briefing, Fox News reporter Jennifer Griffin asked another top official, Vice Admiral Bill Gortney, a very simple question: “Do you know who the opposition is, and does it matter to you?”  “We’re not talking with the opposition,” Gortney responded.  “We have — we would like a much better understanding of the opposition.  We don’t have it.  So yes, it does matter to us, and we’re trying to fill in those gaps, knowledge gaps.”  Gortney’s answer was another suggestion that the U.S. is doing critical due diligence on the fly in Libya.

Shouldn’t those gaps have been filled before deciding to stage an intervention that benefited the rebels?  After all, those bombing runs against Gaddafi’s armored divisions aren’t just protecting civilians in Benghazi.  Instead of vetting rebels to ensure we’re not enabling AQ terrorism, the White House seems to be moving full steam ahead to arm them

Why are we bombing Libya?  To replace a murdering dictator with al-qaeda?  With jihadist lunatics? 

Do any members of this administration have any idea of what they are doing?  Are they nothing but an inconsequential pack of cards?

Can we move up the 2012 elections?  Please?

Ken Berwitz

It would be hard to find a web site more likely to be viewed by people sympathetic to Barack Obama than MSNBC.com.

So it is fascinating to note that its on line polling - with about 90,000 votes cast, shows this:

What did you think about President Obama’s address to the nation on Libya?

Total of 90,438 votes:

-42.9%:  It was a success. He clearly made a case for the U.S. mission there.  (38,835 votes)

 

-51.7%:  It was a failure. I’m still not clear what the U.S. is doing there.  (46,765 votes)

 

-5.3%:  Not sure (4,838 votes)

You decide what conclusions to draw......

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

UPDATE:  Here are the new poll numbers, with over 100,000 votes cast:

Total of 100,230 votes:

-42.3%:  It was a success. He clearly made a case for the U.S. mission there.  (42,399 votes)

-52.4%:  It was a failure. I’m still not clear what the U.S. is doing there.  (52,559 votes)

- 5.3%:  Not sure (5,272 votes)

Ken Berwitz

From KGNS-TV, Laredo, Texas: 

At least eleven bodies are found in Nuevo Laredo yesterday. However, since Mexican media doesn't report murders when instructed by drug traffickers, yesterday's death toll is unofficial. The eleven deaths are confirmed through the Mexican military that found the bodies thrown in several different areas of Nuevo Laredo. The torture and shooting victims were found along the highway to Monterrey. The bodies all had small posters on their body, with writing presumably from rival cartels. Three other drug cartel members were killed when Mexican soldiers stopped an 18-wheeler and gunmen fired shots from inside the trailer. An explosion, believed to be a grenade was heard, killing the men inside and producing a large fire which ended up burning the compartment.

In case you are unaware, Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, is the next town over from Laredo, Texas - separated only by the Rio Grande. 

If you are a resident of Laredo, would this worry you? 

And if you are a resident of any border state - or, for that matter, any state at all - would the fact that the Obama administration's only significant action regarding our borders is to sue Arizona for trying to secure them worry you?

How soon before the mass murders are on the US side of this border?  Too soon.

And how soon before we can replace an administration that could not care less that it is happening?  Not soon enough.

Ken Berwitz

Hey, why not?  What does bill maher have to worry about?

If the media do not condemn him for calling Sarah Palin a "dumb twat", and they don't condemn him for calling her, along with Michele Bachmann, "bimbos", why not call her a cunt too?

From Arnold Wayne Jones' loving, fawning review of maher's "performance" at Dallas' Winspear Opera House:

It’s that fearlessness — he acknowledged that some people would probably be uncomfortable with some of his remarks about religion, not to mention calling Sarah Palin a “cunt” (“there’s just no other word for her”) — that makes Maher the most dangerous person in comedy.

I'll just bet that maher's fans laughed and applauded at that one.

He is a pig.  But a smart pig, who knows that, as long as the target is a Republican and/or conservative woman, he is home free. 

Try saying that about Hillary, bill.  See if you get the same non-reaction.

And thank you, media, for almost completely burying maher's sickening insult and showing us - again - why people call you biased.  In that regard, you rarely disappoint.

Ken Berwitz

What happens when, after we bomb Libya, qaddafi's forces repel "the rebels" anyway? 

From Ryan Lucas' article this morning, for the Associated Press:

BIN JAWWAD, Libya – Libyan government tanks and rockets blunted a rebel assault on Moammar Gadhafi's hometown of Sirte on Tuesday and drove back the ragtag army of irregulars, even as world leaders prepared to debate the country future in London.

Rockets and tank fire sent Libya's rebel volunteers in a panicked scramble away from the front lines, before the opposition was able to bring up truck mounted rocket launchers of their own and return fire.

The latest rebel setback emphasizes the see-saw nature of this conflict and how the opposition is still no match for the superior firepower and organization of Gadhafi's forces, despite an international campaign of deadly airstrikes.

Let me say this plainly:  We're not sending ground troops, which means we cannot hold territory.  So if "the rebels" (whoever they are and whatever they want for Libya's government) cannot withstand qaddafi's ground forces, what was the point of the bombing?  What did we accomplish other than target practice?

And if qaddafi's people invade Benghazi using only ground troops, what will President Obama do about the massacre he told us would occur?  Who will he bomb then?  Will he blame the invasion on President Bush too, along with everything else that goes wrong during his administration?

Has anyone in this administration thought out, for even one second, what they are doing?  I almost hope not, because I don't know how to deal with the possibility that this is the product of their thinking process.

The 2012 elections cannot come fast enough.

Ken Berwitz

President Obama used the speech to attack George Bush (can this man talk about anything without trying to make Bush his personal piñata, and the reason for everything that goes wrong in his administration?);

He told us that he is "going after al Qaeda wherever they seek a foothold" - but somehow neglected to mention that "the rebels" he is bombing on behalf of, have recruited al-qaeda to fight alongside them.

He compared this to Iraq and said there weren't results there for 8 years.  A total lie - we removed Saddam in a matter of weeks and free elections took place the next year. (CORRECTION:  I am off by one month. Saddam was removed in 2003 and elections for a transitional government were held January of 2005.  A permanent government was elected in 2006.  I have corrected my one month mistake - but I'm still waiting for President Obama to correct his total lie --and based on the fact that it was ignored on the shows I've watched this morning, it seems clear our wonderful "neutral" media are not going to push Mr. Obama's correction along.) 

He still doesn't say we are in there to remove qaddafi - and not one word about what happens if qaddafi stays. 

He doesn't give us any idea of what kind of governance he thinks Libya will have if qaddafi does fall.  Initially, my feeling was that nothing could be much worse than qaddafi; but now that I know "the rebels" include al-qaeda sympathizers and jihadists, I'm not as sure.  Is it possible that we are replacing one horror show with another?  

And what if "the rebels" win, then decide to take their fury out on qaddafi supporters?  Are we replacing one massacre with another?  If that happens, would we start bombing "the rebels"?  

And what about the brutal civil wars in Tunisia, Yemen, Syria and possibly even Jordan? Which side will we be bombing in those places?

But you have to hand it to Mr. Obama:  he speaks beautifully with a teleprompter in front of him.

Ken Berwitz

Does Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker play hardball?

Read this excerpt from an article by Jason Stein and Patrick Marley of  the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and see for yourself:

Madison - Gov. Scott Walker's administration is no longer collecting dues on behalf of state unions and as of Sunday began charging employees more for health care and their pensions, even though nonpartisan legislative attorneys say the changes are not yet law.

Administration Secretary Mike Huebsch said Monday administration attorneys have determined the law is now in effect. State workers will receive paychecks April 21 that reflect the changes, he said in a conference call with reporters.

In addition to requiring state, local and school employees to pay more for their benefits, the measure ends most collective bargaining for public workers. The law also bars the state from charging dues to employees and passing them on to unions, as it has done for years.

The changes to collective bargaining drew massive protests at the state Capitol and prompted Senate Democrats to leave the state for three weeks in an effort to block the bill.

Other attorneys do not agree the law is now in effect, and the courts will be the final arbiter of whether the law goes into effect. Huebsch said he would abide by a ruling from a judge.

Whew.

That's hardball.  The kind I far more expect from Democrats and unions than I do from a Republican.

Ok, now let's see what happens next. This could get real interesting, real fast.

Ken Berwitz

Last week I blogged about the so-called Afghanistan "kill teams" - US soldiers who killed Afghani civilians, apparently for the fun of it, and took body parts as trophies.  I referenced an article at Der Spiegel, which claims to have thousands of pictures to prove such teams existed, and may still exist today.

For a week, our wonderful "neutral" media largely buried this terrible story - presumably because it took place during the Obama rather than Bush Presidency. (The proof:  did they bury the photos from Abu Ghraib for George Bush - photos that were comically trivial by comparison?)

But Rolling Stone Magazine has just published a major story by Tom Boal - complete with photographs and videos - which goes straight to the heart of these war atrocities. 

Now the rest of mainstream media can no longer run interference for Obama & Co.  If media blame a President for what happens on his watch, they have to blame President Obama for this.

But before you assume that's the way I personally feel, here is how I ended last week's blog:

What a disgusting story.  And what a bonanza for our enemies both in and out of Afghanistan.

But, despite how awful this is, it would be wrong to blame President Obama for what these soldiers did.  The President may be Commander In Chief.  But, realistically, he has absolutely no control over what happens at the field level. 

The blame - and obviously there is a ton of it - lies elsewhere.

For me, that still goes.

But it will be interesting to see how many of the same media which were so quick to villify President Bush for Abu Ghraib, will do the same now, when the name is Obama instead.

Ken Berwitz

Congratulations - belated, but congratulations anyway - to the Washington Post, for noticing the ludicrous specacle of President Obama avidly looking forward to buying oil from Brazil instead of getting it from our own domestic resources.

I blogged about this a week ago today, using significant quotes from an Investors Business Daily editorial which started with the following sentence:

Energy Policy: While leaving U.S. oil and jobs in the ground, our itinerant president tells a South American neighbor that we'll help it develop its offshore resources so we can one day import its oil. WHAT?!?

The rest of the editorial is excellent, but IBD could have stopped right there.  The Obama administration's "policy", if you can call it that, is head-shakingly bizarre.

Now, a week later, we have the WaPost's take on it, as excerpted below:

Drill, Brazil, drill, says the U.S.

 

WHEN WAS the last time an American president stood before an audience in a foreign country and announced that he looked forward to importing more of its oil? Answer: Just over a week ago, when President Obama joined political and business leaders in Brasilia in hailing the fact that their newly discovered offshore petroleum reserves might be twice as large as those in the United States. Americans “want to help with technology and support to develop these oil reserves safely, and when you’re ready to start selling, we want to be one of your best customers,” Mr. Obama said.

 

Brazil is probably a more stable, secure supplier than, say, Libya. Still, the president’s words were ironic. Brazil already produces vast quantities of a fuel — ethanol — that the U.S. government, under a policy long supported by presidents and farm-state members of Congress from both parties, has promoted as a green alternative to gasoline. But the United States, protecting its own heavily subsidized ethanol industry by means of a 2.5 percent tariff and a 54-cent-per-gallon duty, prevents Americans from importing all but trivial amounts of the stuff from Brazil. Therefore, we need more oil — much of it imported.

 

As for offshore drilling, Mr. Obama’s enthusiasm for punching holes in the ocean floor off Brazil is hard to reconcile with his decision, announced Dec. 1, to keep the waters off the East and West coasts and the eastern Gulf of Mexico off-limits to exploration indefinitely. His policy was a reversal of an earlier decision he had made to open some of those areas.

 

... it is tough to reconcile with U.S. eagerness to “help” Brazil pump oil off its coasts and ship it here.  What does this posture say about American regard for the natural environment outside U.S. territory?

 

This makes no sense, economically or environmentally, and, sooner or later, a more balanced view must prevail.

To the Washington Post's editorial staff:  welcome to the real world, guys  The rest of us will enjoy your company.

Wind and solar may well be the answer - and I strongly support their development, as quickly as possible.  But even the most generous assesment of their current "state of the art" indicates both are decades away from replacing enough oil to satisfy our energy needs. 

So what do we have here?  We have a President who enthusiastically supports drilling for oil - as long as the USA is not the beneficiary of it.  Much better to make us even more dependent on other countries. 

That's supposed to make sense?

Can we move up the 2012 elections?  Please? 

Ken Berwitz

This strange little story comes to us via the following excerpt of Martin Finucane's article at the Boston Globe:

A 22-year-old East Boston woman is to be arraigned today in East Boston District Court on cocaine trafficking charges after she allegedly flew into Logan International Airport with more than a kilogram of the drug concealed in what authorities said was a "diaper-like" garment.

...officers grew suspicious and decided to conduct a pat-down search. The search revealed a "powdery substance concealed in a diaper-like garment" she was wearing under outer clothing, State Police said in a statement.

She was arrested by the CBP, state troopers, and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.

It is hardly unusual to find a powdery substance in a diaper.  But usually it's talcum powder - and the wearer of the diaper is a bit younger than 22 years of age. 

At least the woman didn't stuff it into her buttocks, which is the preferred hiding place in several other cocaine-smuggling stories I have blogged about over recent months. 

Heck, there's too much crack cocaine out there already.

Ken Berwitz

A quick break from politics to discuss Carmelo Anthony. 

Mr. Anthony is a very talented NBA player, who toiled for the Denver Nuggets.  But he was terribly unhappy with the prospect of making $23 million for each of the next three years to run around in his underwear and shoot hoops for the Nuggets.  He wanted out.  So he made it clear that a trade was necessary - which, as you might imagine, did nothing for his popularity in Denver.

Lots of teams were interested.  But Denver demanded so much in return for Anthony - and fellow Denver Nugget player Chauncy Billups as well - that most of them decided to look elsewhere. 

The eventual "winner" was the New York Knickerbockers, who traded a large chunk of their team to Denver for this great prize.  The Knicks gave up 3 of their starting five players for Anthony and Billups.  They felt these two would make them a better team, and improve attendance.

So how did things work out?

-At the time of the trade, the Knicks' record was 28 wins and 25 losses.  Since then, they have won 7 and lost 12.  Not good.

-By contrast, The Denver Nuggets were 32 - 25.  Since then they have gone 12 - 4.  Very good.

And, attendance-wise, the Nuggets are drawing slightly more fans now than they did with Anthony, while paying millions and millions less to field their team.  A substantial net gain.

Maybe Carmelo Anthony, and the Knicks, had an inflated idea of his value as a player.  D'ya think?

Just thought I'd mention.

Ok, back to politics....

Ken Berwitz

hamas is a terrorist organization which took control of the Gaza Strip by force against its own people.  hamas is committed, in writing, to the annihilation of Israel through violent jihad.  hamas is supported, and supplied, by the terrorist state of Iran.  hamas has no problem beating, torturing or killing fellow Arab Muslims if they dare to question its actions.

These are facts - easily checkable and undeniable.

So why do you suppose there is so little in the way of negative reporting about hamas by on-scene "journalists"? 

I've written about this before.  But today we have another example that should provide a clear answer, so I want to show it to you, via the following excerpt from Khaled Abu Toameh's article in today's Jerusalem Post:

Gaza cops use ‘beatings, stun guns’ on women reporters

 

Hamas security personnel raid offices of media organizations, including Reuters and CNN, confiscate equipment and documents.

 

A number of Palestinian women journalists complained on Sunday that they had been beaten and tortured by Hamas security forces in the Gaza Strip.

They said the assaults occurred in recent days when they and their colleagues tried to cover pro-unity rallies in different parts of the Gaza Strip.

Hamas policemen used force to disperse the protesters, who were calling for an end to the dispute between the Islamist movement and Fatah. The rallies were part of a Facebook campaign organized by Palestinian youth on March 15.

At least eight journalists were beaten by the Hamas police officers during the rallies.

Some had their cameras and laptops confiscated, while others were taken into custody and made to sign a document pledging to refrain from covering such events in the future.

One of the female journalists, Samah Ahmed, complained that a Hamas policeman in military uniform stabbed her in the back as she tried to leave the al-Katiba Square, where pro-unity protesters were staging a sit-in strike.

She said that she and another female journalist, Asma al- Ghoul, were later also beaten with clubs before they were taken to detention.

“At the police station, they continued to beat us and curse us,” Ahmed told the Palestinian news agency Aswar Press. “When they realized that I was bleeding from the area where I was stabbed, the police interrogators sent me to hospital.”

She added that the Hamas police officers who accompanied her to the hospital forced the medical team to admit her under a different name and to list her as a victim of a traffic accident.

In case this isn't repulsive enough for you so far, use the link I've provided to read about the other female journalists who were treated this way, and worse, for their crime of trying to report what hamas does in the Gaza strip.

Then think about how likely it is that some, or most, or just about all, of the journalists there will color their stories in favor of hamas to protect themselves. 

Then think about how many stories have been, and will be, sugar-coated. 

Then think about how many stories have been, and will be, unreported altogether.

There's your answer.  

Ken Berwitz

What do you say when the Secretary of Defense tells the country, in so many words, that, by President Obama’s own criteria, he had absolutely no constitutional authority to authorize the bombings in Libya?

Sounds amazing, doesn’t it?  But that’s what happened.  Honest.  See for yourself, by reading the following excerpt from ABC Newsperson Jake Tapper’s “Political Punch” blog, and pay special attention to the parts I’ve put in bold print:

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that Libya did not pose a threat to the United States before the U.S. began its military campaign against the North African country.

On “This Week,” ABC News’ Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper asked Gates, “Do you think Libya posed an actual or imminent threat to the United States?”

“No, no,” Gates said in a joint appearance with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. “It was not -- it was not a vital national interest to the United States, but it was an interest and it was an interest for all of the reasons Secretary Clinton talked about.  The engagement of the Arabs, the engagement of the Europeans, the general humanitarian question that was at stake,” he said.

During his campaign for the Presidency, in December, 2007, Barack Obama told The Boston Globe that “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”

Could that be clearer?  If so, how?

Thank you, Jake Tapper, for once again being honest enough to point out this administration’s ineptitude, and its lack of concern regarding the constitutionality of what it does.  You are one of a disturbingly small, and dwindling, number of truly professional journalists.

Now let’s see how the rest of our wonderful “neutral” media handle this remarkable situation – other than simply burying it on behalf of their undisputed hero of heroes, that is.

Ken Berwitz

Why does Ed Schultz support President Obama's action in Libya? 

Here is about as much as I could stomach of his blog, posted at huffingtonpost.com.  Schultz (justifiably) is in rust and my comments are in blue:

Ken Berwitz

Should a state that has public sector employees both in and out of unions be performing the unions' functions for them?

Read this excerpt from the Orlando Sun-Sentinel and decide for yourself:

TALLAHASSEE -- The Florida House delivered a major blow to public employee unions Friday, approving a bill that would ban automatic dues deduction from a government paycheck and require members to sign off on the use of their dues for political purposes.

Democrats and Republicans fought over the legislation for just under two hours. Democrats and labor unions have accused conservatives of "union-busting" and said the bill was more about political payback than public policy. Unions have typically been big backers of Democratic candidates.

Rep. Chris Dorworth, R-Lake Mary, the House sponsor of the legislation, said this was simply the state's movement to get out of the dues deduction business and let the unions take care of it.

"It's a bill that empowers membership of labor unions," Dorworth said.

The measure, HB 1021, passed by a 73-40 vote, with three Republican lawmakers siding with the Democrats.

Florida is a "right to work" state, which means a worker is not forced to join a union. But many public employees do so, and state employers typically withhold union dues from workers' paychecks. A portion of those dues is set aside by their unions for education, community action — and political contributions.

Democrats argued that Republicans are simply trying to take out their political opponents.

"It's about silencing the opposition. That's not democratic," said Rep. Richard Steinberg, D-Miami Beach.

During the last general election cycle, the statewide teachers' union gave more than $3.4 million in campaign contributions, mostly to Democrats. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees doled out nearly $1.4 million, much of it directly to the state Democratic Party.  And the AFL-CIO and other labor groups gave hundreds of thousands of dollars more.

Let's try to digest this:

-Currently, taxpayers are forced to incur the cost of deducting the dues of public sector union members and forwarding that money to the unions.  Obviously, the money spent by taxpayers is money the union does not have to spend on its own dues collections;

-The bill, which passed in a landslide, 73-40, also requires that union members must have the right to accept, or decline, the use of their dues for political contributions. 

-Every Democrat voted against the bill - hardly surprising in view of the fact that just about every dollar of political contributions from unions goes to Democrats - either to the party or individual candidates;

-And, for exactly the same reasons, almost every Republican voted in favor of the bill.

Florida is a Republican-leaning state - that's how they got a Republican Govenor and a such a large majority in the house. 

Little wonder that the Republican majority does not want to subsidize unions on the cost of collecting dues.  And little wonder that they want union members to have the option of preventing dues from being used for political contributions, given that a percentage of union members - maybe a large percentage - vote Republican, but unions contribute almost exclusively to Democrats.

As you can see, it is very easy to identify, and understand, the battle lines.  But which side is right? 

You tell me.

Ken Berwitz

From John Rosenthal at pajamasmedia.com, we have this ugly information:

Libyan rebels: “Now is the time of Jihad!”

The journalist Marc de Chalvron was in Libya ten days ago. He accompanied rebel forces as they advanced to the oil-producing town of Ras Lanuf and then were turned back by Libyan government forces. On a broadcast today on the French news channel i-Télé, de Chalvron showed footage from his trip. The footage includes interviews with rebels on the back of a pick-up truck on the road to Ras Lanuf. The full report can be viewed here. The relevant portion is between 3:45 and 4:20 of the clip.

 

One rebel says: “We were at Benghazi with many other volunteers. From there, we are at Ajdabiya, the center of the Jihad.”

 

A second rebel, alluding to the rule of Muammar al-Gaddafi, adds: “Forty-two years of a nightmare… Now the time of Jihad has arrived!”

 

A third yells “Allahu Akbar!” as other rebels fire their guns into the air.

Are we bombing Libya to replace moammar qaddafi with al-qaeda allies?  With a bunch of jihadists?  Are we trying to create another pre-9/11 Afghanistan - this one with oil?

Does anyone in the Obama administration have any idea of why we are helping these people out?  Whether they would be better or worse than qaddafi?   (Yes, it is hard to be worse than qaddafi, but jihadists who are sympathetic to al-qaeda - as I pointed out in a blog yesterday - would make the cut.)

Is there one ounce of sense between President Obama and Hillary Clinton about what they are doing?  Or do they remain a pair of ridiculously unqualified neophytes, trying to cover their inexperience and ineptitude by brazening things out?  Are they in any meaningful way seeking out the advice of people who actually know something about foreign policy?

This is insane.

Ken Berwitz

This one is for anyone who still thinks that Media Matters is in any way a neutral web site.

Excerpted from Ben Smith's article at politico.com:

The liberal group Media Matters has quietly transformed itself in preparation for what its founder, David Brock, described in an interview as an all-out campaign of “guerrilla warfare and sabotage” aimed at the Fox News Channel.

The group, launched as a more traditional media critic, has all but abandoned its monitoring of newspapers and other television networks and is narrowing its focus to Fox and a handful of conservative websites, which its leaders view as political organizations and the “nerve center” of the conservative movement. The shift reflects the centrality of the cable channel to the contemporary conservative movement, as well as the loathing it inspires among liberals — not least among the donors who fund Media Matters’ staff of about 90, who are arrayed in neat rows in a giant war room above Massachusetts Avenue.

“The strategy that we had had toward Fox was basically a strategy of containment,” said Brock, Media Matters’ chairman and founder and a former conservative journalist, adding that the group’s main aim had been to challenge the factual claims of the channel and to attempt to prevent them from reaching the mainstream media.

The new strategy, he said, is a “war on Fox.”

In an interview and a 2010 planning memo shared with POLITICO, Brock listed the fronts on which Media Matters — which he said is operating on a $10 million-plus annual budget — is working to chip away at Fox and its parent company, News Corp. They include its bread-and-butter distribution of embarrassing clips and attempts to rebut Fox points, as well as a series of under-the-radar tactics.

Media Matters, Brock said, is assembling opposition research files not only on Fox’s top executives but on a series of midlevel officials. It has hired an activist who has led a successful campaign to press advertisers to avoid Glenn Beck’s show. The group is assembling a legal team to help people who have clashed with Fox to file lawsuits for defamation, invasion of privacy or other causes. And it has hired two experienced reporters, Joe Strupp and Alexander Zaitchik, to dig into Fox’s operation to help assemble a book on the network, due out in 2012 from Vintage/Anchor. (In the interest of full disclosure, Media Matters last month also issued a report criticizing “Fox and Friends” co-host Steve Doocy’s criticism of this reporter’s blog.)

Opposition research?  What are they going to do, try blackmailing Fox News people?  Maybe they've already done it.

David Brock, you may remember, once was a conservative political writer.  But a nice big dollop of $$$ from george soros seems to have changed all that on a dime. 

Media Matters used to present itself as a watchdog site, making sure that people got the true story.  But it quickly became evident that the site was dedicated, virtually exclusively, to attacking the people Mr. Brock had been so comfortable with in the past;  Republicans and conservatives.

Now it has dropped all pretense and is a dedicated soroseian attack organization, doing its best to shut up, and shut down one of the relatively few venues that effectively present a differing point of view.

Are you comfortable with that?  I hope not.

Thank you, Ben Smith, for honestly reporting Media Matters' disgraceful activities.  You are a brave man. 

But don't count on our wonderful "neutral" mainstream media to stand up with you.  Don't expect a raft of news reports and features condemning this blatant attempt to censor a major news organization.  

Remember, it is much safer to go along and get along with the soros people.  And cowards love safety.

Ken Berwitz

Excerpted from an article by Alan Jones, of London's Independent:

Up to 500,000 protestors attend anti-cuts demo

By Alan Jones, PA

 

Saturday, 26 March 2011Organisers of a huge protest against the Government's public spending cuts tonight hailed the demonstration a "fantastic success" after hundreds of thousands of people joined the biggest event of its kind for over 20 years.

 

Between 400,000 and 500,000 teachers, nurses, firefighters, council and NHS workers, other public sector employees, students, pensioners and campaign groups from across the UK marched through central London to a rally where union officials and Labour leader Ed Miliband condemned the "brutal" cuts in jobs and services.

 

Violence flared away from the rally when a group of hundreds of activists, not connected with the union protest, clashed with police. They set off fireworks, threw paint and attacked shops in Oxford Street, Regent Street and Piccadilly.

 

Topshop and HSBC had their windows smashed, while paint and glass bottles were thrown at a Royal Bank of Scotland branch.

 

Covering their faces with scarves, they fought with police and disrupted traffic, throwing lightbulbs filled with ammonia at officers and lighting a fire.

 

Nine arrests were made and some police officers were injured.

 

UK Uncut, an anti-cuts direct action group, later occupied the Fortnum & Mason store in Piccadilly, claiming the firm had "dodged" paying taxes.

 

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said he "bitterly regretted" the violence, adding that he hoped it would not detract from the massive anti-cuts protest.

 

He told the Press Association: "I don't think the activities of a few hundred people should take the focus away from the hundreds of thousands of people who have sent a powerful message to the Government today.

 

"Ministers should now seriously reconsider their whole strategy after today's demonstration. This has been Middle Britain speaking."

Mr Barber said unions would now step up pressure on the Government, especially MPs in their constituencies, and launch a series of protests next week in defence of the NHS."

What happens when you give people more and more, by taxing other people?  Do you create an entitlement society which thinks their financial support can always be addressed by raising taxes on "rich people" and "corporations"?

And what happens when you hit the limit of taxation, and/or the economy sags so that even higher taxes won't make up the difference?  Do the people demand that the money to fund their lifestyles must magically materialize anyway?

Those are questions that face Wisconsin.  And California, and New York and a lot of other places in the USA.

But they also face the UK.  And Greece, where workers have been striking because the government spigot has run dry, forcing it to make "austerity cuts" in services.  And Portugal, and Spain and Ireland and Italy.

It isn't easy to put the genie back in the bottle.  But economic circumstances are forcing an awful lot of cities, and countries, to try. 

We are in hard times, and they are about to get a lot harder.

Ken Berwitz

On Friday, Bill Maher called Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann "two bimbos"   He got lots of press for it, just as he got lots of press for referring to Sarah Palin as a "dumb twat" the week before.

It is easy to assume Maher is a misogynist, a woman-hater.  That was my initial reaction. 

But, in thinking about it, I've come to realize that this is not misogyny, it is a marketing strategy.

Simply stated, maher understands that if he attacks republican/conservative women in as vile a way as possible, it gets him lots of publicity, but little condemnation.  And he will be revered by the kind of audience his HBO show generates.

But don't ever expect him to call a leftward Democratic woman, especially a Black leftward Democratic woman, a dumb twat or a bimbo.  That will get him nothing but trouble.

And certainly don't expect our wonderful "neutral" media to condemn him for what he says about the women most of them join him in hating.

Ken Berwitz

Am I a racist?  No I am not.

Does our company in Chicago hire Black employees?  Yes it does, just as it hires women and gays.  There are no ethnic, gender or sexual-orientation rules there, and never will be.

Would we hire people with criminal records?  It would depend on the crime - its severity and how recently it occurred.  But, as the co-owner of this business, I would avoid hiring people recently convicted of significant crimes, and/or people whose crimes relate to the conduct of our business.

Would I avoid hiring a Black person in the situation I just described?  Absolutely.  Just I would avoid hiring a White person.  The person's behavior, not his/her skin color, would be the issue.

Would I be called a racist for feeling this way?  Based on the following excerpt from Monique W. Morris's article at thegrio.com, yes I would be - and a lawbreaker too.  Read it and see if you agree or disagree with Ms. Morris:

Today, it is estimated that 65 million U.S. adults have a criminal record and continue to face barriers to employment as a result. According to a new report by the National Employment Law Project (NELP), the overuse of imposing criminal background checks and blanket bans against hiring people who have been charged with even a misdemeanor offense is a practice that has been adopted by at least 10 leading national employers, including Bank of America, Aramark, Lowe's, Domino's Pizza and Radio Shack, among others.

In 1987, the EEOC issued policy guidelines that determined barring people from employed based solely on a criminal conviction history disproportionately excluded African-Americans and Latinos from the labor market because they are overrepresented in the criminal justice system. Just as it is illegal to overtly discriminate by race, ethnicity or skin color, it is also a violation of civil rights law for an employer to use non-job related selection criteria that disproportionately disadvantages people of color in hiring decisions.

Still, the violations are numerous and bold. NELP's four-month scan of Craigslist, which operates in more than 400 geographic areas of the U.S., documented more than 300 ads precluding the consideration of individuals with criminal conviction histories:

Ms. Morris goes on to discuss the case of Darrell Langdon, whose 25 year old felony conviction for cocaine possession caused him to be denied a job, even though he had, for many years, been an excellent, reliable worker.  

I agree with Ms. Morris about Mr. Langdon.  But cherry-picking an especially egregious example like his does not make her case.  You can find a few exceptional circumstances for just about everything. 

To me, Ms. Morris's argument comes across more as saying "if you don't hire a Black criminal, you're a racist" than anything else.  And seeing criminal activity as "non-job related selection criteria" is, under most circumstances, ludicrous. 

Would you hire a convicted robber to be a cashier, or to count money?  Would you hire a convicted arsonist to be a fireman?  Would you hire a convicted mugger to work at an assisted living center?  Would you hire someone with muliple convictions for anything at all?  The examples are countless.

And suggesting that companies which look for employees without such criminal records is "disadvantaging people of color"?  Frankly, that comes across as nothing other than saying "if they are Black, just hire them", which I see as both racist, and hugely insulting to Black people in general.

Anyway, that's my opinion.  What's yours?

Ken Berwitz

Earlier this morning I blogged about how our media strongly promoted the anti-Mubarak protesters in Egypt, calling them fighters for democracy -- but now it appears that post-Mubarak Egypt is likely to bring the country to rule by the fundamentalist, jihadist, terrorist Muslim brotherhood.

But leave it to our wonderful "neutral" media to ignore history - even history this recent - and do it again. 

This excerpt, from London's Daily Telegraph, is dedicated to the media that are promoting Libyan "rebels" as if they are wonderful freedom fighters instead of a just-as-bad alternative to qaddafi:

Libyan rebel commander admits his fighters have al-Qaeda links

Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, the Libyan rebel leader, has said jihadists who fought against allied troops in Iraq are on the front lines of the battle against Muammar Gaddafi's regime.

In an interview with the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, Mr al-Hasidi admitted that he had recruited "around 25" men from the Derna area in eastern Libya to fight against coalition troops in Iraq. Some of them, he said, are "today are on the front lines in Adjabiya".

Mr al-Hasidi insisted his fighters "are patriots and good Muslims, not terrorists," but added that the "members of al-Qaeda are also good Muslims and are fighting against the invader".

Look, I would not lose one minute's sleep if moammar qaddafi were killed today, along with every one of the people around him.

But I feel a lot differently about the prospect that the US military is now supporting al qaeda sympathizers in Libya, in an effort to hand the country over to them.

How do you feel about this?  How do you feel about the classicly inept, bungling mess Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are perpetrating in that part of the world?  

Would you like one or both of them to address the comments of this "rebel leader"?  To discuss his support of al qaeda, and explain why we are bombing Libya on his behalf?  I sure as hell know I would.

I would especially like to hear what they have to say about al-hasidi's insistence that the "members of al-qaeda are also good Muslims and are fighting against the invader".  Since the fight is between us and qaddafi who, whatever else you can say about him, is not an invader, what does that make us? 

Here's an idea:  maybe we should try to convince al-hasidi and al-qaeda to build residential housing for Jews in Jerusalem.  Then at least I know there would be an angry response from the Obama administration.

Ken Berwitz

I'm not a big fan of Donald Trump's, and I very much hope that his supposed interest in a Presidential run is nothing more than one of his many ego-driven PR stunts.

But Mr. Trump is owed a shout-out, with great thanks, for stating the obvious about Barack Obama's birth certificate (and numerous other documents that would illuminate his past) -- i.e. the fact that he has zealously withheld them suggests they contain information he does not want the public to know -- information that might bear on his legitimacy to be President.

Excerpted from Trump's interview with Jim Meyers and Ashley Martella of newsmax.com:

Donald Trump is not backing down from his demand that President Barack Obama produce his birth certificate and stepped up his criticism by questioning why he has not released other personal records, including college transcripts and legislative papers.

The billionaire real estate tycoon and star of “The Apprentice” created a stir on Wednesday when he said on “The View” that Obama must release his birth certificate.

Now Trump has reiterated his call in an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV, with this simple message for Obama: Why don’t you produce your birth certificate and put to rest all speculation that you were born outside the United States?

“I’m hearing all sorts of stories that his own family can’t agree which hospital he was born in and lots of other things, and I’m trying to find out where is the birth certificate. I have a birth certificate. Where is his birth certificate?

After questions were raised about his birth, Obama's campaign released a Certification of Live Birth. The form is a summary document and does not include the newborn's location of birth. The long-form Birth Certificate includes such data, but Obama has declined to release it.

Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie first ordered the state attorney general and health department director to release more information about Obama’s birth there, then abandoned that pursuit.

“I assume that Obama was born in the United States. I assume he was probably born in Hawaii. But I have to get rid of the word ‘assume.’ If somebody wants to run for president you have to be born in this country.

And when the family argues about which hospital it was because they’re not sure, as has been reported, and you don’t have a birth certificate, it’s sort of a strange situation.”

Asked if Obama has fulfilled his campaign pledge to have the most transparent administration, Trump responds: “Certainly he hasn’t in terms of his birth, and I guess a lot of college records and other records haven’t been produced, and that’s a little unusual. Why wouldn’t you produce your records?

“There are client lists that haven’t been produced and lobbying lists that haven’t been produced, so there are a lot of things that haven’t been produced for somebody who is supposed to be so transparent.

“There’s certainly not a lot of transparency.”

For years, our wonderful "neutral" media obsessed over whether George Bush may have missed a few national guard meetings in the early 1970's, as if that were of earth-shattering importance. Every possible bit of evidence was searched for, ferreted out and examined with a fine-tooth comb. 

But finding out whether or not Barack Obama is legally our President?  Questionning why every document that could shed light on his status (not just the original birth certificate, but college records that might show if he received foreign aid, etc.)?  Not important enough.  We got our guy in the oval office, so let's bash Sarah Palin instead. 

And then they wonder why people call them biased.

So thank you, Donald Trump, for saying what should be said.  And don't back down one little bit.

Ken Berwitz

I bet you didn't know that Republicans are unworthy of constitutional freedoms.  I'll bet you didn't know that they owe Frank Lautenberg and his fellow Democrats a big fat thank-you for allowing them to have those freedoms in spite of not deserving them.

No, I have not been drinking, or smoking those thin, smelly little cigarettes, or popping pills.  He really said that. 

Want to see the verbatim quote?  Ok, here it is, with the video (hat tip to www.hotair.com):

"The Republicans in Congress claim they’re concerned about the budget balance, but it’s a disguise! It’s not true! It’s a lie! That’s not what they want. They want — they want other people not to be able to have their own opinions. They don’t deserve the freedoms that are in the Constitution! But we’ll give it to them anyway."

That, by the way, was said to a highly receptive, highly appreciative group of Planned Parenthood advocates outside of their office in Englewood, New Jersey.

Frank Lautenberg was a very successful business entrepreneur, and I give him full credit for that.  But, politically, he is a hopelessly ridiculous partisan Democrat who is spewing incoherent idiocy at these people.  And they are loving it. 

Here's a hint, Senator:  Every citizen has constitutional freedoms.  They exist even for people who disagree with you and your fellow Democrats.  And the people who disagree with you are not supplicants waiting for you to dispense those freedoms, as if you were in charge of doling them out.

Mr. Lautenberg retired from the Senate some years ago.  He came back only because the incumbent, Robert Torricelli, resigned in disgrace from his re-election campaign ,and the New Jersey supreme court ignored the law by allowing Lautenberg to take his place weeks after the deadline had passed.

If this is all Frank Lautenberg has left, maybe he should resign too.

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

UPDATE:  So how are our wonderful "neutral" media doing in making the public aware of what Senator Lautenberg said?

According to Tom Blumer of newsbusters.org and bizzyblog.com:

I found three reporters for two news organizations who appear to have been on hand for Lautenberg's appearance. Two of those reporters did not report the...remarks. One relayed "these people don't deserve the freedoms in the Constitution," and framed it as applying to "Tea Party Republicans."

Tom goes on to point out there was very little reporting of Mr. Lautenberg's comments in other mainstream media - and even what little there was often sanitized what he actually said.

Would media have run this kind of interference for, say, Republican Senator Mitch McConnell?   Surrrrrre.  Count on it. 

Ken Berwitz

What happened to that "democracy" Egypt was supposed to have after Hosni Mubarak resigned?  What happened to all those jubilant assurances by our wonderful "neutral" media that the huge crowds in Tahrir Square were heralding the dawn of a free society?

Have you seen any articles or seen any features touting Egyptian "democracy" recently?  If the answer is "no", here's why - excerpted from Rob Miller's blog at americanthinker.com.  Please pay special attention to the last part, which I've put in bold print:

Remember when the pundits, columnists and the newsrooms in the dinosaur media were practically jumping out of their shoes touting the Egyptian 'pro-democracy' movement? How wonderful it all was, and how Egypt was going to be the new liberal paradise in the Arab world? How sagacious and wise Obama was for encouraging it all and dumping Mubarak so quickly?

Well, it appears that some second thoughts and some serious walking back are in order as reality rears its ugly head.

They've finally noticed that the secular unemployed and underemployed twitter addicts and students in Cairo aren't the ones who will be running the new Egypt...it will be the military in partnership with the Ikhwan, the Muslim Brotherhood.

"We are all worried," said Amr Koura, 55, a television producer, reflecting the opinions of the secular minority. "The young people have no control of the revolution anymore. It was evident in the last few weeks when you saw a lot of bearded people taking charge. The youth are gone."

Is this a surprise?  Not for readers of this blog, who saw me write over and over again about the common-sense reality that, a) if there is a power vacuum, the most organized, dedicated group is likely to take over and b) the Muslim brotherhood would, therefore, be most likely to become a major player, or take over completely, in Egypt.

It didn't take any particular smarts to see this.  It was right in our faces.  But it took a major level of denial not to see it.  And that goes straight to our media.

Remember all those interviews in the square?  Remember that virtually all of them were with Egyptians who spoke perfect English?  How could those "news" venues possibly have thought they represented the overall population of the country? 

There are 70-80 million Egyptians, most of whom are poverty-stricken and most of whom live in rural rather than urban areas.  About 35% of Egypt is illiterate.  How could anyone in his or her right mind think that interviews with visibly affluent, western-dressed, multi-lingual people in Cairo's main square would be representative of the country? 

While the protests were in progress and the Mubarak-must-go media frenzy was in full tilt, I posted the results of a Pew Global Research study conductedin Egypt just a few months before.  As I blogged on February 10th:

I understand that it is easier to interview people who speak English this well, but I wonder if it occurs to at least some media people that, by cherry-picking this segment and ignoring the others, they are giving us a very distorted view of what's going on.  Sort of like pretending that a campus protest, or an organized march on Washington, inherently represents what the entire USA is thinking.

Common sense tells me that there are a great many Egyptians who are not marching on Tahrir Plaza, and have a very different view of things. 

In that connection, you might want to look at the latest poll conducted by Pew Global, in Muslim countries.  You will find that, by 85% to 2% Egyptians welcome an Islamic presence in their government (i.e. no separation of church and state), 82% favor stoning people who commit adultery, 77% favor whippings or the cutting off of hands as a punishment for theft/robbery ..... and 84% of Egyptians favor the death penalty for people who leave the Muslim religion. 

Does any of that sound like what you would hear from people demanding freedom and democracy? 

That question at the end of the excerpt?  It is at least as valid now as it was then. 

And the answer - one our media could not face throughout the anti-Mubarak protests - is that these views are what will now inform the new "Democratic" Egypt. 

How do you suppose the people who were interviewed in Tahrir Square like the post-Mubarak era so far?

How do you like it?

Ken Berwitz

Here's an interesting scandal for you - one that MSNBC is going to soft-pedal for sure.

Guess which company has used accounting chicanery to avoid paying billions upon billions of dollars in taxes? 

Why it's General Electric - which, until just a few months ago, was MSNBC's parent company.

Want the particulars?  Here they are, from an article by David Kocieniewski of dailycaller.com (extra credit if you can spell his name right now, without looking back):

General Electric, the nation’s largest corporation, had a very good year in 2010.

 

The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States.

 

Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.

 

That may be hard to fathom for the millions of American business owners and households now preparing their own returns, but low taxes are nothing new for G.E. The company has been cutting the percentage of its American profits paid to the Internal Revenue Service for years, resulting in a far lower rate than at most multinational companies

Wait a minute.  Can this be true?  Can GE have been dodging its taxes this way all during its ownership of MSNBC?  The cable network with those impossibly self-righteous, relentlessly judgmental hosts, who passionately hate corporations which find legal end-arounds to siphon money out of the United States?

Well, well, well.

So what do you have to say about that, Chris?  And Ed?  And Rachel?  And Cenk?  Maybe the ghost of olbermann can chime in too.

I'll wait for the hard-hitting condemnations.  I'm guessing they will arive shortly after Barack Obama renounces the Democrats, joins the Tea Party, and demands whoever gave us trillion dollar deficits immediately be impeached.

Ken Berwitz

Here, courtesy of the following excerpt from Steve Gilbert's excellent blog post at sweetness-light.com, is proof positive that BS is Brown:

In major cuts, Gov. Jerry Brown slashes services for poor, sick and elderly

By Shane Goldmacher, Los Angeles Times
March 25, 2011

Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law billions of dollars in budget cuts Thursday that will mean fewer government services, particularly for the old, the poor and the sick.

Congratulations to the Los Angeles Times. They got the exact message Mr. Brown wanted to get out both in the headline and the lead.

But honestly, is there anything more obvious than a Democrat politician? This is what Democrats always do. They make the most painful, the most heart-rending cuts first. Meanwhile they always manage to preserve the jobs of all the public sector workers who feed their re-election coffers.

They really must think that the rest of us are just plain rock stupid. And given the fact that Mr. Brown was just elected, perhaps they have a point.

The governor signed the new laws to tackle $11.2 billion of the state’s estimated $26-billion deficit, even as he scrambled to find Republican support for the other half of his budget plan: a ballot measure asking voters’ blessing to renew expiring taxes…

Again, this is right out of the Democrat playbook. Insist that your ‘painful’ budget cuts are matched with an equal increase in taxes. And when the dust settles, the tax increases survive.

State officials will now begin notifying many Californians that their government benefits are to be cut within 90 days — at just about the start of the new budget year. Come July, welfare grants will be reduced by 8%, and parents will be kicked off the rolls after four years instead of the current five.

Oh, the humanity. Hopefully, the "parents" will have enough children to make up for this terrible blow.

Assistance for the elderly and disabled, in their homes and at senior centers, will also be reduced. State-subsidized child care for 11- and 12-year-olds will be eliminated.

Notice there are no details about how many paper pushers will lose their jobs. Nor is there any word on any state employee even being asked to chip in just a little for their lavish health insurance or pensions.

After all, Mr. Brown has his priorities. He is not a monster like Gov. Scott Walker. Better the poor, sick and elderly suffer than one public sector union worker get their hair mussed.

Jerry Brown is faced with an impossible 26 billion dollar deficit.  In truth, I don't know how anyone would be able to overcome this overwhelmingly bad situation.  But, as Steve assures us so bitingly well, nailing the most vulnerable people in the state is not the way it is going to happen.  There is no way on earth Governor Brown truly intends to put the wood to these population segments. 

Going after "the poor, sick and elderly" is a red herring; nothing but a dog and pony show to facilitate a major rise in taxes -- while exempting the wages and benefits of state employees.  Brown is not about to mess with those union folks.  They are too important to the Democrat Party.  And the last thing he wants is a fiasco like the one we saw in Madison, Wisconsin. 

So, instead of trying to get major concessions from the state workers, we get a hot steamy load of Brown BS.

To the taxpayers of California:  You elected him.  I hope you enjoy what you got.

Ken Berwitz

Let me start with an excerpt from my blog of February 17th - one of a number I wrote on this subject.  Please pay special attention to the segment I have put in bold print:

Tahrir Square has been filled with a sea of Egyptians for three weeks - first demanding the resignation of Hosni Mubarak, then "celebrating" when it happened.  And for three weeks our wonderful "neutral" media have done little but extol this, as if it were some kind of guarantee that Egypt would become a free, democratic state.

 

Well, where are the guarantees now?  Who is going to emerge on top?  What will the new government do about Egypt's relationship with the USA?  What will the new government do about Egypt's 30 year peace with Israel?  Will Egypt be heavily influenced, or even run completely, by the Muslim brotherhood - a fundamentalist group that (despite James Clapper's imbecilic mouthings) is fully committed to jihad? 

 

No one knows what will happen next.  But remember;  however bad he was, there are worse situations than a Hosni Mubarak government.  Lots worse.

 

It is long past time for media to start taking them into account.

With that in mind, now please read the following excerpt from Michael Slackman's article in today's New York Times:

CAIRO — In post-revolutionary Egypt, where hope and confusion collide in the daily struggle to build a new nation, religion has emerged as a powerful political force, following an uprising that was based on secular ideals. The Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group once banned by the state, is at the forefront, transformed into a tacit partner with the military government that many fear will thwart fundamental changes.

Can that nascent movement compete with Mubarak's old party and the Muslim Brotherhood for political power?

 

It is also clear that the young, educated secular activists who initially propelled the nonideological revolution are no longer the driving political force — at least not at the moment.

As the best organized and most extensive opposition movement in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood was expected to have an edge in the contest for influence. But what surprises many is its link to a military that vilified it.

“There is evidence the Brotherhood struck some kind of a deal with the military early on,” said Elijah Zarwan, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group. “It makes sense if you are the military — you want stability and people off the street. The Brotherhood is one address where you can go to get 100,000 people off the street.”

“We are all worried,” said Amr Koura, 55, a television producer, reflecting the opinions of the secular minority. “The young people have no control of the revolution anymore. It was evident in the last few weeks when you saw a lot of bearded people taking charge. The youth are gone.”

The Muslim Brotherhood is also regarded warily by some religious Egyptians, who see it as an elitist, secret society. These suspicions have created potential opportunities for other parties.

When the new prime minister, Essam Sharaf, addressed the crowd in Tahrir Square this month, Mohamed el-Beltagi, a prominent Brotherhood member, stood by his side. A Brotherhood member was also appointed to the committee that drafted amendments to the Constitution.

In the weeks leading up to Hosni Mubarak's resignation I (and a good many others who largely were ignored by mainstream media) repeatedly pointed out that we did not know what would happen if he left, and that the resulting power vacuum would most likely be filled by the most organized group - which happens to be the fundamentalist, jihadist, Israel-hating Muslim brotherhood.

How I wish I were wrong.  But, more and more, that looks like where it is headed.

Let me repeat the last part of what I wrote a month and a half ago: 

No one knows what will happen next.  But remember;  however bad he was, there are worse situations than a Hosni Mubarak government.  Lots worse.

 

It is long past time for media to start taking them into account.

Way too late, the New York Times is starting to notice.  And - incredibly - many other supposedly professional journalistic entities still are looking the other way.  They have their story line, and they're sticking to it.

This is professional journalism?  This is serious reporting?  This is allowing events to dictate the story instead of the other way around?

Yeah, right.

Ken Berwitz

It happens every day in elementary school.

Kid A starts up with Kid B.  Kid B hits Kid A back.  And Kid A goes crying to his mommy, who is expected to be outraged by what Kid B did..  The fact that Kid A started it?  Irrelevant 'n' immaterial.

With that in mind, please read the following news report from Ha'aretz:

Report: Hamas calls on UN to halt Israel's strikes on Gaza

 

Al-Quds Al-Arabi reports that Hamas spokesman also called on Arab League to intervene to stop 'Israeli aggression' and stop Israel from 'exploiting regional instability to carry out massacres against Palestinians.'

 

By Haaretz Service

 

Hamas called on the United Nations on Friday to put an end to the "crime of the recent attacks on Gaza," referring to the stepped up Israeli air strikes on the Strip which have come in the wake of increased rocket fire, the pan-Arab daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi reported.

 

The report, which was carried by Israeli media, also said that Taher al-Nunu, a spokesman for the Hamas regime, called on the Arab League to work urgently to stop "recent Israeli aggression."

 

Israel must be prevented from "exploiting the instability in the region and world to carry out massacres against the Palestinian people," Taher said.

 

Tensions along the Israel-Gaza border have been extremely tense over the course of the past week, with an increase in both rocket fire from Gaza and retaliatory air strikes by Israel on the Strip.

 

In the most recent exchange, the Israel Air Force bombed an arms depot in northern Gaza, which according to Palestinian sources, belong to the military wing of Hamas.

 

The attack was carried out around 8:30 P.M. Thursday local time, after two rockets and several mortars fired from Gaza at landed deep into Israel earlier in the day.

 

In a separate report carried by Israeli media, contacts from Hamas and Israel are supposedly meeting with a third party in order to bring about a reduction in tensions between the sides. The report, which cannot be confirmed, came from the London based pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat.

 

Despite the Israeli strikes on the Strip, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned on Thursday that if Hamas chooses to escalate cross-border tensions, Israel's response will be measured.

Let's see:  hamas, fresh from its "victories" of killing five family members who were sleeping in their beds - beheading a three month old child in the process - and blowing up busses in Jerusalem, has decided to further escalate its war of annihilation against Israel.  And Israel has done something about it (though far less than it should have, if you ask me). 

So hamas goes crying to the United Nations, its mommy, demanding that Israel be stopped.  See, it's not fun to get what's coming to you.

And what will happen?  Bet on another UN condemnation of Israel.  Condemning Israel is one of the only things the UN is good at getting done.

What a perfectly named organization.  It is UNfair, UNcaring about what actually happened, UNmoved by a mass murder if the victims are Jewish, and UNworthy of its supposed mission in the world.

Ken Berwitz

In case you are wondering how the various cable news networks, and individual shows, are faring these days, here are the latest Neilsen data - which I got from mediabistro.com:

NOTE: At this point I usually put up the data, but mediabistro.com has put some kind of system in place that mangles them when I try.  So you'll have to click here).

Ken Berwitz

Here, from Gallup, is the support level for our current foray into Libya - along with the support levels at the start of most other conflicts over the past 28 years:

If these data are accurate, the Libya mess is generating a remarkably low level of support, right from the git-go. 

And if you think the numbers are bad now, wait until we hand off control to NATO, and officers from Europe or maybe an Arab country or two are commanding our troops.  

Does it give me any satisfaction to see that so many people apparently share my pessimism about what the Obama administration is doing?  The answer is no.  I do not want to be right about this.

What I want is for the Libya action to work out perfectly.  I would be in seventh heaven if qaddafi is deposed (preferably decomposed), democracy-oriented "rebels" are in control of a joyous, free country, and our troops walk away with few if any casualties. 

But the harsh truth is that I have no hope of it happening. 

Instead, I am cringing at the likelihood that this will be an ugly, bloody, nonproductive, probably counterproductive, fiasco. 

If ever there were a time I would like to be apologizing to the Obama administration and admitting I was wrong, this is it.  Let's all hope that such an apology becomes necessary in the very, very near future.

Ken Berwitz

This is the first paragraph of Chris Moody's latest blog at dailycaller.com.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took a swipe at billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch in a fund-raising email on behalf of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Thursday, even though the DSCC accepted $30,000 from Koch Industries just last year.

Any questions?

Ken Berwitz

The Texas House of Representatives has just passed an eminently logical law - that, in order to vote, a valid ID must be shown.

And Democrats are having an excrement hemorrhage over it.

Excerpted from an article by Aman Batheja for the Austin Star-Telegram -- and please pay special attention to the paragraph I have put in bold print:

AUSTIN -- After more than 11 hours of debate, the Texas House voted 101-48 late Wednesday for a bill requiring voters to show photo ID at the polls, increasing the likelihood that the measure will take effect in time for the 2012 elections.

 

House Republicans achieved a long-sought political goal by passing the bill. Now they will have to iron out differences with the version the Senate passed in January. Gov. Rick Perry had declared that the bill was one of a handful of emergency items. Republicans say their constituents demand the change to ensure election integrity.

 

"I have Democrats, Republicans and independents in my district who think people ought to show ID before being allowed to vote," said Rep. Dennis Bonnen, R-Angleton.

 

All votes against the bill were by Democrats. They said the measure would disenfranchise poor and minority voters and is targeting a problem -- in-person voter fraud -- that doesn't exist. Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth, said the bill would effectively return Texas to the days of Jim Crow.

 

"I think it's horrible," Veasey said. "I think it discriminates against people. I think we'll look back in shame."

 

Several kinds of government-issued photo identification would be accepted, including a driver's license, a U.S. military ID card and a U.S. passport.

Bluntly stated, every argument raised by the 48 Democrats who voted against this legislation is a lie. 

-The legislation has no relevance to income.  It doesn't ask people's income; it only asks that they prove their identity;

-The legislation has no relevance to minority status.  It doesn't ask people's color, race or religion; it only asks that they prove their identity;

-The legislation has no relevance to Jim Crow laws, which were created to prevent Black people from voting.  It doesn't ask people's skin color; it only asks that they prove their identity;

-But the legislation has great relevance to in-person voter fraud, because it makes unlawful voting much harder to "successfully" accomplish.  And it is impossible for Rep. Marc Veasey to know how much voter fraud currently takes place because, without an ID check, it is impossible to identify who is and is not a legitimate voter.

Why are Democrats so strongly against this legislation?  Why are they so strongly against voters being asked to produce nothing more than the same kind of ID they need to get into an R Rated movie, or cash a $5 check at the supermarket, or to perform countless other mundane events in their everyday lives?

I can't prove it for certain, but the one and only reason I can come up with that makes any sense, is that they believe there are illegal voters who mostly vote for Democrats, therefore it will cost them votes they have no business getting.

If you can show me any reason that producing a valid ID discriminates against poor people or minorities, I urge you to post it in the "comments" section below.  I promise to address each reason individually. 

But, somehow, I doubt that anyone will be able to do so.

Ken Berwitz

According to the following excerpt from an article in the Omaha World-Herald, here is the way Mayor Jim Suttle proposes to wipe out part of the city's debt:

Mayor Jim Suttle went to Washington Tuesday flush with ideas for how federal officials could help cities like Omaha pay for multibillion-dollar sewer projects.

Among the items on his brainstorming list: a proposal for a 10-cent federal tax on every roll of toilet paper you buy.

Based on the four-pack price for Charmin double rolls Tuesday at a midtown Hy-Vee, such a tax would add more than 10 percent to the per-roll price, pushing it over a buck.

The idea came from a failed 2009 House measure by an Oregon congressman to help cities and the environment.

“I heard about it and said, ‘Well, this is simple. Let's put it on the table,'” said Suttle. “It doesn't mean I endorse it.”

The mayor says Omaha needs help with the metro area's $1.7 billion bill for federally mandated sewer improvements. The work must be done by 2024.

Personally, I'm surprised by the mayor making such a bold proposal; it's so....un-Suttle.

Then again, you have to admire his courage.  Do you realize how badly he is going to be smeared for this idea?

And his critics have a point, since all he's talking about is paper profits.

But the mayor does have strong support.....from the bidet industry. 

Ok, enough sh*tty jokes.  Then next one is yours.

Ken Berwitz

Funny, isn't it, how the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) becomes a sometimes thing, based on who is doing the asking and who is expected to provide the information.

Steve Gilbert of sweetness-light.com has written a terrific blog about this, which I am excerpting below.  I am probably posting too much of it but Steve has done such a stellar job that I want to be sure you see for yourself.  Do yourself a favor, though, and use the link I have provided and read Steve's entire piece:

First we have this bit of background on Crossroads GPS, via the Politico:

Crossroads GPS launches FOIA site

By Mike Allen
March 23, 2011

Crossroads GPS, the cash-flush Republican advocacy group, is launching a new initiative and website Thursday, Wikicountability.org, which is designed to crowdsource FOIA files from organizations, individuals and journalists who have sought, and who have received, public information from the Obama administration. Thousands of pages of information from the departments of Labor and Health and Human Services have been uploaded to the site, and Crossroads is encouraging other groups and individuals to upload their own FOIA reports as well.

The horror!

The site is also designed to spotlight what it suggests is the administration’s poor record of compliance with FOIA — with a special section devoted to unfulfilled FOIA requests.

The launch of Wikicountability.org will reveal:

- The Andy Griffith ad promoting Obamacare last year cost taxpayers $3.66 million – including $404,000 in production – according to records obtained from HHS in a FOIA request earlier this year.

- Labor Secretary Hilda Solis met with union bosses or attended their events on more than 40 separate occasions from February 2009-January 2010.

- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau head Elizabeth Warren made time for dinner with liberal journalists including American Prospect’s Bob Kuttner, Mother Jones’s David Corn and DailyKos.com’s Markos Moulitsas.

- Among dozens of unfulfilled FOIA requests by the Obama administration: The Department of Education has yet to offer any response to a February 2010 FOIA request for Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s schedule and travel vouchers.

Crossroads is doing what our news media would be doing, if we had a free press.

After all, the very same labor unions that put Mr. Obama into office, and who helped him force through Obama-care, and who are now getting waivers exempting them from the mandates of Obama-care. You would think that some ‘journalists’ would be interested in such an obvious scandal. But you would be wrong, because there we have no journalists worthy of the name.

Instead we have the lickspittle minions of the Democrat party, who call themselves reporters. And they have already leaped into action to do whatever they can to keep any of this information from coming out.

Exactly right, Steve.  Thank you for saying it so well.

And, yes, these are the same "journalists" who squeal like stuck pigs if you call them biased. 

Ken Berwitz

Man oh man, would Anthony Weiner have a fit on the floor of the house over this amazing hypocrisy....if it weren't for the fact that he happens to be the hypocrite.

Excerpted from Kate Nocera's article at politico.com:

Rep. Anthony Weiner said Wednesday he was looking into how a health law waiver might work for New York City.

Weiner, who is likely to run for mayor of New York, said that because of the city’s special health care infrastructure, his office was looking into alternatives that might make more sense. Weiner is one of the health care law’s biggest supporters; during the debate leading up to reform, he was one of the last holdouts in Congress for the public option.

“The president said, ‘If you have better ideas that can accomplish the same thing, go for it,’” said Weiner. “I’m in the process now of trying to see if we can take [President Barack Obama] up on it in the city of New York, … and I’m taking a look at all of the money we spend in Medicaid and Medicare and maybe New York City can come up with a better plan.”

You've got to be kidding.

Anthony Weiner, who, in his aggressive, angry, rumpelstilstskinesque way, led the fight to force ObamaCare down our throats, wants a waiver for it?????  So that the people in his congressional district - and all the rest of New York City - do not have to suffer its consequences?????

If there is a hall of fame for hypocrites, they better start building a wing for this guy.  Right next to the rubber-padded room they should be building for his next holy fit.

Ken Berwitz

Tom Raum, veteran writer for the Associated Press (which is hardly an Obama-bashing enterprise) has written a thoughtful, thought-provoking analysis of the Libya mess. 

Here is an excerpt.  But please click on this link and read it all:

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama said he was setting clear and unmistakable terms for the U.S. role in Libya: It would be limited, lasting days, not weeks, and its purpose was to protect Libyan citizens.

But that's not the way it's turned out. Less than a week later, the mission has been clouded by confusion and questions about who's in charge and who's doing what — all while the killing of civilians is going on.

The Pentagon claims success in establishing an effective no-fly zone over much of Libya that has grounded Col. Moammar Gadhafi's aging air force. But Gadhafi's tanks and troops are still targeting civilians on the ground.

"It could still all come around very quickly in our favor. But if that's to happen, we will have to apply much more intensive military power in an effort to make this succeed," said Aaron David Miller, a former top State Department Mideast negotiator in Republican and Democratic administrations.

"But it doesn't appear to me, given the constraints acting upon us and our own reservations, that we're prepared to do that," said Miller, now with the Woodrow Wilson Center, a foreign-policy think tank. "Right now, it appears to be settling into a stalemate which isn't terribly hurting on the Gadhafi side."

Raum goes on to detail what is wrong with the Obama administration's strategy and actions.  He is just about completely spot-on.

But, then again, what should we have expected?  We elected a Chicago machine politician with absolutely no qualifications for the presidency, and he installed a Secretary of State whose major qualification was that she went on trips with her husband. 

Years ago, I used to play cards with a guy from the neighborhood who described worthless, nonproductive activity by saying "from shit you don't make omelets". 

I don't see any omelets here.  Do you?

Ken Berwitz

What did we get ourselves into? 

Excerpted from an article from Germany's Der Spiegel:

'Gadhafi Is Facing a Coalition of the Unwilling'

NATO is split over whether it should take over command of the coalition military operation against Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi. German commentators warn that the alliance could be playing into the despot's hands with its dithering.

 

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The coalition military operation against Moammar Gadhafi has made good progress toward its goals of destroying the Libyan dictator's air defenses and establishing a no-fly zone over the country. But that, it seems, was the easy part. Far more difficult are the questions of who should now lead the mission and what the operation's ultimate objectives should be.

 

The US government, wary of getting stuck in another war in a Muslim country, would like to hand control of the mission over to NATO, but the alliance is divided. At a meeting on Monday, NATO ambassadors failed to agree on whether the alliance should take control of the mission. NATO involvement would require approval by all 28 members.

 

France has opposed handing control to NATO because of Arab skepticism about the alliance, which is perceived as being dominated by the US. Paris would prefer the current coalition of France, Britain and the US to keep political control of the mission, with operational support from NATO, according to sources quoted by Reuters. Turkey, an alliance member which sees itself as a bridge to the Muslim world, is opposing NATO control of the operation. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the United Nations should be in charge of an entirely humanitarian operation in Libya.

 

Britain and Italy want the alliance to be in charge of the operation, however. Rome has threatened to restrict access to its air bases, which are crucial to the mission, if NATO does not take over control. US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has suggested that Britain or France could also take control of the mission, but some NATO officials doubt if either country could handle the operation by itself, according to Reuters.

 

Other allies even reportedly questioned at Monday's meeting whether the no-fly zone was still needed, arguing that the air strikes had already inflicted substantial damage on Gadhafi's forces. Operation Odyssey Dawn began on Saturday following last week's UN Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force against Gadhafi's regime.

How could President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton have bungled Libya so completely?

How could they have allowed the USA to devolve into just "one of the guys" - especially when our military - as per usual - is performing the lion's share of activity (113 of the first 175 bombing missions)?  Did they not know that, without our lead, not only do we lose relevance and credibility in the world, but we wind up in a hopeless debating situation instead of a decisive action with defined objectives.  Didn't their mommies ever tell them that too many cooks spoil the broth? 

The idea of our action in Libya is very noble.  We want Libya to be free of moammar qaddafi.  But how are we going about it?

-First, we wait until qaddafi has largely decimated his opposition before doing anything at all;

-Then we let France, that great military power of the planet, take the lead over us - which makes the USA look like a ridiculous, second-tier shell of its former self;

-Eventually we jump in with bombing raids.  But we assure qaddafi (and Mr. Obama's hard-left masters) that we won't send in ground troops, which means qaddafi cannot lose land to our actions.  And, oh, by the way, we're not really trying to depose him.  Plus, we promise we'll only bomb a few more days. 

That is how a left wing think-tank dreamer or an MSNBC host or a New York Times editorial writer might see a war.  Not a commander in chief.

The result?  qaddafi has suffered major military losses - inevitable when a number of militarily superior countries are bombing it.  But he is still there.  He is still defiant.  He is still going on Libya state TV to thumb his nose at the west. 

And, since no one seems to have any idea of how to pursue this action beyond bombing raids (which qaddafi is positioning as  "us against them", which is likely to gain, rather than lose popular support for him), it is hard to find a way that this can have a successful conclusion.

Even if  "the rebels" were somehow to take over, what do we know about them?  I agree that it is unlikely they would be worse than the deranged, murderous lunatic qaddafi.  But they might be worse, or just as bad.  Would a rebel takeover enmesh Libya in a hopeless, bloody tribal war, like Rwanda? 

Max Boot, writing in a New York Times op-ed on Monday, suggested - seriously, not sarcastically - that post-qaddafi Libya would probably need an international peacekeeping force.  

Does that sound promising to you?  I didn't think so.

Ken Berwitz

Because Elizabeth Taylor died today, Dorothy Young's passing will get virtually no press.  But that's not fair.

So here, excerpted from an article at ABC News, is her remarkable claim to fame:

Dorothy Young, the last surviving stage assistant of illusionist Harry Houdini and an accomplished dancer, has died. She was 103.

Young's death was announced Wednesday by Drew University, where she was a prominent donor and patron of the arts. Spokesman Dave Muha said she died Sunday at her home in a Tinton Falls, N.J., retirement community.

Young joined Houdini's company as a 17-year-old after attending an open casting call during a family trip to New York. She initially sat in the back because she was too shy to step forward, but Houdini and his manager soon noticed her and asked her to dance the Charleston. They signed her to a contract, and she eventually persuaded her parents to let her join the stage show.

Who would have believed it possible that someone who worked on stage with Harry Houdini could still be alive?  But there it is, in black and white. 

If you click the link, you'll find that Ms. Young went on to have a very nice career in her own right, eventually becoming a philanthropist and patron of the arts.

People like this are always in too-short supply.  I'm sure you join me in being sorry to see her go.

May Dorothy (forever) Young rest in peace.

Ken Berwitz

ObamaCare was signed into law a year ago.  (Let's forget for a moment that its current status is that the legislation was ruled unconstitutional:  heck, if President Obama can ignore it, so can we, right?)

Here, according to the following excerpts from CNN, is how public opinion stood then and how it stands now:

 (CNN) – One year after President Barack Obama signed the health care reform bill into law, a new national poll indicates that attitudes toward the plan have not budged.

 

According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Wednesday, on the one year anniversary of the signing of the law, a majority continue to oppose the measure, but some of the opposition is from Americans who think the law is not liberal enough.

Thirty-seven percent of Americans support the measure, with 59 percent opposed. That's basically unchanged from last March, when 39 percent supported the law and 59 percent opposed the measure.

 

"It's worth remembering that opposition to the bill came from both the left and the right last year, and that has not changed either," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "In 2010, about a quarter of the health care bill's opponents disliked the bill because it was not liberal enough - the same as today. That works out to 13 percent of all Americans who oppose the bill because it did not go far enough. Forty-three percent oppose it because it was too liberal."

Two other polls released in the past week, by Gallup and Kaiser Family Foundation, also indicate that Americans are divided over the health care law.

If these data are correct, they tell us that, for a year the public has looked at ObamaCare, kicked its tires, checked under the hood, and......they feel exactly as they did the year before.  They don't want it. 

Popularity-wise, this legislation is in quicksand.

Which means that - again, if these data are accurate - Republicans should be rooting for the Obama administration and every Democrat congressperson to be pushing for ObamaCare every day, right through to November, 2012.

One other thing:  I love that last paragraph, don't you?  37% in favor, 59% against, and "Americans are divided over the health care law". 

Who does the data analysis over at CNN?  The ghost of Tip O'Neill?

Ken Berwitz

You know those billboards with a smiling George Bush and the words "Miss me yet?".  After this unbelievably inept, harebrained fiasco in Libya you may be seeing a ton more of them.

Here, compiled by drudgereport.com, is a synopsis of stories detailing just how quickly this has fallen to pieces:

Germans pull forces out of NATO; Libyan coalition falls apart...
Allies in disarray...
DER SPIEGEL: Coalition of the Unwilling...
OBAMA: No ground troops, no matter what happens...
French PM: 'We are not at war'...
Costs, mission unclear...
Also backing the rebels -- al Qaeda...

Libya has become so much of a mess that even Matt Lauer of the Today show found himself agreeing with Newt Gingrich's assessment of it - which I would have thought only slightly more likely than a tropical heat wave in the Antarctic, a blizzard in Borneo or the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series (on second thought, scratch that last one - nothing is more improbable than the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series).

Want to see it for yourself?  Then use the link I've provided, and note that, from about 3:00 to the end at 4:44, Gingrich lays out chapter and verse of what is wrong with the Obama Administration's actions and what should be done, with Matt Lauer not having one word of dispute with him.

If that doesn't tell you how bad this is, nothing will.

Ken Berwitz

Ken Hoagland, at dailycaller.com, has written a terrific blog detailing the ObamaCare lies that we know about so far (with this many, why would anyone assume there aren't more?).

Here is a taste of his piece, which I urge you to read in its entirety by clicking here:

It’s now entirely clear why Nancy Pelosi said we had to pass Obamacare to know what it contained. This week marks the law’s one-year anniversary, and what we’ve learned is not good. If this had happened in the private sector, someone would be facing charges for false advertising.

 

Almost all the promises so often repeated by President Obama and his supporters are proving false. Despite the president’s apparent exasperation with us for not accepting his repeated assurances, for example, most of us will probably not be keeping the health insurance coverage that we like. Recent studies predict that 80% of small businesses, among others, will have to drop their current coverage.

 

We also know now that our annual federal deficits and the destructively growing national debt will be going up rather dramatically as a result of Obamacare, despite repeated promises delivered with a straight face to the contrary.

 

We know that the very first promise — that the law would rein in escalating health care costs — was abandoned by House and Senate Democrats to secure passage. In truth, American families will pay $2,100 more a year for family coverage by 2016 than they would have without Obamacare.

 

We know that the SEIU and other unions that spent tens of millions of dollars to see the president elected and that routinely disparaged opponents of this government takeover of health care have sought and been granted waivers because they, too, can’t afford the program.

 

Speaking of favored treatment, we now know that the House and Senate committee staffers who wrote the law exempted themselves from the act. While they were at it, they exempted the president, the vice president, their families and cabinet officers. The speaker and Senate majority leader were also exempted.

 

We know now that the appropriations process was ignored when more than $100 billion was hidden in the authorization of the act.

 

We know that the cost of the new law will be far higher than was promised because, in fact, revenues were double-counted and because a half-trillion-dollar cut to Medicare won’t really take place unless legislators are willing to see few if any doctors ever again treat the elderly. .

And so on....and on and on and on.

How can anyone believe a thing this administration and its congressional leadership say? 

We can only wonder how much of an effect these lies had on the clock-cleaning Democrats sustained in November. 

Frankly, they better hope the effect was huge.  Because if this is how voters reacted before realizing what a fraud ObamaCare is, it could make last year's mid-term elections look good by comparison.

Ken Berwitz

Elizabeth Taylor, a great actress (two academy awards), oft-married (8 marriages to 7 husbands -- Richard Burton twice) and amazingly beautiful woman in her youth, died of heart failure today at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles.  She was 79 years old.

At other times I would write more about such a huge entertainment icon.  But she has not been in the public eye for many years and, frankly, world events are far more important today than the death of a great former actress.

This is nothing against Ms. Taylor, it is just an issue of timing. 

May she rest in peace.

Ken Berwitz

From MSNBC (more details to follow, of course):

JERUSALEM — A bomb exploded at a crowded bus stop Wednesday in central Jerusalem, wounding at least 25 people in what appeared to be the first militant attack in the city in several years.

 

The blast could be heard throughout Jerusalem and blew out the windows of two crowded buses. There was no claim of responsibility, but Israeli police blamed Palestinian militants, calling the bombing a "terrorist" attack.

Yitzhak Aharonovich, Israel's minister of public security, said militants planted a 2-pound device in a bag on the sidewalk.

 

Israel's national rescue service said 25 people were wounded, including 15 seriously and several critically. Rescuers were seen removing bloodied people from the area on stretchers. No deaths were reported.

That, in the eyes of the "newspeople" at MSNBC is a "militant attack".  Not a terrorist attack.

An explosive detonated in an area populated with innocent civilians, dozens of casualties among random people who were doing nothing other than riding on busses, and MSNBC can't find a way to characterize it as terrorism.  Every reference of theirs is to "militants".

How can you believe anything these people say?

Ken Berwitz

Since I've already written a blog drawn from Chris Matthews' "Hardball" show, let's do one more. 

Here is Chris Matthews' "question" (propaganda is more like it) attacking Republican critics of President Obama's action in Libya, and then salon.com editor Joan Walsh's incoherent, incomprehensible response:

MATTHEWS:  “Can’t they hear themselves in the echo chamber of B.S. they live in that the minute the guy did the opposite of what he said he did, he should have done, they would have attacked that. It’s just automatic criticism. Your thoughts, Joan?”

WALSH:  "Well, it’s so shallow, too. You know? And that is what you’re saying, Chris. It doesn’t matter. If something different happened, they would have a different principle. So they’re not, they’re not applying any kind of coherent principle of foreign policy or of domestic policy. They’re just looking for opportunities to cheap shot the President. The people who were criticizing Bush had a coherent, had coherent reasons to criticize him. It wasn’t like that. There was coherence to the point of view, where as here, I think you’re exactly right. They would just be trashing him whatever he did, and it feels that way. It feels cheap, it feels shallow."

The translation - I think - is that Matthews accuses Republicans of looking for something to criticize Mr. Obama for no matter what he does (which, of course, is true of the opposition regardless of which party is in power), Walsh agrees, and then assures viewers that it was ok to do this against Bush, but not Obama, because the reasons to attack Bush were "coherent".  Or something.

Evidently, neither Mr. Matthews nor Ms. Walsh can find any reason to criticize President Obama for unilaterally bombing Libya - without any objective, or any intention of holding ground that might be won (without ground troops it would be impossible to do so), or any intention of removing qaddafi from power.  The only thing we have been told is that bombing will continue for less than a week more (to what end nobody knows) and that the USA does not want to lead the effort (so we will intentionally make ourselves subserviant to whomever leads it instead).

THAT'S coherent?????????????????????????????

No need to remind you that Hardball is on MSNBC.  The comments by Matthews and Walsh pretty much leave no doubt.

Ken Berwitz

If Joe Biden was a man of his word, or anything remotely near it, he would aggressively be moving to impeach President Obama right now.

And if you think that is political BS on my part, I suggest you watch the 1:27 clip of of then-Senator Biden saying exactly, precisely that - completely in context, on Chris Matthews' "Hardball" show.  The date?  Tuesday, December 4, 2007 -- just prior to the 2008 presidential primaries.

Click on the link I've provided, and you will hear the following dialogue (bold print is mine):

CHRIS MATTHEWS:  I want to ask you a question about something you’ve been involved with.  You said that if the President of the United States had launched an attack on Iran without congressional approval, that would have been an impeachable offense.  You want to review that comment you made.  Well, how do you stand on that now?  Do you think…

 

JOE BIDEN:  Absolutely.  Yes I do.  Well I want to stand by that comment I made.  The reason I made the comment was as a warning.  The reason I made, I don’t say those things lightly, Chris, you’ve known me for a long time.  I was chairman of the judiciary committee for 17 years, or its ranking member.   I teach separation of powers ofconstitutional law.  This is something I know.  So I got together, and brought a group of constitutional scholars together, to write a piece that I’m going to deliver to the whole United States Senate, pointing out the President has no constitutional authority to take this nation to war against a country of 70 million people unless we are attacked or unless there is proof that we are about to be attacked.  And if he does, if he does, I would move to impeach him.  The house obviously has to do that, but I would lead an effort to impeach him...

The clip ends by showing the following statement, made by then-Senator and Presidential hopeful Barack Obama, just two weeks later on December 20, 2007 - less than a year before he was elected President:

“The President does not have power, under the constitution, to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation”.

Well, President Obama unilaterally bombed Libya - a country that is not presently attacking us, nor is there any proof that it is about to do so.

Joe?  I'm waiting. 

And if Joe Biden doesn't have the integrity to make good on that unequivocal pledge, how about you, Mr. President?  Turn yourself in for impeachment, based on your own statement.

Gee, I guess it's a lot easier to shoot off your mouth when you run for President than it is to be one.  Wouldn't you say?

Ken Berwitz

There's a holdup in the Bronx, Brooklyn's broken out in fights,

There's a traffic jam in Harlem that's backed up to Jackson Heights,

There's a scout troop short a child,

Khrushchev's due at Idlewild,

Car 54, where are yoooooooouuuuuu?

That is the classic theme song from a hit TV show of the early 1960's:  "Car 54, Where Are You?", starring Joe. E. Ross and Fred Gwynn.

It was supposed to be funny - and it was, too.

But this is 2011, and we have a real-life version of this song at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue starring Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton; one that is not funny at all.

Excerpted from The New York Post's editorial:

Yesterday was just another day in the rapidly unraveling Middle East.

 

* Turkish news media reported that a Syria-bound Iranian cargo plane suspected of carrying nuclear material was forced to land in Turkey on Saturday for inspection.

 

The weapons may have been intended for use in Syria -- where five days of anti-government protests have led to a half-dozen deaths in a crackdown by security forces.

 

Or, more likely, they may have been destined for Hamas-ruled Gaza, where renewed rocket fire against Israel began over the weekend.

 

* In Yemen, President Ali Abdullah Saleh -- a key US ally in the war on terror -- announced his willingness to call elections and step down in January after 32 years in power, following mounting public protests and growing defections of key military and political leaders.

 

* In Bahrain, King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, backed by Saudi troops, ordered his armed forces to continue a bloody crackdown on anti-government Shiite protesters, sweeping them from the capital's financial district and elsewhere.

 

* And in Libya, Moammar Khadafy's troops remained undeterred by coalition airstrikes, continuing to terrorize civilians in Tripoli.  

 

Meanwhile, where is the president?

 

What signs are there that he and his team have anything remotely resembling a thought-out, coherent policy for dealing with the crises?

 

Answer: none.

 

On Libya, the US, France and Britain agreed to hand off primary responsibility for the air campaign to NATO -- although Turkey and the Arab League continue to resist that.

 

And members of Congress across the political spectrum wondered whether Obama ever intends to fill them in.

 

Maybe when he returns from south of the border, sometime today?

 

It's the least he can do.

Maybe now that his essentially useless jaunt to South America (on the taxpayer's bill, of course) is over, Mr. Obama can come back to the White House and start trying to make some kind of sense about USA policy and objectives in the middle east. 

Or - as I fear - is that too much to ask of a Chicago machine politician, with no qualifications for the Presidency, who seems more interested in listening to the academics, political lifers and assorted other navel-gazing types he has surrounded himself with than the people with real world experience who just might have a bit more valuable input?

Ken Berwitz

I am not making this up.  I swear.

According to Reuters, this is what yugo chavez said to mark world water day (I spell chavez's first name "yugo" because of the similarities in performance between him and the car):

“I have always said, heard, that it would not be strange that there had been civilization on Mars, but maybe capitalism arrived there, imperialism arrived and finished off the planet”

Well, there you have it, folks.  Capitalism and imperialism may be the reason Mars is without life.  This comes to us from a "man" who is actually running an entire country.

Actually, now that I think of it, since Danny Glover and Sean Penn (among other Hollywood types) are big fans of chavez, maybe they believe capitalism and imperialism may have ended life on Mars too.

I propose that Glover and Penn use some of the millions they have made via capitalism (i.e. by demanding as much money as they can get for each film) to have a spaceship built, then fly there to see for sure.

And please, please, take yugo with you.  The car and the dictator.

Ken Berwitz

How insane (that's not hyperbole, it is the correct word) is President Obama's oil drilling policy? 

Read this excerpt from yesterday's Investors Business Daily editorial and see for yourself:

Obama: Drill, Brazil, Drill!

Posted 03/21/2011 07:08 PM ET

Energy Policy: While leaving U.S. oil and jobs in the ground, our itinerant president tells a South American neighbor that we'll help it develop its offshore resources so we can one day import its oil. WHAT?!?

With Japan staggered by a natural disaster and a nuclear crisis, cruise missiles launched against Libya in our third Middle East conflict and a majority of U.S. senators complaining about a lack of leadership on the budget, President Obama decided it would be a good time to schmooze with Brazilians.

His "What, me worry?" presidency has given both Americans and our allies plenty to worry about. But in the process of making nice with Brazil, Obama made a mind-boggling announcement that should make even his most loyal supporter cringe:

We will help Brazil develop its offshore oil so we can one day import it.

We have noted this double standard before, particularly when — at a time when the president was railing against tax incentives for U.S. oil companies — we supported the U.S. Export-Import Bank's plan to lend $2 billion to Brazil's state-run Petrobras with the promise of more to follow.

Now, with a seven-year offshore drilling ban in effect off of both coasts, on Alaska's continental shelf and in much of the Gulf of Mexico — and a de facto moratorium covering the rest — Obama tells the Brazilians:

"We want to help you with the technology and support to develop these oil reserves safely. And when you're ready to start selling, we want to be one of your best customers."

Obama wants to develop Brazilian offshore oil to help the Brazilian economy create jobs for Brazilian workers while Americans are left unemployed in the face of skyrocketing energy prices by an administration that despises fossil fuels as a threat to the environment and wants to increase our dependency on foreign oil.

In an op-ed in USA Today explaining his trip, Obama opined: "Brazil holds recently discovered oil reserves that could be far larger than ours. And as we seek to increase secure-energy supplies, we look forward to developing a strategic energy partnership."

Is this man crazy? 

Who is advising him on oil?  Moe, Larry or Curly?

We are being told that the United States should not drill for oil, because it will be detrimental to the environment.  But it is ok, even desirable, for Brazil to do so, as if the environment is better off if they do.  And then we can buy oil from Brazil, thus becoming even more dependent on foreign oil than we already are.

I dare anyone to explain the sanity of this policy.  I double-dare anyone to do so.

But who do we have to blame besides ourselves?  We elected a Chicago machine politician, with no qualifications for the Presidency, but a seemingly unquenchable propensity for deferring to other countries instead of acting on the USA's behalf.  We're lucky he didn't apologize to Brazil for the offshore drilling we have done. 

Can we move up the 2012 elections?  Please?

Ken Berwitz

Amazing, isn't it, how many times we can see that ObamaCare comes with "death panels", and our wonderful "neutral" media ignores them.

Well, here is the latest demonstration that they exist, from Matthew Boyle's blog  at dailycaller.com.  Let's see if the media can ignore this too: 

An often-overlooked portion of President Barack Obama’s prized health care law, the creation of the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), will face heat in the coming months from Congress and from the courts. Congressman Phil Roe, Tennessee Republican, told The Daily Caller the IPAB is the “real death panel” in the health care law, as compared to “end-of-life counseling” provisions in Obamacare that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin once deemed “death panels.”

 “This one is the real baby right here – and most people missed this,” Roe told TheDC. “What everybody was talking about, when you saw Sarah Palin and so forth, what they were talking about these advanced directives where you sit down and there’s sort of mandatory counseling – and Medicare paid for it. This IPAB got missed – and it’s the real death panel.”

The board would cap the total amount of money Medicare recipients could get for care. Roe,  a practicing doctor before he entered politics, said that means health care decisions will end up being based solely on cost, instead of what the best possible option is for Medicare patients.

“Basically, there’s a certain amount of money that’s allocated for Medicare spending each year,” Roe said in a phone interview. “Once you hit that amount that’s been appropriated, this board, this bureaucratically-appointed board, can then decide, not based on quality or need, but based on strictly cost.”

Does that look like a "death panel" situation to you?  If not, what would you call it?

Did Sarah Palin and others have a point?  You bet they did. 

And were our media so far in the tank for Barack Obama and his de facto nationalization of health care that they ignored it then - as they probably will ignore it now too?  You bet they were.

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

Ken Berwitz

In a war, there are sometimes horrific incidents.  And the following excerpt from London's Daily Mail describes one of them:

'Repugnant': U.S. army apologises for graphic photos of soldiers posing with dead Afghan civilians

 

By Daily Mail Reporter

Last updated at 9:12 AM on 22nd March 2011

 

-U.S. army forced to issue an apology over 'trophy' photos of soldiers grinning over bloodied Afghan corpses

 

-Commanders in Afghanistan bracing themselves for public fury and possible riots

 

-German newspaper Der Spiegel, which obtained the photographs, said there are thousands more showing other victims

 

American soldiers have appeared in leaked photographs posing with the bloodied and partially naked bodies of Afghan civilians they allegedly killed in cold blood.

 

Last night, the U.S. army was forced to apologise for the ‘repugnant’ pictures.

What a disgusting story.  And what a bonanza for our enemies both in and out of Afghanistan.

But, despite how awful this is, it would be wrong to blame President Obama for what these soldiers did.  The President may be Commander In Chief.  But, realistically, he has absolutely no control over what happens at the field level. 

The blame - and obviously there is a ton of it - lies elsewhere.

Ken Berwitz

Remember when President Bush attacked Iraq, along with a "coalition of the willing"?   Remember how that coalition was attacked by our wonderful "neutral" media, and derided as being a ridiculous claim?

Keep that in mind as you read the coalition for Mr. Bush's action in 2003 compared to the coalition for Mr. Obama's current action in Libya.  The source is the U.S. State Department, and the compilation was made by Fox News (What?  You expected MSNBC to do this?):

Coalition Countries - Iraq – 2003                Coalition - Libya - 2011           

 

Afghanistan                                                       France                            

Albania                                                              United Kingdom

Australia                                                            Italy

Azerbaijan                                                         Canada

Bulgaria                                                             Belgium

Colombia                                                           Denmark

Czech Republic                                                  Norway                               

Denmark                                                           Qatar

El Salvador                                                        Spain

Eritrea                                                               Greece

Estonia                                                              Germany

Ethiopia                                                            Poland

Georgia                                                             Jordan

Hungary                                                           Morocco

Italy                                                                  United Arab Emirate

Japan

South Korea

Latvia

Lithuania

Macedonia

Netherlands

Nicaragua

Philippines

Poland

Romania

Slovakia

Spain

Turkey

United Kingdom

Uzbekistan

 

[Source: US State Department]

Notice a difference in the number of coalition countries?  Me too.

Now let's see how quickly Mr. Obama's "coalition" is sneered at by the same media that did its hit job on Bush. 

Ken Berwitz

We've all heard the expression "a poor workman blames his tools".  Well Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill seems to have expanded that expression to "a rich senator blames her plane"  I kid you not.

Read this excerpt from Trish Turner's article at Fox News and see for yourself:

Any way you slice it, $287, 273 is a lot of money, especially in this economy. For one-term Senator Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., up for re-election in 2012, that's the amount of personal property taxes she failed to pay since 2007 on a plane she and her husband, a millionaire businessman, partially owned.

 

"I have discovered that the...personal property taxes on the plane have not been paid," McCaskill told a small number of reporters on a conference call Monday. "There should have been a reporting to the county of the existence of this airplane...There are people I could blame for this, but I know better. As (a former) auditor, I know I should have checked for myself. I take full responsibility for the mistake." Audio of the call was sent to Fox by a McCaskill aide and can be found here.

 

The senator said she had done her own "thorough review" of all 89 flights she had taken following a political controversy that erupted recently over the same plane that was first reported by Politico.

 

The senator had used the plane for political purposes paying for the travel with taxpayer money from her Senate office, a "mistake," the senator said, for which she reimbursed the government nearly $89,000. "All of the money has been repaid for the public funds," McCaskill said Monday.

 

The National Republican Senatorial Committee quickly pounced releasing a video after the senator's admission showing McCaskill in 2006 telling voters, "If my walk doesn't match my talk, then shame on me and don't ever vote for me again."

 

McCaskill recently co-sponsored a bill in the Senate that would send pink slips to federal employees who are found to have unpaid taxes, a measure Republicans also highlighted Monday, calling the Democrat a hypocrite. But a McCaskill aide said that was not a fair attack. "Those are people who knowingly have not paid their taxes and have refused to own up to it and to make that right," an aide told Fox. "She didn't knowingly do this. 

 

An audibly exasperated McCaskill told reporters, "I have convinced my husband to sell the damned plane. He has hired a broker, and I never intend to step foot on that plane ever again." 

Beautiful. 

A former auditor, who co-sponsored a senate bill which would have federal employees who don't pay their taxes fired, but Senator McCaskill didn't notice she was running up a tax bill of $287,000 - plus another $89,000 to pay for the use of her plane with taxpayer money.

And Ms. McCaskill's response?  She could blame others but she won't (what a nice lady!).  And she's paying it all back (now that she has been caught red-handed), so it doesn't count. 

Besides, it is not really her fault.  The real culprit is......the plane, that's who. 

"I have convinced my husband to sell the damned plane...".  See, now that damned plane will never be able to do it to her again.

Claire McCaskill is up for re-election in 2012.  I certainly hope the voters of Missouri take this, er, unfortunate incident with a damned plane into account.

Ken Berwitz

I, along with a good many others, have recently written a great deal about what I call "The Obama Disconnect" - i.e. the fact that as more and more major events require President Obama's attention, he seems to be focussing on less and less important - you might even say time-wasting - issues.

The latest piece I have read on this truly disturbing situation is Victor Volsky's article at American Thinker .  Here is his first two paragraphs:

The world is going to hell in a hand basket; Japan, ravaged by an earthquake and a tsunami of biblical proportions, is teetering on the brink of yet another, nuclear, disaster; the Middle East is aflame; the national debt is skyrocketing while Congressional Democrats and Republicans are mud-wrestling over the budget; gas prices are inexorably climbing to the psychologically devastating $4/gallon level -- and meanwhile what is the U.S. President doing?

  

Amid all the turmoil,  he discusses an apparently world historical issue of school bullying; honors the 2009-10 Stanley Cup Champion Chicago Blackhawks; delivers a radio address on another all-important subject, "Women's History Month;"  attends a fund-raiser; goes golfing (that darned weather: it was just too nice for the President to resist the temptation of hitting the links -- for the 61st time in his two plus years in office); yuks it up with the Washington press corps (pronounced "k-o-r", not "k-o-r-p-s," try to remember this, Mr. President) at the annual Gridiron Dinner. And to top it all off, the crowning event in Barack Obama's busy schedule -- drum roll, please! -- videotaping his NCAA tournament bracket picks. (Think about it: Obama discusses basketball with authority, which means that he must be spending a lot of time watching the games and listening to sports commentators. Exactly what he was elected for, wasn't he?) While Rome burned, Nero fiddled. While the world burns, Obama ponders the outcome of a college basketball tournament.  

The only dispute I have with Mr. Volsky is that he left out President Obama's decision to bomb Libya.  That is definitely doing something. 

Too bad, however, that the "something" being done is so completely wrong. 

Contrary to Mr. Obama's own position (stated, of course, when George Bush was President), he acted unilaterally, without any congressional approval.  Then there is the fact that (we are being told) the military action will not include land troops, and is not meant to depose qaddafi.  Finally, as an extra-added attraction, the bombing is taking place only after qaddafi finished destroying almost all his opposition.

A reasonably inquisitive person might ask "Then what is the objective here?  Target practice?"  And my answer - along with Victor Volsky and a rapidly increasing number of others on both the left and the right is.........."I don't know"

"The Obama Disconnect".  It is not a pretty thing. 

The 2012 elections cannot come fast enough.

Ken Berwitz

Regular readers of this blog know that I regularly attack the disgraceful Obama toady and sock puppet eric holder for the racist tilt our Department of Justice has taken since he was appointed Attorney General. 

But let's not forget loretta king - an under-the-radar lackey of Mr. Obama and holder who seems to think the DOJ is her personal racial fiefdom.

Here is the first part of an article by Caroline May of the Daily Caller, which should give you an unsettling idea of king's activities: 

Attorney General  Eric Holder may be the face of the Justice Department, but behind the scenes, a little-known assistant attorney general named Loretta King (no relation to Martin Luther King, Jr.) has been the driving force behind the DOJ’s recent, most questionable racially motivated decisions.

 

Neck-deep in the more divisive civil rights cases of the past several years — most notably the New Black Panther voter intimidation case and the recent Dayton, Ohio police department’s testing standards issue — the Obama appointed assistant attorney general has many wondering whether her guide is the law or racial politics.

 

“Some of the most outlandish policies of the Holder Justice Department over the last two years flow directly from Loretta King’s worldview,” J. Christian Adams, who worked with King while serving as a voting rights attorney at the Justice Department, told The Daily Caller.

 

In testimony before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights about the New Black Panther case, former DOJ Voting Rights Section chief Christopher Coates explained that King ordered him to stop asking trial attorney applicants whether they would have a problem dealing with cases involving white victims.

 

“In the spring of 2009, Ms. King, who had by then been appointed Acting AAG [assistant attorney general] for Civil Rights by the Obama Administration, called me to her office and specifically instructed me that I was not to ask any other applicants whether they would be willing to, in effect, race-neutrally enforce the VRA [Voting Rights Act],” he testified. “Ms. King took offense that I was asking such a question of job applicants and directed me not to ask it because she does not support equal enforcement of the provisions of the VRA.”

 

In 2009, King was one of the lead attorneys who went after Georgia’s voter verification program, which was instituted to ensure those voting were actually U.S. citizens. The DOJ argued that the process was discriminatory. Georgia was ultimately able to continue the program, but not before Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel issued a scathing rebuttal of the DOJ’s efforts.

 

In North Carolina, King was the lead attorney in a case which halted the city of Kinston’s decision not to list candidates’ party affiliations. In a letter to the city, King expressed her distaste for the measure, saying it would harm minorities’ ability to be elected.

 

“Removing the partisan cue in municipal elections will, in all likelihood, eliminate the single factor that allows black candidates to be elected to office,” she wrote. “In Kinston elections, voters base their choice more on the race of a candidate than his or her political affiliation, and without either the appeal to party loyalty or the ability to vote a straight ticket, the limited support from white voters for a black Democratic candidate will diminish even more. And given that the city’s electorate is overwhelmingly Democratic, while the motivating factor for this change may be partisan, the effect will be strictly racial.”

 

In New York, King is currently the lead attorney in an effort to disregard low test scores to allow more minority candidates to become firefighters. The effort, as some have pointed out, disregards the 2009 New Haven firefighter case, Ricci v. DeStefano. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that objective test results could not be thrown out merely to meet a desired racial outcome.

 

Here are the questions that, in my opinion should be asked and must be answered:

-Why is a racist sack of manure like this in a position of importance within the Department of Justice?

-Why is a racist sack of manure like this in he Department of Justice at all?

-Why is Attorney General eric holder allowing her to function, other than because he agrees with her racism?'

-Why is President Obama allowing holder and king to function as racists within the DOJ?

-And - with great appreciation to Caroline May and the Daily Caller - where are our wonderful "neutral" media on this?   loretta king's activities are there to be seen and to be judged.  If Caroline May can find them, does it not stand to reason that the mainstream media can too?

The fact that mainstream media are again  looking the other way on behalf of Barack Obama and shameful people like holder and king, is the biggest disgrace of all.

Ken Berwitz

What is our purpose in bombing Libya?  What do we expect to accomplish there?

Excerpted from an Associated Press article by Richard Lardner:

WASHINGTON – A U.S.-led coalition has succeeded in scattering and isolating Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi's forces after a weekend of punishing air attacks, Pentagon officials say, and American military authorities are moving to hand control of the operation to other countries.

 

Gadhafi is not a target of the campaign, a senior military official said Sunday, but he could not guarantee the Libyan leader's safety.

 

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the U.S. expects to turn control of the mission over to a coalition — probably headed either by the French and British or by NATO — "in a matter of days."

 

Late Sunday, however, NATO's top decision-making body failed to agree on a plan to enforce the no-fly zone over Libya, although it did approve a military plan to implement a U.N. arms embargo.

 

And fifteen Air Force and Marine Corps aircraft, along with jets from France and Great Britain, hit a heavy infantry unit advancing on the rebel capital Benghazi. "To protect the Libyan people, we took them under attack," Gortney said.

 

Gadhafi and his residence are not on a list of targets to be hit by coalition aircraft, Gortney said. But Gadhafi won't be safe "if he happens to be at a place, if he is inspecting a surface-to-air missile site and we don't have any idea that he's there or not," Gortney said.

 

Earlier Sunday, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the goals of the operation are to protect civilians from further violence by pro-Gadhafi forces, while enabling the flow of humanitarian relief supplies. But it was unclear how long the military effort would continue or on what scale.

Let me get this straight:

-We have bombed the bejeezus out of Libya. 

-Why?  To protect the Libyan people from qaddafi. 

-But we are not going after qaddafi, so when we are through with the bombing he will still be in charge.

-And since we have implemented this operation after qaddafi largely decimated the rebel uprising against him, there may be no alternative government to put in place - other than one that will be created by the USA and Europeans, which neither the Libyans nor the Arab League are going to be happy about.

-Plus, "in a matter of days" we are turning control of the mission over to a coalition of NATO members who do not agree on how to proceed.

Does this answer the question "Why are we in Libya" to you?  Because it sure as hell doesn't answer it to me.

Ken Berwitz

In case you wonder whether the American Federation  of State, County and Municipal Employees union (AFSCME) treats its own members any better than it treats, say, Wisconsinites who want public sector employees to come back to earth compensation-wise, these excerpts from a Washington Times article  by Joseph Weber and David Hill should give you some insight:

Prison guards at a Western Maryland correctional facility say a union boss berated and tried to intimidate them after they raised questions at a pre-shift meeting about how their fees are spent and the benefits of belonging to a union.

 

Sgt. Kelley and several other guards also said Mr. Berger, a retired guard generally liked by current guards at the facility, grew angrier with each new question, eventually challenging to a fist fight a 6-foot 2-inch tall guard who later posed a query.

 

The guards filed written complaints and sent copies to state Sen. Christopher B. Shank, Washington Republican, who has asked Public Safety and Correctional Services Secretary Gary D. Maynard for an investigation.

 

Department officials declined to comment on the dispute, as did Patrick Moran, director of the union’s Maryland chapter. However, Mr. Moran denied the allegation to the Hagerstown Herald-Mail, which first reported the dispute, and suggested that Mr. Shank is behind the dust-up.

 

“These allegations were made by somebody with an agenda,” he told the newspaper. “Chris Shank has an anti-union agenda.”

 

Four guards interviewed for this story said at least 70 people witnessed the episode and either sent or signed a complaint. They said the incident also was recorded on a surveillance camera.

 

Mr. Shank said he received about six complaints via phone, email and Facebook from correctional officers, union and non-union, who attended the meeting.

 

He said that six officers have filed formal reports with the corrections department, and that Commissioner J. Michael Stouffer told him the reports have been referred to Maryland Secretary of State John P. McDonough.

 

He said the guards gave him the same account of the meeting, which occurred before the start of the 4 p.m.-to-midnight shift at the facility, near Hagerstown. All said Mr. Berger used profanity, threatening language and was “berating and belittling” them.

 

Mr. Shank said at least one worker told him they were berated after bringing up concerns over the so-called “fair-share” fees, which non-members are required to pay because, unions say, non-union workers benefit from their hard-fought negotiations for better pay and benefits.

 

Mr. Shank said the little-known provision will require roughly 12,000 non-union Maryland employees to pay as much as $400 annually, allowing AFSCME to collect millions of dollars.

 

AFSCME, with 1.6 million members nationwide, is Maryland’s largest public-employee union with an estimated 23,000 members. The group reportedly spent a total of $87 million on the 2010 midterm elections. Gov. Martin O’Malley, a Democrat, was endorsed by the Maryland chapter.

 

The guards said that their concerns were specifically with Mr. Berger, and that they were resigned to union ways, largely because unions are entrenched in heavily Democratic Maryland and for fear of losing good-paying jobs, which start at about $36,000 annually.

 

“I get abused [by inmates] every day at work, so I don’t have pay somebody to do that,” Sgt. Kelley said.

In a way, this is somewhat reassuring.  It reminds us of the fact that a union is perfectly capable of being as thuggish against its own members as it is against non-members who question the way it operates.

And it makes crystal-clear the fact that AFSCME may represent "working people" (that's in quotations because the rest of us work too), but there is a very good argument that its primary business, its real business, is to keep the $$$$ flowing into those union offices.so the big shots have money and power. 

And if a union member has a problem or a complaint - he/she better be damn careful about saying so.  I mean, who do these workers think they are, anyway?  What makes them think they have any right to question the union?

Ken Berwitz

Why does hamas get good press - meaning far better press than a murdering bunch of anti-Semitic scum has any business getting?

Here's your answer, via Leo Rennert's blog at www.americanthinker.com:

The Washington Post, in its Sunday, March 20, edition, reports an escalation of mortar fire against Israel from Gaza, but curiously omits any mention that in the same news cycle Hamas goons attacked several news offices in Gaza City, beating journalists, and confiscating cameras and videotape.  The motive appears to be Hamas's displeasure with correspondents filming Hamas security officers forcefully dispersing demonstrators for Palestinian unity.

 

The intruders, announcing they were members of Hamas security services, ransacked the Reuters bureau.  They struck one Reuters reporter with a metal bar.  They also broke into the offices of CNN, Japan's NHK bureau and a local media production company.

  

None of this was reported by the Washington Post, even though the Sunday edition has the biggest news hole of the week.  There was plenty of space for a few paragraphs on Hamas's assault on the press.  Newspapers usually are very sensitive to such attacks on the media, wherever they may occur, and promptly publicize them. 

 

So what gives in this instance?  The Washington Post may cover a sharp uptick in mortar fire against Israel from Hamas-ruled Gaza, although it all too often ignores daily lower-level rocket attacks.  But even more often, the Post tends to ignore how repressive the Hamas regime in Gaza has become, not only against the press, but against its own people, using brutal tactics against political opposition and any deviation from Hamas's Islamist code.

 

The result has been the sanitizing of Hamas, an iron-fisted, Iran-backed terror organization -- not by what the Post reports, but by what it fails to report.  As happened with the Sunday paper.

Ok; you're a reporter working the middle east and you have a story about hamas, maybe a very negative story.  It is the truth.  And, to be informed of what is really going on, the world needs to know the information you are sitting on.

But are you going to report it?  While you are where hamas can do something about it at will?  Do you want to be beaten?  Maybe die?  Or do you save yourself and bury the story?

Don't doubt for a second that the carnage Leon Rennert describes was done randomly.  It was a message; a very clear, understandable one.

And one that anyone who reads news reports from the so-called "Palestinian territories" should understand, and take into account, as completely as the reporters there most assuredly do.  

Ken Berwitz

Our friends at the New York Times have done it again. 

Following is yesterday's editorial on illegal immigration - and my comments (in blue).  See which side you think makes more sense.

D.I.Y. Immigration Reform

Published: March 19, 2011

Political, business, labor and religious leaders in Utah were widely praised last year for signing the Utah Compact, agreeing to seek practical solutions to the problems of illegal immigration while avoiding the extremist oratory and harsh enforcement schemes that have given its neighbor Arizona such a toxic reputation. A toxic reputation? To whom?  The New York Times and other people who don’t care whether illegals stream into the country?  Maybe I’m just misremembering, but didn’t Governor Jan Brewer, who supported and aggressively defended Arizona’s immigration laws, win her election last November in a landslide? 

 

The state has now adopted a series of laws to put those goals into practice. They amount to one state’s effort to enact its own comprehensive immigration reform, given Washington’s continuing failure to do so. On this we agree.  But the problem isn't immigration reform, it is immigration enforcement.  Too bad the Obama administration isn't doing either.  How about an editorial on that? 

 

We understand the frustration, but going solo on immigration is not a good idea, even with good intentions. And what are border states supposed to do, when the Obama administration not only ignores immigration laws, but aggressively fights against any attempt to enforce them?

 

On the enforcement side, Utah’s new laws have some aspects that are sensible in principle, including stricter procedures for verifying immigrants’ eligibility to work. We are concerned about the effort to draw local police agencies into federal immigration enforcement.   Ooohh, law enforcement might get involved in a law enforcement  issue?  Shocking.  If the federal government under Obama and holder bothered to enforce the laws, local authorities wouldn’t have to be involved, would they?

 

Arizona’s immigration law, which orders its police officers to check the immigration status of anyone they suspect of being here illegally, is a wide-open invitation to racial profiling and an intrusion onto federal authority. The Obama administration sued to block it, and a federal judge has declared much of it unconstitutional. Arizona acted because Barack Obama, the love of the New York Times’ editorial staff’s life, didn’t. Remember?

 

Though Utah’s bill seeks to temper Arizona’s approach — it would, for example, require officers to check immigration status only when people are arrested for serious crimes — it is still too open to abuse.  And your solution?  Wait for Obama and holder, which is to say wait for nothing at all to happen?  Sorry, it doesn’t work.

 

Utah’s planned guest-worker program would issue permits to immigrants, even undocumented ones, allowing them to work in Utah after they pass a background check and pay a fine. This is magnanimous, practical and respectful of federal authority — it would go into effect only after Washington granted a waiver — but even so, it is troubling. Illegal immigrants cannot legally be hired, and it is hard to see how any state could carve out its own exception to that rule — or why the federal government would allow it. It should not. Unbelievable.  Guest worker permits for people who pass a background check isn’t ok with the Times?  Well what is, other than just letting whichever illegals feel like coming over do so – no background check necessary?

 

Another new law allows the governor to enter into a pilot program with the Mexican state of Nuevo León to supply legal workers through existing federal guest-worker programs. Those programs are cumbersome and offer too few protections to workers. We certainly applaud efforts to streamline legal immigration. Utah will need to commit to defending the workers it recruits and to detect and root out employer abuse.  Oh, I see.  You don’t like joint programs with Mexico to supply legal workers either.  Again, we see that the Times’ “solution” to illegal immigration is to do nothing other than let it happen.

 

Utah’s legislators deserve credit for trying. But the country cannot have 50 separate immigration systems, 50 separate foreign policies, 50 states following, leading or stumbling around one another.  OK, Then how about the federal government enforcing the immigration laws we already have?  Oh, I forgot, that's too much trouble.

 

The states still have a major role to play. They can increase oversight and workplace protections for all low-wage workers, native-born and immigrant. They can push back at the Obama administration’s misguided efforts like Secure Communities, which muddies the line between local policing and federal enforcement — straining local resources and making it much less likely that immigrant communities will cooperate with the police. “Immigrant communities”?  Give me a hint; what is that supposed to mean, other than illegals, who won’t cooperate with the police under any circumstances anyway?  What a bunch of baloney.

 

They can work harder to integrate immigrants into their communities, increase support for citizenship and English language education, and issue driving privilege cards. And they can keep the pressure on Congress and the president to fix things the right way, in Washington.  Fix things?  How about enforcing the law.  Amazing how that solution eludes the New York Times.

Ken Berwitz

From www.drudgereport.com, we have this:

MARCH 19, 2011

 

OBAMA: 'Today we are part of a broad coalition. We are answering the calls of a threatened people. And we are acting in the interests of the United States and the world'...

 

MARCH 19, 2003

 

BUSH: 'American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger'... 

Make of it what you will.

Ken Berwitz

"I warn my brother do you let these wicked demons move you in a direction that will absolutely ruin your future with your people in Africa and throughout the world...Why don't you organize a group of respected Americans and ask for a meeting with Qaddafi, you can't order him to step down and get out, who the hell do you think you are? 

That delicate little sentiment was voiced by louis farrakhan; career racist, career Black supremacist, career anti-semite......and the Man of the Year at then-Senator Barack Obama's place of worship, Trinity United Church of Christ.  

He is the same louis farrakhan that Barack Obama's reverend, and mentor, jeremiah wright, said "epitomizes greatness".

So tell me; if it's Barack Obama versus Mitt Romney in 2012, who do you think farrakhan will be supporting.......(I'm laughing at the questions too)

Ken Berwitz

Remember when helen thomas made those vile comments about Jews - so vile that she was dumped by Hearst and lost that front row seat she used to have during Presidential news conferences?

Well, now that it is clear she isn't getting her job or her seat back, thomas is no longer apologizing, and pretending she didn't mean it.  Playboy Magazine has just published an interview with thomas in which she finally tells us how she really feels (as if we didn't already know). 

Here is a summary of her bile, from the Jerusalem Post:

Helen Thomas: Jews control White House, US Congress

By JPOST.COM STAFF 

03/19/2011 03:18

 

In 'Playboy' interview, veteran US journalist stands behind anti-Israel comments that led to her resignation: "I knew exactly what I was doing."

 

Veteran US Journalist Helen Thomas said that Jews have "total control" over the White House and US Congress, telling Playboy magazine in an interview to be published in April, "Everybody is in the pocket of the Israeli lobbies."

 

Thomas, who covered the White House for more than six decades, was forced to resign from her position at Hearst Corp. last year, after saying in an interview that Jews should "get the hell out of Palestine" and "go home to Poland, Germany and the United States."

 

Thomas appeared to show no regret for last year's comments, reiterating in the Playboy interview her belief that "Israelis have the right to exist-but where they were born."

 

"Why shouldn't I say it? I knew exactly what I was doing-I was going for broke. I had reached the point of no return. You finally get fed up," Thomas said.

 

Thomas denied claims that she was anti-Jewish. "I think they're wonderful people.  They had to have the most depth.  They were leaders in civil rights.  They've always had the heart for others but not for Arabs, for some reason.  I'm not anti-Jewish; I'm anti-Zionist."

 

She explained her comment that Jews should go back to Poland and Germany meant "they should stay where they are because they're not being persecuted-not since World War II...If they were, we sure would hear about it." Thomas added that Jews "carry on the victimization. American people do not know that the Israeli lobbyists have intimidated them into believing that every Jew is a persecuted victim forever-while they are victimizing Palestinians."

 

When asked whether she believed their was a secret Jewish conspiracy at work in the US, Thomas stated that it is "not a secret. It's very open...Everybody is in the pocket of the Israeli lobbies, which are funded by wealthy supporters, including those from Hollywood. Same thing with the financial markets. There's total control."

Jews have total control of the White House and congress?  Jews have total control over Barack Obama???  What a great insight, helen!  No wonder he's been such a great friend to Israel.

Then there is the fascinating concept that Israelis have the right to exist, but not in Israel.  Which - this is a scoop for you, helen - means there is no Israel and, therefore, they are not Israelis. 

Then there's that idea that people should go back to where they came from if they aren't being persecuted there.  Based on this brilliance, I assume you will lead the charge to remove all Mexicans from the United States, including those who came here legally.  Heck, Mexicans are not a persecuted class in Mexico, are they?

And that comment that Jews are wonderful people (which, from helen thomas, is equivalent to bull connor saying that some of his best friends are nigras) but, for some reason, they don't have a heart for Arabs?  It's hard to decide whether this is more comical or more pathetic. 

When Israel was created by international vote in 1947 (and formally became a state in 1948), every Arab country on the face of the earth declared war on it, and five Arab armies actually engaged in that war.  To this day, most Arab countries remain in a declared state of war against Israel.  And that is before we get to the fact that most Arab countries (maybe all of them) teach their children that Jews are the spawn of pigs and monkeys.  Shocking though this may be to you, helen, these actions have not warmed the auricles and ventricle of a great many Jews.

I could go on, but what's the point.  A hardline anti-semitic hater like this is immune to reason and logic.

Let's just say that helen thomas's dismissal from mainstream media wasn't what you'd call a blow to enlightened journalism.

Ken Berwitz

A little political "civility", left wing style, for you:

This is Bill Maher talking about Sarah Palin, Via Jeff Poor's blog at dailycaller.com:

“Did you hear this – Sarah Palin finally heard what happened in Japan and she’s demanding that we invade ‘Tsunami,’” Maher said. “I mean she said, ‘These ‘Tsunamians’ will not get away with this.’ Oh speaking of dumb twats, did you –”

Nice, huh?

As always, if you're going to be hateful, disgusting and misogynistic, it's good to be a left winger --- and especially good to be against Sarah Palin. 

Try and imagine what our wonderful "neutral" media would be saying if this were, oh, Mike Huckabee talking about Michelle Obama.

But grow old waiting for them to attack Maher for incivility, or heated political rhetoric, or anything  else.

And, yes, these are the same media which will squeal like stuck pigs if you call them biased.....

Ken Berwitz

In case you're wondering what is happening while we bomb Libya (now that qaddafi has decimated his own people at will for two weeks), we have this from Fox News: 

Palestinian militants in Gaza fired more than 50 rockets into Israel on Saturday, the heaviest barrage in two years, Israeli officials said, while Hamas police beat up reporters and confiscated their equipment.

 

A Hamas official was killed and four civilians were wounded when Israel hit back with tank fire and air strikes, said Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Adham Abu Salmia.

 

The violence comes amid increasing calls for reconciliation between Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his bitter rivals, the Islamic militant group Hamas. Abbas is seeking U.N. recognition for a Palestinian state by the fall and is currently lobbying for votes worldwide. Hamas used force to disperse a reconciliation rally in Gaza. Some reporters were later beaten up, threatened and briefly detained.

Hey, why not?  Who is going to stop them? 

-The UN?  You have to be kidding.  The UN largely supports hamas.

-The USA?  You have to be kidding.  The USA is headed by Barack Obama, who has had hamas sympathizers in the White House as honored guests, as recently as March 10th.

-And if you're waiting for Egypt to cut off hamas' supplies, you can forget that too.  Unlike when Mubarak was in charge, hamas appears to have no problem getting resupplied under the new interim "government" (still happy that Mubarak is gone?).

Now:  What is Israel going to do about it? 

That is something the world better start thinking about.  Because I can assure you Israel is thinking about it.

Ken Berwitz

Leave it to Joe Biden.  Who else would compare Republican calls for austerity to blaming a rape victim for what happened to her?

This comes to us from allahpundit's blog at hotair.com:

In setting up his comparison, the vice president explained to the audience that before the Violence Against Women Act that he championed was passed into law, “there was this attitude in our society of blaming the victim,” according to a press pool account of the event.

 



“When a woman got raped, blame her because she was wearing a skirt too short, she looked the wrong way or she wasn’t home in time to make the dinner,” Biden said.

 

“We’ve gotten by that,” he said. “But it’s amazing how these Republicans, the right wing of this party – whose philosophy threw us into this God-awful hole we’re in, gave us the tremendous deficit we’ve inherited – that they’re now using, now attempting to use, the very economic condition they have created to blame the victim – whether it’s organized labor or ordinary middle-class working men and women. It’s bizarre. It’s bizarre.”



Translation:   It is over four years since Democrats took over the house and senate, thus the budget-creation for our country (Republicans have just taken back the house). It is over two years since Barack Obama and Joe Biden became President and Vice President.  And it is over two years since Democrats enacted the so-called "stimulus package" - the one that Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden assured us would stop unemployment in its tracks and bring the economy back.

So who is to blame for the economy being in the toilet?  Republicans, that's who.  And, by the way, they have the same attitudes as people who blame rapists for being attacked.

Not for nothing do I call him Jackass Joe.

Ken Berwitz

If your politics are to the right of center, you have got to love this feud.

First we have Ariana Huffington, a left wing writer who suddenly became a conservative after engaging in an apparent marriage of convenience to a rich right wing homosexual (Michael Huffington) and who, then, divorced him, kept his name (along with lots of his money) and became a left winger again. 

Then we have a bunch of writers for Huffington's very successful web site, Huffington Post, who knowingly, willingly, wrote for that site without compensation.

And, finally, we have the Newspaper Guild, which is part of the Communication Workers of America.

Add in the fact that Ms. Huffington just sold her web site for the remarkable sum of about $315 million dollars, and what do we get?

Well, here's what, courtesy of the following excerpt from Steven Nelson's article at dailycaller.com:

A strike called by unpaid Huffington Post contributors received a major boost Wednesday with a call to arms released by the national Newspaper Guild.

 

The industry association called on contributors not currently on strike to cease contributions and asked members to help by “shining a light on the unprofessional and unethical practices of this company.”

 

The Newspaper Guild boasts 26,000 members and is affiliated with the Communications Workers of America (CWA). The CWA is affiliated with the AFL-CIO.

 

The strike was called earlier this year by the membership of Visual Art Source, whose 50 members had previously contributed content for free to the site.

 

“Just as we would ask writers to stand fast and not cross a physical picket line, we ask that they honor this electronic picket line,” wrote the Guild.

 

Mario Ruiz, the Huffington Post’s senior vice president for media relations, responded to the Guild’s statement by providing to The Daily Caller a previous e-mail response to Newspaper Guild President Bernie Lunzer.

 

Ruiz’s February 20 e-mail addressed a post on the Newspaper Guild’s website titled “Arianna got millions, all we got was a byline.” The post called on Arianna Huffington “to invest in quality journalism by sharing a portion of this fortune with the people who made her successful.” It included a template to e-mail Huffington.

 

Ruiz wrote to Lunzer, “We feel there’s a critical distinction between our editors and reporters and the people who contribute to our group blog.” Ruiz noted that the Huffington Post had a staff of 143 paid employees. On Thursday, Ruiz told TheDC that the site had hired 17 additional journalists since March 7.

 

A rebuttal written by Lunzer was published by Jim Romenesko on Poynter. Lunzer responded to Ruiz, “We continue to have great concerns about the HuffPost model and its long-term effect on journalism. I am not at all surprised that you see it as a simple matter.”

 

Bill Lasarow, the Publisher and Co-Editor of Visual Art Source, told TheDC that the involvement of the Newspaper Guild has brought the strike into a new stage. Lasarow said that his group would not have been best suited to maintain the strike or to conduct negotiations with the company.

 

“That’s where the Newspaper Guild comes in,” explained Lasarow. “They have an internal structure that’s designed for just this sort of thing. For us to undertake a full negotiation on our own would not be a wise course of action.”

 

Lasarow said that he had not been contacted by the Huffington Post’s management since announcing the strike, but declined to speculate on why.