Ken Berwitz

You cannot make this stuff up.

Chris Matthews claims he is "absolutely nonpartisan".  (I'll wait for you to stop laughing).....................................

Finished yet?  Ok.  Now get ready for another side-splitter, as Matthews comments on Dennis Kucinich's idea of moving to Seattle and running for congress there, if redistricting elminates the Ohio district he currently represents.  I pulled the transcript from Scott Whitlock's blog at newsbusters.org.  Scott also put the key segments in bold print:

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Are we going to hear your voice in Congress after this Congress? Are you going to be able to get a seat out in Seattle where you can- like in the British system? I'm with you. I'm a Churchill nut. He moved five different times, I think, different seats when he got beaten in different places. I'm all for trying the voters. You seem to represent, you know, philosophically the people in Seattle I've gotten to know. I remember Congressman Lowry over the years out there and McDermott. You seem to be a good fit out there. Can you make that move and still be a Congressman in Ohio? Or will you be treated like Lebron James?

DENNIS KUCINICH: [Laughs[ If I could only play basketball like him.

MATTHEWS: Well, they are mad at him for leaving even if he wins the championship. So, where are you on this?

KUCINICH: I should tell you, I have no decision about where to move. My district is bound to be effected in redistricting. I don't know exactly where I will end up at this point. I would like to stay in Congress but I'm not the only one who will I have a say on that, obviously.

MATTHEWS: The filing date- rather the primary is August 21, 2012 in Washington State. When would you have to move out there to run?

KUCINICH: Well, anyone who wants it run for Congress anywhere has to be mindful of when filing deadlines are and you have to qualify first as a registered voter wherever you are going to run. And that's usually before the filing deadline. In any event, Chris I-

MATTHEWS: Could you be congressman from Ohio and register in Washington State?

KUCINICH: No, I haven't made a decision yet about a candidacy.

MATTHEWS: But, can you be?

KUCINICH: But, the answer to that question is no. No, that's not possible. You have to live in the area where you are running. And if you are running in an area, you have to be a registered voter. So, I haven't crossed that bridge yet.

MATTHEWS: Well, let me make a promise to you. Let me make a promise to you. Should you make this incredible decision, we will be covering your campaign with enthusiasm. And that's a fact.

KUCINICH: I appreciate that. Thank you so much.

MATTHEWS: I have some influence around here. I would find it a dandy proposition that someone from the Democratic left could find another constituency which was just as hospitable to him, even if he was screwed by the legislature of his home state. Anyway, thank you Congressman Kucinich, sir

Holy excrement.

If Matthews got any more kissy-facey with Kucinich, al sharpton would complain that he's been moved to #2 status.

Chris Matthews is absolutely nonpartisan?  That's like claiming that a ham on white with mayo, and a glass of milk, is absolutely kosher.

Ken Berwitz

President Obama took office January 20, 2009.

Here is how the number of food stamp recipients has changed since then:

Damn that President Bush.........

Ken Berwitz

Here is the latest from Wisconsin:

-Joanne Kloppenburg (to my surprise, I must admit) has, today, conceded to David Prosser, who now begins another 10 year term in Wisconsin's state supreme court.  Finally - if belatedly - Ms. Kloppenburg is behaving in a reasonable fashion.

-Wisconsin's Government Accountability Board (GAB) has now approved the recall elections of 6 Republican members of the state senate -- but has not gotten around to approving any of the recall elections for even one of the three Democrats being challenged. 

Not surprisingly, Republicans are screaming foul - as seen in this excerpt from an article in today's Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

Madison - State election officials on Tuesday approved recall elections against three Republican senators Tuesday but put off decisions on certifying recall petitions against three Democrats.

That drew cries of partisanship from Republicans and set up the possibility that two sets of recall elections would be held a week apart, rather than all on the same day.

"This is an example of a supposedly neutral government agency acting in a blatantly partisan manner to further the objectives of a particular political party," said Dan Hunt, who led the effort to recall Sen. Bob Wirch (D-Pleasant Prairie).

The board on Tuesday unanimously approved recall elections for Republican Sens. Rob Cowles of Allouez, Alberta Darling of River Hills and Sheila Harsdorf of River Falls. That follows rulings last week to hold recall elections for Republican Sens. Randy Hopper of Fond du Lac, Dan Kapanke of La Crosse and Luther Olsen of Ripon.

Republicans are trying to recall three Democratic senators - Wirch, Dave Hansen of Green Bay and Jim Holperin of Conover.

The decision to sign off on recalls for Republicans before Democrats unleashed howls of protests from Republicans. At a news conference outside of the board meeting, Hunt called for the board's director, Kevin Kennedy, to resign.

Also at the news conference were David VanderLeest, who oversaw the recall campaign against Hansen, and Kim Simac, who led the effort to recall Holperin. VanderLeest and Simac plan to run if recall elections are held.

VanderLeest called on the Legislature to defund the accountability board and "replace it with a body that can be unbiased as it is supposed to be."

"We have a biased body that has no check or balance with the voters," VanderLeest said.

Eric McLeod, a lawyer for the Republicans, said the board was operating in defiance of the court order because it did not take up the petitions against the Democrats on Tuesday and has not announced plans to meet again until June 8.

The GAB is ostensibly made up of 6 nonpartisan former judges.  I am having trouble finding out how many of the 6 were appointed by each party, and I don't want to jump to conclusions.  But, frankly, it is pretty hard not to.

I wonder which party this will work in favor of? 

It would not surprise me if no seats at all changed hands (remember, they are being conducted against incumbents whom the people have already elected).  But, if voters perceive that unfair deference was given to Democrats - along with a backlash from Kloppenburg's ridiculous challenge that cost the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars - if there are any changes I would not be surprised to see them benefitting Republicans. 

We'll find out soon enough.

Ken Berwitz

What is the latest on "Weinergate" - the sexually-oriented picture Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) either did or did not send one of his twitter.com followers, a young woman in Seattle, showing a man in shorts with an obviously erect penis?

Well, Mr. Weiner has hired a lawyer.  But he still has not called for an FBI investigation.

And, assuming he is an innocent victim of a hacker, that is one damn stranage reaction.

It seems to me that if a congressperson's internet account is hacked, there has to be an FBI investigation, whether the congressperson in question asks for one or not.  Because if it could happen to one it could happen to another. 

The problem, however, is that if an FBI investigation shows there was no hacking, it is a near certainty that Weiner did, in fact, send the lewd picture to that young female follower.

Here are two reactions that pretty much sum up my feeling about "Weinergate".  One is from Alana Goodman at Commentary Magazine:

Liberal bloggers should be the ones leading the campaign for an official investigation. Many of them have claimed that Andrew Breitbart, and other conservative activists, are responsible for hacking into Weiner’s official congressional Twitter account. If that’s the case, then let’s make sure these right-wing hackers are forced to face the legal consequences of their actions.

This is a fairly customary process. After President Obama’s official Twitter account was hacked, the FBI managed to track the hacker all the way to France, where he was tried and convicted. If Weiner’s account was compromised, there’s a good chance that law enforcement will find the person who did it.

The other is from John Hinderaker of powerlineblog.com:

...the episode must be investigated by law enforcement. Hacking into politicians' accounts of various sorts is a criminal offense that could have serious consequences. There is precedent for the sort of thing Weiner is talking about: during the 2008 presidential campaign, a young man in Tennessee hacked into Sarah Palin's personal email account. He was identified, criminally prosecuted and convicted by a jury in 2010. He was sentenced to a year in federal prison.

If Weiner's Twitter account was in fact hacked, the perpetrator needs to be identified, prosecuted and sent to jail. If there is no investigation, we will know that Weiner is lying.

If an FBI investigation is likely to determine whether the hacking actually took place, and neither Rep.Weiner nor his kindred spirits in the left wing blogosphere are demanding that investigation.....................?

Feel free to draw your own conclusions - as I am drawing mine.

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

UPDATE:  I just saw this video, from CNN, of Weiner ducking any and all inquiries about the alleged hacking (if you have trouble seeing it, just click here):

He looks guiltier and guiltier by the second.

Ken Berwitz

This would be funny if it weren't so pathetic.

Just yesterday I blogged about Michael Barone's excellent piece, in which he points out that, even after almost two years of bad economic news, every time more such news comes out mainstream media can be counted on to characterize it as "unexpected".

With that, I will now show you an excerpt from today's Associated Press article by Mae Anderson:

Consumer confidence falls unexpectedly in May

 

Consumer Confidence Index drops unexpectedly to 6-month low in May; gas, job worries persist

Mae Anderson, AP Retail Writer, On Tuesday May 31, 2011, 11:29 am EDT

 

Americans are losing faith that the economy will keep improving, according to a monthly survey.

 

The Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index fell to 60.8 from a revised 66 in April, a sign of the toll that high gas prices, a choppy job outlook and a moribund housing market are taking on people's psyches. Economists had expected an increase to 67. It was the lowest reading since November.

 

"Consumers are considerably more apprehensive about future business and labor market conditions as well as their income prospects," said Lynn Franco, director of The Conference Board Consumer Research Center. She said fears over inflation, which eased in April, picked up again in May.

 

"Expectations of higher prices coupled with expectations of lower income makes for a more anxious consumer," he said. "The takeaway here is employment and income are not growing rapidly enough to sustain an extended stay by rapid inflation."

I swear, I didn't make this up.  I'm not that clever.

Can you believe the level of partisanship?  The writer is telling you that consumers expect higher prices and expect lower income.  But the headline is that Consumer Confidence drops unexpectedly.

You have to wonder whether there really is an AP writer named Mae Anderson, or is this Jay Leno, using a pseudonym, and trying out new material for the Tonight monologue.

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

Ken Berwitz

If you want to know what is going on in the Arab world from the standpoint of a pro-Arabist, Israel hating columnist, you need go no further than the London Independent's Robert Fisk.

Here is part of Fisk's latest analysis, in which he assures us that Barack Obama's fecklessness has caused the USA not just to be diminished in the eyes of the Arab world, but to be ignored altogether:

This month, in the Middle East, has seen the unmaking of the President of the United States. More than that, it has witnessed the lowest prestige of America in the region since Roosevelt met King Abdul Aziz on the USS Quincy in the Great Bitter Lake in 1945.

While Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu played out their farce in Washington – Obama grovelling as usual – the Arabs got on with the serious business of changing their world, demonstrating and fighting and dying for freedoms they have never possessed. Obama waffled on about change in the Middle East – and about America's new role in the region. It was pathetic. "What is this 'role' thing?" an Egyptian friend asked me at the weekend. "Do they still believe we care about what they think?"

And it is true. Obama's failure to support the Arab revolutions until they were all but over lost the US most of its surviving credit in the region. Obama was silent on the overthrow of Ben Ali, only joined in the chorus of contempt for Mubarak two days before his flight, condemned the Syrian regime – which has killed more of its people than any other dynasty in this Arab "spring", save for the frightful Gaddafi – but makes it clear that he would be happy to see Assad survive, waves his puny fist at puny Bahrain's cruelty and remains absolutely, stunningly silent over Saudi Arabia. And he goes on his knees before Israel. Is it any wonder, then, that Arabs are turning their backs on America, not out of fury or anger, nor with threats or violence, but with contempt? It is the Arabs and their fellow Muslims of the Middle East who are themselves now making the decisions.

Indeed, Obama's policy towards the Middle East – whatever it is – sometimes appears so muddled that it is scarcely worthy of study. He supports, of course, democracy – then admits that this may conflict with America's interests. In that wonderful democracy called Saudi Arabia, the US is now pushing ahead with a £40 billion arms deal and helping the Saudis to develop a new "elite" force to protect the kingdom's oil and future nuclear sites. Hence Obama's fear of upsetting Saudi Arabia, two of whose three leading brothers are now so incapacitated that they can no longer make sane decisions – unfortunately, one of these two happens to be King Abdullah – and his willingness to allow the Assad family's atrocity-prone regime to survive. Of course, the Israelis would far prefer the "stability" of the Syrian dictatorship to continue; better the dark caliphate you know than the hateful Islamists who might emerge from the ruins. But is this argument really good enough for Obama to support when the people of Syria are dying in the streets for the kind of democracy that the US president says he wants to see in the region?

One of the vainest elements of American foreign policy towards the Middle East is the foundational idea that the Arabs are somehow more stupid than the rest of us, certainly than the Israelis, more out of touch with reality than the West, that they don't understand their own history. Thus they have to be preached at, lectured, and cajoled by La Clinton and her ilk – much as their dictators did and do, father figures guiding their children through life. But Arabs are far more literate than they were a generation ago; millions speak perfect English and can understand all too well the political weakness and irrelevance in the president's words. Listening to Obama's 45-minute speech this month – the "kick off' to four whole days of weasel words and puffery by the man who tried to reach out to the Muslim world in Cairo two years ago, and then did nothing – one might have thought that the American President had initiated the Arab revolts, rather than sat on the sidelines in fear.

Obviously Fisk intensely dislikes Barack Obama's actions as President almost as much as he despises Israel (use the link and read his entire piece to fully understand).

But does he have a point about Mr. Obama's directionless waffling, and the debilitating effect his rudderless ship has had on our prestige and influence among Arab countries (and Israel too, for that matter)?  I don't much like giving Robert Fisk credit for it, but I have to admit that he does.

Though much of our wonderful "neutral" media keep their readers/viewers blissfully ignorant of the foreign policy disaster being perpetrated by Obama & Co., that disaster nevertheless continues on. 

Simply stated, President Obama, and his equally unqualified/equally inept Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, are presiding over what may well be the end of our status as the last remaining superpower. 

Do you want the United States to be back in the pack?  Unable to muster any more influence than a typical EU member or the Arab League?  I know I don't.

The 2012 elections cannot come fast enough.

Ken Berwitz

As most readers are, I am sure, aware, MSNBC host Ed Schultz been suspended for the past week - voluntarily or involuntarily, depending on who you believe - for referring to conservative radio host/commentator Laura Ingraham as "a slut".

(The overflowing cesspool-full of viciously personal insults Schultz has directed against other Republicans and conservatives on his show, prior to this incident?  Evidently those were just fine and dandy.  But I digress.)

The purpose of this post is to show you what one Schultz-supporting genius had to say about the suspension.  Here it is, via the following excerpt from Jack Coleman's blog at newsbusters.org:

Angered by Ed Schultz's quick apology and suspension from MSNBC for maligning Laura Ingraham as a "right-wing slut" and 'talk slut," Los Angelese-based radio host Bill Handel has come up with a decidedly peculiar response to the controversy.

Is there "any proof that she's not" a slut, Handel asked on his KFI AM radio show.

It was such a warped take on Schultz's remarks that even Handel's presumably like-minded radio show sidekicks didn't agree with him.

 "But you just can't go around calling women who are (crosstalk) a slut."

"Yeah you can!" Handel brayed. "Yes you can! And by the way, we don't have any proof that she's not."

"But on what basis?" asked another Handel colleague. "I mean, if he had actually been talking about some sort of sex scandal with her, maybe ..."

 

Clearly this was more common sense than Handel could grasp.

"There is no proof she is not a slut," Handel responded, digging in his heels.

Ken Berwitz

How did President Obama observe Memorial Day?

Excerpted from Keith Koffler's blog at whitehousedossier.com:

The business of memorializing our war dead done, President Obama headed out to the Fort Belvoir golf course today, finding his way onto the links for the ninth weekend in a row.

Obama earlier today laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and met with families of those killed in battle. But he emerged from the day’s solemnity to go golfing for the 12th time this year and the 70th time of his presidency.

The decision to golf on Memorial Day invites comparison with President George W. Bush, who gave up the game early in his presidency and said he did it out of respect for the families of those killed in Iraq. 

On this Memorial Day, we are fighting three wars:

-The ludicrous action in Libya where, for all we know, we are bombing on behalf of al qaeda; 

-Afghanistan, where President Obama has almost quadrupled our troop presence for absolutely no good reason - and where we went over 1,500 combat deaths this Memorial Day weekend - a large majority of them during the Obama administration; 

-And Iraq, which Mr. Obama told us we'd be completely out of 12 to 16 months after he became President, but we still have something like 50,000 troops on the ground.

But, hey; no need to let the solemnity of Memorial Day get in the way of a fun round of golf, right?

Can we move up the 2012 elections?  Please?

Ken Berwitz

Having Debbie Wasserman Schultz as head of the DNC is going to be fun.

We have already heard her tell us that Republicans are trying to make it a crime to enter the USA illegally (evidently Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who, for reasons of brevity I will call DWS, is unaware that a crime is defined as something you do illegally) and that Republicans are trying to close down our domestic auto manufacturers (as she drives her Japanese Infiniti).  And that was just the past few days.

But now we have this, from yesterday's edition of Face The Nation:

Harry Smith: But the Trustees also said a couple of Fridays ago that this thing (Medicare) could be insolvent in the next decade. Doesn’t something really dramatic have to happen, and as the Congressman suggested, Republicans have a plan, do the Democrats have a plan?

Debbie Wasserman Schultz: Like I said [sic], the Republicans have a plan to end Medicare as we know it. What they would do is they would take the people who are younger than 55 years old today and tell them You know what? You’re on your own. Go and find private health insurance in the healthcare insurance market, we’re going to throw you to the wolves and allow insurance companies to deny you coverage and drop you for pre-existing conditions. We’re going to give you X amount of dollars and you figure it out.

Uh......no.

Rep. Ryan's plan does not end Medicare for the 55 and under crowd.  It does recalibrate it to prevent the program from going under - which seems to be an untenable position for DWS.  But you can't say she hasn't provided us with an unexpected treasure trove of entertainment.

And why should it stop there?  Based on Ms. Wasserman Shultz's performance over the past week, I eagerly await her pronouncements on other issues as well.  May next time she'll tell us that Republicans are intending to station threatening-looking men with weapons in front of polling places so they can intimidate vo.....whoops, sorry.  Wrong party.

Until she became DNC head, I had no idea Debbie Wasserman Schultz was this ridiculous.  But now I know it to be true. 

How do I know?  Because, to say the least, DWS speaks for herself. 

What a dim bulb.

Ken Berwitz

Do you expect God to be an inept, bumbling failure?  I didn't think so - nobody does.

Maybe that explains media's incessant use of the term "unexpected" when describing bad economic news during the Obama administration.

Excerpted from Michael Barone's excellent piece at townhall.com:

Unexpectedly!

As megablogger Glenn Reynolds, aka Instapundit, has noted with amusement, the word "unexpectedly" or variants thereon keep cropping up in mainstream media stories about the economy.

"New U.S. claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly climbed," reported cnbc.com May 25.

"Personal consumption fell," Business Insider reported the same day, "when it was expected to rise."

"Durable goods declined 3.6 percent last month," Reuters reported May 25, "worse than economists' expectations."

"Previously owned home sales unexpectedly fall," headlined Bloomberg News May 19.

"U.S. home construction fell unexpectedly in April," wrote The Wall Street Journal May 18.

Those examples are all from the last two weeks. Reynolds has been linking to similar items since October 2009.

As Instapundit reader Gordon Stewart, quoted by Reynolds on May 17, put it: "How many times in a row can something happen unexpectedly before the experts start to, you know, expect it? At some point, shouldn't they be required to state the foundation for their expectations?"

One answer is that many in the mainstream media have been cheerleading for Barack Obama. They and he both naturally hope for a strong economic recovery. After all, Obama can't keep blaming the economic doldrums on George W. Bush forever.

I'm confident that any comparison of economic coverage in the Bush years and the coverage now would show far fewer variants of the word "unexpectedly" in stories suggesting economic doldrums.

There is a lot more worthwhile reading in Mr. Barone's piece than what I have shown you above.  But let's stick with the points he has driven home so cogently:

-It has been well over two years since the so-called "stimulus package" was enacted, and the economic news has been almost unrelentingly bad..  But, even after all this time, most of mainstream media cannot bring itself to admit what is right in their collective faces - that his policies are a bust; a flat-out failure;

-Under Obama, the economy not only has not improved, it has become significantly worse.

It would be fair to say that, given their astronomically high expectations for President Obama and loving view of his policies, the bad economic news might have surprised them at the beginning.

But now?  27 months later, when unemployment remains appreciably higher than where it was when the "stimulus package" was enacted, and economic growth is so anemic that even Dracula would pass it by?  

Simply stated, if media are still surprised at bad economic news now, they are allowing their love of all things Obama to block what is right in front of their eyes.  They cannot bring themselves to face the inevitable conclusion:  that Barack Obama's economic policies (like so many other of his policies) is a failure.

When do they wake up?  Ever? 

Ken Berwitz

The most evenhanded report I have seen on "Weinergate" (i.e. the allegations that Rep. Anthony Weiner sent a picture of a man's genital area, clothed, but with an obvious erection to a young female student in seattle who follows him on twitter) can be found at mediaite.com. 

Ironically, I became aware of the mediaite story from Dan Riehl's article at biggovernment.com, the site which published this Weiner picture in the first place.

Weiner, not surprisingly, continues to deny he put up the picture and says his account was hacked.  And, based on  mediaite.com's compilation of facts, there is a good amount of circumstantial evidence to back him up.  The problem, however, is that there also is a good amount of circumstantial evidence backing up the claim that he sent the picture.

Someone is lying.  And the stakes for Mr. Weiner are enormous.

-If he did not send the picture, a terrible injustice is being perpetrated against him. 

-If he did, it could ruin his political career and maybe even force him to resign from the Hosue of Representatives.

I have no doubt that there will be additional twists and turns to this story in the very near future.  Keep watching.

Ken Berwitz

When Libyans took to the streets to protest moammar qaddafi's regime, qaddafi started attacking and killing them.  So, for the last two months we, along with NATO, have been bombing Libya. 

First we were given no defined objective at all, and were assured that our action was not meant to depose qaddafi (which leads to the obvious question of why else would we be bombing Libya?).  Then, eventually over time, Mr. Obama has gravitated, inch by inch, to the "objective" of getting rid of him.***

Why have we done this?  According to Mr. Obama, it has been for "humanitarian reasons". 

When Syrians took to the streets to protest bashar al-assad's regime, al-assad started attacking and killing them.  And, for montths, he has continued doing so in an orgy of blood that is exactly like qaddafi's, for exactly the same reason:  i.e. they both kill their own people to stay in power.

But, in Syria, the Obama administration and NATO have done nothing.

Why?  Is this not a "humanitarian" situation?  Are Syrians not humans? 

If we jumped into Libya's civil war, why are we not jumping into Syria's civil war too?  Is bashar al-assad right when he goes on his merry ay not worrying one little bit about the USA doing to him what it is doing to qaddafi?

And if we are right not to be in Syria, what the hell are we doing in the middle of Libya's civil war?  We don't even know if "the rebels" fighting qaddafi are any better than he is.  If we help them win, will they turn Libya into a haven for al qaeda - which they seem to have no problem with?

How many ways can this administration demonstrate its foreign policy ineptitude?  The ugly misadventure in Libya is one example.  The near-quadrupling of troops in Afghanistan is another.  Maybe Syria will be a third.  How many more will there be?

The 2012 elections cannot come fast enough.

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

***This is a revised paragraph, courtesy of my sister, who reminded me of Obama's original premise (if you can call it a premise) for bombing.  Thanks, sis - and sorry to readers; I guess I'm a little bleary this morning.)

Ken Berwitz

Greece's economy is a shambles.  And other EU countries, including Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Italy , are not far behind.

Efforts to change Greece's economy in a way that would give it even the tiniest hope of coming back have been squashed by the angry hordes of what I will call EC's (entitlement citizens), who think that every social benefit they derive that is funded by money the government does not have is some kind of basic right that can never be taken away.

And when other EU countries try to agree on the circumstances under which they will loan Greece the money to keep its economy afloat, this is what happens - excerpted from an article in London's Financial Times.  Please take special note of the part I have put in bold print:

European leaders are negotiating a deal that would lead to unprecedented outside intervention in the Greek economy, including international involvement in tax collection and privatisation of state assets, in exchange for new bail-out loans for Athens.

People involved in the talks said the package would also include incentives for private holders of Greek debt voluntarily to extend Athens’ repayment schedule, as well as another round of austerity measures.

Officials warned, however, that almost every element of the new package faced significant opposition from at least one of the governments and institutions involved in the current negotiations and a deal could still unravel.

In the latest setback, the Greek government failed on Friday to win cross-party agreement on the new austerity measures, which European Union lenders have insisted is a prerequisite to another bail-out.

In addition, the European Central Bank remains opposed to any restructuring of Greek debt that could be considered a “credit event” – a change in terms that could technically be ruled a default.

Officials think Greece will be unable to return to the financial markets to raise money on its own in March – as originally planned in the current €110bn package – meaning that the IMF is now forbidden from distributing any additional cash. Without the IMF funds, eurozone governments would either be forced to fill the gap or Athens could default.

To bring the IMF back in, the new deal must be reached by a scheduled meeting of EU finance ministers on June 20.

What an impossible mess.

Greece is hopelessly in debt, its people are fighting the changes necessary if it even hopes to get out of the mess it is in, and its fellow EU countries - countries that don't even like each other, based on centuries of enmity - are fighting over what to do about it.

Then there is the issue of what happens if the EU does agree on a hugely expensive bailout plan.  What happens when the other four members enumerated above (and possibly more) come knocking at the door for their bailouts?

And what happens when the few EU countries with strong economies decide they have been turned into suckers, who are subsidizing the mistakes of those other members?  What if they decide to wave bye-bye?

Is this the beginning of the end of the EU? 

Stay tuned, because I doubt that it will take long to find out.

Ken Berwitz

I never thought someone would so quickly challenge Joe Biden for his title as #1 gaffe-maker among Democrats.  But Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the newly crowned DNC head, is giving him a run for his money.

Here is her latest entry, while speaking about illegal immigration:

I think the president was clearly articulating that his position — the Democrats position — is that we need comprehensive immigration reform. We have 12 million undocumented immigrants in this country that are part of the backbone of our economy. And that is not only a reality but a necessity. And that it would be harmful if — the Republican solution that I’ve seen in the last three years is that we should just pack them all up and ship them back to their own countries, and that in fact it should be a crime and we should arrest them all. I mean that was the legislation that Jim Sensenbrenner advanced a couple of years ago.

Wait a minute.  Is Ms. Wasserman Schultz really complaining that Republicans think illegal aliens - i.e. people who are in the United States illegally - have committed a crime? 

What the hell does she think coming into the country illegally is?

If anyone reading this is acquainted with Ms. Wasserman Schultz, would that person please pass along the definition of "crime"?

crime  noun \ˈkrīm\

 

Definition of CRIME

1: an act or the commission of an act that is forbidden or the omission of a duty that is commanded by a public law and that makes the offender liable to punishment by that law; especially : a gross violation of law

Thank you. 

I wait, with eager anticipation, for Ms. Wasserman Schultz's next shot at Mr. Biden's formerly secure primacy as #1 gaffe-maker of his party.  I doubt that it will take long.

Ken Berwitz

First, President Obama sandbagged Prime Minister Netanyahu:  without any warning, he made a speech proposing Israel go back to the 1967 borders, and then begin "negotiating" land swaps with the Palestinian Arabs who want all of Israel gone and all of its Jews dead. 

What a brilliant idea - if you happen to want Israel vaporized. 

Can someone explain to me the "magic" of 1967 those borders?  What makes them sacrosanct? 

Aren't they the same borders that existed when four Arab armies made war on Israel?  Isn't the fact that Israel won that war - which it neither started nor wanted - why Israel has the land Mr. Obama so casually tells it to just hand back?  

The United States won a lot of its land during the Mexican War.  Does he also propose that we give the southwest "back" to Mexico also?  I didn't think so.

When the inevitable firestorm erupted over President Obama's words - and Mr. Netanyahu blew him away with logic and common sense - Mr. Obama told us it was all a misunderstanding, he didn't mean that Israel should just give it back, he was being misquoted, he's just saying what other Presidents were saying, yada yada yada.

Yeah, right.

And now?  Sandbagging Israel:  Round II.

Excerpted from Robert M. Goldberg's blog at American Spectator (spectator.org):

An Auschwitz Borders Tour

Is President Obama using his European trip to pressure Israel to accept a peace deal based on the Jewish State's pre-war borders? Days after the President claimed to be misunderstood it now appears that he and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are backtracking on his previous backtrack and incredibly actually seeking support for a negotiated settlement based on what Abba Eban called "the Auschwitz borders" (because they left Israel vulnerable to extinction) and presumes that Israel will be forced to absorb hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

According to the Guardian, the president "will seek a joint Middle East agreement with David Cameron, insisting that a Palestinian state should be based on pre-1967 borders." It may be that the notoriously anti-Israel Guardian is repeating speculation. But at a joint press conference with Clinton, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said they agree with Obama's original statement that, as the International Business Times put it, "any future negotiations between Israel and Palestine must be based on the borders that existed prior to the 1967 war."

"Time is running out for a two-state solution and the initiative must be seized now," Hague said.

Rather than restating the President's clarification, Clinton helpfully added: "Now is the time, in this period of great upheaval, there is an opportunity to come to a successful outcome."

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made it clear that Israel will no longer seek to appease the international community by granting territory or additional concessions to the Palestinians.

This shift in approach is long overdue. Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs scholar Dan Diker observed:

[F]or most of the period from 1993 to 2000, Israel's overall diplomatic strategy focused on helping the Palestinians achieve their demands for what Arafat and Palestinian spokesmen had always termed their "legitimate rights," hoping this would result in peace and security for Israelis. Though well intentioned, this approach undercut Israel's longstanding diplomatic policy of asserting both Jewish historical rights to Israel and unconditional demands for security.

Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, and from Gaza and the Gaza-Egypt border in 2005, without any security agreements or defined borders in order to demonstrate to the U.S. and the "international community" its desire for peace. Not only did a stronger Hamas and Hezbollah emerge to launch attacks on Israel, withdrawal also, as Diker notes, "created and reinforced the impression that the demonstrable lack of peace is Israel's fault and can be rectified only by further Israeli concessions."

Ariel Sharon's former national security adviser Major General (ret.) Giora Eiland pointedly concluded that concessions-based diplomacy made even a two-state solution untenable:

Can anyone with a functioning cerebrum still believe that Barack Obama has any problem lying to our faces?

Can anyone with a functioning cerebrum still believe that Barack Obama is, or would ever be, a friend to Israel?

Can anyone with a functioning cerebrum still believe that there is even one iota of honesty or principle in Hillary Clinton - that she would have any problem taking any side of any issue for political reasons?

Finally, to the Jews, and non-Jews, who support Israel but still intend to vote for President Obama in 2012:  What is wrong with you?  Can you possibly be this blind?  Are you so completely owned by the Democrat party that you've closed off your intelligence and power of reasoning this much?

Ken Berwitz

Did Rep. Anthony Weiner send a sexually provocative picture of  to a female college student in Seattle?

Here are the particulars, excerpted from Jonathan Allen and Ben Smith's blog at politico.com:

Rep. Anthony Weiner says social networking identity hacking is to blame for the lewd material that a conservative news website reported was sent from his Twitter and yfrog handles to an unidentified woman from Seattle, Washington.

 

The New York Democrat told POLITICO he thought it “obvious” that his account had been taken over, and he tweeted that his Facebook account had been hacked with the abbreviation “FB hacked.”

 

A photo of a man’s bulging gray boxer-brief underwear was posted to Weiner’s account with yfrog — an online image-sharing site — on Saturday night, according to biggovernment.com, which is run by Andrew Breitbart. The photograph is from the waist down, and shows no face.

 

“This evening a photo surfaced on Congressman Weiner’s yfrog account and in his verified Twitter timeline of a man in his underwear with an erection,” Publius, the handle for the site’s editors wrote. “The photo was reportedly sent to a woman on Twitter. We’ve protected her name and her account, which was at one time verified to be active but has since been deleted after the photo in question was deleted. Coincidentally, the rest of the photos in the congressman’s alleged yfrog account were also deleted around 11 p.m. eastern.”

 

Biggovernment.com writes that the woman in question is a college student who lives in Seattle and notes that another Weiner tweet from Friday, about an upcoming appearance on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC program, made reference to when the program would air in Seattle.

 

Weiner’s office — generally one of the most press friendly around — did not respond to a request for comment on whether he has contacted federal authorities to report the alleged cyber-attack, which could fall under laws prohibiting cyberhacking and impersonating federal officials.

My initial inclination is to belive that Mr Weiner is the victim of hackers, and did not do this. 

But I certainly do not claim to know for sure that this is the case.  Just months ago a house member, Chris Lee (R-NY), had to resign for sending suggestive pictures and messages over the internet.

And then we have this subsequent information, excerpted from Dan Riehl's blog at biggovernment.com, which references Mr. Weiner's statement about the incident and purports to tear it apart:

There are at least two demonstrably false statements issued to the New York Post on behalf of Representative Anthony Weiner by his spokesperson, Dave Arnold.

Here’s the first [emphasis mine]:

The tech-savvy congressman saw the picture almost immediately. He had been tweeting about a hockey game just a few minutes earlier.

An analysis of Rep. Anthony Weiner’s Twitter timeline has already been done here at Big Government that clearly shows Weiner’s Twitter account had been publicly silent for 3 hrs. and 24 mins. prior to the Tweeting of the inappropriate image. Consequently, there was no Tweet about a hockey game “just a few minutes earlier.”  Therefore, that statement simply isn’t true. 

Rep. Weiner’s spokesman then falsely claims that after removing the image in question, Weiner joked about the incident a mere 15 minutes later. Again, from the Post:

Weiner pulled the shot himself, but not before it had been retweeted and screen-grabbed by several followers. Weiner, a voracious user of Twitter, wrote a humorous response about 15 minutes later.

False. 

In fact, on his Twitter account, Weiner appeared to dissemble and bumble about for over an hour before firing off the tweet about his Facebook account being hacked.

Riehl then goes on to show the actual tweet messages and their timeline.

Again, my initial inclination is to take Mr. Weiner at his word.  But, as we have seen in the past, stories like this have a habit of changing over time - sometimes pretty dramatically.

I suggest that everyone, regardless of their feelings about Anthony Weiner, keep an open mind.

Ken Berwitz

Have you heard about the ugly murder of Jose Guerena?  It's a story that was carried for a couple of days by our media and then dropped.  

But that is unacceptable.  Jose Guerena was an honorable man.  A military veteran and hard-working husband and father. 

So we have to ask ourselves why this story has not gotten more exposure.  And - sickeningly - I think I've found the answer.

Excerpted from Radley Balko's piece at huffingtonpost.com:

On May 5 at around 9:30 a.m., several teams of Pima County, Ariz., police officers from at least four different police agencies armed with SWAT gear and an armored personnel carrier raided at least four homes as part of what at the time was described as an investigation into alleged marijuana trafficking. One of those homes belonged to 26-year-old Jose Guerena and his wife, Vanessa Guerena. The couple's 4-year-old son was also in the house at the time. Their 6-year-old son was at school.

As the SWAT team forced its way into his home, Guerena, a former Marine who served two tours of duty in Iraq, armed himself with his AR-15 rifle and told his wife and son to hide in a closet. As the officers entered, Guerena confronted them from the far end of a long, dark hallway. The police opened fire, releasing more than 70 rounds in about 7 seconds, at least 60 of which struck Guerena. He was pronounced dead a little over an hour later.

The Pima County Sheriff's Department initially claimed (PDF) Guerena fired his weapon at the SWAT team. They now acknowledge that not only did he not fire, the safety on his gun was still activated when he was killed. Guerena had no prior criminal record, and the police found nothing illegal in his home. After ushering out his wife and son, the police refused to allow paramedics to access Guerena for more than hour, leaving the young father to bleed to death, alone, in his own home.

Why was the SWAT team sent to invade an innocent man's house?  Balko goes on to report that the Pima County sheriff's office keeps changing its story - and that the sheriff himself says he may never release the search warrants and police affidavits.

This reeks of a coverup.  This reeks of incompetence.  It reeks of dishonesty, arrogance and an attitude by the sheriff that he is above the law.

Now:  Do you know who the sheriff of Pima County, Arizona is?

His name is clarence dupnik.  

That's right, clarence dupnik, the arrogant jerk who, instead of sticking to his law enforcement duties after jared loughner's massacre that left 9 dead and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords on death's door (happily she is now recovering), decided to get in front of the cameras and make a political statement implicating conservatives on talk radio and "bigotry" (loughner was an unhinged lunatic with left wing views and a taste for violence-oriented meavy metal rock) - with no evidence of any kind to back his big mouth up.

The same clarence dupnik who, knowing that loughner was a violent lunatic with a history of hatred for Ms. Giffords, provided no security for her when she made her speech.

And the same dupnik whom our wonderful "neutral" media have left virtually unmentioned since this latest murderous outrage.

I have three questions:  

-Just how far are media willing to go in protecting dupnik? 

-Just how much immunity did speaking against the Tea Party buy him?

-Just how do the people of Pima County, Arizona abide having this sorry excuse for a man as their sherrif?

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

NOTE:  This blog has been revised slightly, with a couple of insulting references removed (though most are still here).  I was extremely angry about the horrible, needless death of Jose Guereno when I wrote it, and, in reading it this morning, feel I went somewhat overboard.  I offer no apology, because I don't think clarence dupnik deserves one. 

Ken Berwitz

There are a lot of reasons to like Canada's Prime Minister, Stephen Harper.  Here's one of them, excerpted from John Hinderaker's latest piece at powerlineblog.com:

Group of Eight leaders had to soften a statement urging Israel and the Palestinians to return to negotiations because Canada objected to a specific mention of 1967 borders, diplomats said on Friday.

Canada's right-leaning Conservative government has adopted a staunchly pro-Israel position in international negotiations since coming to power in 2006, with Prime Minister Stephen Harper saying Canada will back Israel whatever the cost. ...

"The Canadians were really very adamant, even though Obama expressly referred to 1967 borders in his speech last week," one European diplomat said.

Canada has paid a price for its support of Israel:

Canada's strong backing for Israel was cited by diplomats last year as one reason why Ottawa failed to win a rotating two-year seat on the United Nations Security Council.

But as long as the Conservatives are in power, Canada isn't backing down:

Harper has made is position on Israel very clear, saying last year: "When Israel, the only country in the world whose very existence is under attack, is consistently and conspicuously singled out for condemnation, I believe we are morally obligated to take a stand."

Sometimes it is easy to do the right thing.  Like, for example, saying "OK" when Navy SEALs are in position near osama bin laden's compound, ready to take out the world's most wanted murderer.  What else would  you say?

But sometimes it isn't so easy.  Sometimes it takes political courage; the willingness to take a hit for a principled stand.

Stephen Harper has those qualities.

I envy Canada its good fortune in having Mr. Harper available to be the country's Prime Minister.  And its good sense in making it happen.

We are less than one and a half years from election day, 2012.  Maybe we can exercise some good sense as well.

Ken Berwitz

Yesterday President Obama signed a four year extension of the key provisions of The Patriot Act into law (interestingly, his signing may have been illegal because it was done with an "autopen", but that is for another blog).

The media response?  A collective yawn.

But wait a minute.  Isn't this the same Patriot Act the networks attacked, hammer and tongs, when President Bush pushed it through after 9/11?  The same Patriot Act that supposedly trampled our civil liberties and rights of privacy? 

And, most tellingly, isn't this the same Patriot Act that then-Senator Barack Obama railed against on the floor of the Senate?  Here are excerpts from his speech of December 15, 2005.  See if you detect a slightly less amenable tone:

This is legislation that puts our own Justice Department above the law. When National Security Letters are issued, they allow federal agents to conduct any search on any American, no matter how extensive or wide-ranging, without ever going before a judge to prove that the search is necessary. They simply need sign-off from a local FBI official. That's all.

Once a business or a person receives notification that they will be searched, they are prohibited from telling anyone about it, and they are even prohibited from challenging this automatic gag order in court. Even though judges have already found that similar restrictions violate the First Amendment - this Conference Report disregards the case law and the right to challenge the gag order.

If you do decide to consult an attorney for legal advice - you have to tell the FBI that you have done so. This is unheard of - there is no such requirement in any other area of law, and I don't see why it is justified here.

And if someone wants to know why their own government has decided to go on a fishing expedition through every personal record or private document - through library books they've read and phone calls they've made - this legislation gives people no rights to appeal the need for such a search in a court of law. No judge will hear their plea, no jury will hear their case.

This is just plain wrong.

Well, the extension Mr. Obama signed keeps this all in place. 

So, therefore, our wonderful "neutral" media are all over it, attacking President Obama unmercifully for his insistence that we lose our civil liberties and privacy, and for his obvious hypocrisy, right?

Wrong.

Now that Barack Obama, the anti-Bush, the Democrat, has signed the same act back into law, our media have concluded that it is nothing worth talking about at all.

They may think they're journalists.  They may have jobs that are supposed to be held by journalists.  But they are not journalists at all.  They are propagandists and advocates, who suppress news on behalf of the side they favor.

Ken Berwitz

What will the single most compelling wedge issue of 2012 be?

Well, I don't have a crystal ball, so I don't know.  But if the election were held today, there would be no doubt.

Excerpted from a very worthwhile article by Jonathan Fahey of the Associated Press:

There's less money this summer for hotel rooms, surfboards and bathing suits. It's all going into the gas tank.

High prices at the pump are putting a squeeze on the family budget as the traditional summer driving season begins. For every $10 the typical household earns before taxes, almost a full dollar now goes toward gas, a 40 percent bigger bite than normal.

Households spent an average of $369 on gas last month. In April 2009, they spent just $201. Families now spend more filling up than they spend on cars, clothes or recreation. Last year, they spent less on gasoline than each of those things.

The price of gas is something that hits voters every time they go to the pump.  Every time they consider a drive of any length. 

The day that Barack Obama took office, oil was about $42 a barrel.  Today it hovers around $100 - 110 a barrel.  Gas, on average, was about $1.80 a gallon.  Today it hovers around $4 a gallon.

And, for over two years, the Obama administration has done everything it can to prevent us from exploiting our own oil - which not only keeps the price up, but forces us to buy oil from countries which hate us.

If that isn't a wedge issue, there is no such thing.

Given these facts, it is a mystery to me why Republicans are not attacking President Obama and his fellow Democrats every day on their oil policy.  Can they, as a party, really be that dense?

Look at what Democrats are doing with their claim - their fraudulent, dishonest claim - that the Ryan plan will end medicare and cause old people to die.  That has become so etched in the minds of so many people that it already has probably sewn up votes for them in 2012. 

If Republicans are not mining (drilling for?) 2012 votes right now, on the price of gas and the reasons why we are so dependent on foreign oil, they better start rethinking their strategy.  And fast.

Ken Berwitz

Excerpted from an article by Corrie MacLaggan at Reuters (and wait until you see the last part!!!)

Texas Governor Rick Perry on Friday ceremonially signed a bill making Texas the twelfth state to require photo identification from voters.

"Today we take a major step forward in ensuring the integrity of our electoral process in Texas, a major step protecting the most cherished right that we enjoy as a people," Perry, joined by lawmakers who supported the legislation, told reporters.

The measure was one of the Republican governor's "emergency" legislative priorities for the session, and he's not alone. Republicans across the country are pushing such legislation. This year, more than 30 states have considered adding or strengthening voter identification requirements, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Photo ID requirements were signed into law in Wisconsin this week and in South Carolina earlier this month. Kansas also passed a photo ID measure this year that goes into effect January 1.

The requirement is already in place in Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan and South Dakota. Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton on Thursday vetoed a photo identification bill.

About 11 percent of American adults don't have photo identification, said Keesha Gaskins, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law. Most states that have passed photo ID laws have not made it easier to get IDs, she said.

"The burdens are still there," said Gaskins, whose nonpartisan organization advocates for protecting voter rights. "Every one of these laws results in suppression of votes without any clear benefits," she added.

In a sane world, this new law would not be an issue.  All it does is insure that people who vote are legally able to do so.  

But evidently this is not such a sane world.  And we have the Keesha Gaskins crowd, whining that it is a "burden" for voters to simply demonstrate they are who they say they are.

We need an ID to take out a library book.  To cash a $5 check at the local supermarket. To get into an R rated movie.  And to do countless other things in our everyday lives.  But to vote?   If you believe this bunch, it's a "burden" that "results in suppression of votes without any clear benefits".

Let's talk honestly here.  The only "suppression" this causes is the suppression of illegal votes.  And the benefit it provides is that only people who have a legal right to vote can do so.  My reaction to that?  Hallelujah!

It seems crystal clear to me that there are only two reasons some people oppose voter ID laws:  they are misguided (they buy into the BS that this is some kind of "burden) or malevolent (they want illegals to be able to vote).  Can you come up with any other reason?  If so, let me in on it.

So my congratulations to Governor Perry for signing this eminently reasonable, necessary legislation.  I fervently hope that Texas, at #12, is quickly superseded by #13, #14, #15, straight through to #50. 

And let the Keesha Gaskins' of the world whine about how burdensome it is from today to doomsday. 

Ken Berwitz

Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) is the house assistant Democrat leader - currently he is the highest ranking Black member of congress. there is.

I used to have a great deal of respect for Mr. Clyburn.  But that has dropped to near zero, for two reasons:

-The major reason is that he has been a complicitor in the absolute 100% lie that in March, 2010, when he and other Democrats marched through a Tea Party rally (in an obvious effort to elicit reactions they could use against the movement) they were repeatedly called "nigger".  That did not happen.  With countless audio and video taken during the entire march, not one device ever picked up any instance of the word being used.  But Clyburn never took back the lie;

-The other reason is that he has spent the past two years calling critics of Barack Obama racists - not because they said anything racist, but because, in his world, any criticism of Barack Obama is racist.  Period.

With that in mind, I wonder what Mr. Clyburn would think of a President who enthusiastically supported a racist group trying to take over a country.  I wonder what Mr. Clyburn would think of a President who gave money, verbal support, and ordered weeks of bombing raids, in an effort to hand the reins of power to those racists.

I especially wonder what Mr. Clyburn would say if the President who did this was Barack Obama.

Here is Andrew Bostom's short, but chillingly clear, blog about the racism being visited upon Black people in Libya by "the rebels" that the Obama administration is so avidly supporting:

Ken Berwitz

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that they have the same last name.....

When it comes to making obnoxious, insulting, dishonest comments Ed Schultz (and the rest of the gang at MSNBC) have nothing on Florida congressperson, and new head of the DNC, Debber Wasserman-Schultz.

Just this week, Ms. Schultz assured anyone who takes her seriously (and, God help us, some do) that the Republican Party is anti-woman, and is running a war against women.  Why?  Apparently because it is against funding Planned Parenthood. 

I guess the tens of millions of women who oppose abortions (which Planned Parenthood performs more of than anyone else in the USA) are not women anymore.  Ms. Wasserman-Schultz has spoken.

But despite her ridiculous, gratuitously sarcastic nonsense about women, it is not my favorite Schultzism of the week.  My favorite is when she said:

"If it were up to the candidates for president on the Republican side, we would be driving foreign cars. They would have let the auto industry in America go down the tubes."

FYI:  Debbie Wasserman-Schultz drives an Infiniti.  The last time I checked, Infiniti is a Japanese car.  How does that work for saving the US auto industry?

Point of order:  I read about Ms. Schultz's car ownership at Andrew Malcolm's blog for the L.A. Times.  Good for Mr. Malcolm and good for the Times. 

Now grow old waiting for the rest of our wonderful "neutral" media - the same media which obsessed for days this week over Newt Gingrich buying jewelry for himself and his wife - deriding Debbie Wasserman-Schultz for her transcendental hypocrisy.

Ken Berwitz

Melanie Phillips, the excellent British writer whom I have quoted here in the past, has written an open letter to the UK's Prime Minister, David Cameron, regarding his demand that Israel sit at the table with the Palestinian Arabs of Gaza and Judea/Samaria (the west bank), and hash out a "peace agreement".

To remind you, P.M. Cameron (along with President Obama) is telling Prime Minister Netanyahu to sit down with "fatah"; an entity which does not recognize any part of Israel as being legitimate, overtly honors its "successful" suicide/homicide bombers, and, as part of its "unity agreement" with hamas (those nice folks who volently overthrew fatah in Gaza and now fully control it), is specifically committed to vaporizing Israel and killing all of its Jews. 

You can read Ms. Phillips' entire letter by clicking here.  The first few paragraphs are posted below:

Dear Prime Minister,

I was interested to read that, when you met Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week, you said:

‘Britain is a good friend of Israel and our support for Israel and Israel's security is something I have described in the past, and will do so again, as unshakeable.’

I wonder, therefore, if you make a habit of threatening your friends?  For you also said that unless Israel ‘engages seriously in a meaningful peace process’ with the Palestinian Authority, the more likely it is that Britain will endorse the ‘State of Palestine’ for which the PA is expected to seek recognition at the UN in September.
This is not the behaviour of a friend so much as the kind of intimidation that is more reminiscent of a Mafia protection racket.

First of all, you have incomprehensibly decided to pressurise the victim in this conflict to make peace with her aggressor, even though the victim is the one party that constantly tries to make peace while the aggressor does not. It is the PA which has refused to negotiate with Israel, not the other way round, on the spurious grounds that Israeli expansion of Jewish homes beyond the ‘Green Line’ is a bar to negotiations.

I wonder whether you might explain to both Britain and the Jewish people why you do not insist that Mr Abbas ‘engages seriously in a meaningful peace process’ by unambiguously renouncing – in both English and Arabic – his repeated assertions that his people will never accept Israel as a Jewish state, the casus belli of the entire conflict?

I wonder also if you might explain to both Britain and the Jewish people why you implicitly endorse the racist ethnic cleansing inherent in the putative ‘State of Palestine’ which the PA says it will declare – a state in which Mr Abbas has repeatedly declared that not one Jew will be allowed to live -- but which you have now threatened to support? I’m sure the British people in particular would be interested to know when you decided that racism and ethnic cleansing were part of your modernising programme for the Conservative Party.

Next, I wonder if you might clarify for us exactly why the British government has welcomed the alliance entered into between Hamas and Mr Abbas’s Fatah, and why you believe that this will advance the cause of peace. As you know, your government still regards Hamas as a terrorist organisation. More than that, Hamas is explicitly committed to the destruction of Israel and the genocide of the Jews, a platform from which is has explicitly stated this week that it will not resile. And as you know, following the killing of Osama bin Laden the leader of Hamas in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, condemned the ‘assassination of a Muslim holy warrior’ -- while for their part the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the terrorist department of the Fatah organisation that you do not appear to think is an obstacle to peace, called bin Laden’s death ‘a catastrophe’ and vowed to step up the jihad to establish the dominance of Islam in the world.

Those are damn good questions.  Questions a media which cared at all about reality, cared at all about right and wrong, would be asking - make that loudly demanding - of both Prime Minister Cameron and President Obama.  But almost none of them are.

Why not?  You tell me.

And to the Jews and non-Jews who claim to support Israel, but intend to also support Barack Obama in 2012?  Great going, guys.  You're really deep thinkers.  Honest.

Ken Berwitz

Egypt continues to Islamacize.  The starry-eyed idealists of Tahrir Square and their facebook/twitter culture continue to recede into oblivion.  The "peace" between Egypt and Israel grows more tenuous by the day.

And we, along with Europe members of the G-8, are going to reward this with billions and billions of dollars.

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal:

The Group of Eight will signal its intention Friday to let multilateral development banks take the lead in coordinating the provision of aid of over $20 billion for Egypt and Tunisia and move to mobilize further bilateral support, saying they strongly support the aspirations of the "Arab Spring", according to an updated draft of the G-8 statement.

The Group of Eight leading industrialized economies also appeared set to step up its pressure on Syria, warning that it would seek "further measures" if the Syrian government continues to use violence against its citizens.

What, exactly, do they like about what is happening in Egypt?  What, exactly, do they think they are advancing with all this money?

Less than a week ago former UN big shot and current candidate for Egypt's presidency, Mohamad ElBaradei, warned us that "right now, socially, we are disintegrating" and asked "What kind of state (are we) going to have?  Is it a presidential system? Is it a parliamentary system?  When are we going to have a new constitution?"  ElBaradei also openly worried about the the level of influence now being wielded by the violent, terroristic, shari'a law advocating Muslim brotherhood.

Call me a party pooper, but wouldn't it make sense for the G-8 countries to wait just a bit longer, so they can get a feel for where this is going before they fund it?

Wouldn't it make sense for them to get some kind of assurance that Egypt's share of the $20 billion won't be used to turn the country into something worse than it had under Hosni Mubarak?

Do we really want to fund the creation of an Islamic state under the control of the Muslim brotherhood?

Latching onto a clever little catchphrase like "Arab Spring" and repeating it over and over again might do wonders for the egos of a few journalists - and, evidently, the G-8 countries.  But, personally, I would far prefer that they rely a lot less on a catchphrase and a lot more on reality.

Ken Berwitz

Vice President Joe Biden, at a Democrat fundraiser in New Hampshire today, talking about the raid on osama bin laden's compound:

“…The boldest, the boldest decision, the boldest undertaking any president has undertaken on a single event in modern history..."

Am I glad that osama bin laden was killed?  Yes, of course I am.  No one deserved it more.

Am I glad that President Obama gave the "OK" to attack his compound and kill him?  Yes, of course I am.

Do I consider the operation that took bin laden out a "bold undertaking?  Yes again.  Congratulations to the many people who spent years tracking him down and special congratulations to the Navy SEALS who actually performed that undertaking.

Do I consider President Obama's personal involvement - saying "OK" so that the SEALS could go in - a bold undertaking?  Of course not.  Was this a toughie?  What else would he have done?  

D-Day was a bold undertaking.  Hiroshima was a bold undertaking.  Desert Storm was a bold undertaking.

But saying "OK" to a raid on the bin laden compound was a bold undertaking -- the boldest undertaking on a single event in modern history?  Are you kidding me?

Not for nothing do I call him Jackass Joe.

Ken Berwitz

Today, Wisconsin Judge Maryann Sumi (you have to admit that "Sumi" is a great name for a judge) has ruled that the Republican legislature illegally pushed through a bill ending most public sector unions' collective bargaining rights.

Is this a surprise?

Well, consider the following:

-Sumi's husband, Carl Sinderbad, donated to Tom Barrett, who ran against Governor Scott Walker, who pushed for this legislation,  to three of the 14 Democrat senators who fled the state rather than vote as a minority party on this issue, and to union-supported Joanne Kloppenburg, who - despite her ridiculous post-election theatrics - lost an election for the state Supreme Court to David Prosser.

-Sumi's son, Jake Sinderbad, has worked for both the AFL-CIO and SEIU.

Do you think, if you looked, very, very hard, you might find a conflict of interest here?

Obviously, Ms. Sumi had no business ruling on this case and should immediately have recused herself.  But she didn't, did she?

And now that it is going to the state Supreme Court, I can assure you with virtual certainty that Joanne Kloppenburg is going to make whatever legal moves she can come up with to stall certification of David Prosser's victory, thus preventing him from ruling on this matter.  The fact that her machinations will be nothing more than a politically-motivated wild goose chase which will cost the state money it desperately needs?  Irrelevant'n'immaterial.

I hope Wisconsin voters are getting themselves a real eyeful and earful.  All of which should be remembered - vividly - come next election day.

Ken Berwitz

This is going to be one of the shortest blogs I will ever write:

Every time you hear a Democrat, or a leftward "journalist", tell you that the Ryan plan ends Medicare, you are hearing a liar.  Because that is a lie.  And, pathetically, they all know it, but lie anyway because they think you are too stupid to figure it out before 2012.

And, ironically, the fact that their "mediscare" lie apparently worked in New York's 26th congressional district may well be their undoing.  Because it will encourage them to keep right on lying about the Ryan plan.  And that has the potential to backfire. Big time.

Ken Berwitz

Did you catch that celebratory crowing by the Obama administration and congressional Democrats, about Chrysler repaying its 7.6 billion dollar debt?  Do you now believe that this is some kind of Obama success story?

If so, shame on you.  These people lie to you all the time, and you fell for another of their lies anyway.

Conn Carroll, senior editorial writer for the Washington Examiner, has exposed this fraud so clearly, that even the most zealous Obamabot would have trouble buying it.  You can read his piece by clicking here.  But meanwhile, let me show you a key segment:

American taxpayers have already spent more than $13 billion bailing out Chrysler. The Obama administration already forgave more than $4 billion of that debt when the company filed for bankruptcy in 2009. Taxpayers are never getting that money back. But how is Chrysler now paying off the rest of the $7.6 billion they owe the Treasury Department?

The Obama administration’s bailout agreement with Fiat gave the Italian car company a “Incremental Call Option” that allows it to buy up to 16% of Chrysler stock at a reduced price. But in order to exercise the option, Fiat had to first pay back at least $3.5 billion of its loan to the Treasury Department. But Fiat was having trouble getting private banks to lend it the money. Enter Obama Energy Secretary Steven Chu who has signaled that he will approve a fuel-efficient vehicle loan to Chrysler for … wait for it … $3.5 billion. TTAC comments:

...it’s hard to overlook the coincidental nature of Chrysler’s need for $3.5b and the government’s allocation of extra funds to apparently guarantee a low cost loan to Chrysler for precisely the same amount. After all, we’ve seen this movie before..

So, to recap, the Obama Energy Department is loaning a foreign car company $3.5 billion so that it can pay the Treasury Department $7.6 billion even though American taxpayers spent $13 billion to save an American car company that is currently only worth $5 billion.

Oh, and Obama plans to make this “success” a centerpiece of his 2012 campaign.

Now, let me ask a question I find myself asking over and over when it comes to the Obama administration:  Where are our wonderful "neutral" media on Chrysler's fraudulent "Payback"? 

If Conn Carroll can find this information - no big deal, since it is all a matter of public record - is there any doubt that the network news shows, or the NY Times, or the Today show, CBS Early Morning, Good Morning America, Meet The Press, 60 Minutes, The View, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. can find it as well?

The answer, of course, is that they have just as much access to it as Mr. Carroll does.  But they have decided not to report it on behalf of President Obama and his fellow Democrats (can you provide a different reason?).

And what does this say to the people who rely on these venues for their news?  It says that media grossly disrespect them, and work under the precept "keep 'em ignorant and you own 'em".

They may think they're journalists.  They may have jobs that are supposed to be held by journalists.  But they are not journalists at all.  They are propagandists and advocates, who suppress news on behalf of the side they favor.

Ken Berwitz

Because it is too small to excerpt, I am posting John Hinderaker's complete blog, which details the senate's 97-0 vote to reject President Obama's Fiscal 2012 budget.  John, of course, is free to publish anything I write any time he wants:

Not A Single Senator Supports Barack Obama's Budget

 

Today, in what would be a major news story if the times we live in were not so bizarre, the Senate voted 97-0 against President Obama's FY 2012 budget. Obama's budget was such a joke that not a single Democrat was willing to support it.

 

So one naturally asks: do the Democrats have something better to propose? The answer is: No. The Democratic Senate has not come up with a budget in two years, thereby violating federal law. President Obama has not proposed a replacement for his laughable FY 2012 budget, which not a single member of Congress is willing to support. The Democrats have no budget; no plan; no path out of the fiscal disaster into which they have led the United States. They are bystanders and political opportunists, utterly unfit to govern.

I do have one issue with John's commentary.  I disbelieve that senate Democrats all voted against the budget because they decided it was "such a joke".  My guess is that this was an intentional dog and pony show, in which Democrats strategized that they would down Mr. Obama's budget - thus keeping the issue alive -  and then be able to attack the subsequent Republican proposals to change it.

The only way they can get away with this charade is if our wonderful "neutral" media either ignore the vote or report it as perfunctorily as possible.  And, you can be sure, our wonderful "neutral" media are happy to oblige.

They may think they're journalists.  They may have jobs that are supposed to be held by journalists.  But they are not journalists at all.  They are propagandists and advocates, who suppress news on behalf of the side they favor.

Ken Berwitz

This morning, the Today Show aired a major investigative report on the almost 1,400 waivers the Obama administration has given out, including hard-hitting commentaries about the huge number of unions and other big Democratic donors which got waivers, the wildly disproportionate number of waivers given to businesses in Nancy Pelosi's congressional district, the administration's refusal to provide information on the total number of applications it recieved or which companies/organizations were turned dow...................

Whoops, sorry.  That was a mistake.  Let me start over.

This morning, the Today Show aired a major investigative report on the amount of money Newt Gingrich and his wife have spent on jewelry at Tiffany's - money out of their personal resources that taxpayers have nothing to do with.  In the report, the show featured a derisive, photo-shopped picture of Gingrich wearing a king's crown.

That right.  Newt Gingrich buys jewelry for himself and his wife and Today is on it like white on rice.  But the huge scandal of ObamaCare waivers?  Not worth so much as a mention.

If you want to understand just how partisan NBCs' Today Show is, and how ridiculous Today looks because of its partisanship, this should give you a pretty good idea.

Ken Berwitz

Ed Schultz - depending on whch report you are listening to - has either voluntarily or involuntarily been suspended for a week or indefinitely.  The reason is that he called conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham a "right wing slut". 

Personally, I find this more than a little fascinating, since Mr. Schultz makes offensive comments about Republicans and conservatives on virtually every show.  I would say that the difference here is that he attacked a woman, but the vicious insults Schultz' has directed against Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann alone would fill a small book (ok, maybe a big book).

In any case, rather than try to enumerate all the examples of similarly vile invective which have emanated from Ed Schultz (the list would overwhelm this blog), I thought I'd post just three of my "favorites":

(September, 2009, speaking of Republican opposition to ObamaCare):  "The Republicans lie! They want to see you dead! They’d rather make money off your dead corpse! They kind of like it when that woman has cancer and they don’t have anything for her."

(January, 2010, before the special senate election between Scott Brown and Martha Coakley):  "If I lived in Massachusetts, I'd try to vote ten times.  Yeah, that's right.  "I'd cheat to keep these bastards out. I would. Because that's exactly what they are." 

(February, 2010, while former Vice President Dick Cheney was recovering from a heart attack):  "You’re damn right, Dick Cheney's heart's a political football.  We ought to rip it out and kick it around and stuff it back in him."

Until this suspension, you could count on exactly the same kind of sick garbage just about every day from Schultz. 

Just as you can from Cenk Uygur.

Just as you could from keith olbermann (until he walked out or was fired:  like the chicken and the egg, I guess we'll never know which came first). 

And, filling out the rest of MSNBC's evening lineup are Chris Matthews, Lawrence O'Donnell and Rachel Maddow, all of whom display an identical level of take-no-prisoners partisanship, but with marginally less invective than Schultz, Uygur and olbermann.

I wonder what Comcast, which now owns MSNBC, thinks of their product.  Could Ed Schultz' suspension be a harbinger of things to come?  Will other hosts be suspended for their similarly disgusting comments?  Will any of them walk out rather than be forced to act like civil human beings? 

Stay tuned.

Ken Berwitz

Michael Barone is a very smart guy and a very good writer.  And he has some questions about ObamaCare and the 1,300+ waivers - so far - doled out by the Obama administration,.

Excerpted from his latest commentary for the Washington Examiner:

…1,372 businesses, state and local governments, labor unions and insurers, covering 3,095,593 individuals or families…have been granted a waiver from Obamacare by Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius.

If Obamacare is so great, why do so many people want to get out from under it?

More specifically, why are more than half of those 3,095,593 in plans run by labor unions, which were among Obamacare's biggest political supporters? Union members are only 12 percent of all employees but have gotten 50.3 percent of Obamacare waivers.

Just in April, Sebelius granted 38 waivers to restaurants, nightclubs, spas and hotels in former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco congressional district. Pelosi's office said she had nothing to do with it.

On its website HHS pledges that the waiver process will be transparent. But it doesn't list those whose requests for waivers have been denied.

It does say that requests are "reviewed on a case by case basis by Department officials who look at a series of factors including" -- and then lists two factors. And it refers you to another website that says that "several factors . . . may be considered" -- and then lists six factors.

What other factors may be considered? Political contributions or connections? (Unions contributed $400 million to Democrats in the 2008 campaign cycle.) The websites don't say.

I think I'll help Michael out.  I'll address the issues he raises, by offering the most likely answers:

-Businesses, governments, labor unions and insurers want waivers because ObamaCare is a lousy system that will raise the cost of their health insurance;

-Labor unions are being given dramatically more relief from ObamaCare than their incidence in the population because President Obama is paying them off for the money and organizational support they gave him in 2008, and buying more of it for 2012;

-Nancy Pelosi's district got a ton of waivers as a payoff for her unwavering (as opposed to unwaivering) support;

-The administration is not telling us a thing about the review process, or which applicants were denied waivers, because it would show that the preponderance of waivers are going to friends and $$$upporters of President Obama;

Now:  can someone explain to me why people like Michael Barone (and me, since I've been asking the same questions for weeks) are so few and far between?  Why our wonderful "neutral" media are not all over this in-your-face scandal?

Heck, if you didn't know better you just might think they're in the tank for Obama..........

Ken Berwitz

According to Michelle Caruso-Cabrera of CNBC:

The most prominent Israeli-American business leader in the United States, Haim Saban, says President Obama needs to do more to show his support of Israel in light of the President's comments last week suggesting Israel needs to return to its pre-1967 borders to achieve peace with the Palestinians.

In an exclusive interview with CNBC, Saban, one of the biggest individual supporters to the Democratic Party and chairman of Saban Capital Group, said Obama needs to visit Israel as he has done with other countries in the Middle East.

Yeah, right.

My opinion (and I would bet on it) is that Saban, who gives tons of money to Democrats, is not about to give up all the leverage he has bought all these years by stiffing Barack Obama.

Obama will pump out a couple of make-nice comments to Saban about Israel, apropos of nothing.  Then Saban will declare that he is satisfied, and the money will flow just like before.

If there is one thing we have learned about Mr. Obama, it is that he has exactly zero problem saying anything about anything, regardless of whether he means it.  So you can pretty much count on Saban hearing a few platitudes from Mr. Obama, then puffing out his chest with importance then writing his checks to the Obama - 2012 campaign.  And you can count on Obama laughing at Saban and cashing those checks.

Do you have any doubt that this is how it will play out?

Ken Berwitz

Wouldn't it be nice if the so-called "stimulus package" stimulated something?  Unemployment, at 8.1% when it was enacted, is at 9.0% now, the post-recession "recovery" is among the most anemic on record...........

....and, to complete the trifecta, we found out yesterday that the Obama administration has showered tens of billions of dollars on tax cheats, who were not "stimulated" into paying their delinquent tax bills.

Excerpted from today's blog by Michelle Malkin:

At a congressional hearing on Tuesday, federal auditors reported on the latest porkulus spending gone wild. According to a new General Accounting Office audit (summary and full report pdf here) conducted over the past year, nearly 4,000 stimulus recipients received $24 billion in Recovery Act funds — while owing more than $750 million in unpaid corporate, payroll and other taxes. Among the tax-cheating federal contractors and grant winners who raked in stimulus bucks, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found:

 

– Two social services groups with nearly $3 million in unpaid taxes each received more than $1 million in stimulus awards.

 

– One nonprofit organization owed more than $2 million from years of unpaid payroll taxes, while at the same time its CEO made numerous trips to a casino. The group was awarded more than $1 million in stimulus funds.

 

– One engineering services firm had a $6 million delinquent tax debt and was called by the IRS an “extreme case of noncompliance,” yet won a contract worth more than $100,000.

 

– A municipality with a history of late tax filings and five periods of unpaid payroll taxes worth $1 million received $100,000 in stimulus money.

 

– A health care company that owes more than $1 million in back taxes and has had federal IRS liens filed against it since the late 1990s received $100,000 in stimulus funds.

 

– One security firm owed $9 million and was repeatedly cited not only for being uncooperative with the IRS, but also had been nabbed with frequent labor violations. It also received a stimulus contract worth more than $100,000.

 

And this is just the tip of the Cash for Tax Cheats iceberg. The GAO acknowledged in its report that “the estimated amount of known unpaid federal taxes we identified is likely understated” because of rampant underreporting of income and because the analysis did “not include Recovery Act contract and grant recipients who are noncompliant with or not subject to Recovery Act reporting requirements.”

 

The official response of the Obama administration’s stimulus oversight board? First, the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board patted itself on the back for its transparency. Second, the panel dodged responsibility by sheepishly pointing out that “federal law does not prohibit tax delinquents from getting government contracts or grants.” As if the RATs couldn’t have exercised their own common sense to stop such plundering in the name of job creation themselves?

Ken Berwitz

Barroom loudmouth Ed Schultz, during his radio show yesterday (transcript from Brian Maloney's radioequalizer.blogspot.com):

"And what do the Republicans thinking about? They're not thinking about their next-door neighbor. They're just thinking about how much this is going to cost. President Obama is going to be visiting Joplin, Mo., on Sunday but you know what they're talking about, like this right-wing slut, what's her name?, Laura Ingraham? Yeah, she's a talk slut. You see, she was, back in the day, praising President Reagan when he was drinking a beer overseas. But now that Obama's doing it, they're working him over."

Wasn't this the same Ed Schultz who was braying about the need for "civility" just a few months ago?

How proud his radio syndicator, and Comcast (which now owns MSNBC) must be....

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

UPDATE:  Ed Schultz just made a statement at the beginning of what was to be today's show.  He apologized profusely for his comments and said he agreed to leave his show "indefinitely".   

To his credit, Schultz made no excuses of any kind, and could not have been more contrite. 

Maybe, to paraphrase that great line at the end of The Ancient Mariner, "A sadder and a wiser man he'll wake the morrow morn".  And, if so, maybe he'll be a lot more civil if and when he comes back.

Ken Berwitz

New York's 26th congressional district is heavily Republican.  So much so that, even after its incumbent Republican congressperson resigned in disgrace, it appeared likely the party would retain the seat. 

But that's not what happened.  Democrat Kathy Hochul defeated Republican Jane Corwin and phony "Tea Party" candidate Jack Davis to win last night's special election. 

I watched a few minutes of one of MSNBC's resident barroom loudmouths, Ed Schultz, crowing about it.  And, in fairness, he was probably right in citing Paul Ryan's budget proposals - specifically its revamping of Medicare - as the key issue. 

But there is a little more to it than what Schultz was gloating over.

Excerpted from today's article in the New York Times:

The results set off elation among Democrats and soul-searching among Republicans, who questioned whether they should rethink their party’s commitment to the Medicare plan, which appears to have become a liability heading into the 2012 elections.

Two months ago, the Democrat, Kathy Hochul, was considered an all-but-certain loser in the race against the Republican, Jane Corwin. But Ms. Hochul seized on the Republican’s embrace of the proposal from Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, to overhaul Medicare, and she never let up.

On Tuesday, she captured 47 percent of the vote to Ms. Corwin’s 43 percent, according to unofficial results. A Tea Party candidate, Jack Davis, had 9 percent.

Voters, who turned out in strikingly large numbers for a special election, said they trusted Ms. Hochul, the county clerk of Erie County, to protect Medicare.

“I have almost always voted the party line,” said Gloria Bolender, a Republican from Clarence who is caring for her 80-year-old mother. “This is the second time in my life I’ve voted against my party.”

Pat Gillick, a Republican from East Amherst, who also cast a ballot for Ms. Hochul, said, “The privatization of Medicare scares me.”

Some Republicans suggested that it would be oversimplifying to attribute the results to a single issue, saying that Ms. Corwin proved a less nimble and ultimately less appealing candidate than Ms. Hochul, who campaigned energetically and with great focus. When Medicare erupted in the race, Ms. Corwin, a wealthy former Wall Street analyst, was knocked off balance and struggled to respond.

In the closing hours of the race, Ms. Corwin admitted as much, saying about her rival’s attacks: “When she started making these comments, I thought, ‘This is so outrageous no one would ever believe it.’ Apparently some people did.”

Others cited the presence of the third candidate, Mr. Davis, who ran on the Tea Party line after failing to win the Republican nomination. He not only drew conservative support away from Ms. Corwin, but also turned his aggressive attacks on her in the end, contributing to her high negative numbers.

On the other hand, Ms. Hochul maintained a positive image conveying a homespun quality, speaking with a Buffalo accent, connecting naturally with voters.

As the clerk of Erie County, she oversees the automobile bureau, which issue driver’s licenses; Ms. Hochul gained prominence in 2008 when she challenged former Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s plan to issue licenses to illegal immigrants.

So what is our takeaway?

-A woman caring for her 80 year old mother was worried about what would happen to Medicare.  But in Ryan's plan her mother would be completely unaffected.  No one currently aged 55 or over would experience any change in Medicare coverage at all;

-Another woman was scared of Medicare's "privatization" under the Ryan plan.  But that isn't what he is proposing.  In Ryan's own words, just last month:

Starting in 2022, new Medicare beneficiaries will be enrolled in the same kind of health-care program that members of Congress enjoy. Future Medicare recipients will be able to choose a plan that works best for them from a list of guaranteed coverage options. This is not a voucher program but rather a premium-support model. A Medicare premium-support payment would be paid, by Medicare, to the plan chosen by the beneficiary, subsidizing its cost.

 

In addition, Medicare will provide increased assistance for lower- income beneficiaries and those with greater health risks. Reform that empowers individuals—with more help for the poor and the sick—will guarantee that Medicare can fulfill the promise of health security for America’s seniors.

If attitudes like these were what drove the vote, it tells us that the problem wasn't Ryan's plan per se, it was that Ryan's plan was mischaracterized in a way that scared the excrement out of people who fell for the mischaracterization. 

Count on Democrats doing this relentlessly throughout the next year and a half - and on our wonderful "neutral" media not calling them out for it.

Then we had the Jack Davis effect.  Jack Davis was once a Republican.  But, in recent years, he has been a Democrat and has made several unsuccessfully runs, for congress - each time spending millions of his (seemingly bottomless pile of) money in the losing effort.  This time Davis usurped the "Tea Party" name, in an apparent effort to confuse some conservative voters into thinking he shared their views.  Davis got 9% of the vote - , most it, presumably, from those conservatives - and may well have provided Ms. Hochul her margin of victory.

Finally, we had Ms. Hochul campaigning on her opposition to giving illegals valid drivers' licenses.  This certainly put her in good stead with most voters in the 26th, by demonstrating that, as Democrats go, she was on the conservative side.

The bottom line?  Yes, Ann Hochul won the election.  I congratulate her.  But the reasons are not as simple as the Times article (or the loudmouths like Schultz) make them out to be. 

Republicans, if they are smart, have learned a major lesson, and will deal with the Medicare lies accordingly in future elections.

But, since "Republican" and "smart" often do not mix, I have my doubts. 

We'll see....

Ken Berwitz

Now that so many of our wonderful "neutral" media have condemned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his "rude", "disrespectful" "lecture" which treated President Obama like a "schoolboy", I thought you might be interested to see their concern level during the previous administration, when far worse was said to/about President Bush:

Here, via excerpts from Brent Bozell's excellent column at newsbusters.org, is what I am talking about:

When Barack Obama replaced George Bush, there was unbridled joy among the elites. The days of "cowboy diplomacy" were over! Finally, we had a president who was a careful multi-lateralist, who wouldn't rudely impose his will, but would instead work with allies to build consensus.

But that's not what Obama delivered with Israel last week, is it? Obama went to the State Department and insisted Israel needed to stop its "unsustainable" policy toward the Palestinians and "boldly" retreat behind pre-1967 borders. A stunned Benjamin Netanyahu responded as any ally would if so roundly betrayed. He publicly – correctly – denounced Obama’s policy prescription.

Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic magazine (and website) posted an item on May 20 headlined: "Dear Mr. Netanyahu, Please Don't Speak to My President That Way." Netanyahu, he wrote, threw a "hissy fit." That pretty much encapsulated the American media’s reaction. "Cowboy diplomacy" is just fine from time to time – if the man in the saddle is Obama.

 On that night's "NBC Nightly News," reporter Andrea Mitchell was finding anonymous distaste for Netanyahu from other Israeli officials, never mind that his country was unquestionably applauding him: "I was told that even some Israeli officials, David, were uncomfortable with what they acknowledge was a lecturing tone by the prime minister. But he felt very strongly he had to say this to the world, to President Obama's face."

Mitchell’s NBC sure was less outraged when Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez came to the U.N. in 2006 and denounced President Bush as a devil. Kelly O'Donnell was downright blase: "Chavez repeatedly called the president ‘a devil,’ and labeled him a ‘Yankee terrorist.’ The administration quickly dismissed the swipe....And some say that the Venezuelan president cannot be so easily ignored because he has so much oil."

The next day, Matt Lauer turned to a set of VH-1 comedians. He played the Chavez devil clip, and said "That's wacky." Sherrod Small replied, "I ain't laughed that much at a Latino guy on TV since I watched Telemundo. He's got what it takes." Jessica St. Clair added: "He's saying what everybody wants to say, and so now we love him."

Thanks, NBC, for always standing up for our president, regardless of party.

Did anyone disagree with Obama’s position on Israel? Apparently not, if we are to trust the press. None of the network morning shows found critics of Obama's remarks on Israel. CBS’s "Early Show" instead turned to former Clinton State Department spokesman Jamie Rubin.

Anchor Erica Hill suggested Netanyahu couldn't "give an inch" politically to the president on Israeli security. Rubin replied: "This is unfortunate for everyone, I think. Because President Obama doesn't have the huge popularity in Israel that, perhaps, President Bush had, it's easier for Prime Minister Netanyahu to have a fight with him."

CBS’s liberal guest insisted it was "unfortunate for everyone" that Obama wasn't more popular in Israel, with the clear implication that he should be. Our media feel President Obama's pain so intensely that they can't bear the thought that someone would say an unkind word to him, especially with their cameras rolling. Their outrage at Netanyahu is only a small indicator of how much they're going to hate Obama's Republican opponents in the months to come. 

Exactly. 

And, to demonstrate that Mr. Bozell provided only a sampling of the media bias in favor of Barack Obama/against Benjamin Netanyahu, here are a few excerpts of readers' comments with even more examples:

But of course when the president of mexico came to lecture us in our government, slamming us and that was to be applauded.

 

It's different when POTUS is on the receiving end!  Obama could chastise the SCOTUS at the SOTU speech and it was good. Obama could berate Paul Ryan at a speech that he asked Ryan to attend and it was good. However when Obama got a well deserved lesson in manners, in public, well now, that was just downright rude.

Go Benjamin, Go!

It was about time someone put Obama in his place. To his face no less. The insecure, arrogant man child we have for a president had this one coming. And the liberal media again shows their bias by attacking Netanyahu. I say go Bibi go! America should be so lucky as to have a leader of Netanyahu's caliber.

Too Public to be Credible.  What we witnessed in Netanyahu was a diplomat, s statesman, and a leader. What we witnessed in Obama was an amateurish political weasel.  As far as the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg throughout history there have always been those Jews who have turned their backs on their own in favor of a bigger calling. In his case it is the Big D (Democrat). Just because you have a Jewish last name or, in his case, spent time in Israel, does not give you automatic credentials to speak for the rest of us.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir famously said.that "There will be peace when Arabs love their children more than they hate Jews". 

To paraphrase Ms. Meir, there will be honest reporting about Barack Obama when media love their journalistic integrity more than they hate anyone who dares to show him up - no matter how richly he deserves it.

Ken Berwitz

What would media have said if this were George Bush?

Here is President Obama's entry, today, into the guest book for Westminster Abbey.  See if you notice anything, shall we say, retro about it:

24 May 2008?   Hmmmm.

Well, that was before President Obama's onslaught of blunders and insults toward the UK, so maybe he just wishes it was 2008 again.

I expect that media will laugh along with Mr. Obama on this silly little lapse.  Which is exactly what they should do.

But would they have done it for President Bush?  Did they laugh along with his silly little lapses (which all of us have now and then)?

Yep, it's good to have that D at the end of your name.

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

UPDATE:  As it turns out, this was not the only lapse.  His gaffe when toasting the Queen was even worse.

Excerpted from Jake Tapper's blog at ABC News:

When the president toasted the Queen the orchestra misunderstood a pause and what seemed to be a cue from the president for “God Save the Queen” to begin playing.

“Ladies and gentlemen please stand with me and raise your glasses as I propose a toast,” the president said, putting down his note cards and grabbing his glass. “To her majesty the Queen.”

The president paused, the guests stood, and the orchestra prepared to play.

But the president wasn’t done speaking.

“The vitality –“ the president said before the orchestra began.

Then the familiar tune – you might know it better as “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” – started up.

The president kept going: “ -- of the special relationship between our peoples and for the words of Shakespeare to this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,” the president said as the awkward moment played out.

The Queen looked ahead as the UK anthem played.

“To the Queen,” the president finally said.

He lifted his glass to her, she smiled a bit uncomfortably.

But because the song was playing, no one drank from his or her glass, including the president, who put his glass down on the table.

Jake is a nice guy and is giving President Obama the benefit of the doubt.  But I'm sure he and I both agree that, once "God Save The Queen" started playing, Mr. Obama should have known enough to stop talking.  He didn't.

Asking again:  What will media say about this Obama gaffe?  Well, Mr. Tapper may have already given us a hint.

And what would media have said if it were President Bush instead of President Obama?  

Use your imagination....

Ken Berwitz

Leave it to MSNBC. 

Benjamin Netanyahu made a speech to congress.  And, except for the requisite outburst by a Code Pink lunatic, it was greeted with great enthusiasm by most members on both sides of the aisle. 

But, true to form, MSNBC used this opportunity to trot out the same tired lies that it, and a great many other of our media, always seem to miseducate their viewers/listeners with when talking about the Israel/Palestinian Arab conflict.

Here are key excerpts from the MSNBC article in rust, with my comments in blue (NOTE:  the text of MSNBC's report has changed slightly from its original version):

WASHINGTON — In an address to a joint meeting of Congress, Israel's prime minister pledged to make "painful compromises" for peace with the Palestinians, but said he would not agree to any deal that threatens Israel's security or its identity as a Jewish state.

 

Netanyahu, who received a rapturous reception from lawmakers on both sides of the political divide, said Israel wants and needs peace but repeated his flat rejection of a return to what he called the "indefensible" borders that existed before the 1967 Mideast war. He also restated Israel's refusal to entertain the return of millions of Palestinian refugees and their families to land in Israel. I have read that, in total, there are maybe 75,000 "refugees" still alive from 1948, when Israel won its war of independence.  And most of them were not expelled by Jews, they left on the advice of their Arab brethren, who told them that, after the Jews were driven into the sea, they could return as conquerors.  The idea that every child, grandchild and great grandchild of a "refugee", none of whom have ever set foot in Israel, are “refugees” too, is ridiculous.  The only reason they can even pretend to have refugee status is that, other than Jordan, not one of the 22 Arab countries will allow them to emigrate and become citizens.  So how about let's cut the crap and talk real.

 

"Israel will never give up its quest for peace," Netanyahu said, adding that he is "willing to make painful compromises to achieve this historic peace."

 

"Now this is not easy for me. It's not easy, because I recognize that in a genuine peace we will be required to give up parts of the ancestral Jewish homeland,'' he said, referring to the occupied West Bank.

 

In outlining his peace vision, Netanyahu said Israel would not negotiate with terrorists and urged Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to rip up a power-sharing agreement that his moderate Fatah faction has signed with the militant group Hamas, which does not recognize Israel's right to exist.  “Moderate” fatah?  Aren't these the people who call Jews the descendents of monkeys and pigs?  The people whose schoolbooks do not show any Israel of any size at all, not even one square block of Tel Aviv?  The people who name plazas, schools and sporting events in honor of "successful" suicide/homicide bombers?  The people who just signed an agreement with hamas, a terrorist group specifically committed to killing all Jews?  These are "moderates"?  There are a lot of lies told about the Israel/Palestinian Arab issue, but the claim that fatah is "moderate" ranks among the biggest of them all.

 

“We must take calls for our destruction seriously," Netanyahu said, recalling the Holocaust and the absolute imperative not to allow the Jewish people to suffer new massacres. "When we say 'never again, we mean 'never again,' " he said.

 

Israel, which enjoys strong bipartisan backing in Congress, has been rattled by President Barack Obama's support for drawing the future borders of a Palestinian state and a Jewish state on the basis of Israel's pre-1967 war frontiers. Obama has also called for a full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, something that Netanyahu said is possible only in the very long term.

 

Obama has not called for a return to the exact borders that Israel held before capturing east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the Six-Day War of June 1967. He, like the Palestinians, is open to land swaps so Israel can hold on to settlements it built after the 1967 war. I love it.  Obama and the “Palestinians” are in agreement on land swaps with Israel – a country "the Palestinians" do not recognize the existence of, which has a Jewish population they intend to annihilate.  Are the people at MSNBC on hallucinogens, are they just plain stupid, or are they so anti-Israel that facts mean nothing to them?  Obama has not, however, offered proposals for how to return the two sides to the bargaining table. The Palestinians are refusing to come back as long as Israeli settlement construction continues.  What is the difference if, or when, they come back, if their true goal is the non-existence of Israel and the removal or death (preferably death) of all its Jews?  This is the Middle East equivalent of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

 

Netanyahu congratulated the United States for killing al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, wishing him "good riddance" and making the case that America and Israel are paragons of democracy. Netanyahu dismissed early shouts from a female protester as evidence that freedom of speech is alive and well in the United States and is respected in both countries, while it is punished in Arab states now going through upheaval.  You mean that Code Pink pain in the ass who someone (almost certainly on the Democrat side) gave a ticket to?  Does Code Pink do anything but disrupt speeches and spew out hate-USA, hate-Israel vomit?  And who cares, since I doubt there more than 50 active members of this BS “organization” anyway.  Without the Democrats and our wonderful “neutral” media to give them a forum, they would be nonexistent.

 

He also repeatedly thanked Congress for its support of Israel, which he said supports true democracy throughout the Middle East and wants peace with its Arab neighbors.

Thanks, MSNBC.  You're really good at regurgitating the lies I've pointed out.  But here's an even better idea:  why not check out what I've written and, if you find it is true, start reporting the real story. 

What a refreshing change that would be.   

Ken Berwitz

Regular readers know that I have blogged numerous times about the disgusting, racist, anti-semitic, poverty-pimp hustler, al sharpton.

Among the things I have written about is the high regard sharpton is held in by so many in our wonderful "neutral" media, who are happy to ignore his dissolute past and herald him as some kind of elder statesman for Black people in particular and the "oppressed" in general - neither of which he in any way is.

Chris Matthews, in particular, acts as though they're thisclose to picking out furniture together every time he has sharpton on his show.

But, not to be outdone, 60 Minutes reporter Lesley Stahl did a 12 and a half minute love song to sharpton this past weekend, in which she treated him with a level of deference no Republican of any quality, and only some Democrats, would ever get from her.

Matthew Balan of Newsbusters.org wrote a blog with a lot of the transcript of Stahl's love song.  I suggest you click here and read it.

But in the meanwhile, here is a brief list of sharpton's "achievements" over the years, compiled last year by powerlineblog's Scott Johnson:

Al Sharpton plies his trade

March 30, 2010 Posted by Scott at 6:21 AM

When Don Imus sought absolution for his characteristic display of poor taste, he bent his knee to Pope Al Sharpton. How is it that Al Sharpton has become the arbiter elegantiae for matters pertaining to race and etiquette? Though he is accorded an absurdly respected role in the Democratic Party, he is easily one of the most vile men active in American public life.

Jay Nordlinger reviewed Sharpton's record as of early 2000 in his brilliant National Review feature article "Power Dem." Jay updated his take on Sharpton in his Impromptus column "Words from Pope Al."

From his promotion of Tawana Brawley's hoax and his defamation of Steven Pagones and Robert Abrams, to his defense of the Central Park "wilding" rapists, to his role in the pogroms leading to the murders of Yankel Rosenbaum in Crown Heights and eight victims in Freddy's Fashion Mart in Harlem, Sharpton has compiled a record that should result in his excommunication by decent people from civil society. Here is Pope Al on the accidental death of Gavin Cato in Crown Heights in August 1991:

The world will tell us that [Gavin Cato] was killed by accident....What type of city do we have that would allow politics to rise above the blood of innocent babies?...Talk about how Oppenheimer in South Africa sends diamonds straight to Tel Aviv and deals with the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights....All we want to say is what Jesus said: If you offend one of these little ones, you got to pay for it. No compromise. Pay for your deeds....It's no accident that we know we should not be run over. We are the royal family on the planet. We are the original man. We gazed into the stars and wrote astrology. We had a conversation and that became philosophy....We will win because we are right. God is on our side.

Writing in the Village Voice in December 2004, Wayne Barrett proclaimed Sharpton to have hit "a new low." And Sharpton of course contributed to the miscarriage of justice represented by the dismissed rape charges brought against the three Duke lacrosse players. In an April 2006 interview with Bill O'Reilly, Sharpton said (among other things): "This case parallels Abner Louima, who was raped and sodomized in a bathroom like this girl has alleged she was. That's the case and just like the Louima case, you have people saying she fabricated it. They said he fabricated it -- two guys in jail right now for that."

Last week Peter Wallsten reported in the Wall Street Journal that Sharpton has emerged as a key ally of President Obama. It turns out that President Obama is just about as post-racial as he is post-partisan.

Jim Hoft points out that Sharpton appeared on Bill O'Reilly's Fox News show last night peddling the Democratic Party's line tarring opponents of Obamacare and Obama's program of national socialism as racists. Sharpton told O'Reilly that he had seen the (non-existent) tape showing Tea Party protesters abusing black congressmen with racial epithets.

CLICK HERE TO SEE VIDEO

In the video above, O'Reilly calls Sharpton on his bald-faced lie. Let's just say that this particular tiger has not changed his stripes.

FYI, Johnson left out a few additional facts:

-sharpton is a decades-long supporter of the Black supremacist, anti-Semitic louis farrakhan,

-he was a proud friend, and attendee at the funeral of, Black supremacist, anti-Semitic khalid muhammad,

-his National Action Network's tax filings just a few years ago showed that virtually all the money collected for this supposedly altruistic venture went for the "expenses" of Sharpton  and a couple of cronies, without ever reaching the needy,

-and that he has stiffed people right and left, running up a ton of debts that, somehow, he never gets around to paying (even Stahl had to acknowledge this, though her estimate - about 2.8 million dollars - probably is on the low side.)

Let me leave you with this thought:  What if Lesley Stahl did a kissy-smoochy report about a White Republican with a racist, anti-Semitic history? 

-Would 60 Minutes ever air it? 

-Even if it were aired, would mainstream media just yawn and not make anything of it, the way they have for Stahl's sharpton story?  Or would they go full-bore into an apoplectic outrage?

This is what "journalism" has sunk to, folks.  And it isn't pretty.

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

Ken Berwitz

There's good news and bad news on the end of the world front. 

-The good ews is that the end of the world was May 21, and it didn't happen.

-The bad news is that the next end of the world is scheduled for October 21. 

I chose not to blog about harold camping, the religious nutcake who was ranting that the world would end May21, or the presumably well-meaning dupes who believed him.  I considered it nothing more than a sorry sideshow spectacle.

But the nutcake has revised his doomsday prediction (he sort of had to, since May 21st's doomsday came and went with nothing happening).  Now he tells us that May 21 was only the "invisible" doomsday (FYI:  I played center field for the Yankees and invisibly hit five home runs in a world series game on May 21 too - just thought you'd like to know) and assures us that the new, improved - presumably visible - end of the world will occur on October 21.

Excerpted from Elizabeth Tenety's article at the Washington Post:

Harold Camping says May 21, 2011 was ‘invisible judgment day,’ world will end October 21, 2011

By Elizabeth Tenety

 

Radio evangelist Harold Camping said in a special broadcast Monday night on his radio program Open Forum that his predicted May 21, 2011 Rapture was “an invisible judgment day“ that he has come to understand as a spiritual, rather than physical event.

“We had all of our dates correct,” Camping insisted, clarifying that he now understands that Christ’s May 21 arrival was “a spiritual coming” ushering in the last five months before the final judgment and destruction.

In an hour and a half broadcast, Camping walked listeners through his numerological timeline, insisting that his teaching has not changed and that the world will still end on October 21, 2011.

“It wont be spiritual on October 21st,” Camping said, adding, “the world is going to be destroyed all together, but it will be very quick.”

See you in October. 

I had sympathy for harold camping's followers until this weekend.  Faith-bound true believers are hard to reason with.

But now?  What's that old saying:  "Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me".

The (sure to be fewer) camping followers who are still buying what this carnival barker is selling are beyond hope.  And the people laughing derisively at them have been given more than enough reason to do so.

As for me?  On October 20, I'm going to Whole Foods and buying a nice big bunch of green bananas.  If I get to eat any of them when they are ripe, all is well.

Ken Berwitz

The Chicago Tribune has an excellent editorial in today's edition, which challenges congress to insist that President Obama do something he clearly has a problem with - stay within the legal parameters of his presidency.

The issue is Libya.  The War Powers Act requires that, after 60 days, a President must either end military operations or get Congressional authorization.  Well, our action in Libya hit the 60 day mark on Friday.  And Mr. Obama has chosen to do neither.

This is the behavior of a monarch, not a democratically elected head of state.  And the Trib, correctly, is insisting that something be done about it

Here are key excerpts of its editorial.  The bold print is mine:

Under the War Powers Act, President Barack Obama had until Friday to get congressional authorization to continue U.S. military operations in Libya. But the day passed without his even asking for it, which means he has to disengage within 30 days. Obama may not heed that requirement either.

Obama is on the horns of a dilemma. As a candidate, he said the president does not have the power to go to war on his own except in cases of actual or likely attack. But if he were to ask Congress to authorize the Libyan intervention, he would probably be rebuffed. So he's chosen to simply ignore the law.

But ignoring laws is not what presidents promise to do when they are sworn in. Unless Obama wants to make the case that it's unconstitutional, as some experts think, he should act (belatedly) to follow it or explain why the Libya operations don't qualify. The latter would be a stretch, but maybe Defense Secretary Robert Gates wants to elaborate on his theory that Libya is merely a "limited kinetic action," not a war.

The war in Libya has been hard to justify from the start because there is no important U.S. security interest at stake and because the president's goal of evicting Moammar Gadhafi appears more than a limited air campaign is likely to achieve. And now that we're in, there seems to be no clear strategy to get out.

But a mere law, untested in the courts, is not much of a check on presidential decision-making if Congress lacks the backbone to use the powers it has. By not acting, members are inviting Obama to defy them.

Many thanks to the Chicago Tribune for saying what had to be said. 

And what a shame that the Trib has to be thanked for doing what media in general should be doing - i.e. demanding that the President of the United States operate within the law. 

They sure as hell demanded it when George Bush was President......

Ken Berwitz

It occurs to me that I keep stating hamas is committed, in writing, to the annihilation of Israel and its Jews through jihad.   But I have not shown readers any proof.

So here it is.

If you want to read the entire hamas charter, just click here.  I guarantee you will be appalled.

But to key in on two specific areas that demonstrate hamas' "regard" for Israel and its Jews, I will post the last half of the charter's article 7, and its chilling, one-sentence, article 8:

Ken Berwitz

As our wonderful "neutral" media continue to argue over whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "disprespected" President Obama by publicly rebuffing his views of the 1967 borders as a starting point for negotiations, and his characterization of dealing with hamas as "difficult" instead of a non-starter, we have this, excerpted from an article by Patrick Goodenough at cnsnews.com:

“The U.S. administration will fail, just as all others have in the past, in forcing Hamas to recognize [Israel],” a Hamas spokesman declared Sunday after President Obama once again pressed the terrorist group to relinquish violence and recognize Israel’s right to exist.

 

Sami Abu Zuhri, spokesman for the group that controls the Gaza Strip, reiterated a stand which, in Obama’s own words, should make it impossible for Israel to negotiate with a Palestinian government that includes Hamas.

 

Hamas and its rival, Fatah – Palestinian Authority (P.A.) chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ movement – early this month signed a reconciliation agreement and agreed to establish a “unity” government.

 

Addressing an American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference in Washington on Sunday, Obama said the Fatah-Hamas agreement “poses an enormous obstacle to peace,” adding that “no country can be expected to negotiate with a terrorist organization sworn to its destruction.”

 

His answer to that dilemma was not to call on Abbas, Israel’s professed “peace partner,” to shun Hamas and crack down on its terror activities – as he is committed to do under signed agreements – but rather to urge Hamas to change. Obama also did not say what Israel should do if Hamas does not.

 

“We will continue to demand that Hamas accept the basic responsibilities of peace: recognizing Israel’s right to exist, rejecting violence, and adhering to all existing agreements,” Obama said.

 

Abu Zuhri’s statement made clear Hamas has no intention of following the advice.

 

Another Hamas official, Salah al-Bardwil, was quoted by Israel’s Yediot Ahronot as saying Obama’s comments Sunday on the Fatah-Hamas unity deal amounted to “blatant interference in the Palestinian internal affairs” and “an attempt to continue to deepen the Palestinian rift in order to please Israel.”

 

Abbas and his spokesmen have not reacted but the P.A. leadership will reportedly meet in Ramallah on Wednesday to discuss the path ahead following Obama’s major Mideast speech last Thursday.

As you can see, hamas - Israel's supposed negotiating partner, now that it is one with fatah again - has rebuffed, and "disrespected", President Obama at least as bluntly as Prime Minister Netanyahu did.  Are you surprised?  If so, why?  But don't count on most media to point this out, or to attack hamas for it. 

It is hard to fathom what President Obama is expecting of Israel.  Would the United States go into peace negotiations with a party that remains unalterably committed to the USA's destruction?  What would the point be?  What would there be to negotiate, other than how and when?

And, by the way, anyone who thinks fatah isn't committed to exactly the same annihilation of Israel that hamas is, lives in a dream world.  Simply stated, the only difference between hamas and fatah is that hamas says it in English too, not just Arabic.

Now let's talk a bit more about Mr. Obama and Mr. Netanyahu.

As recently as last Tuesday, the White House was stating in so many words, that President Obama's speech would be little other than a reiteration of the USA's ongoing position regarding Israel and the so-called "Palestinians".  

When Mr.Obama's press secretary, Jay Carney, was asked point-blank about a report that the 1967 borders were going to be part of his speech, Carney answered  that it was "totally false" - on the grounds that no one outside the administration had seen the draft yet. 

What Carney didn't say was that Israel was told beforehand that there would be no new proposal regarding the 1967 borders.  Thus, when President Obama specifically brought it up - in a way that Israel could not possibly accept - he completely sandbagged Prime Minister Netanyahu.

So there was Mr. Netanyahu, freshly crapped on by the Obama administration, being asked his views on the speech .  What did they expect him to say?  "Yeah, Mr. Obama is right, this is a tough situation and difficult decisions have to be made"? 

Israel does not have the luxury of barfing out trite little slogans to please the Obama-loving media.  Israel deals with life and death situations every day.  Thus, to his credit, Benjamin Netanyahu answered forthrightly.  Of course there is no way that Israel will agree to indefensible borders as a starting point to negotiations.  Of course Israel will not agree to negotiate with an entity specifically, unchangingly committed to its annihilation. 

If that was disrespect, it was disrespect brought on 100% by Barack Obama's dishonesty towards Israel just days before.

To suporters of Israel - Jewish and non-Jewish - who voted for Barack Obama in 2008:  do you now understand that Barack Obama is no friend of Israel's?  I certainly hope so.

To those of you who still think Barack Obama is a friend to Israel:  I would love to know how many ways he has to prove it before you see the light?  What will it take?  What has to happen that will make you see what is in front of your eyes?

Or, in the words of that great song from The Pajama Game, "Hey There":

Won't you take this advice
I hand you like a brother?
Or are you not seeing things too clear,
Are you too much in love (with Obama) to hear,
Is it all going in one ear and out the other?

Ken Berwitz

When they had convinced themselves that "freedom and democracy" in Egypt was right around the corner, our media were there, every day, interviewing the young, idealistic, English-speaking facebook fans in Tahrir Square. 

Their reporting made the situation out to be very simple:  Hosni Mubarak had to go, and these young protesters were poised to take over and make Egypt into a paradise on earth.

Then there was this little matter of reality.

Here, excerpted from an article in the Jerusalem Post, is how things actually are turning out:

ElBaradei: Egypt is 'disintegrating' as tourism drops

By BLOOMBERG 
05/22/2011

Egypt is disintegrating socially and its economy “is bust,” said Mohamed ElBaradei, the former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency and possible candidate for the Egyptian presidency.

“Right now, socially, we are disintegrating,” ElBaradei said on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” scheduled to air Sunday. “Economically we are not in the best state. Politically it’s -- it’s like a black hole. We do not know where we are heading.”

ElBaradei said many Egyptians don’t feel secure as the country struggles to create a new government after former president Hosni Mubarak was forced from power by protests earlier this year.

“People do not feel secure,” ElBaradei said. “They are buying guns” to protect themselves, he said.

ElBaradei said he wasn’t sure when a presidential race could begin because there aren’t any laws that outline “how to run a campaign, how you raise funds” or when candidates can become official.

“What kind of state or regime we are going to have?” ElBaradei asked. “Is it a presidential system? Is it a parliamentary system? When are we going to have a new constitution?”

He also expressed concern about the influence of the Islamic group the Muslim Brotherhood, which has had longer to organize than other nascent political contenders. ElBaradei said the election may slip to next year given the uncertainty.

Let's see.  According to elbaradei: 

-The country is disintegrating socially;

-The economy is a bust;

-People are scared and arming themselves;

-No one has any idea of how to proceed with a free election, or if there will be a constitution;

-The Muslim brotherhood is better organized than anyone else (which probably means it will be more "successful" than anyone else);

-Maybe there won't be elections this year after all.

Add this to the findings of Pew Global Research, which show that a large majority of Egyptians are fine with shari'a law and want their country to function as an Islamic state.  What do you have?

Miss Mubarak yet?

Funny thing, though:  those same media, which were breathlessly happy to report every development, almost hour by hour, when they saw little other than a bunch of dreamers in Tahrir Square, are nowhere to be found now.  Think about it:  Other than a stray article here and there, when was the last time you saw any appreciable ongoing coverage of Egypt? 

Is it just me, or when the Egypt story turned from media's self-created fairy tale to the real world, did media run, not walk, to other stories? 

Y'know, you could almost get the impression that, when events proved them wrong, our media decided it was better to stop reporting than to report what was really taking place.

And they wonder why people no longer trust them?  Wow.

Ken Berwitz

It is now about a week after the publication date of Jerome Corsi's book, "Where's the Birth Certificate", which challenges Barack Obama's legal right to be President, and over a month since Amazon made the book available for purchase on a pre-publication basis.

Once President Obama made what he claims to be his true long-form birth certificate available, a great many Obama supporters (and maybe some detractors) felt that interest in Mr. Corsi's book would quickly disintegrate and it would become "bargain bin" material pretty much from that time on.

Well, here is its current sales status:

                  Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #28 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

                                #1 in Books > Nonfiction > Law > Constitutional Law

                                #1 in Books > Nonfiction > Law > One-L

                                #1 in Books > Nonfiction > Government

Ken Berwitz

The Obama administration will not secure our border with Mexico. 

Drugs are streaming over the border.

Drug cartels murder people.  Lot's of them.

And that is why we read stories like this, excerpted from an Associated Press article:

DURANGO, Mexico — The vacant car repair lot hardly looks out of place in a vibrant but gritty part of the northern colonial city of Durango, famous as the set for John Wayne westerns.

 

Only a closer look reveals the secrets hidden at "Servicios Multiples Carita Medina," clues to exactly what kind of "multiple services" were rendered. The freshly turned soil is sprinkled with lime to kill the smell and littered with discarded Latex gloves and an empty cardboard box: "Adult Cadaver Bag. 600 gauge, Long Zipper, For Cadavers of up to 75 inches. 15 pieces."

 

In the most gruesome find in Mexico's four-year attack on organized crime, police dug up 89 bodies in the repair lot, buried over time in plain sight of homes, schools and stores.

 

Then, like the killers, authorities left one of Mexico's most puzzling crime scenes completely open and unprotected.

 

It was the largest of seven graves found in bustling urban areas of the city of almost 600,000, where a total of 219 bodies have been uncovered since April 11.

Give me one good reason not to believe that, sooner rather than later, we will be reading of mass graves just like this one on our side of the border.  Please.  

The Obama administration is doing nothing to stop it from happening.  If anything, the administration, by suing Arizona, is making it even easier for the drug cartels than it already is.  So why wouldn't it happen?

We need a President who gives a damn about our borders, and an Attorney General who doesn't think people who want immigration laws enforced are the enemy.

The 2012 election cannot come fast enough.

Ken Berwitz

NBC's reliably left wing shill, Andrea Mitchell, is upset that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was, in her view, disrespectful to President Obama.  I was going to put this whining drone in her place, but Matt Schneider of mediate.com did it so well that I don't have to bother:

Mitchell explained Netanyahu’s reaction to Obama’s policy proposal:

“It was taken as a red flag by Netanyahu and what happened then was that even if this was implicit in things that previous Presidents had said, Netanyahu seized on it even before he got on the plane – he criticized the President. And in such a fashion, he lectured him in the Oval Office. . . . It was a stone-faced Barack Obama and Netanyahu basically treating him like a school-boy.”

Mitchell went on to suggest that even Netanyahu’s associates thought his tone towards Obama was “really rude.” Just asking, but might it also be “really rude” if a foreign country demanded that we give our land to our sworn enemies so that our new neighbors can then use such land to make their desired goal of our total annihilation possible and much easier? If the answer is yes (as it should be), then Obama (and Mitchell) should be grateful that the President’s naive foreign policy dreams were met with merely a stern “lecture” from Netanyahu and not much more.

Exactly.

Ken Berwitz

Herman Cain has declared his candidacy for Republican presidential nomination. 

The New York Times' headline for this story is "Former Restaurant Executive Enters 2012 Republican Race", with a sub-head of "From Godfather's Pizza to radio host to presidential hopeful".  Within the article, it provides the following biography:

The son of a chauffeur and a domestic worker in Georgia, he graduated from Morehouse College, a  historic black college, with a degree in mathematics, and he earned a master’s degree at Purdue before joining the Navy. He then began his rise in the corporate world, first at Coca-Cola and then at the Pillsbury Company, where he was an executive overseeing Burger King and chief executive at Godfather’s Pizza.

Ok, now that we've seen what the New York Times wants you to know about Herman Cain, let me tell you what it left out: 

-Mr. Cain also was CEO of the National Restaurant Association. 

-And a member of the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas City. 

-And Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve Bank.

Whoops.

Look, I don't know if Herman Cain is or is not a viable candidate.  But I do know when a newspaper intentionally leaves out a candidate's significant accomplishments, so its readers will not have a full picture of who he is and what his qualifications are.

And this is a classic example of just that.

The "newspaper of record"?  Yeah, ok.  Sure.

Ken Berwitz

Just how bad has the Obama administration's performance been in job creation?  The data are available.  But try and find them.

Here, excerpted from Dennis Cauchon's article in Friday's USA Today, is a refreshing, if minuscule, exception to this tacit media blackout:

Nearly two years after the economic recovery officially began, job creation continues to stagger at the slowest post-recession rate since the Great Depression.

 

The nation has 5% fewer jobs today — a loss of 7 million — than it did when the recession began in December 2007. That is by far the worst performance of job generation following any of the dozen recessions since the 1930s.

 

In the past, the economy recovered lost jobs 13 months on average after a recession. If this were a typical recovery, nearly 10 million more people would be working today than when the recession officially ended in June 2009.

President Obama was handed a golden political opportunity:  a recession that we were coming out of.  This provided him an opportunity to blame the economic situation - rightly or wrongly - on the previous President, then take accolades for the improved conditions during his time in office.

Well, it is two years since the end of the recession, and where are we?

-Remember when President Obama and his majority-Democrat congress rammed through the so-called "stimulus package", based on the premise that, without it, unemployment would rise from the then-level of 8.1% to 8.5 or even 9%?  Did that happen?  In actuality, unemployment rose - over 10% at one point -  and has finally, after all this time, "dropped" to the upper end of where Mr. Obama said it would be if we didn't pass the "stimulus package".

-Remember when President Obama told us he would create 3,500,000 to 4,000,000 jobs by the end of 2010 -- and then, just days later, morphed the promise into "create or save" those jobs?  Do you see them?  I don't.

-Remember, last year, when Vice President Biden bragged that we were going to have a "recovery summer"?  Did you see it?  I didn't.

-And remember, too, that all of this occurred with a Democrat in the oval office and huge Democrat majorities in both houses of congress. 

Now:  How much media coverage has there been of these failures?  Of the lies and broken promises, one after the other?  How many reminders have there been that this took place while the Democrat party was completely in charge?

Yes, our wonderful "neutral" media will talk (and talk, and talk) about the awful condition of the economy.  But how often do they tie it to President Obama, or call him on what he promised would happen? 

Would they have done the same for President Bush?  Did they?

That, I am truly sad to say, is what our media have sunk to in this day and age.  What should be news and investigative journalism, is propaganda clumsily posing as news reportage and investigative journalism, put on hold, reserved only for the other political party.

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

Ken Berwitz

Too bad. 

Although Daniels has a lot of personal baggage, and considerable to explain about some of his decisions - e.g. the one state supreme court justice he chose, who has such a fascinating idea of the fourth amendment, for example - he has been a very successful and effective governor of Indiana, and would have been an interesting candidate.

But no is no.

Moving on.......

Ken Berwitz

Elections are being held in Spain this week - not for its head of state, though, and lucky for him.  Here, excerpted from an article at msnbc.com, is an abbreviated look at the factions:

MADRID — Spaniards began voting on Sunday in local and regional polls expected to deal heavy losses to the ruling Socialists, who are blamed for widespread unemployment that has off a wave of pre-election protests.

The elections are a key test of how much the party's support has crumbled due to soaring unemployment and its handling of the financial crisis, and are seen as a prelude to general elections next year.

Tens of thousands of Spaniards demonstrated in the past week in city squares around the country against austerity measures that have kept a fiscal crisis at bay but aggravated the highest jobless rate in the European Union.

More than 34 million people are eligible to vote while in the background the growing protest movement has illustrated the disillusionment felt by Spaniards toward both main parties and what they call a political system that favors economic interests over citizens.

The protesters have called on Spaniards to reject the Socialists and the center-right Popular Party, the main two political options in Spain.

Nice mix.  You've got the Socialists, who have put Spain into this impossible mess, the "center-right" that demands Spain must spend within its means, and the so-called "indignados" who don't like either side, but just want the spending (i.e. the entitlements) to continue as if money grows on trees.

This is a monumental problem - not only for Spain, but almost certainly for Greece, and a number of other Euoropean countries which have created a similar culture of entitlements and low productivity expectations.

Just like the United States is doing.

We better take a very, very close look - and listen closely.  Because those Spanish canaries in the coalmine of Europe are chirping loud and clear.

Ken Berwitz

Just in case you think that James Clapper is the only one out there with mental deficiencies, we have this, excerpted from Susie Madrak's blog at crooksandliars.com:

Ken Berwitz

James Clapper is the Obama administration's Director of National Intelligence (DNI). 

Intelligence?

Personally, I am starting to believe there is a very good argument for declaring him non compos mentis. 

Let's start with this gem of a quote, from three months ago:

"The term 'Muslim Brotherhood' ... is an umbrella term for a variety of movements, in the case of Egypt, a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried Al Qaeda as a perversion of Islam"

Got that?  The country's DNI believes that the Muslim brotherhood is secular and non-violent.  You cannot make this stuff up.

If they ever branch out from dancing, and do a show called "So You Think You Can Talk Like A Complete Idiot", that puts Clapper into the finals even if he never says another word.

But wait.  There's more.

Here is Clapper - again, verbatim - praising President Obama for the killing of osama bin laden.  Please pay special attention to the incredible claim I have put in bold print:

"Recently, I received an email from a former student of mine at Georgetown who lost his wife at the World Trade Center.  He wanted to thank those responsible for the takedown of Osama bin Laden.  It represented closure for him. 

"And in a sense, this dramatic event represents a measure of closure as well for the intelligence community.  It was an historic milestone in a relentless campaign which continues on. 

"Those heartfelt thanks of my student deservedly go to many.  To the men and women in the intelligence community who contributed directly -- notably, from CIA, NSA, NGA, NRO, and NCTC -- and many others from intelligence organizations who contributed indirectly, taken together a magnificent example of teamwork and intelligence integration.

"But most assuredly, thanks must go to the President, our Commander-in-Chief -- (applause) -- for making perhaps the most courageous decision I’ve witnessed in almost 48 years in intelligence.  He made this decision based on very compelling, but largely circumstantial intelligence." 

If you didn't read this, you would not believe he said it.

After years of intense work by a number of different military and intelligence organizations tracking down bin laden, President Obama is asked for approval to take him out.  He says "OK".  And that is "perhaps the most courageous decision I've witnessed in almost 48 years in intelligence"??????

President Obama, sitting on his ass in the White House, is asked "now that we know bin laden is in the compound, should we or should we not go in there" and saying "OK" is COURAGEOUS?  The most courageous decision in Clapper's 48 years?

Where the eff did he spend the last 48 years, in a lobotomy ward?

Somebody - anybody - tell me what was "courageous" about giving someone else the go-ahead to take out the single most wanted man on the face of the earth? 

Was this a tough decision?  Who in the world would have said "No, don't do it" -- oh, wait; jimmy carter was President, forget that one.

In Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks' riotously funny  "2013 Year Old Man" - a follow-up to the classic "2,000 Year Old Man" - Brooks is asked what the greatest advance in the last 2,013 years was.  Unhesitatingly, he answers "Liquid Prell"  Carl Reiner, trying hard to continue the interview without breaking down in laughter, asks "What about the heart and lung machine".  And Brooks says "Well, that's nice too, but.....and goes into a mind-contorting rationale for why Liquid Prell is a superior advance.

That was satire. 

But Clapper - for real - is, in effect, saying "Yeah, the CIA, NAS, NGA, NRO and NCTC are nice too. but..." and giving Barack Obama credit for a decision that anyone over the age of 10 with an IQ over 76 would have made in two seconds flat.

When do we test James Clapper?  Is it possible that continued exposure to Barack Obama and The Chicago Way has done this to him, or was he always this way?

Whichever it is, Clapper has about as much capability to be Director of National Intelligence as Lady Gaga has to run the CIA.

And, based on Barack Obama's selection of Clapper, let's hope she isn't his next appointment.

Ken Berwitz

As of today, President Obama is officially ignoring the War Powers Act and continuing our military efforts against Libya illegally.  (No, Bush never did this.  Not for Iraq and not for Afghanistan).

His ignoring of the War Powers Act fits in nicely with the fact that he also is ignoring a federal judge's ruling that ObamaCare is illegal and continues its implementation anyway.

It also fits in with the fact that he has stated specifically that he is ignoring the Defense Of Marriage Act, even though it is the law of the land

We voted for a President.  We got a tinhorn dictator wannabe.

And the only reason Mr. Obama can do this is that our wonderful "neutral" media will not call him out on it.  It is clear that most of them support him, and have forgone journalistic ethics and responsibilities on his behalf.

This is a national disgrace.  But one that the people can end in a year and a half.

Let's.

Ken Berwitz

Here, excerpted from an article in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel , are the final numbers in the Prosser/Kloppenburg recount - and what Ms. Kloppenburg might do to extend this farce even further:

With the weeks-long recount complete, unofficial numbers confirm that state Supreme Court Justice David Prosser narrowly defeated Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg in the April 5 election.

But the battle may not be over yet, as Kloppenburg mulls whether to challenge the results in court.

And if a legal contest goes on long enough, attorneys say it could delay efforts to swear Prosser in for a new term on Aug. 1, leading to a temporary vacancy on the closely divided high court.

Final recount numbers are expected to show Prosser with an advantage of slightly more than 7,000 votes over Kloppenburg.

Kloppenburg will spend the coming days reviewing the findings of the recount to determine whether to sue over the results, said Kloppenburg campaign manager Melissa Mulliken.

"I'm not going to speculate" on the likelihood of a lawsuit, Mulliken said. "We have to look at the record and analyze the evidence and the law and make our decision from there."

Sure, Joanne.  You lost the first vote.  Then, knowing a change of outcome was virtually impossible, you cost the citizens of Wisconsin something like $1 million dollars to confirm that you lost in the recount.  And now you'll decide if you want to sue.   What will you do after that?  Hold your breath until your face turns blue?

What judgment.  What common sense.  What a great state Supreme Court Justice you would have made!

Ironically, if there is any sanity in the state of Wisconsin (and I assume there's plenty of it), this has already hurt rather than helped Democrats.  There is little doubt in my mind that a great many citizens have had it about up to here with Kloppenburg's nonsensical whine-fest. Do you think they will be eager to reward her side of the aisle by voting to recall Republicans?  I doubt it. 

But if Kloppenburg continues her juvenile (make that preschool-quality) crusade to waste Wisconsin's scant resources on a lawsuit?  I'm guessing that even more voters are going to remember this on the recall vote - not to mention when the public sector unions start complaining again that they have to kick in and sacrifice along with everyone else.

A melange of in and out-of-state union operatives, UW-Madison student activists and assorted leftists may look impressive when they all gather in one place and draw lots of media coverage.  But there is a tad more to the state of Wisconsin. 

That's a lesson that Kloppenburg and her Democrat masters are poised to learn the hard way. 

Ken Berwitz

Since ObamaCare is, to a considerable degree, based on the UK's National Health Service (NHS), and since the NHS repeatedly has been trotted out by ObamaCare proponents as an ideal we should be aspiring to, I thought you might be interested to see how it is doing these days.

Excerpted from an article in today's London Guardian:

Doctors are blaming financial pressures on the NHS for an increase in the number of patients who are not being treated within the 18 weeks that the government recommends.

New NHS performance data reveal that the number of people in England who are being forced to wait more than 18 weeks has risen by 26% in the last year, while the number who had to wait longer than six months has shot up by 43%.

In March this year, 34,639 people, or 11% of the total, waited more than that time to receive inpatient treatment, compared with 27,534, or 8.3%, in March 2010 – an increase of 26% – Department of Health statistics show.

Similarly, in March this year some 11,243 patients who underwent treatment had waited for more than six months, compared with 7,841 in the same month in 2010 – a 43% rise.

Despite rising demand for healthcare caused by the increasingly elderly population and growing numbers of people with long-term conditions, the NHS treated 16,201 fewer people as inpatients in March 2011 compared to March 2010, the latest Referral To Treatment data disclose.

The British Medical Association said the longer waits and fewer treatments were inevitable: "Given the massive financial pressures on the NHS, it was always likely that hospital activity would decrease and waiting times would increase," said a spokesperson.

I hope you enjoyed reading this.  Because there is an excellent chance that it is in our future. 

What should you do about it?  I suggest you put in for your waiver ASAP.  Obviously, they are still available - especially if you can somehow convince one of the Obamabots that you live in Nancy Pelosi's congressional district.

Ken Berwitz

I didn't see it all.   But the most striking part of what I did catch was that President Obama did not specifically mention the 1967 "borders"**  which, just yesterday, he said Israel would have to go back to as a prelude to negotiating land swaps.  But he did say that Palestinian Arabs have to answer difficult questions on how they can make peace in partnership with hamas which has "resorted to terror".

Netanyahu thanked Mr. Obama for his hospitality.  He then proceeded to state, unequivocally, that Israel cannot go back to the 1967 borders because a) they are indefensible and b) in any event major population shifts have occurred since 1967 which make it impossible to do so. 

Netanyahu then stated, just as unequivocally, that Israel could not make peace if hamas was a part of it, because "as President Obama said, hamas is a terrorist organization".  By doing so, Netanyahu blew away Obama's clumsy worsmithing about "difficult questions" and "resorted to terror".  He just stated the reality of the situation, bluntly and without regard to Obama's weaselly blah-blah-blah.

Good for Prime Minister Netanyahu.  And a lesson for President Obama:  if he wants to fudge his way through the Middle East situation, he picked the wrong guy to do it with.

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

**FYI:  The term “borders” is commonly used, but not accurate.  They were armistice lines, not specific, agreed-upon borders.  Big difference.

Ken Berwitz

I hope this doesn't surprise you.

Here, from Doug Powers, writing for michellemalkin.com, and Matthew Boyle of dailycaller.com, is the latest ObamaCare outrage:

Doug Powers called it on November 5, 2010:

 

AARP, either in blind faith or full complicity, bet on door #1 and their employees (not to mention almost everybody else) get to pay the price:

 

WASHINGTON – AARP’s endorsement helped secure passage of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul. Now the seniors’ lobby is telling its employees their insurance costs will rise partly as a result of the law.

In an e-mail to employees, AARP says health care premiums will increase by 8 percent to 13 percent next year because of rapidly rising medical costs.

 

And AARP adds that it’s changing copayments and deductibles to avoid a 40 percent tax on high-cost health plans that takes effect in 2018 under the law. Aerospace giant Boeing also has cited the tax in asking its workers to pay more. Shifting costs to employees lowers the value of a health care plan and acts like an escape hatch from the tax.

 

Prepare for AARP to now lobby the Obama administration for a waiver from the glorious health care law they helped shove down America’s throat.

 

Matthew Boyle at the Daily Caller, today:

 

The Daily Caller has learned that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) rate review rules, which it finalized on Thursday, exempt “Medigap” policy providers, like the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), from oversight when such providers increase payment rates for their supplemental insurance plans.

 

Insurance providers who aren’t exempt from Obamacare’s rate review rules are required to publicly release and explain some health care payment rate increases.

 

The AARP is the nation’s biggest seller of Medigap policies, or supplemental healthcare plans that add onto what Medicare won’t cover for seniors. The senior citizens interest group advocated for Obamacare to include an attack on Medigap policies’ biggest competitor, Medicare Advantage.

 

Though the White House and HHS dismiss allegations of political favoritism when it comes to who’s getting exceptions from the new health care regulations – such as in the recent uproar over the disproportionate number of Obamacare waivers that went to companies in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s district — Obamacare critics say the mere appearance of the administration helping friends is disturbing.

What a surprise.  AARP supports Obama's health care plan that guts Medicare out of over 500 billion dollars, and badaboom, badabing, it doesn't have to live with the plan - which means it doesn't have to publicly release and explain its higher health care rates.

If this surprises you in the least, you are not a regular reader of this blog.  But you might be a diligent reader/viewer of mainstream media.

That pretty much says it all......

Ken Berwitz

Yesterday, President Obama warned Syria's dictator, bashar al-assad, to either lead a transition to democracy in his country, or get out of the way.

Here, from Reuters, is his answer:

Syrian security forces fired live rounds into crowds gathered for at least two protests in the central city of Homs, an activist in the city said, as pro-democracy demonstrations erupted across the country on Friday.

he Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the coastal city of Banias, which was stormed by the army this month, witnessed the largest demonstration since the uprising began in southern Syria nine weeks ago. (Reuters)

Why do you suppose Barack Obama's demands are ignored by dictators like al-assad and qaddafi?  Why do they have no fear of him at all?

Think about it.  As Bob Dylan said, the answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind.

Ken Berwitz

This is way longer than what I usually post. 

But Caroline Glick has written an absolutely brilliant, absolutely must-read analysis of President Obama's pro-Palestinian Arab position, which details in plain, easy-to-understand terms, what the so-called "journalists" in our mainstream media are too ignorant, too unprofessional, too lazy or too supportive of Mr. Obama, to even begin to think about.

Here it is in its entirety (with apologies to Ms. Glick, who can copy anything I write any time she wants).  Read it and you will understand far more about what Mr. Obama said, and what it means, than anything you are likely to see in mainstream media. 

Please also take special note of the paragraph I've put in bold print.  It is among the most important, and exasperating, points Ms. Glick makes:

Obama's abandonment of America

May 20, 2011, 7:21 AM

 

I was out sick yesterday so I was unable to write today's column for the Jerusalem Post. I did manage to watch President Obama's speech on the Middle East yesterday evening. And I didn't want to wait until next week to discuss it. After all, who knows what he'll do by Tuesday?

 

Quite simply, Obama's speech represents the effective renunciation of the US's right to have and to pursue national interests. Consequently, his speech imperils the real interests that the US has in the region - first and foremost, the US's interest in securing its national security.

 

Obama's renunciation of the US national interests unfolded as follows:

 

First, Obama mentioned a number of core US interests in the region. In his view these are: "Countering terrorism and stopping the spread of nuclear weapons; securing the free flow of commerce, and safe-guarding the security of the region; standing up for Israel's security and pursuing Arab-Israeli peace."

 

Then he said, "Yet we must acknowledge that a strategy based solely upon the narrow pursuit of these interests will not fill an empty stomach or allow someone to speak their mind."

 

While this is true enough, Obama went on to say that the Arabs have good reason to hate the US and that it is up to the US to put its national interests aside in the interest of making them like America. As he put it, "a failure to change our approach threatens a deepening spiral of division between the United States and Muslim communities."

 

And you know what that means. If the US doesn't end the "spiral of division," (sounds sort of like "spiral of violence" doesn't it?), then the Muslims will come after America. So the US better straighten up and fly right.

 

And how does it do that? Well, by courting the Muslim Brotherhood which spawned Al Qaeda, Hamas, Jamma Islamiya and a number of other terror groups and is allies with Hezbollah.

 

How do we know this is Obama's plan? Because right after he said that the US needs to end the "spiral of division," he recalled his speech in Egypt in June 2009 when he spoke at the Brotherhood controlled Al Azhar University and made sure that Brotherhood members were in the audience in a direct diplomatic assault on US ally Hosni Mubarak.

 

And of course, intimations of Obama's plan to woo and appease the jihadists appear throughout the speech. For instance:

 

"There will be times when our short term interests do not align perfectly with our long term vision of the region."

 

So US short term interests, like for instance preventing terrorist attacks against itself or its interests, will have to be sacrificed for the greater good of bringing the Muslim Brotherhood to power in democratic elections.

 

And he also said that the US will "support the governments that will be elected later this year" in Egypt and Tunisia. But why would the US support governments controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood? They are poised to control the elected government in Egypt and are the ticket to beat in Tunisia as well.

 

Then there is the way Obama abandoned US allies Yemen and Bahrain in order to show the US's lack of hypocrisy. As he presented it, the US will not demand from its enemies Syria and Iran that which it doesn't demand from its friends.

 

While this sounds fair, it is anything but fair. The fact is that if you don't distinguish between your allies and your enemies then you betray your allies and side with your enemies. Bahrain and Yemen need US support to survive. Iran and Syria do not. So when he removes US support from the former, his action redounds to the direct benefit of the latter.

 

I hope the US Navy's 5th Fleet has found alternate digs because Obama just opened the door for Iran to take over Bahrain. He also invited al Qaeda - which he falsely claimed is a spent force - to take over Yemen.

 

Beyond his abandonment of Bahrain and Yemen, in claiming that the US mustn't distinguish between its allies and its foes, Obama made clear that he has renounced the US's right to have and pursue national interests. If you can't favor your allies against your enemies then you cannot defend your national interests. And if you cannot defend your national interests then you renounce your right to have them.

 

As for Iran, in his speech, Obama effectively abandoned the pursuit of the US's core interest of preventing nuclear proliferation. All he had to say about Iran's openly genocidal nuclear program is, "Our opposition to Iran's intolerance - as well as its illicit nuclear program, and its sponsorship of terror - is well known."

 

Well so is my opposition to all of that, and so is yours. But unlike us, Obama is supposed to do something about it. And by putting the gravest threat the US presently faces from the Middle East in the passive voice, he made clear that actually, the US isn't going to do anything about it.

 

In short, every American who is concerned about the security of the United States should be livid. The US President just abandoned his responsibility to defend the country and its interests in the interest of coddling the US's worst enemies.

 

AS FOR ISRAEL, in a way, Obama did Israel a favor by giving this speech. By abandoning even a semblance of friendliness, he has told us that we have nothing whatsoever to gain by trying to make him like us. Obama didn't even say that he would oppose the Palestinians' plan to get the UN Security Council to pass a resolution in support for Palestinian independence. All he said was that it is a dumb idea.

 

Obama sided with Hamas against Israel by acting as though its partnership with Fatah is just a little problem that has to be sorted out to reassure the paranoid Jews. Or as he put it, "the recent announcement of an agreement between Fatah and Hamas raises profound and legitimate questions for Israel."

 

Hamas is a jihadist movement dedicated to the annihilation of the Jewish people, and the establishment of a global caliphate. It's in their charter. And all Obama said of the movement that has now taken over the Palestinian Authority was, "Palestinian leaders will not achieve peace or prosperity if Hamas insists on a path of terror and rejection."

 

Irrelevant and untrue. 

 

It is irrelevant because obviously the Palestinians don't want peace. That's why they just formed a government dedicated to Israel's destruction.

 

As for being untrue, Obama's speech makes clear that they have no reason to fear a loss of prosperity. After all, by failing to mention that US law bars the US government from funding an entity which includes Hamas, he made clear that the US will continue to bankroll the Hamas-controlled Palestinian Authority. So too, the EU will continue to join the US in giving them billions for bombs and patronage jobs. The Palestinians have nothing to worry about. They will continue to be rewarded regardless of what they do.

 

Then of course there are all the hostile, hateful details of the speech:  

He said Israel has to concede its right to defensible borders as a precondition for negotiations;

 

He didn't say he opposes the Palestinian demand for open immigration of millions of foreign Arabs into Israel;

 

He again ignored Bush's 2004 letter to Sharon opposing a return to the 1949 armistice lines, supporting the large settlements, defensible borders and opposing mass Arab immigration into Israel;

 

He said he was leaving Jerusalem out but actually brought it in by calling for an Israeli retreat to the 1949 lines;

 

He called for Israel to be cut in two when he called for the Palestinians state to be contiguous;

 

He called for Israel to withdraw from the Jordan Valley - without which it is powerless against invasion - by saying that the Palestinian State will have an international border with Jordan.  

Conceptually and substantively, Obama abandoned the US alliance with Israel. The rest of his words - security arrangements, demilitarized Palestinian state and the rest of it - were nothing more than filler to please empty-headed liberal Jews in America so they can feel comfortable signing checks for him again.

 

Indeed, even his seemingly pro-Israel call for security arrangements in a final peace deal involved sticking it to Israel. Obama said, "The full and phased withdrawal of Israeli military forces should be coordinated with the assumption of Palestinian security responsibility in a sovereign, non-militarized state."

  

What does that mean "with the assumption of Palestinian security responsibility?"

 

 It means we have to assume everything will be terrific.

 

 All of this means is that if Prime Minister Netanyahu was planning to be nice to Obama, and pretend that everything is terrific with the administration, he should just forget about it. He needn't attack Obama. Let the Republicans do that.

 

 But both in his speech to AIPAC and his address to Congress, he should very forthrightly tell the truth about the nature of the populist movements in the Middle East, the danger of a nuclear Iran, the Palestinians' commitment to Israel's destruction; the lie of the so-called peace process; the importance of standing by allies; and the critical importance of a strong Israel to US national security.

  

He has nothing to gain and everything to lose by playing by the rules that Obama is trying to set for him.

Ken Berwitz

Here, courtesy of MEMRI.org, are excerpts of a Friday night sermon given by hamas' former minister of culture, and broadcast over hamas' al-aqsa TV station just one month ago.

CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO.

To refresh your memory:

-hamas is a terrorist organization specifically committed to the destruction of Israel through jihad and the annihilation of Jews. 

-The last time there were "free elections" held in the so-called Palestinian Territories, hamas won a majority of seats in what passes for the Palestinian Arab parliament, but the fatah party kept the presidency. 

-That was not good enough for hamas, which thereupon violently overthrew the government in Gaza, violently tossed out all fatah elected officials and took it all over (do they ever do anything without violence?). 

-But in the past few months, fatah has "made peace" with hamas and now says they are on the same page - which is to say that fatah is ok with the destruction of Israel through jihad and the annihilation of Jews (as if they weren't beforehand).

This is who President Obama demands that Israel give the west bank and East Jerusalem to.  In return for what?  Nothing tangible at all; only a promise of recognition - which, the last 44 years has taught everyone but the politically blind and deaf, will never come.

How can any supporter of Israel - Jew or non-Jew - trust, or support, or vote for Barack Obama?

Ken Berwitz

CBS News made President Obama's call for Israel to recede to its 1967 borders a major story.

NBC's Today Show did not include it as a lead story, or the second or the third lead at the beginning of its broadcast and only mentioned it 9 minutes in.

Good Morning America gave it one sentence at 7:15.

What's wrong with CBS?  Didn't it get the message?

Ken Berwitz

Here is congressperson Allen West's response to President Obama's love song to Palestinian Arabs at the expense of Israel:

Thank you congressperson West.  You understand perfectly.

Too bad the President of the United States doesn't - not because he is incapable of knowing, but because he flat-out doesn't want to.

Ken Berwitz

In the neverending effort by Joanne Kloppenburg and her union/student activist/left wing pals to overturn the result of the vote for State Supreme Court, we have this:

4/5/2011 General Election, recount as of 9:45 am 5/19/2011
Source - Government Accountability Board
Total reporting units -	3,602
Reporting units recounted -	3,545
% reporting units recounted -	98.42%
Unofficial Prosser lead (deficit) -	7,006
Unofficial Prosser lead change -	(310)

What will they try next?  You can bet there will be something.

Stay tuned.

Ken Berwitz

Excerpted from today’s Associated Press article:

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama is endorsing the Palestinians' demand for their future state to be based on the borders that existed before the 1967 Middle East war, in a move that will likely infuriate Israel. Israel says the borders of a Palestinian state have to be determined through negotiations.

That's right.  Back to 1967.  Back to a border that, at one point, leaves Israel only 9 miles wide. 

A complete give-back of all the land Israelis died for, while fighting people unequivocally committed to its annihilation. 

A complete "do-over" in which those same countries - still unequivocally committed to Israel's annihilation, and now with far more sophisticatedly armed Palestinian Arabs to help it along - get all the cards, while Israel gets none.

To my Jewish and non-Jewish friends and relatives who support Israel and voted for Barack Obama:

NOW do you get it?

Why the hell did you think this man spent almost 20 years in a Jew-hating, Israel-hating Reverend’s church? Because he SUPPORTED Israel? 

The worst part?  At least some of the people I am talking to STILL will work triple-overtime to figure out a rationale that they can use to explain this away, so they don't have to admit they should never have voted for him.  And at least some will come up with a "reason", however ridiculous and self-destructive, to vote for him again in 2012.

They are the hopeless ones.  And I don’t know how to reach them.  I doubt it is even possible.

Ken Berwitz

I was reading through freerepublic.com (as I do every day), and came upon this comparison, posted by someone using the name "no gnu taxes".  I thought you might want to see it.  (Other than titles, the bold print is the poster's not mine):

George W. Bush speech after capture of Saddam:

"The success of yesterday's mission is a tribute to our men and women now serving in Iraq . The operation was based on the superb work of intelligence analysts who found the dictator's footprints in a vast country. The operation was carried out with skill and precision by a brave fighting force. Our servicemen and women and our coalition allies have faced many dangers in the hunt for members of the fallen regime, and in their effort to bring hope and freedom to the Iraqi people. Their work continues, and so do the risks. Today, on behalf of the nation, I thank the members of our Armed Forces and I congratulate 'em."

Barack Obama speech after killing of bin Laden:

"And so shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda, even as we continued our broader efforts to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat his network. Then, last August, after years of painstaking work by our intelligence community, I was briefed on a possible lead to bin Laden. It was far from certain, and it took many months to run this thread to ground. I met repeatedly with my national security team as we developed more information about the possibility that we had located bin Laden hiding within a compound deep inside of Pakistan. And finally, last week, I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action, and I authorized an operation to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice.Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad , Pakistan."

I assume you don't need me to explain the difference.

The 2012 elections cannot come fast enough.

Ken Berwitz

Another day, has gone by with our wonderful "neutral" media virtually ignoring the fact that almost 1,400 waivers have been issued  for "ObamaCare" so far, that they are disproportionately being given to labor unions (who have in the past, and presumably will in the future, reciprocate with money and manpower for the Obama administration), and that about 20% of the last bunch (38 of 204) were just handed out specifically within Obama BFF Nancy Pelosi's congressional district.

This is not a small scandal.  This is not even a big scandal.  This is a scandal of epic proportion.

We are now hearing demands from conservative media and the blogosphere for an accounting of who else has asked for waivers - and which requests have been denied.  There is little doubt that the reason for demanding this information is to confirm what common sense should already have told us:  dispensation from ObamaCare is being used as a payout by this thoroughly corrupt, dishonest administration. 

And how are they getting away with it?  Sadly, Obama & Co. are relying on the media to protect them by not reporting how many waivers have been doled out or who did and did not get them.  Predictably, given the state of journalism in this country today, most mainstream media have been happy to oblige.

Debra Saunders, one of the few non-leftists at the San Francisco Chronicle, emailed Nancy Pelosi's office to ask about the waivers her district received.

Here is the remarkable response she got back from Drew Hammill, one of Ms. Pelosi's staff members:

"It is pathetic that there are those who would be cheering for Americans to lose their minimum health coverage or see their premiums increase for political purposes. These waivers are reviewed and granted solely by the Administration in an open and transparent process so workers currently enrolled in 'mini-med' policies like those in San Francisco and across the country will not be punished and lose the minimum coverage they already have. These waivers will be eliminated in 2014 when Americans will have an opportunity to shop for affordable coverage on the health exchanges and will no longer be at the mercy of insurance companies placing coverage limits on policies. The complaints coming from this crowd that supports ending Medicare is just another example of putting politics first."

I do not know Drew Hammill.  But, if he actually wrote this, he is a man who must think the average IQ of whoever is going to read it ranges from about 25 to 28.

Why would dozens and dozens of San Francisco businesses, some of which are elite, upper-end enterprises catering to the rich and famous, need dispensation from ObamaCare?  Why, if ObamaCare is such a great system (it certainly was touted as one by Mr. Pelosi) would they want to get such a waiver?  Why would it be necessary for the waivers to last 3 years?  Who believes that they will expire in 2014 anyway? 

Most importantly, who in their right mind would believe that almost 20% of the total batch of waivers going to Ms. Pelosi's district is a random result, unrelated to any payoff for Pelosi and her pals? 

There are 435 congressional districts.  With a total of 204 new waivers, on a purely random basis each individual district would have slightly less than a 50/50 chance of getting one of them.  This district got 38 of them.

And what basis does Hammill have for sneering out that the selection process was done transparently?  Does he have a list of waiver applicants, where they are located, along with who did and didn't get a waiver?  Because, if so, he's the only one outside of the administration who does.

That, folks, is what a compromised media does to us.   It enables the Drew Hammills of the world to barf out absolute pig slop, secure in the knowledge that, since they will not be challenged, they don't even have to try to make it look credible.

Then these so-called "journalists" wonder why people call them biased?  Maybe that is where the IQs of 25 to 28 kick in.

Ken Berwitz

In honor of Katie Couric finishing her stint as CBS News anchor (her final broadcast is tomorrow), the Media Research Center put together this 3 1/2 minute tribute to the "neutrality" she was so renowned for displaying. 

Here it is:

In case you ever wondered why CBS, mired in the #3 spot the day Ms. Carwre..er, Couric took over, has become mired even further in the #3 position during her time as anchor, I am hopeful that this will serve as a clear explanation.

Ken Berwitz

Can someone - anyone - tell me why Harvard and Princeton were fighting over who would get Cornel West as a faculty member? 

I have never heard Mr. West say anything that displayed more than nominal intelligence.  But I certainly have heard him talk racism.  In fact, that is virtually all I have ever heard him talk.  And I don't mean this as a sarcastic exaggeration;  I'm dead serious.  Racism seems indelibly etched into everything this man says and thinks.

Here is the latest wit and wisdom of Mr. West - this time directed at Barack Obama for not being leftward enough, and especially for not being "Black" enough, to suit his tastes.  It comes to us via excerpts from Krissah Thompson's article in the Washington Post:

The well-known Princeton professor and author, who has released rap albums and starred in Hollywood films, supported Obama in the 2008 presidential campaign but now calls the president a “black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats.”

“I was thinking maybe he has at least some progressive populist instincts that could become more manifest after the cautious policies of being a senator,” West told Chris Hedges in an interview for the liberal political blog Truthdig.

Focusing on Obama and race, West said: “I think my dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men . . . It’s understandable. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he’s always had to fear being a white man with black skin. All he has known culturally is white. He is just as human as I am, but that is his cultural formation.”

What sickening racist vomit. 

But what do you expect from a sickening racist who never seems to see anything in non-racial terms. 

There are people I disagree with politically and philosophically whom I can still respect for their intellect and the quality of their arguments (I cheerfully acknowledge that there are very smart people who don't think the way I do).  But I can honestly say that I rarely hear anything from Cornel West that sounds intelligent.  It appears to me that his educational attributes are overwhelmed by his personal prejudices.

This is what Harvard and Princeton were fighting over?  Now that is pathetic.

Ken Berwitz

Male circumcision has been a Jewish requisite since biblical times.  It was commanded to Abraham by God (Genesis 17: 1-14).  The key portion of these passages is:

This is My covenant between Me, and between you and your offspring that you must keep: You must circumcise every male. You shall be circumcised through the flesh of your foreskin. This shall be the mark of the covenant between Me and you.

Now, via referendum, San Francisco is attempting to ban circumcision - which is to say San Francisco is attempting to ban an imperative of Judaism.

Forget the health benefits of circumcision.  Forget the fact that about 80% of all males born in the United States are circumcised (Jews comprise only about 2%).  This has nothing to do with health or general acceptance.

This is just what you'd expect from a city with local and congressional representation that is barely to the right of socialism/marxism - a city where hatred of religion is literally celebrated.  Now, for some reason (maybe just generic religion-hatred, maybe as punishment for the inconvenience and unfairness of Israel's continued existence, I don't know) some of the lunatics who thrive in this left wing cesspool are going after Jews.

I hope my Jewish friends and relatives in the San Francisco metro area are enjoying the circus.  I hope they are asking themselves how many of the "public servants" who either are not speaking out against this referendum or are supporting it outright they have helped vote into office. 

You reap what you sow.  Enjoy it.

Ken Berwitz

Investors Business Daily has put up an editorial questionning why so many mainstream media venues are sacrificing their journalistic ethics to suck up to President Obama - and warning them that it is fraught with danger.

IBD is right, of course.

Here are some key excerpts.  And please pay special attention to the last part, which I have put in bold print:

The Obama administration has picked another fight with a dissident newspaper, kicking the Boston Herald out of the press pool on an unprecedented claim that its coverage is unfair. Who died and elected them judge?

If the mainstream media had any gumption at all, they would vigorously protest the strange, new self-appointed arbiter of "fair" press coverage as an implicit threat to their own capacity to cover the news fairly.

 

What the White House has done by telling the Boston Herald it can no longer send a pool reporter to cover local campaign events on behalf of the media is another baby step toward state control of the media, using the carrot of access against the stick of exile.

 

As it stands, the Boston Herald is on its own, with its media colleagues in other organizations largely silent as a vindictive White House press office gets away with determining what's "fair."

 

It's part of an ever-widening pattern of media abuse.

 

Just two weeks ago, the White House duked it out with the San Francisco Chronicle, a lefty paper in a lefty town but one with an independent voice.

 

Chronicle reporter Carla Marinucci was threatened with the same booting the Herald got because of White House displeasure at her filming of a bunch of looney left protestors improbably criticizing Obama.

 

Meanwhile, an Orlando Sentinel pool reporter was stuffed into a closet and held against his will on the Joe Biden campaign trail, while the Pleasanton (Calif.) Weekly was warned by the White House its coverage of first lady Michelle Obama was insufficiently flattering.

 

The media silence over these repeated violations of press freedom is baffling. Can the fact that 30 mainstream media outlets have been co-opted by $48 million in spending by George Soros, a top campaign ally of President Obama, have something to do with this?

 

Or is the urge to fawn over Obama more important than covering the news without fear or favor?

 

The one thing that's obvious is that the media continue to take it with little push-back. And as they do, the bouncers of the White House press office grow bolder.

Can you even begin to imagine the outrage -- the howling, editorializing, daily featuring, MSNBC-apoplectic outrage -- if this were the Bush administration?

What is wrong with these people?  Don't they understand that what goes around comes around?  What do they think will happen to them if they decide at some point in time that they do not like what President Obama is doing?

The end of Martin Niemöeller's classic warning says it all:

"Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me"

Smart guy, that Niemöeller.  Today's "journalists could learn a lot from him.  I wonder if they're capable of doing so.

Ken Berwitz

Weeks ago we were assured that Jerome Corsi's book, "Where's The Birth Certificate", was DOA, because President Obama ended the issue by putting out the long-form version.  Since what Mr. Obama showed us was true, real, and nobody could ever challenge its veracity, the logic went, Corsi had a white elephant on his hands.

Was that right?

Here, weeks later, is how it is doing on Amazon:

                               Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #52 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

                                             #1 in Books > Nonfiction > Law > One-L

                                             #1 in Books > Nonfiction > Government

                                             #1 in Books > Nonfiction > Law > Constitutional Law

There's an answer in there somewhere.....

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

UPDATE:  It is now 7:15 AM Thursday morning, and here are the latest rankings:

                  Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #18 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

                                #1 in Books > Nonfiction > Law > One-L

                                #1 in Books > Nonfiction > Government

                                #1 in Books > Nonfiction > Law > Constitutional Law

That's some white elephant.....

Ken Berwitz

If there is a bigger hypocrite in media than Chris Matthews, I have not come across that person.

Here is part of yesterday's ongoing, daily tidal wave of vitriol from Mr. Legthriller.  Referencing Sarah Palin, he said:

"I think Sarah Palin proved herself to be, I think she’s proven herself to be profoundly stupid. Her inability to answer the questions of Katie Couric. Her inability even now to explain that she ever reads anything. Her absolute failure to begin studying and get serious about running for president. She’s shown no effort at doing any homework or understanding of the issues like the economy or science or the world. No effort, and she’s running for president. I don’t believe that she’d be at all helpful to our republic."

Isn't Chris Matthews the same guy who, just months ago, spent all that time decrying incivility and heated political rhetoric?

This, folks, is what passes for intelligent commentary from Chris Matthews.  Or, put another way, he has sunk so low that, within his current capacity, it is intelligent commentary.

And, incredibly, given the rest of its prime time hosts - Cenk Uygur, Lawrence O'Donnell, Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz - Matthews comes across as comparatively mild-spoken and reasonable.

How proud Comcast must be to have acquired such an elevated level of, er, talent.

Ken Berwitz

You might remember the name Ted Rall.  He is a cartoonist and a writer.  He is also about as far left a "thinker" as you can find on this side of Marx (if, in fact he is on this side of Marx).

Mr. Rall has a complaint about our wonderful "neutral" media.  And, improbable though it may seem, his complaint is the same as mine - that they are woefully compromised in favor of Barack Obama.

How would we two come to the same conclusion on a subject like that?  Well, if you read this blog you certainly know where I'm coming from.  So here, excerpted from his latest commentary, is Rall's reasoning:

There's been a push among political cartoonists to get our work into the big editorial blogs and online magazines that seem poised to displace traditional print political magazines like The Progressive. In the past, editorial rejections had numerous causes: low budgets, lack of space, an editor who simply preferred another creator's work over yours.

Now there' s a new cause for refusal: Too tough on the president.

I've heard that from enough "liberal" websites and print publications to consider it a significant trend.

A sample of recent rejections, each from editors at different left-of-center media outlets:

· "I am familiar with and enjoy your cartoons. However the readers of our site would not be comfortable with your (admittedly on point) criticism of Obama."

· "Don't be such a hater on O and we could use your stuff. Can't you focus more on the GOP?"

· "Our first African-American president deserves a chance to clean up Bush's mess without being attacked by us."

I have many more like that.

What's weird is that these cultish attitudes come from editors and publishers whose politics line up neatly with mine. They oppose the bailouts. They want us out of Afghanistan and Iraq. They disapprove of Obama's new war against Libya. They want Obama to renounce torture and Guantánamo.

Obama is the one they ought to be blackballing.  He has been a terrible disappointment to the American left.  He has forsaken liberals at every turn.  Yet they continue to stand by him.  Which means, in effect, they are not liberals at all.  They are militant Democrats.  They are Obamabots.

As long as Democrats win elections, they are happy.  Nevermind that their politics are the same as, or to the right of, Republicans.

“So what should I think of the war in Libya?” asks Kevin Drum in Mother Jones.  “If it had been my call I wouldn’t have gone into Libya.  But the reason I voted for Obama in 2008 is because I trust his judgment.  And not in any merely abstract way, either:  I mean that if he and I were in a room and disagreed about some issue on which I had any doubt at all, I’d literally trust his judgment over my own.  I think he’s smarter than me, better informed, better able to understand the consequences of his actions, and more farsighted.”

Mr. Drum, call your office.  Someone found your brain in the break room.

Barack Obama and the Democrats have made it perfectly clear that they don’t care about the issues and concerns that I care about.  Unlike Kevin Drum, I think–I know-I’m smarter than Barack Obama.  I wouldn’t have made half the mistakes he has.

So I don’t care about Obama.  Or the Democrats.  I care about America and the world and the people who live in them.

Hey, Obamabots:  When the man you support betrays your principles, he has to go-not your principles.

In other words, Rall is complaining that mainstream media is comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks who are perfectly willing to compromise their standards to protect Democrats in general and President Obama in particular. 

And he must be right, mustn't he?  I mean he knows he's smarter than Barack Obama and would not have made half the mistakes Obama has.....

Welcome to the club, Ted.  I still disagree with just about everything you say.  But I think-I know-you'll be a most unusual member.

Ken Berwitz

Here’s a story about george soros, excerpted from Dan Gainor’s article at Fox News, that you won’t see quoted very much in other media.

Read what Mr. Gainor has uncovered, and you’ll understand why:

It’s a scene journalists dream about – a group of coworkers toasting a Pulitzer Prize. For the team at investigative start-up ProPublica, it was the second time their fellow professionals recognized their work for journalism’s top honor.

For George Soros and ProPublica’s other liberal backers, it was again proof that a strategy of funding journalism was a powerful way to influence the American public.

It’s a strategy that Soros has been deploying extensively in media both in the United States and abroad. Since 2003, Soros has spent more than $48 million funding media properties, including the infrastructure of news – journalism schools, investigative journalism and even industry organizations.

And that number is an understatement. It is gleaned from tax forms, news stories and reporting. But Soros funds foundations that fund other foundations in turn, like the Tides Foundation, which then make their own donations. A complete accounting is almost impossible because a media component is part of so many Soros-funded operations.
This information is part of an upcoming report by the Media Research Centers Business & Media Institute which has been looking into George Soros and his influence on the media.

It turns out that Soros’ influence doesn’t just include connections to top mainstream news organizations such as NBC, ABC, The New York Times and Washington Post. It’s bought him connections to the underpinnings of the news business. The Columbia Journalism Review, which bills itself as “a watchdog and a friend of the press in all its forms,”  lists several investigative reporting projects funded by one of Soros foundations.

The “News Frontier Database” includes seven different investigative reporting projects funded by Soros’ Open Society Institute. Along with ProPublica, there are the Center for Public Integrity, the Center for Investigative Reporting and New Orleans’ The Lens. The Columbia School of Journalism, which operates CJR, has received at least $600,000 from Soros, as well.

Imagine if conservative media punching bags David and Charles Koch had this many connections to journalists. Even if the Kochs could find journalists willing to support conservative media (doubtful), they would be skewered by the left.

I blog a lot about how partisan, how leftwardly biased, our media are.  Does this go at least some distance toward explaining why?  Sadly, I would think the answer has to be yes.

My advice is to remember what Mr. Gainor has uncovered every time you read a report from one of the media sources mentioned in this piece – which is to say pretty much every time you read a report, period. 

Then join me in lamenting what has happened to journalism in this country.

Ken Berwitz

I don't know for sure if the long form birth certificate that suddenly, out of nowhere, was offered up by Barack Obama is real or a forgery.

But I do know that what you are about to read below, which was written by Douglas Vogt - an author, geologist and expert in typesetting and scanning techniques - raises questions that, if we had a truly neutral media or anything remotely resembling one, would be investigated 8 ways from Sunday (if you have trouble seeing it, click here):

Obamas Cert of Birth_May-10-2011_News Release  

There's the evidence.  Decide for yourself.  Then you can wonder why, instead of conducting even the most cursory investigation, our media have buried this so deep you'd need deep water oil drilling equipment to find it.

Ken Berwitz

Here, in its entirety, is a commentary from Einat Wilf, a member of Israel's knesset (congress). I won't add a thing - all I ask is that you read it and decide for yourself if it makes any sense. 

For the Palestinians' sake

By EINAT WILF 
05/17/2011 23:29

As long as they continue to divert their own country-building resources into hoping for Israel's disappearance, they will have no state.

Initial indications suggest that in his upcoming Middle East policy speech, President Barack Obama will ask the Palestinians to recognize Israel, but not as the homeland of the Jewish people. It seems that the US president believes – as some suggest – that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people, is merely a hawkish ploy to avoid negotiations and a sad mark of Israel’s low self-confidence that it needs the Palestinians – of all people – to tell it what it is.

But the prime minister’s demand is neither of those things. It is the one core demand that, once met, will mean that peace is truly possible. Indeed, Israel does not need Palestinian recognition of its identity as the Jewish state. Those who have dreamt, founded and built it have done so with one purpose in mind: to create a homeland for the Jewish people. It is Israel’s raison d’être. Rather, it is the Palestinians – for their own sake and dignity – who need to recognize this.

Zionism has been a political movement of self-determination for the Jewish people. The Palestinian national movement was about resisting Zionism and its program of building a state. In the process of resisting, and given the continued failure of resistance, the Palestinians have told themselves a story according to which Zionism is a colonial movement that has brought strangers to their land, strangers who – faced with determined resistance – are destined, sooner or later, to leave it. In doing so, the Palestinians might have been telling themselves a comforting story of hope, but one that they had better discard if they are ever to have a state of their own.

Hope is generally considered a positive word, but if it prevents engagement with reality while living in suspended anticipation of some make-believe future that will never materialize, then it is neither positive nor helpful. Those who feed this hope do the cause of peace and Palestinian statehood no favor.

Zionism, unlike colonial movements, was a movement of people who were coming home. As such, it was not about exploiting the (nonexistent) resources of a foreign land, but about exploiting the only resources the Jewish people ever had – their own brains and ingenuity – in order to build one, literally from the ground up.

Building a country requires the mobilization of a people.

As long as the Palestinians continue to divert their own country-building resources into resisting Israel and hoping for its disappearance (and yes, hoping that Israel will become a country with a Jewish minority among Arabs is hoping for its disappearance), there will be no peace, and they will have no state.

And yet, should the Palestinians finally recognize that in creating the state of Israel, the Jewish people have come home, they will signal to the world, to Israel, and above all to themselves, that they have chosen to leave behind the siren call of resistance and are ready to get down to