Ken Berwitz

I've invented a new word.  carvillity.  It is "civility", as practiced by James Carville, the sneering, insulting Democrat hatchet man, who many in our wonderful "neutral media love to smile indulgently at while attacking Karl Rove unmercifully.

Here are excerpts from Mr. Carville's email, this morning, to the Democratic faithful:

Dear XXXX,
 
FEC deadline is midnight, and here’s a number to ponder: 90%. It’s so important, you should tattoo it backwards on your forehead so you read it every time you brush your teeth:

• 90% of donations to Karl Rove’s American Crossroads this year came from 3 billionaire donors bent on destroying President Obama.
• 90% of donations to the DSCC come from grassroots supporters.

American Crossroads has 3 important donors. The DSCC’s got half a million. And every one of those donors needs to give by midnight if we’re going to defend our 4-seat majority.
 
Your decision right now – whether to click or not – determines whether we have the money to invest in key races. If we meet our goals, we can hold the Senate and stop their sick Republican agenda. But if Rove wins, you got Big Oil writing energy policy, Big Insurance handling your health care, and you can kiss Medicare goodbye.
 
Your choice, folks. You know what you need to do.

I checked to see if Mr. Carville's 90% claim for Karl Rove's group is correct.  And there certainly is a basis for it.  According to a report by Michael Isikoff at NBC News, American Crossroads received about $3,800,000 over the first 6 months of 2011, with $3,500,000 coming from three billionaires.

Are you impressed?  Well, before you answer, read this from last week's article by Chuck Neubauer of the Washington Times:

A small tax-exempt political group with ties to wealthy liberals like billionaire financier George Soros has quietly helped elect 11 reform-minded progressive Democrats as secretaries of state to oversee the election process in battleground states and keep Republican “political operatives from deciding who can vote and how those votes are counted.”

 

Known as the Secretary of State Project (SOSP), the organization was formed by liberal activists in 2006 to put Democrats in charge of state election offices, where key decisions often are made in close races on which ballots are counted and which are not.

 

One of the SOSP’s financial backers is Mr. Soros, the billionaire hedge-fund operator who spent $27 million in 2004 in an unsuccessful effort to defeat President George W. Bush. Mr. Soros spent $5.1 million in the 2008 election supporting Democratic candidates and causes. In 2008, he gave $10,000 to SOSP.

 

SOSP’s founders include Michael Kieschnick, a Democracy Alliance member who also is president of a telecommunications company that donates to progressive nonprofit groups; James Rucker, former director of Soros-supported MoveOn.org, a stridently anti-Bush group known for its ads comparing Mr. Bush to Adolf Hitler; and Becky Bond, former director at ActBlue, a political committee that bills itself as “the nation’s largest source of funds for Democrats,” whose contributors include Mr. Soros.

 

Democracy Alliance members who gave to SOSP include furniture company heir John R. Hunting; computer company executive Paul Rudd; medical-supply firm heiress Pat Stryker; venture capitalist Nicholas Hanauer; ex-Clinton administration official Rob Stein; Tides Foundation founder Drummond Pike; real estate developer Robert Bowditch; charitable foundation co-chairman Scott Wallace; clothing executive Susie Tompkins Buell; real estate developer Albert Dwoskin; child psychologist Gail Furman; and Taco Bell heir Rob McKay.

 

Ms. Furman also is president of the Furman Foundation, a major donor to the Soros-backed Tides Center, which has provided more than $300 million to “progressive” causes.

 

The SOSP also used ActBlue to help raise funds for itself and its candidates from Democratic donors nationwide. ActBlue says it has raised more than $190 million online for Democratic candidates since 2004.

 

Mr. Soros and several SOSP contributors also are part of a small group of wealthy liberals who have been among the top donors to 527 organizations set up to mobilize Democratic voters in recent years.

Yep.  Unlike Republicans, Democrats sure are funded only by the little guy.  Right?  Er.....right?

Now add in the fact that george soros, alone - before we get to any of the other mega-rich Democrats mentioned above - contributed $27 MILLION DOLLARS IN 2004 to defeat then-President Bush, and TENS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS SINCE THEN to indoctrinate the USA on behalf of Democrats. 

Y'know, a feller just might get the idea that James Carville left a little something out of his email..

So tell me:  After reading this, are you impressed with the claims James Carville has made, or do you see his "carvillity" as a pathetic, hypocritical joke?

I'd say the answer is pretty clear.

Ken Berwitz

12 and 13. Remember those numbers:

-Why 12?  Because the new jobless data have just been released and, for the 12th straight week, initial claims for unemployment benefits have topped 400,000.  The latest number is 428,000 which, according to Reuters, is above the estimates of 420,000.  (I would like to thank Reuters for not calling the difference "unexpected".)

-Why 13?  Because President Obama has gone golfing every one of the past 13 weeks, and it is an excellent bet he'll do so this July 4th weekend as well.

I admit that there is no actual connection between these two numbers.  But if President George Bush were golfing every weekend through an entire quarter year of ugly joblessness numbers, I know as sure as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west that our wonderful "neutral" media would be citing it as proof that he was insensitive to unsuccessful job-seekers.  So I thought I'd do the same when the President's name is Barack Obama.

Ken Berwitz

Steve Gilbert, who writes the www.sweetness-light.com web site, is a master at saying a lot in very few words.  He's much better than I am at it, and I envy his talent.

One case in point is Steve's explanation of the Boeing problem - i.e. the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) lawsuit aimed at preventing Boeing from opening a plant in South Carolina rather than Washington state, because South Carolina won't require the company to use union labor.

You may at this point be wondering what the NLRB's problem is.  You might be wondering what possible business it is of the NLRB if Boeing wants to relocate a plant where it can produce its planes less expensively.  The last time I checked South Carolina is still part of the United States and - at least I think - companies still have a right to relocate.

The problem, as Steve so capably points out, is that the Obama administration has stacked the NLRB with union flaks, who intend to tailor its decisions to a pro-union stance.  In other words, the NLRB is not operating as an arbiter, but as an advocate for one side.  Which makes it a fraud and a disgrace.

With that in mind, here is the beginning of Steve's blog, which intersperses the Associated Press report on this scandal with his commentary.  If you want to read the entire blog (and you certainly should) just click on its title:

AP: Boeing Dispute Is Headache For Obama

June 30th, 2011

From a terribly concerned (about Obama) Associated Press:

Boeing labor dispute turns into headache for Obama

By Sam Hananel, Associated Press Wed Jun 29, 2011

WASHINGTON – The government’s labor dispute with Boeing Co. is turning into a political headache for President Barack Obama, giving his Republican rivals a fresh opening to bash the administration’s economic policies.

Do we have a monarchy? Is everything now only to be viewed through the prism of how it will affect the king? In fact, isn’t this a much bigger headache for Boeing? And what about the Boeing workers in South Carolina, who barely rate a mention in this entire article?

Or what about the ramifications this has for every other company trying to do business in the US?

From congressional hearings to presidential debates, outraged Republicans are keeping up a steady drumbeat of criticism over the National Labor Relations Board’s lawsuit against the aerospace giant.

Do you see how those dastardly Republicans work? They try to use everything to their political advantage. Even a harmless little misunderstanding like this. They are just trying embarrass Mr. Obama.

Obama addressed the case for the first time on Wednesday, declining to criticize or openly support the actions of the independent federal agency. But he said "as a general proposition, companies need to have the freedom to relocate," though they must follow the law when doing so…

Never mind that Mr. Obama has stacked the NLRB with his union goons, so that "independent" is the last thing it is. Nevertheless, Obama pretends his hands are clean.

And of course our media lets him get away with it. In fact, they help him promote the lie.

The NLRB alleges that Boeing retaliated against its unionized work force in Washington state by opening a new production line for its 787 airplane in South Carolina, a right-to-work state. The agency is not seeking to shut down the new plant, but wants a judge to order Boeing to return all 787 assembly work to Washington…

Which of course is a distinction without a difference, since the South Carolina plant was only built to construct 787s.

The case — which could drag on for years — has become an unwanted distraction for Obama as he tries to mend relations with the business community and contend with polls that show growing public disapproval over his handling of the economy.

Which is to say Mr. Obama would have liked the NLRB to have forced Boeing to give in to the unions without anybody hearing about it. And, to be fair, the media did do all they could to keep this story out of the news.

Exactly.

Ken Berwitz

I don't agree with everything Ann Coulter says - particularly her generalizations about "liberals". 

But she is so good at capturing the essence of how intolerant and hypocritical some people on the left are, that it is more than worthwhile to post her comments about them.

As you may be aware, Glenn Beck took his family to New York's Bryant Park a couple of days ago to see a free movie.  While the Becks were there, they were verbally attacked by some number of self-righteous jerks, who evidently think themselves morally and intellectually superior to anyone to their political right (which usually is just about anyone to the right of Michael Moore).  Sadly, New York City is supersaturated with  people like this.

Here, excerpted from her latest column at townhall.com, is what Ms. Coulter has to say about it:

A liberal's idea of being a bad-ass is to say vicious things to a conservative public figure who can't afford to strike back. Getting in a stranger's face and hurling insults at him, knowing full well he has too much at risk to deck you, is like baiting a bear chained to a wall.

They are not only exploiting our lawsuit-mad culture, they are exploiting other people's manners. I know I'll be safe because this person has better manners than I do.

These brave-hearts know exactly what they can get away with. They assault a conservative only when it's a sucker-punch, they outnumber him, or he can't fight back for reasons of law or decorum.

Liberals don't get that when you're outnumbering the enemy 100-1, you're not brave.

But they're not even embarrassed. To the contrary, being part of the majority makes liberals feel great! Honey, wasn't I amazing? I stood in a crowd of liberals and called that conservative a c**t. Wasn't I awesome?

This is a liberal's idea of raw physical courage.

When someone does fight back, liberals transform from aggressor to victim in an instant, collapsing on the ground and screaming bloody murder. I've seen it happen in a nearly empty auditorium when there was quite obviously no other human within 5 feet of the gutless invertebrate.

People incapable of conforming to the demands of civilized society are frightening precisely because you never know what else such individuals are capable of. Sometimes -- a lot more often than you've heard about -- liberals do engage in physical violence against conservatives ... and then bravely run away.

That's why not one person stepped up to aid Beck and his family as they were being catcalled and having wine dumped on them at a nice outdoor gathering.

Most people are shocked into paralysis at the sight of sociopathic liberal behavior. The only ones who aren't are the conservative's bodyguards -- and they can't do anything without risking a lawsuit or an arrest.

As you can see, Coulter loves to stereotype liberal/leftists.  That is not good.

On the other hand, there are enough liberal/leftists who fit this stereotype like a glove, that I have to admit enjoying her generalizations. 

Maybe you do too.  Your call.

Ken Berwitz

Remember those protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square earlier this year?  Remember President Obama's demands that Hosni Mubarak step down as Egypt's head of state?

At that time, I blogged, probably over a dozen times, about the danger of Mubarak quickly leaving office - about how likely it would be that the Muslim brotherhood, an anti-USA, anti-Israel, fundamentalist terrorist group, would fill the void Mubarak's departure created.  And I was far from alone in doing so.

Well, Mubarak is gone.  And the Muslim brotherhood is poised to take over a substantial part of Egypt's government in what will pass for free elections there.  Maybe even the Presidency.

Obviously, given President Obama's status as a prime mover in this sequence of events, it would behoove his administration to do or say something about what is happening.  And it has.

Excerpted from Arshad Mohammed's article at Reuters - which, you will realize when reading it, is little more than a propaganda piece for the Muslim Brotherhood:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has decided to resume formal contacts with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, a senior U.S. official said on Wednesday, in a step that reflects the Islamist group's growing political weight but that is almost certain to upset Israel and its U.S. backers.

 

"The political landscape in Egypt has changed, and is changing," said the senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It is in our interests to engage with all of the parties that are competing for parliament or the presidency."

 

Under the previous policy, U.S. diplomats were allowed to deal with Brotherhood members of parliament who had won seats as independents -- a diplomatic fiction that allowed them to keep lines of communication open.

Where U.S. diplomats previously dealt only with group members in their role as parliamentarians, a policy the official said had been in place since 2006, they will now deal directly with low-level Brotherhood party officials.

 

Elliott Abrams, a deputy national security adviser handling Middle East affairs under former President George W. Bush, said he favored dropping the ban on formal contacts -- but approaching any actual dealings with great caution.

 

Abrams said positions espoused by some Brotherhood members -- such as favoring religious tests for public office, questioning the rights of women and limiting freedom of religion or speech -- were "anathema" to the United States.

 

The group says it wants a civil state based on Islamic principles, but talk by some members of an "Islamic state" or "Islamic government" have raised concerns that their goal is a state where full Islamic sharia law is implemented. The group says such comments have been taken out of context.

 

"It's critical ... that we make it very, very clear to Egyptians, if we are going to do a meeting, that we are no less opposed to the ideas they represent," Abrams said, noting that there are splits among Brotherhood members. 

Hosni Mubarak was no friend of the United States and no friend of Israel.  But he effectively worked with both. And, because of his efforts, Egypt has enjoyed 30 years of peace. 

Now Egypt will get a government which, at the very least, will be heavily influenced by the Muslim brotherhood, and maybe will be completely dominated by the group.

Arhsad Mohammed may have convinced himself that it is comprised of peaceful, religious folk, who only want a...what was that?...."civil state based on Islamic principles"   But, in my opinion, anyone who believes that is either hopelessly naive or a supporter of the Muslim brotherhood's real aims:  namely a shari'a law state and the demise of Israel.

I can't help thinking back to what one anguished woman who had been protesting in Tahrir Square said, weeks after Mubarak's fall:  "The guys with the beards are taking over".

Sadly, that is exactly what is happening.

I hope President Obama is pleased as punch about this.  People should always be proud of their accomplishments.

Ken Berwitz

President Obama declined to talk about Project Gunrunner/Operation Fast and Furious at today's press conference.

That elicited an angry outcry from the House Oversight & Government Reform Committee Chairman, Darrell Issa (R-CA), who has conducted hearings on this scandalous, probably murderous, fiasco - despite being stonewalled by the administration when requesting the relevant documents with which to conduct his investigation.

Excerpted from Jordy Yager's piece at thehill.com:

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) denounced President Obama for refusing to comment on a controversial gun-tracking program that is under investigation.

At a press conference Wednesday, Obama reiterated that Attorney General Eric Holder did not order the gun-tracking program, which was run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) and allowed known and suspected straw purchasers to buy thousands of weapons in hopes of tracking them to members of Mexican drug cartels.

Holder called for the Inspector General to investigate the matter to determine who approved of the operation. Obama said he would comment further on the issue once the investigation is completed.

“My attorney general has made clear that he certainly would not have ordered gun running to be able to pass through into Mexico,” Obama said.

“The investigation is still pending. I'm not going to comment on a current investigation. I've made very clear my views that would not be an appropriate step by the ATF, and we've got to find out how that happened.

“As soon as the investigation is completed, I think appropriate actions will be taken,” Obama said. 

Can President Obama possibly be telling us, with a straight face, that an operation involving the United States selling thousands of AK-47 assault rifles to Mexican drug cartels was some kind of middle management decision?  That it didn't come from him, or his Attorney General, maybe not even the head of ATF?

Anyone who believes this needs help.  Lots of it.

This is a scandal.  A huge scandal.  A scandal that has dead bodies at the end of it. 

A scandal that is not going away, no matter how much BS is shovelled out at us by Mr. Obama.

And where are our wonderful "neutral" media?  Why are they not demanding answers?

Well, it's President Obama.  That's O B A M A.  Got it?

There's your answer.

Ken Berwitz

In today's news conference, President Obama told us that his older daughter, Malia, was 13 years old.  Two different times.

In fact, she is 12.

What if President Bush had misstated his own child's age?  Or Sarah Palin?  Or Michele Bachmann?  Do you think the media would have a field day with it, telling us all what idiots they were.  Me too.

Now let's wait and hear how President Obama is skewered for it.  And wait.  And wait.  And wait............. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Ken Berwitz

Yesterday, Glenn Beck and his family went to Bryant Park to spread a blanket with other New Yorkers and watch a free movie.  During that time he was verbally assaulted and wine was poured on his wife. 

A woman speaking for the group which apparently was responsible for what happened, claims that Beck and his family were not abused at all.  She also said that, while it was true that wine was spilled, it was accidental.

I just read a full account of the incident at theblaze.com, complete with a great deal of information about the woman - whose name is Lindsey Piscitell.   Based on that information, I conclude that it is a virtual certainty she is a liar.

You can read it here, and decide for yourself.

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

NOTE:  Thanks to commenter zeke for advising me I messed up the link.  It is fixed now.

Ken Berwitz

I write this as someone who does not want Michele Bachmann to be the Republican candidate for President.  One reason is that she has no qualifications for the office.  There are other reasons, but I will stop there because my preference for a different candidate is not the purpose of this blog.

I am writing to detail the latest media hit against Ms. Bachmann, which occurred this morning on the Today Show (there may have been others since then, it is very hard to keep up with them).

First we had a report by Kelly O'Donnell, in which footage was shown of Bachmann introducing her husband.  At that point O'Donnell immediately informed viewers that the mental health clinics Mr. Bachmann runs are "under scrutiny".  The reason? 

“While Bachmann campaigns for less government spending, and opposes an expansion of Medicaid, NBC news has obtained state records that show the Bachmanns’ clinics received government funds; $137,000 in federal and state Medicaid payments since 2005…”

As O'Donnell imparted this obvious suggestion that the Bachmann's were money-grubbing hypocrites, she put up a graphic to dramatically bring home how much money, each year, the mental health clinics got.  The $137,000 was in large print.  And, unless viewers were paying full attention, they might not have realized that this amount was disbursed over a 7 year period, and came to less than $20,000 per year. 

Only then did O'Donnell tell viewers:

“that money (is) considered reimbursement for treatment provided to low-income patients”

and, 

“…that’s the kind of thing that many health clinics do do, and there’s no suggestion that there is anything improper about that....

At this point you might be wondering why - if the amount was so inconsequential, it was reimbursement for treatment of low-income patients, and, in any event, there is no suggestion of any impropriety - NBC would have reported it at all.  You might also be wondering why it was reported in such an insinuating way:  i.e. that big-print $137,000, immediately after showing footage of Ms. Bachmann's husband who runs the business.  

My answer is that NBC is a cesspool of left wing partisanship, which intends to torpedo Michele Bachmann just as intenesely as it torpedoed, and continues to torpedo, Sarah Palin. 

If you can come up with a better explanation, let's hear it. 

But before you try, you might want to consider the fact that the next segment, a discussion of O'Donnel'sl report, was conducted between Today host Ann Curry, and hard left, Republican hating Rachel Maddow.  No one else was included for balance, so there was no chance that two sides of the story would be heard.

And, guess what:  In the course of attacking Bachmann, Maddow said:

“We just heard in Kelly’s report there, Michele Bachmann trying to make this case that she’s a purist, tea party candidate despite the fact that she has this hypocrisy problem, in having benefitted herself from so much government spending”

In other words, immediately after O'Donnell's disclaimer that the reimbursements were perfectly typical and perfectly proper, Maddow suggested they were some kind of major windfall, and that the Bachmanns were hypocrites for accepting "so much government spending".

And with not one challenging word from Ann Curry.  What a surprise.

Incidentally, also during the Curry/Maddow segment:

-Maddow told us that Bachmann and Palin - two conservative women revered by the Tea Party movement - are not fighting for the same Republican voter segment (did you do a double-take on that?  I know I did); 

-She then told us that Chris Christie is nothing more than a self promoter who is auditioning for the Vice Presidential nod by branding himself as being rude.  Honest, she said that.  In reality, however, if you watched the Chris Christie video I put up yesterday, you heard him laughing disdainfully at the idea that a Presidential candidate would even consider him.  Christie said "the person who picked me as vice president would have to be sedated.  Seriously.  Forget it" and that he was "not vice presidential material".  That doesn't mean it couldn't happen, but it certainly is not what a man auditioning for the position would say; 

-Then, for good measure, Maddow also told Today viewers that Christie screamed (her emphasis, not mine) at "Gail", the woman who challenged him on school funding -- which is a blatant lie.  As you can see in the same video, Christie never even raised his voice to Gail.

I mention these facts not only to expose Maddow as a serial purveyor of ignorance and partisan crap, but to again emphasize that hers was the one and only analysis offered after Kelly O'Donnell's hit piece.  Do you consider that a fair hearing for Bachmann?  A chance for viewers to make an informed judgment?

My last point:  If you are troubled by the treatment afforded Ms. Bachmann and think it is an outrage, prepare to be ongoingly outraged by NBC, MSNBC and a ton more within our wonderful "neutral" media.

Everybody has to do something well.   And this is where they shine.

Ken Berwitz

Today, the Greek Parliament has passed a 5 year austerity plan, which includes a combination of almost 30 billion euros in spending cuts and higher taxes. 

This will satisfy Greece's international creditors (to the extent that they can be satisfied).  However, it is enraging Greek citizens who feel a) they have been sandbagged into expecting a raft of government-provided services that they will now have to get on their own, using their own resources while b) paying higher taxes, thus having less resources with which to procure them.

The austerity plan has caused significant riots for weeks, especially in Athens.  As a result of this vote, they will surely grow in size, and violence.

What's more, Greece is just the beginning.  This morning I heard an analyst say that it is now Italy's turn.  I didn't catch everything he said, but if he had included Ireland, Portugal and Spain as well, I would not have been surprised.

The European Union is in the process of falling apart, and the euro may well see an untimely end within the year.

It is like a vast, international game of dominoes.  Watch them fall, one after the other.

And, importantly, Europe is not the only place this can happen.  With the USA's trillion-plus deficits, high unemployment, and an administration that seems determined to drive business out of, rather than into, the country, who is to say we won't be next?

That's something worth thinking about today, tomorrow.....and, very especially, on election day.

Ken Berwitz

That title seems bizarre, doesn't it?  How can a cemetery - any cemetery except, say one created specifically by and for atheists - censor any mention of God from any service there?

And a Veteran's Affairs (VA) hospital doing so?  We all know that would be absolutely unthinkable. 

But we would be wrong.

Excerpted from Lindsay Wise's article in yesterday's Houston Chronicle:

Houston VA accused of censoring religious speech

Local veterans and volunteer groups accuse Department of Veterans Affairs officials of censoring religious speech — including the word "God" - at Houston National Cemetery.

In one example cited in documents filed this week in federal court, cemetery director Arleen Ocasio reportedly told volunteers with the National Memorial Ladies that they had to stop telling families "God bless you" at funerals and that they had to remove the words "God bless" from condolence cards.

"It's just unfair that somebody would ask us to take God out of our vocabulary," said Cheryl Whitfield, founder of Houston National Memorial Ladies.

The new allegations of "religious hostility" by VA and cemetery officials follow on the heels of a controversy over Pastor Scott Rainey's prayer in Jesus' name at a Memorial Day service in the cemetery.

U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes ruled May 26 that the government couldn't stop Rainey from using the words "Jesus Christ" in his invocation. Hughes issued a temporary restraining order to prevent VA from censoring Rainey's prayer.

Ocasio is on vacation and could not be reached for comment. Her assistant, Amanda Rhodes-Wharton, said she could not discuss the matter due to ongoing litigation.

According to court documents, Ocasio banned veterans organizations and volunteer groups from using certain religious words such as "God" or "Jesus," censored the content of prayer and forbade the use of religious messages in burial rituals unless the deceased's family submitted the text for prior approval.

The documents allege that VA prohibited volunteer honor guards from providing optional recitations to families for consideration, and that when burial teams conduct military honors for a veteran's funeral, a government official monitors what is said.

Chapel a 'meeting facility'

Court documents also describe the closure of the cemetery's chapel after Ocasio's appointment as director two years ago.

VA spokeswoman Jessica Jacobsen confirmed the chapel is closed but she said it has nothing to do with the litigation. "It was closed prior to Memorial Day, and it was closed because of construction," she said.

The chapel is scheduled to reopen in September when construction is complete, she said.

Jeff Mateer, general counsel for Liberty Institute, doesn't buy that explanation. The chapel's closure predates any construction, he said.

Hard to believe, isn't it? 

Maybe Ms. Ocasio would be kind enough to take a few moments from her conveniently-timed "vacation" and provide a list of what clergy can and cannot say to the friends and relatives of deceased military veterans.  Or does she intend to allow clergy in the cemetery at all?

If these allegations are true - and it certainly appears that they are - when Ocasio comes back from her "vacation" it should be to an unemployment line. 

And it seems to me that the VA itself, very especially including whoever hired Arleen Ocasio, has some serious explaining to do.

Ken Berwitz

In the past several weeks we have seen a scourge of Black flash mobs around the country - i.e. groups of young Black teens, sometimes pre-teens among them, who suddenly gather at one place, steal things and beat people, then disappear as quickly as they materialized, usually before police can be summoned.

Why is it happening?

Well, here, excerpted from Olivera Perkins' aritcle for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, is a very astute analysis, well worth considering:

The U.S. jobless rate in May was 9.1 percent. For teens 16-19 it was 24.2 percent. For black teens, the figure was 40.7 percent.

An even more troubling for many who have looked at black teen joblessness is something known as the employment-population ratio because it also reflects the teens who have given up looking for work. Only 28.2 percent of teens were in the workforce in May. For black teens it was 14.5 percent.

"We're reaching the point where it is not going to be able to go any lower," said Algernon Austin, director of the Race, Ethnicity and the Economy program at the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C.

Economists study teen unemployment because they say this type of joblessness can potentially have lifetime consequences. Jobless summers can leave plenty of idle time, sparking lawlessness. A string of jobless summers can leave young people unable to connect to the job market as adults.

Ken Berwitz

Over recent weeks, I have more or less stopped writing about Chris Matthews.  That is because he has gone so far off the deep end that it is something of a redundancy to keep saying so.

But sometimes he outdoes himself, so I have to point it out.  And his unbelievably idiotic comment about Michele Bachmann and slavery last night is a case in point.  

Here is the transcript of what Bachmann said, what Matthews said about it, and how an incredulous Michael Steele (MSNBC's house non-leftist) responded:

MICHELE BACHMANN: I want my candidacy for the presidency of the United States to stand for a moment when we, the people, stand once again for the independence from a government that has gotten too big and spends too much and has taken away too much of our liberties. Government thinks it knows better. Government thinks it knows better how to spend our money. Government thinks it knows better how to make a better life for us. They think they create jobs. They even think they can make us healthier, but that's not the case. We have to recapture the Founders' vision of a constitutionally conservative government if we are to secure the promise for the future.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: What is this, Michael? The Protestant Reformation? That somehow we're going back to the purity of the original Christian church? We're going back to the original perfection of slaveholders and how perfect they were and government is the enemy. She speaks pure Tea Party lingo.

MICHAEL STEELE: Well, she's like the Council of Trent for the Catholic Church.

MATTHEWS: Right. What is it she's going back to the purity of the old days?

STEELE: She's not going back to the purity of the old days.

MATTHEWS: Yes, she is.

STEELE: It's reminding us of some of the foundational principles.

STEELE: What? Slavery?

MATTHEWS: Well, that was in the original founding principles.

STEELE: Please, Chris. Stop. Stop jumping in. You know that's not what this is about. And the reality is, when I became chairman of the RNC in 2009, I inherited a party that was lost. Its moorings not anchored as they once were. And, so, you've have candidates now who have emerged out of the last two years who understand by going around the country and listening to the people what some of those foundational issues are for them. Let me speak to that.
                   
MATTHEWS: Okay, let's take Michael at his word. The foundational issues: Government is bad.

Earth to Chris Matthews:  President Obama has referenced our founding fathers numbers of times since becoming President.  Do you think that means he is big on "the original perfection of slaveholders" too?  

What a hopeless, doctrinaire jerk Matthews has become.  And what a hopeless venue MSNBC continues to be. 

When Comcast bought NBC, thus MSNBC, I assumed that it would stay well to the left, but was guardedly optimistic that there would be an effort to generate at least some level of evenhandedness in its hosts and its presentation of events.  But, clearly, I was wrong.

Sadly, in the world of MSNBC, Chris Matthews is no anomaly.  He is a middle-of-the-roader. 

And the funniest part is that he, and people like Cenk Uygur, Lawrence O'Donnell and Rachel Maddow call FOX News biased. 

It seems to me that Fox presents more diversity of opinion in an average prime time night than MSNBC does in an average week.

Ken Berwitz

As you probably know, there was an incident between Wisconsin supreme court justices Ann Walsh Bradley and David Prosser on June 13.  Bradley claims Prosser was choking her by the neck.  Prosser says he did no such thing, that Bradley was charging him and he put up his hands to push her back.

Will we ever know for sure what happened?  Nope, we will not.  But here are a few things we do know:

-The event, such as it was, occurred on June 13, and the first we heard of it was June 27.  If a man was physically choking a woman - in front of 4 or 5 other men and women - don't you think that charges would have been filed?  Or that, at the very least someone would have said something over the ensuing two weeks?

-Justice Bradley and her one identified supporting witness, chief justice Shirley Abrahamson, are both left wingers who do not like David Prosser -and the feeling is clearly mutual.

-The story was leaked to a george soros-funded "nonpartisan" venue (that's like saying a habañero pepper salad is "non-spicy" food) called the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, and bombed out to an unsuspecting public.

Now we have this update, excerpted from Christian Schneider's blog at National Review:

According to one witness, Bradley charged toward Prosser, shaking her clenched fist in his face. Another source says they were “literally nose to nose.” Prosser then put his hands up to push her away. As one source pointed out, if a man wants to push a woman who is facing him, he wouldn’t push her in the chest (unless he wants to face an entirely different criminal charge). Consequently, Prosser put his hands on Bradley’s shoulders to push her away, and in doing so, made contact with her neck.

 

At that moment, another justice approached Bradley from behind and pulled her away from Prosser, saying, “Stop it, Ann, this isn’t like you.” Bradley then shouted, “I was choked!” Another justice present replied, “You were not choked.” In a statement following the incident, Bradley maintained Prosser “put his hands around my neck in anger in a chokehold.”

 

On Monday night, Bradley called Capitol Police Chief Charles Tubbs to talk to him about the incident. On the morning of Wednesday, June 15, Tubbs joined the justices in a closed-door meeting, where he discussed “issues relating to workplace violence.”

 

During the meeting, Chief Justice Abrahamson actually reenacted the incident on Chief Tubbs — no doubt an amusing sight, as the diminutive Abrahamson mimicked choking the tall, portly police chief. During her demonstration, Abrahamson emphasized that Prosser had exerted “pressure” on Bradley’s throat.

 

“There was no pressure,” interrupted the justice who had initially broken up the incident between Bradley and Prosser. “That’s only because you broke us apart,” shot back Bradley. This exchange led several meeting attendees to believe Bradley was making up the charge, as they took her rejoinder as an admission that there was no pressure applied to her neck.

 

Furthermore, sources unanimously believed that it was Shirley Abrahamson who has been the impetus behind the story, managing the press operation from behind the scenes. Justices had been working together regularly since the incident without any signs of rancor until Abrahamson decided to make this an issue, sources believe.

Is it just me, or does this reek - abundantly - of a set-up?  

I don't know, of course.  But the aroma that is wafting by my nose is that Bradley and Abrahamson hate the fact that Prosser won - especially given his hair's breadth margin of victory, and are trying to pull a phony-balony stunt to discredit, undermine, and (they hope) remove him from the court.

If that is the case, I fervently hope not only that they fail, but that they be held to account for their actions. 

Ironically, this kind of behavior is almost certain to turn voters away from, rather than toward, the positions Bradley and Abrahamson favor.  Wouldn't it be something if this helped to turn Wisconsin, which has gone in recent years from blue to purple, into a red state?

To be continued.............

Ken Berwitz

Would you like to know what Chris Christie is about - not through the eyes of a journalist but in his own words?

If so, this 15 minute segment of "Morning Joe" will tell you.  And maybe it will also tell you why so many people are wishing he would run for the Presidency.

CLICK HERE, to watch and listen.  Then decide for yourself .

Ken Berwitz

Suppose you were a President, less than two years into your first term, with things going so shakily on both the economy and the foreign policy fronts that it could affect re-election prospects for you and members of your party's congressional delegation. 

Now also suppose you had a huge treasure-trove of voters - illegal voters - who (in the absence of serious Voter ID legislation) would probably be able to cast ballots,.

What to do, what to do...........

Well, here's a plan you might have dreamed up.  It comes to us excerpted from Susan Carroll's article in today's Houston Chronicle.  The bold print is mine:

Report: Feds downplayed ICE case dismissals

Documents show agency had approval to dismiss some deportation cases

Homeland Security officials misled the public and Congress last year in an effort to downplay a wave of immigration case dismissals in Houston and other cities amid accusations that they had created a "back-door amnesty," newly released records show.

The records, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, include a series of internal memos from Immigration and Customs Enforcement's chief counsel in Houston dated last August ordering attorneys to review all new, incoming cases and thousands already pending on the immigration court docket and to file paperwork to dismiss any that did not meet the agency's "top priorities." (Read the documents provided by the federal officials in response to a FOIA request  here.)

The secretive review process resulted in the dismissal of hundreds of cases in Houston, most of them involving illegal immigrants who had lived in the United States for years without committing serious crimes.

A string of emails shows the dismissals had the blessings of top attorneys at ICE headquarters in Washington, D.C., last summer and that other ICE legal offices across the country were encouraged to consider measures to better use the agency's limited resources to target dangerous criminals.

The records also document for the first time that the agency quietly rescinded the Houston memo on Aug. 25 — the day the Houston Chronicle broke the story on the dismissals — amid allegations from conservatives that the Obama administration had created a stealth amnesty program for illegal immigrants.

Great.  Just great.

-Immigration and Cusoms Enforcement (ICE) decides the law is not the law, and "prioritizes" which, and how many, illegals are going to be pursued.  Among the criteria are that they have not committed serious crimes (the implication being that criminals are acceptable, it is a matter of degree).  

-Then they lie about it. 

-Then they immediately rescind the order when the Houston Chronicle goes public with what they were up to.

Wouldn't you love to know what was deemed a non-serious crime - apart from the fact that illegally being in the US under any circumstances is a crime?

And wouldn't you love to know how many additional illegals were let off the hook in other ways - not just in Houston but throughout Texas and the rest of the country?

And wouldn't you love to know the names of the "top attorneys" who signed off on ignoring immigration law?

And wouldn't you love to know where these orders really emanated from?  How high up the food chain?  Like maybe all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

I certainly hope the Houston Chronicle keeps at it until every bit of this information is ferreted out.  Because if we wait for the rest of our wonderful "neutral" media to investigate...........etc. etc. etc. ad infinitum ad nauseam.

Ken Berwitz

While we're on the subject of what passes for "civility" these days, why stop at the Democrat Party?  Let's look at an example from the left wing "intellectual set" as well.

Here is New York Times columnist david carr, laughing it up on HBO's bill maher left-fest, "Real Time":

"If it's Kansas, Missouri, no big deal. You know, that's the dance of the low-sloping foreheads. The middle places, right? ...Did I just say that aloud?" (laughing)

And, just in case you think maher was behind carr's curve, he was nice enough to characterize Sarah Palin's daughter, Bristol, by saying "the shit doesn't fall far from the bat"  - to a raucously appreciative audience, of course.  God they are sophisticated.

But don't worry.  Our wonderful "neutral" media will be all over this, like they are on the "voter suppression"/against women/against medicare lies Democrats operatives are pumping out.  Right?

My opinion of these two?  bill maher is paid handsomely to work at being an outrageously insulting left wing horse's ass.  And he earns every penny.  But David Carr is paid to be an actual journalist.

If the New York Times had any integrity left, they would fire Carr today.  And that's no hyperbole on my part either.  How can a newspaper credibly publish this unbelievably insulting arrogant jackass after he said that on a televised cable show?

Let's see what happens.......

Ken Berwitz

Here, in the interests of exploring the art of "civility", are excerpts from the last two Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) emails that have been sent to prospective donors:

-J. B. Poersch, former head of the DSCC. Sunday June 26th:  I thought Republicans couldn’t get any worse. Boy, was I wrong. They’ve targeted Medicare and women’s rights. They voted to stall repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
 
And don’t even get me started on Republican dirty tricks. Texas, Wisconsin and Florida – among other states – recently passed laws that will suppress the Democratic vote. I guess if you can’t sell people on your policies (killing Medicare), then you just take away their right to do anything about it (such as sending these Republicans packing).

 

-John Kerry, U.S. Senator on behalf of the DSCC, Monday, June 27th:  The Republicans will sabotage the economy to win the Senate and defeat President Obama.

 

But we're fighting against the usual Republican playbook - slimeball attack ads and outright voter suppression.

Now there are two studies in civility.  Republicans have "targeted" medicare, women's rights, they're slimeballs and they are trying to suppress the vote. 

I'll just bet our wonderful "neutral" media, which were so fast to go after "incivility" and "heated political rhetoric" when they thought it could be pinned on Republicans, will be all over Democrats for these comments.

Sure, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz has decided to leave the Democrat Party to chair the Floridians For Bachmann Committee.....

By the way, in case you are unaware, the claim that Republicans are for voter suppression relates to their support for requiring Voter ID's, as a way of insuring that only legally eligible voters cast ballots. 

There is a problem with this claim, however:  namely that most Democrats support Voter ID too. 

Last month, Rasmussen Research conducted a national survey in which 75% of all respondents supported Voter ID, including 63% of all Democrats.  And before anyone dismisses this by claiming that Rasmussen is a Republican outfit, a poll conducted by the decidedly leftward Minneapolis Star-Tribune the month before, showed a 64% support level among Democrats in Minnesota.

Evidently Mr. Poersch and Mr. Kerry think Democrats favor voter suppression too.  But don't expect to see it mentioned on their next DSCC email.

Ken Berwitz

In case you needed another reason to wish that entertainment celebrities would not talk politics, we have this tribute to one-religion Islamic countries from the pop singer who calls himself Prince:

In an exclusive interview with the Guardian's Film&Music, Prince said: "It's fun being in Islamic countries, to know there's only one religion. There's order. You wear a burqa. There's no choice. People are happy with that." When asked about the fate of those unhappy with having no choice, he replied: "There are people who are unhappy with everything. There's a dark side to everything."

Yep, fun for all.  None of that diversity you find in, say, the United States.  Which, of course is why Prince renounced his US citizenship and moved to a one-religion Islamic countr.....er, what's that you say?  He didn't do any such thing?  How can that be?

For their own sake, I wish the "Princes" of the world would do us all a favor, and just shut up. 

At the very least, their silence would make them sound a lot brighter.

Ken Berwitz

In case you are wondering about the high regard the United States is held in, by countries we pour billions upon billions of dollars into, and fight and die for, we have this excerpt from Patrick Goodenough's piece at cnsnews.com:

U.N. Chief Endorses U.S.-Bashing ‘Anti-Terror’ Conference Hosted by Iran

 U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has come under fire for apparently endorsing an “anti-terrorism conference” hosted by Iran, at which the United States and Israel repeatedly were attacked and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reprised his 9/11 conspiracy claims.

 

Also attending the two-day event this past weekend in Tehran were leaders of three of the top six recipients of U.S. aid in fiscal year 2010 – Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

 

According to Iranian state media and the “International Conference on the Global Fight Against Terrorism” Web site, a message from Ban was read out at the event, expressing the hope that the conference would “attain great goals.”

 

Multiple Iranian media reports on the conference highlighted the participation of the United Nations.  The event’s Web site carries the U.N. logo alongside those of six other organizing entities – such as the conference secretariat and offices of Ahmadinejad and supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – further implying U.N. involvement and endorsement.

 

Phones at the U.N. press office went unanswered on Sunday evening.

 

Less than a week ago, Ban won a second five-year at the helm of the world body, with the full support of the Obama administration.

In this world, it is important to know who your friends are and who your enemies are. 

Too bad our wonderful "neutral" media won't be telling us about it, though.  I googled it by name - "A World Without Terrorism conference" and, on the first two pages, could not find even one article in our mainstream media.

Think about it:  The Islamic countries we have given the most to attend this USA hate-fest - with the sanction and endorsement of the head of the United Nations, whom the Obama administration just supported for another 5 year term - and mainstream media can't find a reason to inform the public about it.

Keep 'em ignorant and you own 'em.  The credo of our media.

Ken Berwitz

David Prosser is the Wisconsin state supreme court justice who just won a narrow re-election victory over Joanne Kloppenburg.  Because Prosser's judicial views are generally thought of as conservative/right Kloppenburg's as liberal/left - his victory preserved a tenuous, 4-3 philosophical majority among the justices.

The left did everything it could to prevent Mr. Prosser from winning re-election to the court.  But he won anyway.  Not surprisingly they were extremely unhappy about the result. 

And now, suddenly, we have a claim that Judge Prosser is some kind of lunatic, who was physically violent to a female Justice.

Excerpted from an article at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

A source who spoke to several justices present during the incident told the Journal Sentinel that the confrontation occurred after 5:30 p.m. June 13, the day before the high court's release of a decision upholding a bill to curtail the collective bargaining rights of public employees.

Six of the court's seven justices - Justice N. Patrick Crooks was not present - had gathered in Bradley's chambers. Some were informally discussing the decision.

The conversation grew heated, and Bradley asked Prosser to leave. Bradley was bothered by disparaging remarks Prosser had made about Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson, a source said.

Bradley felt Prosser "was attacking the chief justice," the source said.

Before leaving, Prosser "put his hands around her neck in what (Bradley) described as a chokehold," the source said.

"He did not exert any pressure, but his hands were around her neck," the source said.

The source said the act "was in no way playful."

But another source told the Journal Sentinel that Bradley attacked Prosser.

"She charged him with fists raised," the source said.

Prosser "put his hands in a defensive posture," the source said. "He blocked her."

In doing so, the source said, he made contact with Bradley's neck.

Argument over decision

Another source said the justices were arguing over the timing of the release of the opinion, which legislative leaders had insisted they needed by June 14 because of their work on the state budget. As the justices discussed the case, Abrahamson said she didn't know whether the decision would come out this month, the source said.

 At that point, Prosser said he'd lost all confidence in her leadership. Bradley then came across the room "with fists up," the source said. Prosser put up his hands to push her back.

Bradley then said she had been choked, according to the source. Another justice - the source wouldn't say who - responded, "You were not choked."

In an interview, Bradley said: "You can try to spin those facts and try to make it sound like I ran up to him and threw my neck into his hands, but that's only spin.

"Matters of abusive behavior in the workplace aren't resolved by competing press releases. I'm confident the appropriate authorities will conduct a thorough investigation of this incident involving abusive behavior in the workplace."

The other justices didn't return calls or declined to comment.

I doubt anyone outside that room will ever know what really happened - maybe not even everyone inside the room.  But we do know that multiple sources, including a fellow justice, claim Ms. Bradley started the incident and is lying about being choked.

Since, in the absence of video, neither side can be proved, I think we can assume that nothing is going to come of this. 

But I think we can also assume that there will be more such incidents in the future.  Prosser committed the unpardonable crime of winning another term on the Wisconsin state supreme court, which makes him a marked man. 

One other thing:  In case the Prosser haters demand his resignation (which has already been floated at several left wing web sites), it might be good to read this very interesting take on the situation from Ann Althouse:  a blogger, and a Law Professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison:

Everyone who thinks Prosser must to resign if he attacked Bradley ought to say that if Bradley attacked Prosser, she should resign. If that happens, then the tactic of leaking the original version of the story to the press will have backfired horrifically for Democrats, as Governor Scott Walker will name the Justice to replace Bradley. If both Justices erred and must resign, that will be 2 appointments for Walker, both of whom, I would imagine, will be stronger, younger, and more conservative than Prosser, and, with Bradley gone, the liberal faction on the court will be reduced to 2, against a conservative majority of 5.

AND: Remember, the legislature has the power to impeach, so it is Bradley who is at the greater risk as the story, suppressed for 11 days, comes out. The legislature could play neutral and impeach both Prosser and Bradley, but that would give 2 appointments to Scott Walker.

ALSO: People may assume that the man is larger than the woman, but — from what I have heard — Bradley is significantly larger than Prosser. Bradley is also 7 years younger than Prosser, who is 68.

Ken Berwitz

Chicago is on fire. 

Crime and violence is rampant - especially in, and from, Black neighborhoods.  "Flash mobs" of Black thugs have taken to suddenly materializing at a given place (most recently the Walgreen's Drug Store on Chicago's Magnificent Mile), creating mayhem, stealing from the store, assaulting innocent people, and then disappearing before police have a chance to intercede.

What should law enforcement do about this?  It should be addressing policing efforts where these mobs come from, and working closely with people of influence within those areas to try and stop the carnage. 

What should law enforcement NOT be doing?  It should NOT be whining that this rampant criminality it is everyone's fault but the perpetrators who are committing the carnage.

With that, I will post an excerpt from Adem Zielinski's article at WLS 890 AM's web site in which the police chief of Chicago does exactly the wrong thing for the wrong reason:

CHICAGO (WLS) - Chicago's new top cop says the accessibility to firearms in America is an extension "of government-sponsored racism" that goes back to the days of slavery and Jim Crow.

 

Speaking to parishoners at St. Sabina Church earlier this month, Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy took to the microphone after Father Michael Pfleger spoke about gun control.

 

McCarthy said the topic of race is a sensitive issue "because everybody's afraid of race" but that he wasn't afraid to broach the subject.

 

"So here’s what I want to tell you. See, let’s see if we can make a connection here. Slavery. Segregation. Black codes. Jim Crow. What, what did they all have in common? Anybody getting’ scared? Government sponsored racism."

 

"Now I want you to connect one more dot on that chain of the African American history in this country, and tell me if I’m crazy. Federal gun laws that facilitate the flow of illegal firearms, into our urban centers across this country, that are killing our black and brown children," he said.

 

"The NRA does not like me, and I’m okay with that. We’ve got to get the gun debate back to center, and it’s got to come with the recognition of who’s paying the price for the gun manufacturers being rich and living in gated communities," McCarthy said.

This is a POLICE OFFICER?  This guy is PAID to go in front of a hard-left church, led by a radical-  left priest, and assure its preominantly Black congregation that Black lawlessness is because of slavery, segregation, Black codes, Jim Crow and government racism? 

That is supposed to explain criminal  behavior in  2011 Chicago? 

Maybe this fool would like to explain the hugely high crime rate within those neighborhoods, where there are virtually no non-Black people at all.  Or is he too busy patting himself on the back for not being afraid to talk about race -- as long as he assures Black people that the Black crime rate is everyone's fault but the people who are perpetrating it.

I know Chicago very well.  I have had a business in Chicago for almost 30 years.  And I know that Black people in Chicago range from the best to the worst - like every other group. 

Being Black does not make anyone a violent thug.  But pretending that violent thuggery is not a major problem of Black neighborhoods in Chicago, and that it somehow is everyone's fault but the people engaging in that thuggery, is imbecilic.  All it does is excuse away criminal activity, and put innocent people - whether Black, White or otherwise - in danger.

If I were a White Chicagoan I would resent this, because Police Superintendent gary mccarthy is giving thugs some kind of free pass based on the color of their skin. 

If I were a Black Chicagoan, especially a Black Chicagoan living in a primarily Black neighborhood, I would resent this every bit as much, because it would make me more of a potential target in my own neighborhood, by reasssuring and empowering the thugs who also live there.

I suggest that Supt. gary mccarthy either jail every gun manufacturer in Chicago and declare the problem solved, or take time out from making excuses for this criminal behavior, and start arresting the thugs who are perpetrating it.

Which do you think will make Chicago safer?

Ken Berwitz

Philadelphia is on its way to becoming another of the United States' "sanctuary cities" - i.e. cities that ignore federal law and make it easy for illegal aliens to live and work there.  And that is an attack on its legal blue collar workers.

Excerpted from an article at philly.com:

City Council wants to end a three-year-old information-sharing agreement with federal immigration authorities, saying cooperation meant to root out criminals is creating fear of police among undocumented but otherwise law-abiding immigrants.

On Thursday, Council voted, 17-0, for a nonbinding resolution calling for an end to an agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the main investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security.

You have to be fascinated. 

Unemployment, nationally, is over 9%.  Illegals not only take jobs that legals would otherwise be able to get, but usually drive down the wages paid for those jobs because, as illegals, they are willing to work for less - with no regulatory issues, no pension, no workman's comp, no nothing other than their low hourly wage.  

Why, in a city that already has too many workers for too few jobs, would a city council vote - non-binding or otherwise - to make it easy for this to happen? 

In a deep recession, the city council of Philadelphia is telling its legal workers to compete for fewer jobs at lower pay - on behalf of people who have no legal right to be there in the first place.

If that isn't an attack on the legal blue collar workers in Philadelphia, I give up.

Ken Berwitz

What is going on with hugo chavez, the USA-hating buffoon of Venezuela?  Is he just very sick, or is he dying?

Read this excerpt from today's article by Adrian Carrasquillo of foxnews.com (among many other sources) and decide for yourself:

Hugo Chávez extended stay in a Cuban hospital is because he is in critical condition, according to a report in El Nuevo Herald.

 

The Venezuelan president, who was last seen in public June 9 and last heard from on June 12, on a phone call with Venezuelan state television, was said to have been treated for a pelvic abscess in Cuba.

 

During the call Chávez said that medical tests showed no sign of any "malignant" illness.

 

But according to the report in El Nuevo Herald, Chávez finds himself in "critical condition, not grave, but critical, in a complicated situation."

 

The Miami newspaper cited U.S. intelligence officials who wished to remain anonymous.

 

Chávez silence has led to chatter and speculation in Venezuela that the socialist leader is actually suffering from prostate cancer. Intelligence officials could not confirm a diagnosis of prostate cancer but Chávez family did go to Cuba in the last 72 hours, according to wire service EFE.

 

Chávez daughter Rosinés and his mother Marisabel Rodríguez "urgently" left the country and headed to Cuba in a Venezuelan air force plane. 

It's not grave, but critical?  His daughter and mother "urgently" flew to Cuba?  We certainly know something is going on. 

I have one question and one comment. 

The question:  do you think chavez is getting the same quality of care an average Cuban gets?  Maybe Castro's willing stooge, Michael Moore, can give us an answer.

The comment:  I hope chavez is getting exactly the same quality of care an average Cuban gets.  And I'll bet you can guess why.

Ken Berwitz

Yesterday, New York became the 6th state to pass legislation legalizing same-sex marriages.  

My congratulations to the New York State lawmakers for their vote, to Governor Andrew Cuomo for immediately signing it into law, and, of course, to all same-sex couples who can now legally commit to one another.

This is a great triumph for fairness and tolerance.  And, despite the angry yawps you will hear from its opponents, legalization of same-sex marriage in no way changes the meaning or sanctity of one man-one woman marriages. 

Heterosexual marriage, today, is exactly what it was yesterday.  All that has changed is that other people can marry as well.

It's called freedom.

So congratulations again.  And may the other 44 states quickly follow suit.

Ken Berwitz

Every day we learn something new about Project Gunrunner/Operation Fast and Furious, we find out it was even worse than we thought.

Here is the latest, excerpted from Kim Murphy's article at the Los Angeles Times:

A congressional investigation into a controversial federal gun-running surveillance operation is moving to Mexico this week amid new reports that two AK-47s sold in Arizona during the operation were found at the scene of a shootout with the suspected killers of a well-known Mexican attorney.

According to testimony provided to investigators with the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the two guns were sold to a straw buyer watched by agents of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, who were under orders not to stop the guns from crossing the border. The ATF surveillance program, called Operation Fast and Furious, was supposed to lead to the arrests of high-level drug cartel figures.

The two guns were subsequently linked to the suspects in the torture and killing of Mario Gonzalez Rodriguez, the brother of Patricia Gonzalez Rodriguez, who was then attorney general of the Mexican state of Chihuahua. The link was first reported by Fox News.

"Following Rodriguez's murder, when Mexican police attempted to arrest the suspects, guns with serial numbers tracing back to Operation Fast and Furious were found at [the] scene," a brief oversight committee statement said.

Another source familiar with the investigation said ATF agents learned that the guns were Fast and Furious weapons when their serial numbers were found in a database of information on guns sold to suspect straw buyers being watched under Fast and Furious.

The blood of Mario Gonzalez Rodriguez is on the hands of the idiots who agreed to Project Gunrunner/Operation Fast and Furious.  The idiots who agreed to allow thousands of AK-47's to be sold to the Mexican drug cartel - ostensibly so they could be traced back to the heads of the cartels- but, in reality were barely traced at all.

They may not have pulled the trigger, but they put the guns in the hands of the murdering scum who did.

This is an investigation that must continue until every person who agreed to this insane debacle is found, and forced to explain the reasons it was done. 

Do you remember the Iran-Contra scandal, when arms were secretly being sold to Iran in an effort to free US hostages?  Media went crazy covering that well-meaning, but wrong, operation for years.

Well where are they for this presumably well-meaning but wrong debacle - one which has resulted in the deaths of our own border agents and Mexican officials fighting the cartels as well?   The coverage so far is pathetic.  Compared to Iran Contra, it is virtually nonexistent. 

It is impossible to believe this is some kind of inadvertent omission. 

Are they afraid that the sign-offs for Project Gunrunner/Operation Fast and Furious will go too high up in the Obama administration?  Like right into the oval office?

Will they ever start acting like journalists again, and go where the story leads them?  Or are they so deep in the tank for Barack Obama that even this will be swept under the rug?

Ken Berwitz

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, at yesterday's press conference:

“…the bottom line is, whose side are you on? Are you on Qadhafi’s side or are you on the side of the aspirations of the Libyan people and the international coalition that has been created to support them? For the Obama Administration, the answer to that question is very easy.

Translation:  If you oppose President Obama's unconstitutional war on Libya, which he is pursuing against the recommendations of his own lawyers let's not forget, you are on moammar qaddafi's side.  Which means you support murderous fanaticism.

Thanks you Ms. Clinton for that question.  Now I have one for you:  but think before you answer, because this isn't a BS question like yours, it's a question that relates to what is actually happening in Libya.

"Whose side are you on?  Are you on qaddafi's side, or are you on the side of "rebels" who clearly and unmistakably align with al-qaeda?"

There are three possible answers to this question.  You either support qaddafi, support the al-qaeda friendly "rebels" or support neither.

If you support neither, Ms. Clinton, then I have another question:

"Why the HELL are we bombing Libya on behalf of al-qaeda friendly "rebels"? 

I'll wait for your answer.  But somehow I doubt I'll get it.

Hillary Clinton is a ridiculous, incompetent embarrassment, with a big mouth.  And, unfortunately, that is hardly unique in the Obama administration.

The 2012 elections cannot come fast enough.

Ken Berwitz

They say a picture is worth a thousand words.  This one, drawn by the great Michael Ramirez of Investors Business Daily, is worth 30 million of them. (if you have trouble seeing it, click here):

Ken Berwitz

Peter Falk, the wonderful actor best known for his portrayal of Lieutenant Columbo - an annoyingly pesky detective in a hopelessly rumpled raincoat who always got the bad guy - has died in Los Angeles at the age of 83.  Although the cause of his death was not specified, Mr. Falk had suffered from Alzheimer's disease.

Falk, who won 5 Emmys and received two academy award nominations, was a cancer survivor - amazingly, from the age of 3, when a tumor caused one of his eyes to be removed. 

He grew up in the New York City suburb of Ossining.  After receiving a Masters Degree from Syracuse University and working at a number of different jobs, Falk became a successful stage actor, later on, a movie actor (his first role was at the age of 41).  Eventually his greatest success came on television, as Columbo.

Peter Falk had about as distinct, recognizable a persona as there was in acting.  I'm very sorry to see him go.

May he rest in peace.

Ken Berwitz

I had more or less given up on writing about the fraudulence of Barack Obama's supposed "long-form birth certificate", because I said my piece, the facts were all out there, and our wonderful "neutral" media clearly were determined to ignore them anyway.

I talked about the experts who pointed out that the supposed birth certificate was "layered", which would have been impossible if it were a photocopy.  I talked about the fact that the certificate number was out of numerical order and would not have been registered on that day.  I talked about the fact key information which was on the extreme left side of the page, where it folded into the book and would therefore have a downward curve, appeard to be typed straight across - which would mean it was added afterwards.  I spoke to, and quoted Doug Vogt, an expert on this subject, who stated that it was a fake birth certificate and has provided an extensive analysis to back it up. (In fairness, there also is a very informed reply to Vogt disputing his findings, which you can read here).

But the other side had an expert.  Exactly one. His name was Jeane-Claude Tremblay and, it was reported, that he stated the document could have been copied exactly as it was, so there was no evidence to suggest it was a fake.

So, I let it go and moved on.

But now we have the following new information, excerpted from the writing of worldnetdaily.com's Joseph Farah who, in the face of seemingly impossible adversity, has tirelessly fought this battle for years:

The one and only document expert consulted by any U.S. media to proclaim Barack Obama's "birth certificate" as legitimate has rejected that position, claiming he was misquoted by Fox News. He has further stated that Fox refuses to answer his demand for a correction.

 

Tremblay told WND none of his comments to Fox would permit the conclusion that the Obama birth certificate is an authentic document.

 

In other words, the entire news media establishment, besides WND, accepted Obama's document at face value, without the slightest effort at due diligence.

 

"I no longer trust Fox News," he said. "Despite my protests, Fox News will not allow me to correct their story."

The Fox News story by reporter Jana Winter, published two days after the White House released the document, remains in its original form despite Tremblay's protests, under the headline, "Expert: No Doubt Obama's Birth Certificate is Legit."

 

"I never said that," Tremblay insists. "Winter called me and talked to me for about five minutes on the telephone, and she never said she was going to quote me. Then she misrepresented what I said."

 

Let me underscore my point here: Tremblay is the only document expert quoted by any U.S. news agency proclaiming the birth certificate as legitimate.

It is getting harder and harder not to conclude that Barack Obama's "long-form birth certificate" is a fake, and that media - possibly out of pure partisanship, possibly because they are terrified of the ramifications inherent in finding out that for 2 1/2 years we have an illegally elected President of the United States - are doing everything they can to cover it up.

The question is:  Where was this bunch before President Obama was elected?  Why were they not all over this, demanding proof of his legitimacy before he took office?

Apparently, they were in the same place as they were when we found out that Obama was a protegé and loving adherent of the hate-filled anti-White, anti-Israel, Black Liberation Theologist named jeremiah wright. 

They wanted Obama to win, so they found a way to ignore what his umbilical attachment to jeremiah wright told them.  Do you doubt that, if it were a White candidate who looked up to an anti-Black, anti-Israel, White supremacist, these same media would have said so in about two seconds flat?

What a mess.  What a disgrace our media are - and continue to be, since it is an excellent bet that they will ignore this information as they have ignored everything else.

Will some of them ever start acting like journalists?  I doubt it.

Ken Berwitz

If you were Jewish, would you fly Delta?

Well, I am.  And, from now on, I won't. 

In a story that I first saw at worldnetdaily.com, I have learned that Delta is adding Saudi Arabian Airlines to its Skyteam Alliance.  Saudi Arabian Airlines bans Jews, and anyone with an Israeli passport, from boarding its planes.

Personally, I think any Jew or Israeli who wants to fly Saudi Arabian Airlines has a screw loose.  But that's not the point.  The point is that they have no choice in the matter; they are banned because of who they are.

And what is Delta's position?  Here is what was put up on its web site:

We've gotten questions today from you, our concerned customers, following an article about Saudi Arabian Airlines joining SkyTeam (the global airline alliance that includes Delta as a member). After listening to many of your thoughts today, we'd like to take this opportunity to share some information and help to clarify some of the questions we know you have.

First and foremost, I think one of the most important things to mention here is that Delta does not discriminate nor do we condone discrimination against anyone in regards to age, race, nationality, religion, or gender.

That said, some have raised questions about whether Saudi Arabian Airlines' membership in SkyTeam means Delta is adopting any type of policies that could present barriers to travel for some passengers, including Jewish customers. For this particular concern, it's important to realize that visa requirements to enter any country are dictated by that nation's government, not the airlines, and they apply to anyone entering the country regardless of whether it's by plane, bus or train.

We, like all international airlines, are required to comply with all applicable laws governing entry into every country we serve. You as passengers are responsible for obtaining the necessary travel documents, such as visas and certification of required vaccinations, and we're responsible for making sure that you have the proper documentation before you board.

What a phony, intentionally confusing pile of crap this is.

Yes, we all know that airlines are at the mercy of visa requirements for individual countries.  But the Skyteam Alliance has nothing to do with this.  It is a voluntary alliance of airlines, which can accept or reject individual members for its own reasons. 

An alliance that accepts Saudi Arabian Airlines, with its no-Jews, no-Israelis policy, is therefore deeming that policy acceptable, even if it, and/or other members of the alliance, do not have that policy - yet.

In case you're wondering, here is the entire Skyteam Alliance:

Aeroflot (Russia), AeroMéxico, Air Europa (Spain), Air France, Alitalia (Italy), China Eastern Airlines, China Southern Airlines, Czech Airlines, Delta Airlines (USA), Kenya Airlines, KLM (Netherlands), Korean Air, TAROM (Romania) and Vietnam Airlines.

Delta is the one and only US carrier in this alliance.  It is now an airline that, barring major emergency, I will never fly again.  

Delta Airlines can go straight to hell.

Ken Berwitz

Admittedly, at first glance Michael Steele and Elisabeth Hasselbeck don't look very similar.  Steele is a middle aged, balding Black male and Hasselbeck is younger, blonde, White female.

But, in fact, they are very similar.

Elisabeth Hasselbeck is the token Republican/conservative on The View - an all-Female, left wing whinefest, hosted by Barbara Walters, that has achieved major success over the years.  Hasselback is there, apparently, to counterbalance the otherwise all-left lineup of Walters, Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg.  She is supposed to lend an aura of credibility (see, we present both sides, so there!) while still giving the leftward viewpoint predominance. 

Michael Steele has recently been hired by the hard-left MSNBC as a political contributor.  And, although I don't know if he is a "regular", I have seen him several times on Morning Joe.

Why is he there?  Apparently, to counterbalance its primarly left wing lineup by lending an aura of credibility (see, we present both sides, so there!), while still giving the leftward viewpoint predominance - just as Hasselbeck does on The View. 

Illustratively, this morning he was on with Joe Scarborough (at one time a political conservative, but now all over the lot to the point where no one knows what he is anymore), leftward Mika Brzezinski, leftward Donny Deutsch, leftward Sam Stein and leftward Ezra Klein.

Neither Mr. Steele nor Ms. Hasselbeck are stupid.  I assume both know why they are there.  But they do it anyway. 

Maybe it is because they figure that even a minority voice on the other side is better than no voice at all.  Maybe it's just for the bucks.  Maybe it's something else.  I don't know.  But I do know their "value" to these shows.

I wish them both the capability of being used this way without coming across as pathetic stooges.

Ken Berwitz

It's not like we haven't been talking about this.  For months. 

Of course, when I say "we" I mean me and regular readers of this blog.  I do not mean mainstream media, which, for the most part, are pulling out all the stops to protect Barack Obama from having to answer for it.

Excerpted from John Rosenthal's article at National Review:

Al-Qaeda and the Libyan Rebellion
A new report explains the connection.

A new report from two French think tanks concludes that jihadists have played a predominant role in the eastern-Libyan rebellion against the rule of Moammar Qaddafi, and that “true democrats” represent only a minority in the rebellion. The report, furthermore, calls into question the justifications given for Western military intervention in Libya, arguing that they are largely based on media exaggerations and “outright disinformation.”

The sponsors of the report are the Paris-based International Center for Research and Study on Terrorism and Aide to Victims of Terrorism (CIRET-AVT) and the French Center for Research on Intelligence (CF2R). The organizations sent a six-member expert mission to Libya to evaluate the situation and consult with representatives on both sides of the conflict. From March 31 to April 6, the mission visited the Libyan capital of Tripoli and the region of Tripolitania; from April 19 to April 25, it visited the rebel capital of Benghazi and the surrounding Cyrenaica region in eastern Libya.

The report identifies four factions among the members of the eastern Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC). Apart from a minority of “true democrats,” the other three factions comprise partisans of a restoration of the monarchy that was overthrown by Qaddafi in 1969, Islamic extremists seeking the establishment of an Islamic state, and former fixtures of the Qaddafi regime who defected to the rebels for opportunistic or other reasons.

There is a clear overlap between the Islamists and the monarchists, inasmuch as the deposed King Idris I was himself the head of the Senussi brotherhood, which the authors describe as “an anti-Western Muslim sect that practices an austere and conservative form of Islam.” The monarchists are thus, more precisely, “monarchists-fundamentalists.”

 

Regarding the effects of western military intervention in support of the rebels, the authors conclude:

Western intervention is in the process of creating more problems than it resolves. It is one thing to force Qaddafi to leave. It is another thing to spread chaos and destruction in Libya to this end and to prepare the ground for fundamentalist Islam. The current moves risk destabilizing all of North Africa, the Sahel, and the Middle East and favoring the emergence of a new regional base for radical Islam and terrorism.

What does this mean?

It means President Obama and his NATO acolytes are bombing Libya - in our case, unconstitutionally - largely on behalf of al-qaeda.

These people are as bad as, or worse than, qaddafi.  They hate our guts.  And we are spending billions of dollars to bomb Libya so that they can take power.

Why did we kill osama bin laden, if we are putting his protegés in charge of a far more important country than Afghanistan?  President Obama must be made to explain.

This is crazy.  It has to stop now. 

Ken Berwitz

Of all the cynical, politically-charged moves Barack Obama has made as President, this is the worst.  And that is saying something.

We have a strategic oil reserve FOR EMERGENCIES.  If we release that oil to get some transitory relief at the pump - i.e. to score political points -  and there is an emergency, we DON'T have it.  An average 6 year old would have no trouble figuring this out.

But Barack Obama thinks were are not as smart as an average 6 year old.  He thinks we are going to be thrilled at this endangering of our national security.  That is the only explanation I can come up with for what he is doing.

Read the following excerpt from Matthew Daly's article for the Associated Press, which makes it so plain that anyone, regardless of party affiliation, would understand:

Wary of a new surge in gas prices, the Obama administration said Thursday it is releasing 30 million barrels of oil from the country's emergency reserve as part of a broader international response to lost oil supplies caused by turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa, particularly Libya.

 

The release from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve will be the largest ever, amounting to half of a 60 million-barrel international infusion of oil planned for the world market over the next month.

The timing brought criticism from business groups and Republican lawmakers, who accused President Barack Obama of playing politics with the country's oil reserves, which are intended to address emergencies.

"The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is an emergency lifeline to protect our nation against critical shortages in our oil supply and shouldn't be used as a Strategic Political Reserve to boost the popularity of elected officials," said Charles Drevna, president of the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association.

The administration's action will do little to benefit consumers while leaving the nation vulnerable to hurricanes or other natural disasters, or a foreign crisis that causes a real supply shortage, said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

"Everyone wants to help the American people and lower prices at the pump," Boehner said, "but by tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the president is using a national security instrument to address his domestic political problems. This action threatens our ability to respond to a genuine national security crisis."

This is not just despicable.  It is dangerous to the safety and well-being of the United States.

What kind of a man is Barack Obama?  What kind of a man denies his country the ability to exploit our vast energy resources, and then significantly depletes our strategic reserves?

Ask yourself what hugo chavez would do if he were given a shot at handling our energy resources?  Wouldn't chavez minimize our ability to find more oil, while removing our strategic reserves, thus putting us at the mercy of him and his likeminded USA haters? 

Well, that is exactly what Barack Obama is doing.  

Not surprisingly, Republicans have immediately spoken out against this insanity.  But that is not enough.  Democrats have to speak out as well, because what President Obama is doing transcends partisan politics and goes straight to our national security.

Simply stated, Democrats have to decide whether they are more partisan politicians, or concerned citizens of the United States.

I truly hope they do the right thing.

Ken Berwitz

Saying that New Jersey's public sector unions - especially the teachers' union - hate Governor Chris Christie is like saying that ants hate anteaters.  There isn't much of an issue about it.

But, as they continue to show their hatred every way they can (go to www.millionairesforchristie.com and see how pathetic this can get), here is what Mr. Christie is doing for the state, as excerpted from Mark Impomeni's article at humanevents.com:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie won another major victory for his agenda last week, announcing a deal with the Democratic leadership of the legislature on a sweeping reform of public employee pensions and benefits.  The deal, which was passed by the state senate on Monday and awaits a vote in the assembly, raises public employees’ pension contributions, mandates that the state make annual payments into the system, increases public employee contributions toward health insurance premiums, and ends collective bargaining for heath benefits.  Should the bill eventually become law, it is projected to save the state $120 billion over 30 years.

Christie, senate President Steve Sweeney and assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver released a joint statement pledging to pass the bill into law by the end of the legislative session.  “After months of serious discussions, we are pleased to announce that we have reached agreement on legislation to reform our public pension and health benefits systems in New Jersey.  The legislation to be considered ... saves the public pension system for current and future retirees, and enhances fairness and choice in our health benefits system,” the statement read.

Speaking to a raucous crowd of county government officials in Atlantic City the following day, Christie praised the bipartisan nature of the pension compromise.

“The debate and discussion that’s going on in Trenton this morning [about the pension reform bill] and will continue through next week, is in the interest of the taxpayers first and foremost.  But it is equally in the interest of the public employees who want to continue to be provided with excellent health coverage and who want to be able, at the conclusion of their careers, to collect a pension that they were promised,” Christie said.

“The pension reforms in this bill alone will save taxpayers $122 billion over the next 30 years and bring all of those pension systems, within 30 years, into an 80% funding ratio, [r]estoring the stability of those systems.”

Governor Christie is hell-bent to get things done regarding public sector unions.  Not to kill them off, as the union cigars (my term for  big shots), and some of their members, are claiming.  But to bring things back to the realm of sanity. 

Ironically, by doing this Christie will be protecting union members' benefits.  What good is it to have a piece of paper that says you will get X amount of dollars years from now, if the dollars are not there to be paid? 

That's something that the cigars, in their big offices, don't seem to care or worry about.  But the rank and file, it seems to me, should be a bit more concerned.

These people owe Chris Christie a thank-you.  Even if some of them might not realize it at this time.

Ken Berwitz

What is the function of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)?  According to its web site:

The National Labor Relations Board is an independent federal agency vested with the power to safeguard employees' rights to organize and to determine whether to have unions as their bargaining representative. The agency also acts to prevent and remedy unfair labor practices committed by private sector employers and unions.

Ok, that's what it says.  But what does it really do?  Before you answer, remember that the NLRB, under the Obama administration, has been stacked with Democrat appointees.  Now, what does it do?

Here's your answer, via the following excerpts from Bret Jacobson's article in today's New York Post:

Here's a truth-in-advertising warning to foreign investors about this week's glossy White House sales pitch: Even as President Obama promises he's "taking steps to ensure that we remain the destination of choice for investors," his National Labor Relations Board is putting the screws to America's employers.

 

The most obvious example is the NLRB's ham-fisted attack on aircraft-manufacturer Boeing. Arguing that the company moved production of some of its Dreamliner jets to right-to-work South Carolina from Washington state in order to punish a union, the board ordered Boeing to close its new South Carolina plant and do the work back in Washington.

 

Obama insists he wants government to "partner with the private sector" to create jobs, but the NLRB's action will have the opposite effect. Indeed, it could cost 1,000 existing Boeing jobs in South Carolina, and eliminate still more jobs that would've been created once the new production line was fully up and running.

 

Add in the chilling effect: Any businesses looking to expand will have to worry that the heavy hand of the NLRB could come down on them should they shift work to one of the 22 right-to-work states.

 

...the Obama NLRB has clearly signaled that it puts the interests of Big Labor ahead of everything else, including its proper role as neutral enforcer of the nation's labor laws. Examples from just this year:

 

* The board is pushing to give unions the right to enter a workplace even if their intent is to harass customers and employees. 

 

* It wants to force employers to post pro-organizing notices in about 6 million workplaces, most of which aren't unionized, under the guise of informing workers about the National Labor Relations Act. But the posters wouldn't inform these workers about aspects of the law the unions don't like -- such as the right to vote out a union or withhold union dues spent on politics.

 

* The board is moving ahead with lawsuits against Arizona and South Dakota over provisions in their state constitutions -- enacted through ballot initiatives last fall -- that require secret ballots for union-organizing votes.

 

* The NLRB is also pushing to let unions cherry-pick groups of workers within a company to organize, without giving those who oppose the union the opportunity to vote, changing an established definition of a "bargaining unit" that has been in place for more than 50 years.

 

* The board is now pushing through rules that eliminate key checks and balances from the process by which a workplace can be unionized -- in the name of speeding things up, it's upending decades of precedent to make it easier for unions to force themselves on workers, who will have less information.

 

In all this, Obama shares full responsibility. He not only appointed the NLRB's acting general counsel, Lafe Solomon, he did an end-run around Congress by using a "recess appointment" to put Craig Becker, a former lawyer for the Service Employees International Union and the AFL-CIO, on the board over bipartisan objections.

 

In this year's State of the Union speech, the president said that to "win the future," the country has to "make America the best place on Earth to do business." If he really wants to achieve that, he must tell the people he's appointed to run the National Labor Relations Board: Arbitrary, costly and unfair enforcement of labor laws isn't the way to win the future or attract foreign investment.

That's a bit different, wouldn't you say?

President Obama, whose re-election prospects require all the union money and organizational capabilities he can get, has effectively turned the NLRB into a union bonanza - at the expense of business.  

Does this help our country?  Will this get us out of our economic mess? 

And, yes, this is the same President Obama who attacks businesses for giving up on getting a fair shake here and outsourcing to other countries (which, ironically, lowers the domestic job pool, thus unions' ability to grow in a positive way).

I strongly urge you to remember this, the next time you hear Mr. Obama or one of his flaks complaining that the current state of the economy is because of George Bush, not him.

Ken Berwitz

I am happy to report that, if President Obama is telling the truth (always a big "if"), 33,000 troops will be phased out of Afghanistan between now and next summer.

I am unhappy to report, however, that this will leave Afghanistan with double the number of troops that were there when President Bush left office and President Obama took over.

For what? 

Is Afghanistan a better place?  Are the taliban less prominent there?  Is what passes for government in Afghanistan any more capable of running the country than it was before?  

President Bush invaded Afghanistan to remove the taliban from governing what little is governable in that godforsaken land, and to close up osama bin laden's training camps, which were training al-qaeda terrorists.  Mr. Bush accomplished those objectives in a matter of weeks with less than 10,000 troops.  Keeping things that way was more difficult and required troop increases, which is why there were about 30,000 troops in Afghanistan the day Mr. Bush left office.

And that's before we get to the fact that, although President Obama has presided over the war in Afghanistan for only 25% of its duration, 63% of all troop fatalities have occurred on his watch.  Again, I ask:  For what?

Bottom line:  President Obama, who called Afghanistan a "necessary war" tripled our troop presence there to almost 100,000.  Now, the removal of 33,000 troops (assuming it happens), thus leaving double the number that were there when he took office, is going to be hailed by Mr. Obama, his administration toadies - and, pathetically, a lot of our wonderful "neutral" media - as some kind of victory. 

It isn't.

But get used to the technique.   

When the so-called "stimulus package" was passed, unemployment was at 8.1%.  Instead of going lower, it jumped over 10%, sat in the mid-9's for a year and a half, and is at 9.1% now. 

However, if unemployment drops back to, say, 8.4% next year, you can bet that President Obama, his administration toadies - and, pathetically, a lot of our wonderful "neutral" media - will hail it as proof the "stimulus package" worked.  

People who buy this utter BS, and vote to re-elect Barack Obama based on his economic "success", deserve what they will be getting.  Ditto for people who buy the utter BS that lowering Afghanistan troop strength to double where it was in the first place is a real drawdown. 

The problem is, they will take everyone else along with them.  And the rest of us don't deserve it.

Let's try not to let that happen.  OK?

Ken Berwitz

Investors Business Daily has put out an editorial which makes some extraordinary suppositions about the Obama administration concerning the Project Gunrunner/Operation Fast and Furious debacle - which, finally, after months of looking the other way, our wonderful "neutral" media are just getting around to covering.

Here is a lot of it - but I urge you to click here and read it all:

Scandal: Rather than a botched attempt to catch criminals, was the ATF program actually an attempt to advance gun-control efforts by an administration that has blamed Mexican violence on easy access to U.S. weapons?

 

If "Operation Fast and Furious" was merely a botched attempt at law enforcement, why was a supervisor of the operation, David Voth, "jovial, if not, not giddy but just delighted about" marked guns showing up at crime scenes in Mexico, as career Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent John Dodson told Rep. Darrell Issa's House Oversight Committee?

 

ATF agent Olindo James Casa said that "on several occasions I personally requested to interdict or seize firearms, but I was always ordered to stand down and not to seize the firearms."

 

Yet, as we've noted, gun-tracking operations stopped at the border. That seems odd if the purpose was to catch gun traffickers and their drug-lord bosses. It makes sense, however, if the real purpose was to perpetuate, in the interests of pursuing the administration's gun-control agenda, what Bob Owens of Pajamas Media calls the "90% lie."

 

Fox News has reported that, according to ATF Special Agent William Newell, Mexico sent about 11,000 guns to the U.S. for tracing in 2007-08, out of about 35,000 confiscated. Of that 11,000, 6,000 were successfully traced. And of that number, 5,114, or 90%, were found to have originated in the U.S.

 

Weapons that originated in foreign countries are not sent to the U.S. for tracing. Neither are weapons of Mexican army deserters or those stolen from armories.

 

Bill McMahon, ATF deputy assistant director, testified that of 100,000 weapons recovered by Mexican authorities, only 18,000 were made, sold or imported from the U.S. And of those 18,000, just 7,900 came from sales by licensed gun dealers. That's 8%, not 90%.

 

So why the lie and why create Fast and Furious, a program designed to put dangerous weapons into criminal hands? We forget that from 1994 to 2002 President Obama was a director of the Joyce Foundation, a progressive organization dedicated to "social justice" and eroding Second Amendment rights.

 

Was Fast and Furious merely a poorly conceived scheme about which Attorney General Eric Holder and President Obama knew little or nothing? Or was it a deliberate attempt to inflate the embarrassingly low true number of guns traceable to the U.S.?

 

Was Watergate just a third-rate burglary?

Those are very serious questions.  And they deserve very serious media scrutiny; not the "We love Barack so we're not going to work very hard at finding out" coverage we have seen so often throughout the 2008 campaign and Mr. Obama's first term of office.

Project Gunrunner/Operation Fast and Furious was stupid, mindless, and may have cost at least two border agents (Jaime Zapata and Brian Terry) their lives.  

But, based on this IBD editorial, the real story may be even worse.  A lot worse.  

Time for media to finally, at long last, step up to the plate.  If they can scrounge through Sarah Palin's 24,000 emails - finding nothing negative at all, by the way - maybe they can take a crack at Project Gunrunner/Operation Fast and Furious.

Look at it this way.  At the very least, acting like real journalists when it comes to the Obama administration will be a nice change of pace for them.

Ken Berwitz

Here is the latest news on the Libya mess - news you won't find featured in most US media:

Excerpted from an article from the French Press Agency (Agence France Presse):

ROME (AFP) – Italy called for a suspension of hostilities in Libya on Wednesday in the latest sign of dissent within NATO as the civilian death toll mounts and Moamer Kadhafi shows no signs of quitting power.

"We have seen the effects of the crisis and therefore also of NATO action not only in eastern and southwestern regions but also in Tripoli," Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini told a parliamentary committee meeting.

"I believe an immediate humanitarian suspension of hostilities is required in order to create effective humanitarian corridors," while negotiations should also continue on a more formal ceasefire and peace talks, he said.

"I think this is the most urgent and dramatic point," Frattini continued.

"I think it is legitimate to request ever more detailed information on the results" of the NATO mission, he added, condemning "the dramatic errors that hit civilians, which is clearly not an objective of the NATO mission."

Do I like moammar qaddafi or want him to be Libya's head of state?  Emphatically no on both counts.  I wish him death and disgrace, both of which qaddafi has earned, and then some.

But do I want the USA-led forces of NATO to bomb Libya into the stone age in an effort to replace him with people who, for all we know are every bit as bad and possibly even worse?  Emphatically no to that as well.

This is a ridiculous, thoroughly bungled, and now unconstitutional debacle, that was spearheaded by a Chicago machine politician who was, and remains, eminently unqualified to be President of the United States.

The 2012 elections cannot come fast enough.

Ken Berwitz

FYI:  that title is not a typo.  It's alcee hastings we're talking about:  one 6 federal judges in the history of the United States to be impeached, convicted and tossed off the bench.

Unfortunately, this is the same alcee hastings who, four years after being removed as a U.S. District Judge in disgrace, won election to congress in the 23rd district of Florida, and currently is in his 10th term there.

But that might come to an end - at least in theory.  Not because the people of his district are embarrassed at who they elected (though I have to believe some are), but because one of his staffers has filed a sexual harassment suit that is being investigated by the Office of Congressional Ethics.

Excerpted from an article by Gary Fields and Brody Mullins at the Wall Street Journal - and please pay special attention to the incoherent response hastings gave to these charges, which I have put in bold print:

WASHINGTON—A congressional ethics panel is investigating allegations that Florida Democratic Rep. Alcee Hastings sexually harassed a member of his staff, according to people familiar with the matter.

 

The investigation of Mr. Hastings is being conducted by the Office of Congressional Ethics, the House's independent ethics investigative arm, and it is at a preliminary stage.

 

It began at least a month ago after Judicial Watch, a conservative group, filed a lawsuit as the legal counsel for Winsome Packer, a staffer on a commission Mr. Hastings headed. She alleged that she had been sexually harassed by the congressman and that he retaliated when she tried to report it.

 

At the time, Mr. Hastings was chairman of the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, a group set up in the 1970s to monitor a Cold-War era pact. Ms. Packer, a Republican, also worked for the commission.

Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, said his organization has been contacted by House investigators. "We can confirm that Ms. Packer is cooperating with the Office of Congressional Ethics," he said.

 

Mr. Hastings didn't directly address the allegations in a recent interview.

 

"Quite frankly your source has as much or more information than I do and I would suggest you rely upon them," he said. "It would be impossible for me in a paragraph or a page or two or a tome or volumes one and two to help you understand the dynamics of these events. I'll leave it at that."

Great answer, alcee.  That certainly clears things up. 

If you are scratching your head over those words, please be aware that it is hardly the first time hastings has made a bizarre, incomprehensible statement.  Here is what he had to say about Sarah Palin during the 2008 campaign:

"If Sarah Palin isn't enough of a reason for you to get over whatever your problem is with Barack Obama, then you damn well had better pay attention. Anybody toting guns and stripping moose don't care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks. So, you just think this through."

Huh?  Wha? 

Yep, this is the genius that Florida's 23rd district keeps re-electing to congress.  Holy excrement.

Anyway, I say his congressional career might come to an end "at least in theory" because, as a rule of thumb, the Office of Congressional Ethics usually gets about as much done as the Islamic Break-Dancing Commission.  I just hope that hastings gets a fair hearing, driven by the evidence rather than any inclination to shove this under a rug.

When I called alcee hastings a paragon of rectumtude, I wasn't kidding.

Ken Berwitz

Here is the latest news of "Arab Spring"  - that mindless little catch-phrase our media fell all over each other to sell to us and etch into our minds.

Excerpted from an article by Colum Lynch of turtlebay.foreignpolicy.com:

First the good news: U.S. President Barack Obama is more than twice as popular in Egypt as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad.

Now, the bad news: the American president's standing has never been worse in Egypt, plummeting since 2008, when he received a 25 percent favorability rating, to 12 percent in 2011.  Even Osama Bin Laden, the late al Qaeda leader, was more popular this year, with a 21 percent favorability ranking. The Iranian leader fared worse, dropping from 21 percent favorability rating in 2008 to a miserable 5 percent.

The findings are drawn from a public poll of Egyptian views in the aftermath of the public uprising that brought about the resignation of Egypt's fallen leader Hosni Mubarak. The poll was commissioned by the International Peace Institute, a New York-based think tank with close ties to the United Nations and Arab governments.

If you were trusting enough to believe our media, especially broadcast media, you might have concluded that post-Mubarak Egypt would be a paradigm of freedom and democracy, led by those happy, well-educated, well-fed, English-speaking facebook fans in Tahrir Square.

If you were not, you might have concluded that Egypt is not comprised of privileged, elite dreamers protesting in a square in Cairo.  You might have concluded that Egypt is a country of almost 80 million people, many of them illiterate,  who are desperately poor, know only what they were taught within their severely limited environments - which is to say the koran and shari'a law - and have exactly no experience whatsoever with freedom or democracy as we know it. 

And you would have been right.

That is why, even now, osama bin laden is more attractive to Egyptians than the President of a western democracy; even one who is trying to take credit for ridding them of Mubarak.

I've said it many times here, and it bears repeating now.  Hosni Mubarak may have been bad, but he held Egypt together, worked to some degree with the USA, and kept peace - a cold, tenuous peace, but peace nevertheless - with Israel for 30 years. There are alternatives to Mubarak that are a lot worse. 

And Egypt, left to the tender mercies of its overall population - not just the well-bred, well-fed Tahrir Square crowd - is very likely to elect one of them.

Ken Berwitz

President Obama, speaking before a Democratic National Committee gathering last night:

“I’m extraordinarily proud of the economic record that we were able to produce over the first two and a half years.”

Peter Wehner, blogging at commentarymagazine.com this morning:

The president has presided over an economy that has lost 2.5 million jobs since he was sworn in and has created only 600,000 jobs during the two years since the recovery began (the summer of 2009). The unemployment rate is up 25 percent since Obama took office and has been above 8 percent for almost 30 months (after the Obama administration promised it would not exceed 8 percent if his stimulus package was passed in early 2009). The debt has increased 35 percent during the Obama presidency. Gas prices have more than doubled. The housing crisis has recently entered a double dip and is now worse than the Great Depression. For the nine economic quarters Obama has been in office, real annual growth in GDP has been just 1.5 percent, just barely above  what it was during the decade of the Great Depression (1.3 percent). And chronic unemployment is worse than the Great Depression.

If Obama is extraordinarily proud of his economic record, he may be the only one.

Who is making more sense?  Mr. Obama or Mr. Wehner?

You decide.

Ken Berwitz

In case you are wondering why New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker are taking the hits, and trying to make public sector union salaries/benefits at least somewhat compatible with government revenues, we have this - excerpted from Greg Hinz's piece at chicagobusiness.com:

The average Chicago household now owes a staggering $63,525 to cover local government debt, according to Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas.

Suburbanites are deeply in the red, too, with the average household owing $32,901, according to the treasurer.

Among the biggest reasons: $25 billion in unfunded pension liability.

(The total may be even worse. Click here for an update.)

The figures were derived from a recently passed debt disclosure law. Ms. Pappas said the numbers have never before been compiled in this fashion.

"This goes well beyond big cities," she said. "These fiscal problems permeate townships, villages, school districts, park districts, fire protection districts and more, and the taxpayers are on the hook."
 
Overall, she said, municipalities have $61 billion in debt. And educational districts, $20 billion. Cook County owes $18 billion, and various sanitary districts collectively owe $4.4 billion.

On pensions, only one-quarter of the Cook County government units involved have at least 80% of the assets on hand needed to pay expected retirement plans for public employees, she said. Most financial watchdogs say 80% or even 90% is appropriate.

State lawmakers last year adopted changes that will reduce pension liabilities over time, but only for new employees. A bill that would reduce benefits or increase payments for current workers failed to pass in the spring legislative session but may come up this fall.

Don't think Cook County is alone.  This ugly scenario is undoubtedly being played out in towns, cities and states throughout the country. 

And it will not be solved by slick union advertising, and union-grovelling political hacks, who pump out the same tired BS about "taxing the rich" (a term that usually is not even defined by these hacks) and making them pay "their fair share" (which also is never defined, and seems to mean "as much as we can soak them for"). 

The tax burden on well-to-do citizens, many of who feel they are being taken advantage of by what amounts to governmental redistribution of their money -  has become so great that, in some cases, it is causing them to establish permanent residence elsewhere, to avoid paying those taxes.  It doesn't take a genius to figure out that raising taxes even higher will drive even more of them out.  What does that do for state revenues?

Want a specific example?  Ok.  From the Wall Street Journal, May 27, 2009:

Maryland couldn't balance its budget last year, so the state tried to close the shortfall by fleecing the wealthy. Politicians in Annapolis created a millionaire tax bracket, raising the top marginal income-tax rate to 6.25%. And because cities such as Baltimore and Bethesda also impose income taxes, the state-local tax rate can go as high as 9.45%. Governor Martin O'Malley, a dedicated class warrior, declared that these richest 0.3% of filers were "willing and able to pay their fair share." The Baltimore Sun predicted the rich would "grin and bear it."

One year later, nobody's grinning. One-third of the millionaires have disappeared from Maryland tax rolls. In 2008 roughly 3,000 million-dollar income tax returns were filed by the end of April. This year there were 2,000, which the state comptroller's office concedes is a "substantial decline." On those missing returns, the government collects 6.25% of nothing. Instead of the state coffers gaining the extra $106 million the politicians predicted, millionaires paid $100 million less in taxes than they did last year -- even at higher rates.

Governors Christie and Walker are not asking a lot of public sector employees.  Is a temporary freeze on pay raises for workers who already make significantly more than comparable people in their field (e.g. compare public school teachers' pay and benefits to those of private school teachers and see for yourself), and an increase in paying into health care (which still leaves them contributing far less than most workers in the private sector) unreasonable?  I don't think so.

I congratulate both Governors.  They are courageous people who have acted responsibly, in the face of merciless attacks by the public sector unions which - understandably - fear that this is the beginning of the end of their gravy train.

It is about time a few other Governors stood up and did the same.  Or do they want Cook County's balance sheet to be their legacy?

Ken Berwitz

I love baseball.  Always have.

I don't care if it is a major or minor league game.  Baseball is great - not only exciting to watch, but far and away the most cerebral of the major sports.  Every player on the field has a specific function on every play - there is so much more to it than just hitting the ball and running around the bases.

So when my friend Bob came into possession of tickets to the Newark Bears' game tonight and asked me to go, I was happy to join him and his son Jason.

The Bears play in an independent league (unaffiliated with major league teams).  But there are a number of former major leaguers among the players, coaches and managers.  Illustratively, the Bears are managed by near hall-of-famer Tim Raines, and one of its coaches is one-time New York Yankees' catcher, Jim Leyritz.

We got to Riverfront Stadium, a nice park with a well-kept, well manicured field - about 45 minutes before game time. And since the weather was perfect, I imagined the place would be hopping.

But, sad to say, reality was very, very different.  I doubt that there were 100 people in the entire park when we got there.  And by game time?  At most 250.  Keep in mind, we are talking about a park that seats 6,200.

We chatted for a while with the couple sitting behind us, whose son plays 3rd base for the visiting Worcester (MA) Tornadoes.  They told us only about 200 showed up yesterday as well.

It was depressing.  In fact it was more than depressing, it was awful.  I don't have any idea how either manager could motivate the players under these circumstances - although the Tornadoes must have found a way, since they were winning 8 - 0 when we gave up and left after the 4th inning.

Newark has a great baseball history, dating back to 1917.  It had a highly successful Negro League team, the Eagles, which won the 1946 Negro League World Series and, over the years, sent 5 players to the Major League Hall of Fame. 

But if this is how the city now "supports" a baseball team, frankly it doesn't deserve to have one.  Seats cost only $10 - the same as a movie - and there is enough population within walking distance to fill Riverfront Stadium.  I just don't understand.

In fairness, this may not always be the way of things.  Maybe the last couple of games are atypical and there usually is a nice big crowd.  I certainly hope so.

But I can't see myself going back any time soon.

Ken Berwitz

I wasn't going to blog anymore about the interview Chris Wallace conducted with Jon Stewart on Fox News Sunday.  But since politifact.com, a project of the (decidedly left wing) St. Petersberg Times, has looked into one of the more sneering claims Stewart made about Fox viewers and found it false, I thought I would write one last entry.

During the interview, Stewart said that "every poll" showed Fox viewers to be "the most consistently misinformed". 

Here, from politifact.com's check of his statement, are the last three paragraphs, which offer its conclusions:

So we have three Pew studies that superficially rank Fox viewers low on the well-informed list, but in several of the surveys, Fox isn’t the lowest, and other general-interest media outlets -- such as network news shows, network morning shows and even the other cable news networks -- often score similarly low. Meanwhile, particular Fox shows -- such as The O’Reilly Factor and Sean Hannity’s show -- actually score consistently well, occasionally even outpacing Stewart’s own audience.

Meanwhile, the other set of knowledge surveys, from worldpublicopinion.org, offer mixed support for Stewart. The 2003 survey strikes us as pretty solid, but the 2010 survey has been critiqued for its methodology.

The way Stewart phrased the comment, it’s not enough to show a sliver of evidence that Fox News’ audience is ill-informed. The evidence needs to support the view that the data shows they are "consistently" misinformed -- a term he used not once but three times. It’s simply not true that "every poll" shows that result. So we rate his claim False.

Ken Berwitz

Here is the latest on Project Gunrunner/Operation Fast and Furious, as excerpted from Matthew Boyle's blog at dailycaller.com:

A spokesman for House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa told The Daily Caller the congressman expects his investigations into the Justice Department’s gun walking programs to point to a much higher political appointee than acting ATF director Kenneth Melson. Melson is widely expected to resign some time in the next couple of days in the face of political pressure from Issa’s investigations into Project Gunrunner and Operation Fast Furious.

 

Even if Melson resigns, Issa spokesman Frederick Hill said the Committee expects to find much more and continue with investigations.

 

Project Gunrunner and Operation Fast and Furious were programs that involved ATF officials allowing guns to be taken into Mexico with the ultimate apparent goal of tracking the larger Mexican drug cartels’ arms market. The ATF officials allowed the sale of guns to “straw purchasers,” or people who were eligible to purchase guns in the U.S. but were doing so with the known intention of trafficking them into Mexico.

 

“It would be significant for a senior official to resign over a Congressional investigation,” Fitton said, adding that he’s almost certain Project Gunrunner and Operation Fast and Furious were anti-gun agenda political ploys from the Obama administration. “I think another major part of this story is that the narrative of the Obama administration and the ATF is that, ‘wouldn’t it be great if we could tie guns, as part of our anti-gun agenda, to the Mexican civil war, as opposed to, you know, our lack of enforcement of the drug laws or failure to protect the borders.’”

 

Former El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC) director Phil Jordan said he thinks this scandal goes as high as Attorney General Eric Holder.

I have no doubt that this enormous, deadly scandal goes as high as eric holder.  There is no way decisions of this magnitude and consquence would have stopped at the head of ATF. 

And I have a strong suspicion it doesn't stop at holder either.

Little wonder Barack Obama & Co. have worked so hard to withhold the documents that Darrell Issa's Oversight Committee has requested.

Thank you to the Daily Caller and Matthew Boyle for staying on top of this story.  When our wonderful "neutral" media, which even now is offering only sporadic coverage, is forced to actually talk about Project Gunrunner/Operation Fast and Furious, it will be your series of blogs that will fill in the gaps their abrogation of journalistic responsibility has created.

Ken Berwitz

What if I told you that we deployed  more than 23 times the number of troops to secure the Korean border than we deploy to secure our own border?

Would you be amazed?  Outraged?  Disgusted?  Would demand to know why?

Well, I suggest you rev up all of those feelings, as you read the following excerpts from Penny Starr's article at cnsnews.com:

Arizona Sheriff Paul Babeu said the Obama administration’s decision to extend the deployment of 1,200 U.S. National Guard troops along the U.S. border with Mexico until Sept. 30 is “pandering” and that those numbers “fall far short” of what military power is needed to keep the country safe.

 

Babeu noted, for comparison, the 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea to help defend it against North Korean aggression; U.S. troops have been stationed in South Korea for 58 years.

 

Babeu is the sheriff of Pinal County in southern Arizona and is on the frontlines against illegal immigration, human traffickers, drug smugglers, and potential terrorists. He was named the 2011 National Sheriff of the Year by the National Sheriff’s Association on Sunday, June 19.

 

“What are we doing?” Babeu told CNSNews.com by telephone. “We need 6,000 armed soldiers on our border to protect America. Homeland Security starts at home.” He was talking about the National Guard.

 

Babeu said that only 520 guardsmen are deployed in Arizona, a state with a 276-mile border with Mexico and the state that has, according to the Department of Homeland Security, the greatest influx of illegal aliens. In 2010, approximately 212,000 illegal aliens were seized in the Tucson sector of Arizona – or 47 percent of all illegal aliens taken into custody.

 

“The gravest national security risk that we face is right here with the unsecure border with Mexico,” Babeu said. “Right from the beginning, these 1,200 [National Guard] soldiers fall far short from what’s really, truly needed to achieve a secure border.”

 

“It’s not about race, color or national origin,” Babeu said. “It’s about enforcing the law, Mr. President. That’s our job.”

 

Every time I think about this administration's positions on border security, my blood boils.  We have:

-a ridiculously inadequate military presence, relative to the size of the border and number of illegals crossing over - many of them involved in drugs and human trafficking, along with

-a"Department of Justice" under the disgraceful toady and Obama sock-puppet, eric holder, that not only is suing Paul Babeu's state of Arizona for trying to prevent the flood of illegals, but has actually complained about it to the United Nations.

And that, of course, is before we get to the fact that, if Mexican laborers, pregnant women seeking free hospital care and the birth of "anchor babies", drug cartels and human traffickers can easily cross the border, so can terrorists bent on blowing this country up, ending Western Civiliation, and turning the USA into a shari'a law caliphate.

If we had a media that cared about something other than keeping Barack Obama in office and crapping on Sarah Palin, maybe we'd be seeing a lot more about this on-air and in print.  Maybe Penny Starr's article would not be as isolated as it is. 

But we do not have such a media.  All too many of our media are comprised of biased propagandists instead of objective journalists.  So this kind of information has to be sought out from alternative sources.

This administration's inaction regarding the border, and media's reaction to it, not only are major disgraces, they put this country in significant danger. 

We can't un-elect our media.  But the Obama administration is a different story entirely.

The 2012 elections cannot come fast enough.

Ken Berwitz

US News's Morton Zuckerman has written a scathing analysis of how the job situation, and overall economy has worsened under the Obama administration.  It is must-reading for anyone who wants a taste of reality instead of political pap. 

Here are a the first few paragraphs:

The Great Recession has now earned the dubious right of being compared to the Great Depression. In the face of the most stimulative fiscal and monetary policies in our history, we have experienced the loss of over 7 million jobs, wiping out every job gained since the year 2000. From the moment the Obama administration came into office, there have been no net increases in full-time jobs, only in part-time jobs. This is contrary to all previous recessions. Employers are not recalling the workers they laid off from full-time employment.

The real job losses are greater than the estimate of 7.5 million. They are closer to 10.5 million, as 3 million people have stopped looking for work. Equally troublesome is the lower labor participation rate; some 5 million jobs have vanished from manufacturing, long America's greatest strength. Just think: Total payrolls today amount to 131 million, but this figure is lower than it was at the beginning of the year 2000, even though our population has grown by nearly 30 million.

The most recent statistics are unsettling and dismaying, despite the increase of 54,000 jobs in the May numbers. Nonagricultural full-time employment actually fell by 142,000, on top of the 291,000 decline the preceding month. Half of the new jobs created are in temporary help agencies, as firms resist hiring full-time workers. [Check out a roundup of political cartoons on the economy.]

Today, over 14 million people are unemployed. We now have more idle men and women than at any time since the Great Depression. Nearly seven people in the labor pool compete for every job opening. Hiring announcements have plunged to 10,248 in May, down from 59,648 in April. Hiring is now 17 percent lower than the lowest level in the 2001-02 downturn. One fifth of all men of prime working age are not getting up and going to work. Equally disturbing is that the number of people unemployed for six months or longer grew 361,000 to 6.2 million, increasing their share of the unemployed to 45.1 percent. We face the specter that long-term unemployment is becoming structural and not just cyclical, raising the risk that the jobless will lose their skills and become permanently unemployable.

Don't pay too much attention to the headline unemployment rate of 9.1 percent. It is scary enough, but it is a gloss on the reality. These numbers do not include the millions who have stopped looking for a job or who are working part time but would work full time if a position were available. And they count only those people who have actively applied for a job within the last four weeks.

Include those others and the real number is a nasty 16 percent. The 16 percent includes 8.5 million part-timers who want to work full time (which is double the historical norm) and those who have applied for a job within the last six months, including many of the long-term unemployed. And this 16 percent does not take into account the discouraged workers who have left the labor force.

That makes things pretty clear, doesn't it?

The bottom line:  President Obama claims that he has staved off a Great Depression.  The real deal, however, seems to be that his policies have brought us much closer to being in a great depression.

That is something worth remembering today, tomorrow, and every day right through to election day 2012.

Ken Berwitz

On Fox News Sunday, anchor Chris Wallace interviewed Jon Stewart, who hosts the Daily Show on Comedy Central.  Stewart was snarky, arrogant and dismissive of both Fox and Wallace.  Wallace, however, handled himself quite well and, I thought, made Stewart look like an elitist wiseass jerk.

This morning, I watched a few minutes of "Morning Joe", during which a clip of last night's Daily Show was played.  In it, Stewart whined that the interview had been edited, which made it seem as if he had sudden changes of emotion - "like a scene from A Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown". 

Personally, I found Stewart's choice of movie reference misogynistic and unfunny.  I suspect that a lot of women - maybe most women - would consider it offensive.  However, this probably does not count, because Stewart is on the left, thus given a free pass to be offensive in a way that the right will always be condemned for.

Then, with an air of triumph, Stewart told his audience that at, one point in the interview, Chris Wallace "basically gives away the game" - i.e. he inadvertently admits that even he agrees Fox News is biased.  To "prove" it, Stewart showed a clip in which Wallace said that Fox was a counterweight to NBC and that it tells "...the other side of the story".  This was supposed to prove Stewart's claim.

But I didn't get that meaning at all.  I understoodk Wallace to mean that Fox presented the other side of the story from what NBC was putting out, but not that it exclusively reported only the other side.  Read this transcript, which puts Wallace's quote in context, and see for yourself.  Please pay special attention to the last part, which I've put in bold print:

WALLACE: How do you explain me? Do you think I get my marching orders?

STEWART: I think that you are here in some respects to bring a credibility and an integrity to an organization that might not otherwise have it, without your presence. So, you are here as a counterweight to Hannity, let's say, or you are here as a counterweight to Glenn Beck, because otherwise, it's just pure talk radio and it doesn't establish the type of political player it wants to be.

STEWART: The embarrassment is that I'm given credibility in this world because of the disappointment that the public has in what the news media does.

WALLACE: I don't think --

STEWART: -- not because I have an ideological agenda.

WALLACE: I don't think our viewers are the least bit disappointed with us. I think our viewers think, finally, they're getting somebody who tells the other side of the story.

WALLACE: I'm suggesting that there is bias, and that you only tell part of the story.

That could not be clearer.  And Jon Stewart, therefore, couldn't be more wrong. 

Selectively editing a piece to change the meaning of what the other guy said, is what you do when you've lost, your ego has taken a hit, and you're trying to make yourself look better than you did.

FYI, If you want to know what Jon Stewart is really about, read this slice of the transcript, and note the parts I've put in bold print:

STEWART: Here is the difference between you and I -- I'm a comedian first. My comedy is informed by an ideological background. There's no question about that.

But the thing that you will never understand and the thing that in some respect conservative activists will never understand is that Hollywood, yes, they're liberal. But that's not their primary motivating force. I'm not an activist. I'm a comedian.

WALLACE: All right. I want to thank you for saying that because --

STEWART: Yes?

WALLACE: Baltimore Sun TV critic David Zurawik -- put it up on the screen -- says that is your dodge. "Stewart has never held accountable in his media criticism, is he? When he is wrong, he goes in a tap dance of saying he's only a comedian and shouldn't be taken seriously."

STEWART: OK. Let's talk about that -- when did I say to you I'm only a comedian? I said I'm a comedian first. That's not only. Being a comedian is harder than what you do. What I do is much harder. I put material through a process, a comedic process.

Those are the words of an arrogant, dismissive and self-impressed person.  

Does Stewart have a reason to be self-impressed?  In terms of professional success, the answer is a resounding yes; he is the host of a hugely successful cable show. 

However, Chris Wallace, the man Stewart is talking down to, is the anchor of a plum Sunday morning news show.  It seems to me that is pretty impressive too. 

Nothing makes a person look smaller than talking down to someone he/she obviously considers to be an inferior.  And - despite the fact that both have achieved major success - that is what Jon Stewart did in the Wallace interview.

With an attitude like that, Stewart deserved to get his tush handed to him.  Which he did.

Good job,  Chris.

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

NOTE:  The quotes from Stewart and Wallace, which I initially put up from memory this morning, have been changed slightly now that I have seen the video on line.  My comments about what was said remain the same.

Ken Berwitz

Suppose you are the President.  You have pushed through a "stimulus package" which put the country trillions of dollars into debt, promising that it would jump-start the economy.  But the economy has largely stayed right down the crapper for over two years, with no particular reason to think it is going to get appreciably better any time soon.  And an election is coming up.

What do you do?

In President Obama's case, you do what you have done in the past:  create an economic fantasy and pretend it is real.

Remember when we were told the "stimulus package" would create 3,500,000 - 4,000,000 new jobs by the end of 2010?  Within days, that promise was changed to save or create the jobs.  With an impossible-to-quantify fantasy like that, the administration has been able to invent just about any job "data" it cares to.

But, with unemployment still over 9%, anemic growth numbers, and the country falling further and further into debt, that wasn't enough.  An escalation of fantasy was inevitable.

So the latest claim is that the economy may look bad, but that is the wrong way to see things.  The bad numbers are really good, you see, because the alternative would have been a Great Depression.  And since Barack Obama's policies averted a Great Depression, we should all be thankful for the lousy economy we are in the midst of.  

Does this beg for a debunking, or what?

Enter John Merline of Investors Business Daily.

Here are a few selected passages from Merline's excellent piece, which blows the Great Depression fantasy to smithereens:

IBD reviewed records of economic forecasts made just before Obama signed the stimulus bill into law, as well as economic data and monthly stimulus spending data from around that time, and reviews of the stimulus bill itself.

The conclusion is that in claiming to have staved off a Depression, the White House and its supporters seem to be engaging in a bit of historical revisionism.

 

Economists weren't predicting a Depression.

 

White House economists forecast in January 2009 that, even without a stimulus, unemployment would top out at just 8.8% — well below the 10.8% peak during the 1981-82 recession, and nowhere near Depression-era unemployment levels.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The same month, the Congressional Budget Office predicted that, absent any stimulus, the recession would end in "the second half of 2009." The recession officially ended in June 2009, suggesting that the stimulus did not have anything to do with it.

 

When the recession officially ended in June 2009, just 15% of the stimulus money had gone out the door. And that figure's likely inflated, since almost a third of the money was in the form of grants to states, which some studies suggest they didn't spend, but used to pay down debt.

 

Other programs Obama often touts — Cash for Clunkers, mortgage help, homebuyer tax credits, the auto rescue plans — either came as the recession had ended or was ending or were widely deemed to be busts. 

 

The stimulus wasn't up to the task.

Economists on both sides of the aisle complained at the time that the stimulus was too small or too slow-acting to be very effective at growing the economy, much less stopping any Depression.

Does this analysis make sense?  Yeah, sure, loads of it. 

But we're talking politics here.  And Chicago politics at that.  So you can bet that the "we staved off a Great Depression" line will be tossed out relentlessly by the Obama people - and parrotted compliantly by much of our wonderful "neutral" media as well. 

Hey, why not?  No one can disprove it, can they?   Of course if Republicans were to claim that, without the "stimulus package"  unemployment would have dropped to 1%, no one could disprove that either.  But, then again, who's counting anyway?

The bottom line is that politics often is the art of making utterly asinine claims with a straight face.  And the Great Depression fantasy may well be one of the biggest.  Do yourself a favor and don't fall for it.

Ken Berwitz

If youtube.com videos are more than a few minutes long, I tend to skip through them just to get things moving.

But not this one, which is both enormously entertaining and highly edifying.

It is a video my sister sent me, which juxtaposes a small sampling of the unbelievably vicious, nasty insults which have been tossed out against Sarah Palin, with examples of Barack Obama making a series of gaffes and missteps that depict exactly what the attackers are saying about Ms. Palin.

The video is a bit over 9 minutes long, but I doubt you'll be skipping through anything.  CLICK HERE and see for yourself:

Ken Berwitz

How interesting that our media - ever dilligent to cover all angles of a story, of course - have almost uniformly ignored this part of Weinergate.

Excerpted from Eileen F. Toplansky's article at americanthinker.com:

Far more disturbing than the salacious details of Weiner's dalliances is the fact that apparently his mother-in-law is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.  Furthermore, Huma Abedin's brother, Hassan, "is listed as a fellow and partner with a number of Muslim Brotherhood members."  Hassan works at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies (OCIS) at Oxford University.  The Egyptian Al-Azhar University, well-known for a curriculum that encourages extremism and terrorism, is active in establishing links with OCIS.

How is it that the Western media, with its hourly analyses of Weiner, missed this salient point, yet Arab news sources revealed this connection?  Walid Shoebat, formerly with the PLO, explains that Saleha Mahmoud Abedin, a professor in Saudi Arabia "belongs to the Sunni movement's women's division known as the Muslim Sisterhood."  During the recent uprising in Egypt, which resulted in Mubarak's removal, "a special women's unit within the Muslim Brotherhood served as 'mules' to deliver messages and acted as messengers for the terrorist group."

The Muslim Sisterhood is also known as the International Women's Organization (IWO) and members are located "across 16 different countries."  Its goal is to "work at all levels in accordance with the message of the Brotherhood."  The Muslim Brotherhood's goal is Islamic world domination and "[i]t is now public knowledge that nearly every major Muslim organization in the United States is actually controlled by the [Muslim Brotherhood] or a derivative organization.  Consequently, most of the Muslim-American groups of any prominence in America are now known to be, as a matter of fact, hostile to the United States and its Constitution."

This chart on page four of the Domestic Intelligence Briefing by Mark Hass shows the FBI - Identified Terror Networks connected to the Muslim Brotherhood in North America.

Which should now raise even greater concerns since Huma Abedin-Weiner is the deputy chief of staff to Hillary Clinton, the United States Secretary of State.  Did any vetting occur by Clinton's people concerning Huma Abedin, her brother Hassan, or her mother Saleha Mahmoud Abedin, and any connections with known Islamists, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood?

 Is it just me, or does this Muslim Brotherhood/Sisterhood connection seem a bit more important than anthony weiner sending anatomically correct pictures of himself to women over the internet?

If you agree, let's both hope against hope that, as our wonderful "neutral" media mull over how and when weiner can mount a political comeback - maybe even in 2012 - they will spend a moment or two exploring what has been uncovered by Ms. Toplansky - which, persumably, they had every bit as much access to as she did.

These are journalists?  Give me a break.

Ken Berwitz

It's silly, it has nothing to do with politics, but it's funny.  So - with thanks to our pal West Coast Russ - here is a book store joke:

A guy goes into a bookstore and asks the young lady assistant, "Do you have the new book out for men with short penises? I can't remember the title." 

She replies, "I'm not sure if it's in yet." 

 The man says, "That's the one".

Ken Berwitz

As President Obama continues to ignore the constitution by conducting a war in Libya without necessary congressional approval, the house of representatives is poised to do something about it.

Excerpted from an article at Reuters:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned Congress on Sunday not to cut off funding for U.S. military involvement in Libya and predicted that the operation targeting Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's forces will "end OK."

Lawmakers question the legality of President Barack Obama's continued use of the U.S. military in Libya without the approval of Congress.

House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, the top Republican in Congress, last week said Congress could cut funding for U.S. military involvement in Libya, ratcheting up pressure on Obama.

Gates, who departs as Pentagon chief this month after serving in the post under one Democratic and one Republican president, noted that earlier during his stint in the job Congress also threatened to cut off funding for the Iraq war.

"Frankly, I think cutting off funding in the middle of a military operation when we have people engaged is always a mistake," Gates told "Fox News Sunday."

"We are seeing the Gaddafi government weaken," Gates said. "... I think this is going to end OK. I think Gaddafi will eventually fall."

He said he could not make a prediction on how long it would take before Gaddafi falls.

President Obama was legally required to get congressional approval within 60 days of the start of hostilities - or 90 days under a set of circumstances which clearly do not exist for this war.  Regardless, the 60 and 90 day time limits have passed.  

President Obama is now running a dictator's war:  i.e. a war in which, irrespective of the constitutional rights given to congress, his say and his say alone counts.

Do I want congress to shut off funding?  No I do not.  It makes us look ridiculous and tells the world that we are in chaos.

But that is the position President Obama's arrogant, dictatorial actions have put us in.  It is a situation entirely of his own making, which forces congress to consider actions it should never have to take.

The 2012 elections cannot come fast enough.

Ken Berwitz

Spare me from left wing racists.  Like E. J. Dionne.

There are various manifestations of left wing racism.  One of them occurs when White people - more often than not educated, well-to-do White people - decide they will prove their good will toward minorities by advocating for them in ways that inherently show they consider those minorities to be less intelligent, less capable sub-beings. 

If you want a classic example of left wing racism, you need go no further than E. J. Dionne's latest column, in which he has a major league hissy-fit over the idea that some states are requiring voters to show valid ID's and are limiting the time period for early voting.

Let me show you some of the "highlights" of Dionne's racist whine, and take them apart.  He is in rust, I am in blue:

WASHINGTON -- An attack on the right to vote is under way across the country through laws designed to make it more difficult to cast a ballot. If this were happening in an emerging democracy, we'd condemn it as election-rigging. But it's happening here, so there's barely a whimper.  Laws that make it more difficult to cast a ballot?  Isn’t that what any voting requirement law does, regardless of how logical and necessary the law is?  Nice set-up, E.J.:  you’ve taken nothing, and tried to wordsmith it into something.  

The laws are being passed in the name of preventing "voter fraud." But study after study has shown that fraud by voters is not a major problem -- and is less of a problem than how hard many states make it for people to vote in the first place. Show us the studies, E.J.  How come you don’t give us even one link?  Some of the new laws, such as limiting the number of days for early voting, have little plausible connection to battling fraud.  Yep, that sure makes sense.  Giving illegitimate voters a longer period of time to game the system wouldn’t help them at all.  Anyone can see that, I’m sure.

These statutes are not neutral. Their greatest impact will be to reduce turnout among African-Americans, Latinos and the young. In other words, you consider these three groups less capable of getting a voter ID or voting within a time frame than the general population?  And you’re calling other people racist? It is no accident that these groups were key to Barack Obama's victory in 2008 -- or that the laws in question are being enacted in states where Republicans control state governments.  And is it any accident that Democrats would demand less checking of voter validity in these places for exactly the same reasons?  Funny that this corollary, which flows directly from your racist whining, somehow goes unmentioned.  I wonder why?

Again, think of what this would look like to a dispassionate observer. A party wins an election, as the GOP did in 2010. Then it changes the election laws in ways that benefit itself. In a democracy, the electorate is supposed to pick the politicians. With these laws, politicians are shaping their electorates.  I see. So in your world, efforts to make sure only legal voters get to cast ballots is rigging the election.  Yep, any dispassionate observer would agree 100%.  Honest.

The laws in question include requiring voter identification cards at the polls, limiting the time of early voting, ending same-day registration, and making it difficult for groups to register new voters.  Good, good, good, and what the hell are you talking about?  The only difficulty this poses to register voters is difficulty to register ILLEGAL voters.

Sometimes the partisan motivation is so clear that if Stephen Colbert reported on what's transpiring, his audience would assume he was making it up. In Texas, for example, the law allows concealed handgun licenses to work as identification, but not student IDs. Could that be because applicants for a concealed handgun license actually have to prove who they are to a government agency, and submit to a background check, while a student ID is issued by a school, not the government, and says nothing other than that the holder is a student?  And guess what? Nationwide exit polls show that John McCain carried households in which someone owned a gun by 25 percentage points but lost voters in households without a gun by 32 points.  Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to support gun ownership rights.  So OF COURSE gun owning households are more likely to vote Republican.  Is it some kind of revelation to you that people vote their own interests?  Do you think people among the minorities you are trying so hard to be a Benevolent Big White Daddy to don’t vote their own interests?   Is there something wrong with you?

 

In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court, by 6-3, upheld Indiana's voter ID statute. So seeking judicial relief may be difficult. Nice pass-by.  But let’s not go on so fast.  Let’s stop for a moment and reflect on the obvious question this raises:  If voter ID laws are so horrible, why did the Supreme Court vote 6-3 to uphold?  Maybe that decision doesn’t communicate anything to a racist like you.  But I would like to think that most people understand it to mean there is a solid rationale to check voter validity.  Ok, now let's go on.  Nonetheless, the Justice Department should vigorously challenge these laws, particularly in states covered by the Voting Rights Act. And the court should be asked to review the issue again in light of new evidence that these laws have a real impact in restricting the rights of particular voter groups.  There you go.  There’s the nut (and I do mean nut) of this ridiculous whine.  In E.J. Dionne’s world, laws which insist that every voter regardless of race, creed, color or national origin must prove they are legally able to vote before doing so is racial.  What a pile of BS.  

"This requirement is just a poll tax by another name," declared state Sen. Wendy Davis when Texas was debating its ID law earlier this year. Wendy Davis is a partisan Democrat, and illegal voting within an almost monolithically Democrat group will benefit her party.  If you had any integrity you would accuse Davis of advocating to make it easier for Black people to cast illegal votes – which seems pretty clearly to be what she is doing.  But you don’t, so you won’t.  That form of racism is fine with you, because it makes you feel like the Big Benevolent White Daddy you seem so desperate to be.  The fact that most decent Black people would be reviled by your paternalistic vomit?  Irrelevant’n’immaterial.    In the bad old days, poll taxes, now outlawed by the 24th Amendment, were used to keep African-Americans from voting. Who Cares?  This has nothing to do with keeping African-Americans from voting.  It has everything to do with keeping illegal voters from voting.   Even if the Supreme Court didn't see things her way, Davis is right. This is the civil rights issue of our moment.  Blah blah blah. 

In part because of a surge of voters who had not cast ballots before, the United States elected its first African-American president in 2008. Are we now going to witness a subtle return of Jim Crow voting laws?  Are you saying that the only reason Barack Obama won in 2008 is because there was less checking to make sure only legal voters cast ballots?  You are some piece of work.  Does it occur to you that this would deligitimize Barack Obama's election to the presidency?

Whether or not these laws can be rolled back, their existence should unleash a great civic campaign akin to the voter registration drives of the civil rights years. The poor, the young and people of color should get their IDs, flock to the polls and insist on their right to vote in 2012.  Again, we see the absurd claim that allowing only legal voting somehow ties in to the civil rights movement.  What a hot steamy load. 

The bottom line?  Voter ID laws, and shorter early-voting periods, do not prevent even one Black person from voting legally.  And they do not allow even one White person to vote illegally.  

Laws that apply equally to everyone should be celebrated.  Applauded.   But to the left wing racist, E.J. Dionne, they are an outrage.  

How can he be a Benevolent Big White Daddy to those Black folks, if the law works the same way for everyone?  It's not fair!

If I were Black, people like E. J. Dionne would outrage me. 

As someone who has spent over 40 years conducting focus groups, I think I know a little something about people's capability to think and communicate.  And, after interviews with thousands of Black people from all walks of life during those 40 plus years, I can assure you that some of the smartest, and dumbest, people I ever interviewed were Black, as well as some of the most and least communicative.  In other words (gasp!), Black people are just like everyone else.

I can also assure you that Black people do not need Benevolent Big White Daddies like E.J. Dionne, using them to feel good about themselves.

Ken Berwitz

Jon Stewart engaged in a lengthy interview with Fox News's Chris Wallace this morning. 

Here are highlights of the interview.  I will leave it to you to decide who came out better:

JON STEWART, HOST: Yes, I do.

WALLACE: Over the years, you have called us -- and we're going to put this on the screen because this is heavy stuff.

STEWART: Please.

WALLACE: "A biased organization, relentlessly promoting an ideological agenda under the rubric of being a news organization."

STEWART: Rubric.

WALLACE: And -- I actually think that's slightly the wrong use for the word rubric.

"A relentless agenda-driven, 24-hour news opinion propaganda delivery system."

STEWART: Yes.

WALLACE: Where do you come up with this stuff?

STEWART: It's actually quite easy when you feel it. You got to feel it in your soul, you know?

WALLACE: Well, here's the deal. Are you willing to say the same thing about the mainstream media, about ABC, CBS, NBC, "Washington Post," "New York Times"?

STEWART: No.

WALLACE: Would you say the same thing about them that they are -- in your words -- a propaganda delivery system relentlessly pushing a liberal agenda?

STEWART: No, I wouldn't say that.

WALLACE: Why not?

STEWART: MSNBC is attempting that. I think they're attempting. They've looked at your business model and they have seen the success of it. And I think they're attempting to be a more activist organization.

WALLACE: You don't think "The New York Times" is a liberal organization?

STEWART: Now.

WALLACE: Pushing a liberal agenda?

STEWART: "The New York Times," no. I think they are to a certain extent. Do I think they're relentlessly activist? No. In a purely liberal partisan way? No, I don't.

WALLACE: Even you make fun of the fact that "The New York Times" and the "Washington Post" when this document dump of 24,000 e-mails of Sarah Palin was released, and they got so excited about it, they asked their readers, help us. Go through these 24,000 documents.

STEWART: Right.

WALLACE: How do you explain the fact that they would do that? They would ask the readers to help them go through the Palin e-mails -- inconsequential as they turned out to be --

STEWART: Right.

WALLACE: -- but they never said help us go through the 2,000 pages of the Obama health care bill?

STEWART: Because I think their bias is towards sensationalism and laziness. I wouldn't say it's towards a liberal agenda. It's light fluff. So, it's absolutely within the wheelhouse. I mean, if your suggestion is that they are relentlessly partisan and why haven't they gone and backed away from Weiner? Now, they jumped into the Weiner pool -- so, with such delight and such relish, because the bias --

WALLACE: Some things are indefensible.

STEWART: -- the bias of the mainstream media -- oh, I'm not saying it's defensible, but the bias of the mainstream media is toward sensationalism, conflict and laziness.

STEWART: Here is the difference between you and I -- I'm a comedian first. My comedy is informed by an ideological background. There's no question about that.

But the thing that you will never understand and the thing that in some respect conservative activists will never understand is that Hollywood, yes, they're liberal. But that's not their primary motivating force. I'm not an activist. I'm a comedian.

WALLACE: All right. I want to thank you for saying that because --

STEWART: Yes?

WALLACE: Baltimore Sun TV critic David Zurawik -- put it up on the screen -- says that is your dodge. "Stewart has never held accountable in his media criticism, is he? When he is wrong, he goes in a tap dance of saying he's only a comedian and shouldn't be taken seriously."

STEWART: OK. Let's talk about that -- when did I say to you I'm only a comedian? I said I'm a comedian first. That's not only. Being a comedian is harder than what you do. What I do is much harder. I put material through a process, a comedic process.

WALLACE: But you are a political commentator. The comedy has a political --

(CROSSTALK)

STEWART: Some of it.

STEWART: Am I an activist in your mind, an ideological partisan activist?

WALLACE: Yes.

STEWART: OK. Then I disagree with you.

You can't understand because of the world you live in that there is not a designed ideological agenda on my part to affect partisan change because that's the soup you swim in. And I appreciate that. And I understand that. It reminds me of, you know -- you know, ideological regimes. They can't understand that there is free media other places because they receive marching orders.

WALLACE: How do you explain me? Do you think I get my marching orders?

STEWART: I think that you are here in some respects to bring a credibility and an integrity to an organization that might not otherwise have it, without your presence. So, you are here as a counterweight to Hannity, let's say, or you are here as a counterweight to Glenn Beck, because otherwise, it's just pure talk radio and it doesn't establish the type of political player it wants to be.

STEWART: The embarrassment is that I'm given credibility in this world because of the disappointment that the public has in what the news media does.

WALLACE: I don't think --

STEWART: -- not because I have an ideological agenda.

WALLACE: I don't think our viewers are the least bit disappointed with us. I think our viewers think, finally, they're getting somebody who tells the other side of the story.

WALLACE: I'm suggesting that there is bias, and that you only tell part of the story.

STEWART: Oh, there's no question that I don't tell the full story. I mean, I don't disagree with that. But I don't not tell the full story based on a purely ideological partisan agenda. That's my point. My point isn't --

WALLACE: I think your agenda is more out there, and you're pushing more of an agenda than you pretend to.

STEWART: I've existed in this country forever. There have been people like me who satirize the political process and who have satirized -- what was it that Will Rogers said? You know, how crazy is it when politicians are a joke and comedians are taken seriously?

WALLACE: That assumes a kind of -- and this is where I think you're wrong and you don't get it --

STEWART: That may be right.

WALLACE: -- is that there is not a single marching order. There is not some kind of command. There is not a talking point memo. I'm saying --

(CROSSTALK)

STEWART: Well, that I disagree with. WALLACE: I am sitting here talking to Jon Stewart and I'm trying to get it, trying to understand you, and trying to see whether or not you recognize that what I believe is true, that there is as much bias on the other side as you subscribe to Fox, and why you seem to go easy on that.

STEWART: I think that there is a -- probably a liberal bias that exists within the media that is because of the medium in which it exists. I think that the majority of people working in it probably hold liberal viewpoints, but I don't think that they are as relentlessly activist as the conservative movement that has risen up over the last 40 years.

And that movement has decided that they have been victims of a witch hunt. And to some extent they're right.

People on the right are called racists and they're called things with an ease that I am uncomfortable with -- and homophobic and all those other things. And I think that that is absolutely something that they have a real right to be angry about and to feel that they have been vilified for those things. And I've been guilty of doing some of those things myself.

WALLACE: I accept your apology.

(LAUGHTER)

WALLACE: I want to thank you for coming on.

Your call.

Ken Berwitz

Here is the latest indication that the euro may be on its way to the landfill of history.

Excerpted from Harry Wilson's article for the London Daily Telegraph:

Senior sources have revealed that leading banks, including Barclays and Standard Chartered, have radically reduced the amount of unsecured lending they are prepared to make available to eurozone banks, raising the prospect of a new credit crunch for the European banking system.

Standard Chartered is understood to have withdrawn tens of billions of pounds from the eurozone inter-bank lending market in recent months and cut its overall exposure by two-thirds in the past few weeks as it has become increasingly worried about the finances of other European banks.

Barclays has also cut its exposure in recent months as senior managers have become increasingly concerned about developments among banks with large exposures to the troubled European countries Greece, Ireland, Spain, Italy and Portugal.

In its interim management statement, published in April, Barclays reported a wholesale exposure to Spain of £6.4bn, compared with £7.2bn last June, while its exposure to Italy has fallen by more than £100m.

One source said it was “inevitable” that British banks would look to minimise their potential losses in the event the eurozone crisis were to get worse. “Everyone wants to ensure that they are not badly affected by the crisis,” said one bank executive.

Moves by stronger banks to cut back their lending to weaker banks is reminiscent of the build-up to the financial crisis in 2008, when the refusal of banks to lend to one another led to a

seizing-up of the markets that eventually led to the collapse of several major banks and taxpayer bail-outs of many more.

While the funding position of UK banks is far stronger now than it was back in 2008, the banking systems of several other major European countries, including Spain, Germany and Italy, are showing increasing signs of weakness.

Europe is collapsing under the weight of of its own profligacy.  Banks make bad loans, stuff money in their pockets, and then come crying for governments to bail them out or "the little people will suffer" - when, in reality, their concern is that the banks will suffer and they'll lose those obscene salaries and bonuses.

Sound familiar?  Sound like anything that has happened in the USA?  Sound like AIG?  Citigroup?  Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac?

The saddest part is that when a few brave politicians try to talk fiscal sanity (Paul Ryan, Chris Christie, Luis Fortuno of Puerto Rico, to name three), they are essentially shouted down and called heartless bastards who don't care about the common people. Even sadder is that a great many of the so-called common people do not begin to understand how badly they are getting their backsides handed to them, not to mention their children and grandchildren.

If the euro goes, will it finally wake up the USA?

Or, what if we go first?  Does that wake up Europe?

Either way, this situation cannot hold.

Ken Berwitz

What do you do as President if you want to continue bombing a country and you have no legal right to do so? 

Well, if you're Boss Barack, you ignore the law and do it anway.

And what do you do if at least some lawyers at the Pentagon and the Justice Department say you have no legal right to do so?

Well, if you're Boss Barack you ignore the lawyers who say what you don't want to hear, and do it anyway.

Excerpted from Charlie Savage's article for the New York Times:

President Obama rejected the views of top lawyers at the Pentagon and the Justice Department when he decided that he had the legal authority to continue American military participation in the air war in Libya without Congressional authorization, according to officials familiar with internal administration deliberations.

Jeh C. Johnson, the Pentagon general counsel, and Caroline D. Krass, the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, had told the White House that they believed that the United States military’s activities in the NATO-led air war amounted to “hostilities.” Under the War Powers Resolution, that would have required Mr. Obama to terminate or scale back the mission after May 20.

But Mr. Obama decided instead to adopt the legal analysis of several other senior members of his legal team — including the White House counsel, Robert Bauer, and the State Department legal adviser, Harold H. Koh — who argued that the United States military’s activities fell short of “hostilities.” Under that view, Mr. Obama needed no permission from Congress to continue the mission unchanged.

 If Barack Obama can convince the public that bombing Libya is not engaging in "hostilities", he is the greatest con man in the history of the world.

But, successful con man that Mr. Obama might be, he isn't that good.  And now a growing chorus of fellow Democrats - partly out of anti-war principle and partly, I am sure, out of dread fear that this is going to come back to haunt their party next election day - are joining Republicans and a large percentage (maybe even a majority) of Indpendents, to speak out against this blatant abuse of the presidency.

Democrats called Iraq an illegal war.  Some called Afghanistan an illegal war as well.   But, in both cases, President Bush played by the rules, seeking - and getting - congressional approval to pursue those wars.

In Barack Obama, however, we have a rogue President who has convinced NATO to join us in wreaking havoc and destruction across Libya, supposedly for "humanitarian purposes".  Yet, as Syrian dictator bashar al-assad kills his own people by the hundreds and thousands for daring to demand freedom and democracy - or, at any rate, the end of unelected dictatorship - our President does nothing except "warn" al-assad.  In other words, nothing at all. 

When you're The Boss, you don't have to be consistent.  You can do what you want, without logic or symmetry.

So where are we in Libya today?

-We still do not have a specific, defined objective.  We either are or are not trying to depose moammar qaddafi, depending on what day you ask;

-We still have no idea who "the rebels" we are helping really are, other than that at least one of their senior leaders has acknowledged recruiting al-qaeda into their ranks, and calls them "good muslims" with common goals.  We, therefore, have no idea whether the group we are helping would be any better than qaddafi or whether they would be even worse;

-The bombing itself is a study in chaotic incompetence. Almost daily, we read reports of NATO bombing runs that miss their mark, hitting either "the rebels" or civilian targets. 

Who do we blame for this?  How much blame goes to Barack Obama, the prime mover of this debacle?  Is the article excerpted above, an indication that President Obama is losing core support over it?

Is it possible that Boss Barack's actions have become so unacceptable that even usually supportive venues like the New York Times have had their bellyful?  Will the Times now come down on Obama for real?  Will it, and other pro-Obama media start noticing that this is not his first abuse of power (e.g. ignoring the fact that ObamaCare has been found unconstitutional and going ahead with its implementation anyway)?

If so, it is about time.  It is well past about time.  But better late than never. 

We elected a President, not a tinhorn dictator.  Or so we thought.

This has to stop.  Now. 

Ken Berwitz

The Project Gunrunner/Operation Fast and Furious scandal is quickly turning into a major nightmare for the Obama administration.

As it damn well should.

Here, excerpted from yesterday's article by Evan Perez and Devlin Barrett of the Wall Street Journal, is the beginning of President Obama's attempt to distance himself from this ugly, deadly fiasco:

The Justice Department is expected to oust the head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, according to people familiar with the matter, amid a troubled federal antitrafficking operation that has grown into the agency's biggest scandal in nearly two decades.

Moves toward the replacement of Kenneth Melson, acting ATF director since April 2009, could begin next week, although the precise sequence of events remains to be decided, these people said.

The shakeup shows the extent of the political damage caused by the gun-trafficking operation called Fast and Furious, which used tactics that allowed suspected smugglers to buy large numbers of firearms. Growing controversy over the program has paralyzed a long-beleaguered agency buffeted by partisan battles.

Mr. Melson is the most senior official so far implicated in a congressional probe of the Fast and Furious operation.

Republican lawmakers say the agency was "reckless" in running the program and should have known that at least some of the thousands of weapons would end up in Mexico or be used in crimes in the U.S.

The Fast and Furious operation caused dissent in the ATF Phoenix office, according to three ATF agents who testified at a House hearing Wednesday. The agents said they battled supervisors who insisted on doing surveillance instead of arresting suspected straw buyers.

Despite the Justice Department's internal probe, the hearing helped cement the view among top Justice Department officials that Mr. Melson needed to be moved out before pressure from lawmakers grew more intense, according to the people familiar with the matter.

White House spokesman Jay Carney, in response to questions Friday, said, "I can tell you that, as the president has already said, he did not know about or authorize this operation."

Let's see:  Toss Kenneth Melson out the window, assure everyone that President Obama was a 100% innocent bystander, and everything is just hunky-dory, right?

Nope, not right.  The Project Gunrunner/Operation Fast and Furious scandal has become so big that even media venues which usually protect Mr. Obama are reporting on it.  How high does this scandal reach?  Maybe as high as there is.  So don't fool yourself into thinking for even one nanosecond that this ends with Kenneth Melson. 

And with President Obama's re-election campaign only months away, he needs this like he needs an advanced bowel virus. 

 Stay tuned.  As I said earlier today, you have not heard the end of this.  Not by a long shot.

Ken Berwitz

Texas Governor Rick Perry, today, speaking at the Republican Leadership Conference:

"It saddens me when sometimes my fellow Republicans duck and cover in the face of pressure from the left. Our party cannot be all things to all people," Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) said at a Republican party event in Louisiana today.

"Our opponents on the left are never going to like us, so let's quit trying to curry favor with them!" 

Yep.

If you want to see/hear Governor Perry's entire talk, about 20 minutes' worth, here it is. 

Yes, he over emotes a bit.  But he also makes a ton of sense and really rouses his base, with a message that, I suspect, will resonate with a far broader spectrum of voters as well.

Watch it and see why he just might be the most attractive candidate Republicans can field.

Ken Berwitz

"He did not know about or authorize this operation"

That was President Obama's Press Secretary, Jay Carney, talking about what he claims is President Obama's lack of any involvement in the harebrained fiasco known as "Project Gunrunner" and "Operation Fast and Furious", in which ATF sold thousands of weapons to Mexican drug cartels with the idea that they could then track them - then didn't track them. 

Those weapons now are being used against both USA and Mexican authorities, and have been involved in the deaths of US border agents.

Do you believe him? 

If so, explain why his administration has moved heaven and earth to suppress the documents that would trace ownership of this stunt to its source. 

Who is he protecting?  Michelle?  Sasha and Malia?  The family dog?

Trust me when I say that you have not heard the end of this.   Not by a long shot.

Ken Berwitz

What a wonderful program ObamaCare must be.

So wonderful that its current legal status is that it is unconstitutional - which the Obama administration completely ignores, continuing implementation as though there were no such ruling at all.

So wonderful that the Obama administration has issued 1,372 waivers to companies, unions and even states, enabling them to avoid dealing with it for at least the next year (can you possibly doubt this will be extended?). 

So wonderful that a significantly disproportionate number of the waivers have been given to friends and supporters of the Obama administration - especially to unions, who now have their cake and eat it by forcing us to live with ObamaCare while they don't have to.

So wonderful that, to this day, the administration has stonewalled every attempt to find out what criteria were used to decide who did and did not get waivers, as well as which requests were denied.

And so wonderful that, as the Republican field is settled and Waivergate will clearly be an attack-issue against President Obama, the administration has suddenly dropped the waiver program like a hot potato.

In a Friday news dump (i.e. when the least number of people will be paying attention) we get this, excerpted from Ricardo Alonso-Zalvidar's article at huffingtonpost.com:

WASHINGTON -- Removing a potential political distraction ahead of next year's elections, the Obama administration Friday announced an early end to a health care waiver program that has come under fire from congressional Republicans.

 

Political considerations were "absolutely not" part of the decision, said Steve Larsen, head of a section of the Health and Human Services department that oversees President Barack Obama's health care law.

 

Larsen said no new applications for waivers will be considered after Sept. 22. Approvals or renewals received by the deadline will be good through 2013. Starting in 2014, the main coverage provisions of the health care law will take effect, and such waivers will no longer be needed.

Political considerations were not part of the decision?  Yeah, ok.  And water is not a part of the Mississippi River.

If media had any integrity, if they were not in the tank for Obama & Co., there would be a huge outcry.  It would not be necessary for Republicans to attack this bogus, corrupt patronage mill, it would be front page/lead story material.

But, as we see over and over again, that is not the case.  Most media are in the tank for Obama & Co.  So this scandal has been buried.  And now, when Democrats circle the wagons and say things like "Hey, it's over.  This is old news.  Let's talk about (whatever their new talking point is)..." will these same media bow, scrape and compliantly go along?  Again?  As usual?

The people doing this may think they are journalists.  They may call themselves journalists.  But they are not journalists, they are propagandists who adjust news coverage on behalf of the side they favor.

Just as the Obama administistration insults our intelligence with Waivergate, so do a great many members of our media disgrace journalism with their one-sided coverage.

Ken Berwitz

Why do mainstream media sometimes intentionally withhold information about people in the news?

Usually, it is for reasons of partisanship, PC and/or fear of being called racist.

Here is a particularly good example of #2 and #3, courtesy of the following excerpt from Brent Baker's blog at newsbusters.org.  It talks about the arrest of yonathan melaku, :

Add ABC’s World News and the NBC Nightly News to James Taranto’s list of news outlets (“Losing His Religion: A Pentagon terror scare and a media taboo”) which refuse to identify Yonathan Melaku, who was caught in Arlington Cemetery with suspicious material and a notebook praising the Taliban, as a Muslim.

Instead, on Friday night ABC offered a bunch of ways to describe Melaku , who caused a major incident when his car was found hidden in bushes near the Pentagon -- starting with anchor Diane Sawyer who identified him simply as a “Marine Lance Corporal.” Reporter Pierre Thomas referred to him as “the suspect” multiple times as well as a “Marine reservist,” “a 22-year old Ethiopian American” and a “lone wolf.”

 

 ABC, at least, took the incident seriously, running a full story. NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams read a short item in which he cited the actions of “a Marine reservist.” The CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley didn’t utter a syllable about it.

Ken Berwitz

How often does the Governor of a state sound like the guy next door?  How often does a politician who is asked an intrusive question openly show his annoyance, and answer the way you or I would?

Well, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was on a PBS show, answering questions from viewers.  And here is what he had to say to a woman who, with something of an attitude, asked him to justify sending his children to private school while cutting public school funding:

 

 

 

 

GAIL:  You don’t send your children to public schools, you send them to private schools.  So I was wondering why you think it’s fair to be cutting school funding to public schools.

 

GOVERNOR CHRISTIE:  Gail, you know what?  First off, it’s none of your business.  I don’t ask you where you send your kids to school, don’t bother me about where I send mine.  Secondly, I pay $38,000 a year in property taxes, for a public school system, predominantly in Mendham, that my wife and I don’t choose to utilize, because we believe, we’ve decided as parents, that we believe a religious education should be part of our children’s everyday education.  So we send our children to parochial school.  Third, I, as governor, am responsible for every child in this state, not just my own.  And the decisions I make are to try to improve the education, educational opportunities of every child in this state.  So with all due respect, Gail, it’s none of your business.

YES!  That is EXACTLY the answer Governor Christie should have given.

"Gail" was damn lucky he didn't ask if she supported giving the Christie family a rebate on their school taxes, since since they weren't utilizing the public school system.

Do you appreciate a politician who talks like a normal human being?  Is someone this plain-spoken, candid and down to earth the kind of guy you wish were in the White House? 

If so, you are far from alone.

Ken Berwitz

Israel blockades the sea route to Gaza. 

It does so because Gaza is controlled by hamas, a terrorist entity which is committed, in writing, to the extermination of Israel and its Jews (along with all non-Israeli Jews as well).  That makes it perfectly legal, reasonable and justifiable.

But Israel haters have no problem ignoring uncomfortable little facts like these.  They would rather cry that Gazans are terribly mistreated by those despicable Israelis who, unaccountably, are attempting to keep their country intact and stay alive.

Which brings us to the 2011 Gaza flotilla - a number of ships that are going to try breaking the Israeli blockade.

Last year a ship, flying Turkey's flag, pulled the same stunt.  It didn't work out well.  While the timeline, and the reasons for violence, remain disputed, 9 passengers of the ship were killed, and a number of Israeli military personnel were injured.

It is anyone's guess how many people will wind up injured or dead after this latest fiasco reaches critical mass.

But they certainly can't say they weren't warned.

From Ethan Bronner's article in today's New York Times:

Israel Warns of Using Force if New Flotilla Heads to Gaza

TEL AVIV — Israel made clear on Thursday that if a new flotilla of pro-Palestinian activists sought to break its naval blockade of Gaza like the one a year ago when its commandos killed nine people, the Israeli military would use force again, including boarding the ships and confronting the activists.

“We will do anything we have to do to prevent a boat from breaking the blockade,” a top naval official said in a briefing for foreign journalists. “If there is the same violence against our forces on board, there is a pretty good chance there will be injuries.” The official spoke on the condition of anonymity under Israeli military rules.

On Israel Radio on Thursday, the military’s chief spokesman, Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, said the army would stop any ship from entering Gaza. General Mordechai added, “There is an unequivocal directive from the government to enforce the naval blockade that is recognized by international law, and we will not allow it to be broken.”

The statements seemed part of a heightened effort to stop another flotilla and to pre-emptively explain Israel’s position if violence ensues.

Among those expected to participate is an American vessel with several dozen passengers, including the writer Alice Walker and an 86-year-old whose parents died in the Holocaust.

Four years ago, after Hamas took over in Gaza, Israel and Egypt closed off the territory, preventing most goods and nearly all people from going in and out. Israel began a naval blockade two and a half years ago when it invaded Gaza to stop Palestinian militants from firing rockets into Israel.

But after the commando raid a year ago, international outrage over the deaths, along with the hardships in Gaza, contributed to a shift in Israeli policy. Israel eased its blockade, letting in more goods over land. After the revolution in Egypt this year, Egypt changed its policy toward Gaza, partly reopening its border to people. Today Gaza has plenty of goods available, but its economy remains devastated and unemployment is 40 to 45 percent.

As it did last time, Israel says it will ask ships carrying aid to Gaza to dock in Israel or Egypt, unload the cargo and allow it to be driven in. Israeli officials say the flotillas’ goal is not to ship aid to the Palestinians, but to challenge and embarrass the Israelis.

As you can see, Israel is not trying to prevent nonmilitary supplies from entering Gaza.  If the flotilla cooperates, the supplies will wind up there.  So if their real intention is just to get these supplies to Gazan citizens, the way is clear.

But that isn't their real intention.  Obviously.  Their real intention is to create a provocation; an international incident.  And if these geniuses act as stupidly as their kindred pals did last year, they just might get their wish.

Incidentally, though not mentioned in Mr. Bronner's article, the flotilla's American ship is "Audacity Of Hope" - a clear reference to Barack Obama.  Given the anti-Israeli activity this ship will be engaging in, they certainly are using an appropriate name.....

Ken Berwitz

Supposee you are a left winger who hates Republicans in general and hates President Bush in particular -- but hates war enough to also hate Barack Obama's three-war administration; especially the one in Libya which he initiated?  Who do you lash out at?

In an effort to answer this question, I went to an aggressively hard-left web site, buzzflash.com (which is on the list of ten left wing sites you can link to from my weblog).   

One of buzzflash.com's blogs today discusses President Obama's claim that the War Powers Act does not apply to Libya. Here is a sampling of commenter reactions:

 "Sounds like Cheney to me"

 

"BO's Reichwing core is whowing (sic)"

 

"...they are hoping that we wont notice that they are flouting the rule of law by aggressively flaunting their disdain for the rule of law - a la bushcrew"

 

"I never thought anyone could have such complete contempt for the Constitutional separation of powers that was the hallmark of the Bush criminal enterprise.  And then, along comes a self-proclaimed "expert" in Constitutional Law who craps on the Constitution worse than the previous war criminals."  

What does this tell us?  Well, if it is in any way typical of how the hard left is viewing things these days (and it just might be), Mr. Obama has a major problem.

Why?  Because at least some of them might either sit out the 2012 election, or vote for an alternative candiate who is further left than Mr. Obama (write-in for Dennis Kucinich, anyone?). 

While I doubt this would amount to a lot of votes in strictly numerical terms, it could be enough in one or two competitive states to turn a close Obama win into a close win for the Republican candidate instead.  And that could be the difference between winning and losing the election.

Is this worth monitoring as the months go on?  You bet it is.  And I will.

Ken Berwitz

For almost a month I have been blogging that President Obama is acting outside his constitutional authority by conducting war activity against Libya more than 60 days, without congressional approval.

In  the last week, however, I have read, from a number of sources, that it is 90 days, not 60 - which would mean that President Obama is still within his constitutional  rights (though this seems moot, since he clearly has no intention of seeking congressional approval after 90 days anyway).

For the record, the "90 day people" are wrong.  It is 60 days.

Here are the key passages of the War Powers Act, which provide the President's timing options.  Please pay special attention to the part I've put in bold print, which specifies when the President has 90 days:

REPORTING

SEC. 4. (a) In the absence of a declaration of war, in any case in which United States Armed Forces are introduced--

(1) into hostilities or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances;

(2) into the territory, airspace or waters of a foreign nation, while equipped for combat, except for deployments which relate solely to supply, replacement, repair, or training of such forces; or

(3) in numbers which substantially enlarge United States Armed Forces equipped for combat already located in a foreign nation; the president shall submit within 48 hours to the Speaker of the House of  Representatives and to the President pro tempore of the Senate a report, in writing, setting forth--

(A) the circumstances necessitating the introduction of United States Armed Forces;

(B) the constitutional and legislative authority under which such introduction took place; and

(C) the estimated scope and duration of the hostilities or involvement.

 

(b) The President shall provide such other information as the Congress may  request in the fulfillment of its constitutional responsibilities with respect to committing the Nation to war and to the use of United States Armed Forces abroad

 

(c) Whenever United States Armed Forces are introduced into hostilities or into any situation described in subsection (a) of this section, the President shall, so long as such armed forces continue to be engaged in such hostilities or situation, report to the Congress periodically on the status of such hostilities or situation as well as on the scope and duration of such hostilities or situation, but in no event shall he report to the Congress less often than once every six months.

CONGRESSIONAL ACTION

SEC. 5. (b) Within sixty calendar days after a report is submitted or is required to be submitted pursuant to section 4(a)(1), whichever is earlier, the President shall terminate any use of United States Armed Forces with respect to which such report was submitted (or required to be submitted), unless the Congress (1) has declared war or has enacted a specific authorization for such use of United States Armed Forces, (2) has extended by law such sixty-day period, or (3) is physically unable to meet as a result of an armed attack upon the United States. Such sixty-day period shall be extended for not more than an additional thirty days if the President determines and certifies to the Congress in writing that unavoidable military necessity respecting the safety of United States Armed Forces requires the continued use of such armed forces in the course of bringing about a prompt removal of such forces. 

 

(c) Notwithstanding subsection (b), at any time that United States Armed Forces are engaged in hostilities outside the territory of the United States, its possessions and territories without a declaration of war or specific statutory authorization, such forces shall be removed by the President if the Congress so directs by concurrent resolution.

Unless you think that the danger to our unmanned drones, or our aircraft which are flying well above the range of Libya's anti-aircraft fire, constitutes an "unavoidable military necessity respecting the safety of United States Armed Forces", the time limit is 60 days.

Clear enough?

I don't know, of course, but I suspect that congressional leadership has not made a major issue over the 60 day time limit, in an effort to give President Obama a face-saving way of going to congress even beyond when he legally had to. 

Well, this President clearly doesn't give a damn about the legality of what he is doing.  And why should he worry about it, when our wonderful "neutral" media have looked the other way, instead of screaming that he is ignoring this legislation, thus acting outside the constitution?

Today's New York Times, albeit belatedly, has an editorial demanding that President Obama go to congress.  The Times points out that Mr. Obama's attempts to wordsmith this legal requirement out of existence are nonsensical - that "No word games can get him off the hook".  

Although I disagree with most of what the Times has to say regarding our war involvement in Libya, on this point it is 100% correct.

Late though this editorial comes, it is a start.  Now, where are the rest of our media?  Still tanking for Obama, as per usual?

Ken Berwitz

Anyone who wants to know just how far in the tank our mainstream media are for the Obama administration, need look no further than its near-nonexistent coverage of "Project Gunrunner", within which is "Operation Fast and Furious"

Just how much of a scandal is purposefully being buried, and just how devastating is it to the USA?  Read the following excerpts from Bob Owens' article at pajmasmedia.com, and see for yourself:

On October 5, 1986, a former U.S. Air Force C-123 transport plane was shot down in Nicaragua. The pilots and radio operator perished when the plane crashed, but a former U.S. Marine who was a cargo handler on the aircraft was able to parachute to safety. He was captured by the Nicaraguan government.

 

The former Marine, Eugene Hasenfus, claimed to be a cargo handler for the CIA. His capture and trial began the unraveling of what became known as the Iran-Contra Affair, which saw 14 Reagan-era officials indicted and eleven convictions for a plot that traded arms to Iran for hostages and illegally funded Nicaragua’s anti-communist rebels.

 

On December 14, 2010, a special unit of the U.S. Border Patrol came across a group of heavily armed suspects near Rio Rico, Arizona. The Border Patrol team identified themselves as law enforcement officers, at which point the armed men open fire. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was hit in the pelvis by a single bullet and died the next morning. One of the suspects was captured, and two AK-pattern semiautomatic rifles recovered at the scene were identified by serial number as weapons that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) — acting in concert with and with the blessing of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) — allowed weapons smugglers to purchase at U.S. gun shops. The weapons were just two of more than 2,000 firearms that ATF supervisors and the highest levels of DOJ management allowed to be “walked” across the border to narco-terrorist drug cartels in Mexico, in a scandal that promises to be more damning and deadly than Iran-Contra.

 

“Operation Fast and Furious contributed to the increasing violence and deaths in Mexico. This result was regarded with giddy optimism by ATF supervisors hoping that guns recovered at crime scenes in Mexico would provide the nexus to straw purchasers in Phoenix.” ATF officials were seemingly unconcerned over the deaths of Mexican law enforcement officers, soldiers, and innocent civilians, noting that you had to “scramble a few eggs” to make an omelette, in a callous disregard of human life.

 

The more than 2,000 weapons that the Obama Justice Department allowed to be delivered to Mexican narco-terrorist cartels are thought to have been used in the shooting of an estimated 150 Mexican law enforcement officers and soldiers battling the cartels. Two American law enforcement officers have also presumably fallen prey to these weapons, along with an unknown number of civilians on both sides of the border.

 

President Barack Obama’s Department of Justice has purposefully armed narco-terrorist drug cartels that have been accused of bombings, ambushes, mass murders, public executions, and the assassination of police, politicians, and civic leaders.

 

Obama’s Justice Department armed the enemy of our neighbor and ally, providing enough arms to equip ten infantry companies, or two battalions, of violent drug dealers.

 

Iran-Contra was a misguided attempt to trade arms for hostages and supply a covert supply of arms to rebels fighting against a communist dictatorship during the Cold War.

 

Gunrunner was an attempt to develop enough gun-running evidence to bring down a cartel, and instead supplied thousands of arms to drug cartels locked in a life-or-death struggle with a key U.S. ally and trading partner.

You tell me which is worse.

Is it not clear that this is a monstrously huge scandal?  An amazing display of stupidity and ineptitude which is doing significant damage to both the USA and Mexico? 

And is it not clear that the Obama administration is doing everything in its power to hide from the public -- with the sickeningly willing complicity of our wonderful "neutral" media?

In 2012 we have a chance to get rid of this godawful administration.  Who do we see about getting back media which care about reporting facts and informing the public?

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

UPDATE:  Can it be that there is finally hope for media coverage on this scandal?  Both MSNBC and CNN did features on it this afternoon - not perfunctory stuff but several minutes of discussion with key facts being aired.  (I did check Fox so I don't know if it did the same). 

Will the nightly network news give Project Gunrunner/Operation Fast and Furious the coverage it deserves as well?  I certainly hope so.

Ken Berwtz

In case there are any lingering doubts, would you like to know how the disgraceful toady and Obama sock-puppet, Attorney General eric holder, thinks the war on terror should be pursued?

If so, you'll be very interested in Josh Gerstein's blog at politico.com.  Here are a few excerpts:

Efforts in Congress to force terrorism suspects into military commissions are undermining the war on terror, Attorney General Eric Holder charged in a speech to a liberal lawyers' group in Washington Thursday night. 

"I am determined to defeat our enemies," Holder said in his address to the American Constitution Society. "But victory and security will not come easily. And they won’t come at all if we adhere to a rigid ideology, adopt a narrow methodology, or abandon our most effective terror-fighting weapon -- our Article Three [civilian] court system."

"Without civilian law enforcement and Article Three courts, our ability to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat terror plots; to secure actionable intelligence; to enlist international cooperation; and to punish those who have -- and who intend to -- harm Americans would be seriously damaged," Holder declared to considerable applause from the audience of about 700. "We must speak out. And we must set the record straight."

Well, so much for lingering doubts.  This genius thinks that international, non-citizen terrorist suspects, most of whom are captured in battle situations, should be given a civil court trial with the same rights and privileges as, say, a US citizen accused of stealing a dozen eggs from the local Kroger's.  And if we have war prisoners tried by military commissions instead - as we have done for decades and centuries - that undermines our war effort.

Do you have trouble with this?  Good, you should.  The effing Mad Hatter would have trouble with this. 

But that, folks, is our sitting Attorney General.  And, in front of an audience guaranteed to agree with him, he gets applause for this drivel -- much as a skinhead would get applause at a nazi convention, by demanding that all Blacks and Jews be killed.

And our wonderful "neutral" media, which couldn't wait to bash Bush AG's John Ashcroft and Aberto Gonzalez every chance they got?  For the most part, silent as churchmice about this disgraceful toady. 

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

Ken Berwitz

Are you ready for a lesson in civility?

As you may know, one of the ways that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is trying to get the state budget back to something approaching sanity is by cutting union pensions and benefits for public sector employees.  You might agree or disagree with Christie's actions, and that is fine.  And, predictably, the state unions vehemently disagree; that is fine too.

But some ways of disagreeing are not so fine.

Illustratively, here is a 2 minute video, in which christopher shelton, a Communication Workers of America big shot, screams about "Adolf Christie" and how he, and his "generals", are turning New Jersey into "nazi Germany": 

I was especially intrigued by the part where shelton, to an enthusiastically cheering audience, screamed:

"Brothers and sisters, this is not going to be an easy fight.  It took World War II to get rid of the last Adolf Hitler. It is going to take World War III to get rid of Adolf Christie. Are you ready for World War III?”

What is that supposed to mean?  That christopher shelton and the CWA membership are making war on Governor Christie?  Will they try to exterminate Christie and the "two generals"?  If someone hears this and gets sufficiently ginned up to go out and take a potshot at Christie or the other two, will our wonderful "neutral" media blame the sick, hate-filled loudmouth christopher shelton, or will they blame Governor Christie?

I hope we never have to find out.

Ken Berwitz

Somehow I doubt that President Bush expects to get a lot of praise from Dennis Kucinich, the ultra-left wing congressperson from Ohio (or maybe Washington state, but that is a subject for another blog).

Well, today Mr. Bush got that praise.  And the reason?  Because, though disapproving of Bush's war in Iraq, Kucinich acknowledged that he observed the constitutional limits on his Presidential power and got approval from congress to pursue it.

By contrast, President Obama could not care less about the constitution and is not seeking approval for his misbegotten bombing of Libya, on behalf of ????????? (all he knows about "the rebels" is that they want qaddafi out - and have no problem conmingling with al-qaeda)

Excerpted from Bob Cusack's article at thehill.com:

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) on Thursday ripped President Obama while giving credit to former President George W. Bush for asking Congress to authorize the war in Iraq.

The anti-war Democrat, criticizing Obama's handling of the conflict in Libya, noted that Bush formally consulted Congress on the Iraq war in 2002.

 

"President Bush came to Congress ... President Obama doesn't feel like he needs to come to Congress," Kucinich said during an interview on C-SPAN's "Washington Journal" program. Kucinich pointed out he was strongly opposed to the Iraq war.

Maybe Kucinich, who usually is long on principled rhetoric but short on effectiveness, can actually get a few more of his Democrat colleagues to join in demanding that Mr. Obama work within the constitution.  That would be a welcome change.

Do we really need a hugo chavez wannabe in the oval office?

Ken Berwitz

Who knew that, attitudinally speaking, Jeremiah Wright had a twin brother who lived in Lebanon?

Read this excerpt from Khaled Abu Toameh's article in today's Jerusalem Post, and see what I mean:

Mufti of Lebanon: Palestinians are 'trash', not welcome

 

The mufti of Lebanon, Sheikh Mohammed Rashid Qabbani, was quoted this week as saying that Palestinians are no longer welcome in his country.

He also condemned Palestinians as “trash” and said that he’s not afraid of their weapons.

Sheikh Qabbani’s remarks were made during a meeting he held in his office in Beirut with a Palestinian delegation representing refugees and various Palestinian factions in Lebanon.

The furious mufti later kicked the Palestinian representatives out of his office.

More than 400,000 Palestinians live in Lebanon, most of them in extremely harsh conditions in refugee camps.

The Palestinian delegates said they were extremely shocked by the mufti’s abusive language and threats.

“He called us trash,” one of them said. “He didn’t even give us time to respond to his allegations.”

The mufti lost his temper following complaints that Palestinians living in refuge camps in Lebanon had illegally seized lands belonging to the state and the Islamic Wakf Trust.

Sheikh tayseer Tamimi, former head of the PA religious courts, strongly condemned the mufti of Lebanon, saying that his statements were unsuitable for a man of his status.

He said that Sheikh Qabbani had a long history of instigating sectarian strife between various communities in Lebanon and demanded that he apologize to all Palestinians

Wow.  Even the Likkud Party in Israel doesn't say that about Palestinian Arabs; at least not publicly.

Lebanon's current President is Michel Suleiman ; a Maronite Christian. But I'll bet if he were a Muslim, and spent 18 years in Sheikh Qabbani's Mosque, no one would doubt where his sympathies lied. 

There is a lesson somwehere in there for US voters.....

Ken Berwitz

In an amazingly raucus press conference, peppered with genuinely disgusting locker-room quality heckling - especially from one little-brain in particular - anthony weiner has resigned from congress.

Weiner did not specify whether he would run for office again in the future - maybe even for congress again next year.

The strangest comment I heard was when he said:

"Thanks to my mother and father, who Instilled in me the values that have carried me this far"

Tell you what:  If I were mom and dad, I would probably be wondering how to take that.

In any event, it is over, at least for now.  But I would bet that, one way or another, we will be seeing more weiner (that is not an anatomical reference, there isn't any more to see) in the near future.

Ken Berwitz

Suddenly it is all over the blogosphere that anthony weiner is going to resign from congress.

I will wait to hear if he does (which does seem pretty certain), what he says, and whether he is simply walking away or will possibly run again next year, etc.

And - please excuse the unregenerate cynic in me - I will also wait a while to hear if his wife's reported pregnancy continues, or she suddenly, one way or another, ceases to be pregnant anymore. 

As you can tell, I put nothing past anthony weiner.  And I put nothing past anyone who works in a senior capacity for Hillary Clinton, which is what Huma Abedin Weiner does.

Stay tuned.....

Ken Berwitz

You have to be fascinated when someone says something amazingly stupid, and then, thinking it is somehow smart, says it again to make sure you heard it right.

Here, excerpted from Molly Ball's blog at politico.com, is DWS's latest howler:

“We own the economy. We own the beginning of the turnaround and we want to make sure that we continue that pace of recovery, not go back to the policies of the past under the Bush administration that put us in the ditch in the first place,” Wasserman Schultz told Mike Allen at POLITICO’s ‘Playbook Breakfast.’

The economy, she said, “has turned around” since President Obama took office, with steady job growth evident even if the pace leaves something to be desired.

Republicans have ridiculed Democrats’ claims of economic success in the wake of disappointing jobs numbers and an uptick in the unemployment rate.

Wasserman Schultz said Democrats aren’t in need of a new story to tell about the economy because they’ve put the right policies in place. “I don’t think it’s about what we say, it’s about what we do.”

Well, I'll say this:  I agree completely with Ms. Schultz's first sentence.  Yes, after enactment of the so-called "stimulus package", and the ensuing 2 1/2 year economic record it generated, Democrats certainly do "own the economy".

Now let's see what she is proudly proclaiming ownership of., via Tina Korbe's summary at hotair.com:

The facts highlighted in the RNC’s most recent video deserve review: 9.1 percent unemployment. More than 6 million foreclosures. About 1 million construction jobs lost. Some 865,000 manufacturing jobs lost. An enormous $3.7 trillion added to the national debt. Three straight record high deficits. Strange equation for an economic turnaround!

This is what DWS wants - demands - ownership of.  Trust me when I tell you that, all over the USA, Republican strategists go to bed every night praying that President Obama, and his fellow democrats run on this record of, er, economic achievement. 

Not for nothing do I call her Dim Bulb Debbie.

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

Note:  Thomas Lifson of American Thinker - a writer I have a lot of respect for - has picked up on this designation and now calls her Dim Bulb Debbie too.  I have not corresponded with Lifson and acknowledge it is possible he came up with the same name by coincidence - but I prefer to assume the most likely probability, which is that he saw it here.

Further Note:  The Washington Examiner, it turns out, has a "Dim Bulb" feature in which it describes various types of stupidity, and has used that description for a number of people, one of whom is Debbie Wasserman Schultz.  But it never used the term "Dim Bulb Debbie", nor did it ever treat that term as specific to her.  So, for whatever it's worth, I retain claim of ownership.

Ken Berwitz

Greece is on the verge of collapse.

Its government has no money and is in desperate fiscal condition.  But when it tries to implement so-called "austerity" measures, a large segment of the population, which has become used to receiving more and more "entitlements" over the years and now resents the idea that they might actually have to produce something to get them, is violently protesting.

Can it happen in other European countries?  Not only is the answer yes, but several are sitting at the edge of the precipice right now; Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Italy among them.

Can it happen in the USA?  Well, do we have a large segment of the population which has become used to receiving more and more "entitlements" over the years and now resents the idea that they might actually have to produce something to get them?

You already have your answer, don't you?

Ken Berwitz

For weeks, I have been writing about "Project Gunrunner" - and, within it, "Operation Fast and Furious" (a term I will be using more frequently in the future).

Simply stated, the idea of this operation was that the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) would sell thousands of weapons to Mexican drug cartels, then track where the weapons went.

That's right, you read it correctly.  There is no typo.  We were selling advanced weaponry to Mexican drug cartels. 

The result of this harebrained, lunatic-asylum-quality idea?  Two dead border agents (so far) and the vast majority of the weapons untracked, and almost certainly being used against us. 

In other words, the result of "Operation Fast and Furious" is that we heavily armed Mexican drug cartels - the cartels that the Obama administration allows virtually free entry across our borders, to distribute within the USA.

The gravity of this deadly disaster is such that the House Oversight Committee instituted an investigation.  But it has stalled, because, presumably under orders from the "transparent" Obama administration, ATF has been tremendously uncooperative in providing the necessary documents and records.

Why?  The first reason that comes to mind is that this fiasco was OK'ed high enough up the political food chain (maybe in the Attorney General's office, maybe in the oval office) that it would be a major embarrassment - one that could be added to the already-voluminous list of embarrassments this inept, bumbling, bungling administration has given us.

The investigation, however, continues.  Hearings were called during which the Oversight Committee was to get to the bottom of this mess.  

Two such hearings have been held this week - Monday and Wednesday. They were important enough to be carried live by C-SPAN.  And despite desperate efforts by Democrat members of the committee to change the subject and try to divert it to a debate over gun control laws, devastating information about Project Fast and Furious has come out.

But what does the public know about this?  Well, the Today Show this morning did not report that the hearings took place.  The New York Times buried it on page A22.  I don't have the resources to monitor the rest of media, but when I googled "Operation Fast and Furious" the list of major news organizations covering it was pathetic.  There was Fox News.  There was an LA Times article about it - from March, nothing to do with the hearings.  There was an excellent Atlanta Journal-Constitution piece by Jamie Dupee .  But it was not an article, it was a blog piece.

Get the idea?

Suppose the Bush administration had been involved in an operation which, instead of combating the drug cartels, had armed them (Dupree makes the point that Project Gunrunne had its genesis in 2006 - but then tells us that it became this fiasco in 2009, after Obama took office).  Suppose there were dead border agents as a result of the operation.  Do you think Today and the NY Times would be giving the story serious coverage - in Today's case, any coverage at all?

In addition to the Dupree blog, if you want to know how significant this story is and just how much of a disaster Operation Fast and Furious has been, please read the C-SPAN report, by clicking here.

But don't bother with most mainstream media, which remains in full Obama-protect mode. 

And they call themselves journalists...........

Ken Berwitz

The Obama administration, very much including its leadership, has spent years railing against those dirty profiteers who are getting rich while the rest of us suffer - especially the ingrates who profit by placing their money outside the United States.. 

With this in mind, please read the following excerpt from Kevin Bogardus's article at thehill.com:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) saw her net worth rise 62 percent last year, cementing her status as one of the wealthiest members of Congress.

Pelosi was worth at least $35.2 million in the 2010 calendar year, according to a financial disclosure report released Wednesday. She reported a minimum of $43.4 million in assets and about $8.2 milion in liabilities.

For 2009, Pelosi reported a minimum net worth of $21.7 million.

Pelosi saw her wealth rise due to some stock gains and real estate investments made by her husband, Paul.

Apple stock owned by Pelosi's spouse rose from at least $500,000 in 2009 to $1 million in 2010. The minority leader's husband also took a bigger stake in Matthews International Capital Management — worth at least $5 million last year, compared to $1 million in 2009 — and his investment in some undeveloped residential real estate in Sacramento, Calif., jumped to at least $5 million in value.

Wow.  What a dirty capitalist warlord.   $35.2 million at least?  A whopping $13.5 MILLION DOLLARS IN ONE YEAR????  Plus, since congresspeople do not have to declare everything, we know that the real amount is a lot more.  Way, way more. 

And what about this Matthews International Capital Management that hubby Paul made $4 million in during just this one year?  INTERNATIONAL????? 

For the record, here is how the company describes itself on its web site:

Matthews International Capital Management focuses its efforts and expertise on Asia, managing assets for individuals and institutions. Matthews’ investment offerings provide a broad range of choices for building a global portfolio that includes exposure to Asia.

Why is Paul Pelosi outsourcing his money from the USA to Asia?  Why is this dirty capitalist removing all those millions when the people of the United States are most in need of it? 

Next thing you know we'll find out that the Pelosi's shelter their money too, so they can avoid paying too much in taxes - taxes that would go to the general welfare of USA citizens (and let's not forget those millions of needy illegals too). 

What is this?  They don't have enough money? 

If you are detecting a note of sarcasm here, you are grossly misunderstanding.  This isn't a note of sarcasm, this is a philharmonic orchestra of sarcasm.

If you can find a bigger hypocrite than Nancy Pelosi, let me know who it is.  Because that would be a true accomplishment.

Ken Berwitz

Thank you President Obama. 

It has been almost 2 1/2 years since you and your Democrat colleagues enacted the so-called "stimulus package", after which unemployment (and the national deficit) skyrocketed. 

For all this time we were asking ourselves "How can this be?  How can almost a trillion dollars in stimulus money result in higher rather than lower unemployment" .  And now, thanks, to you, we know.

Here is our answer, culled from the President's love-fes...er, hard-hitting interview with Ann Curry of the Today Show:

“There are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers. You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM, you don't go to a bank teller, or you go to the airport and you're using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate”

There it is, folks.  The answer we have been seeking.  It is those $#(*&$#+%! ATM machines.  That is what accounts for 2 1/2 years of unemployment significantly higher than what the Obama administration said we would have if we didn't pass the "stimulus package".  

The fact that ATM's and airport kiosks have been around for over a decade, including when the unemployment rate was a fraction of what it is today?  Irrelevant'n'immaterial.

Wait.  I just realized something.;  Although ATM machines are largely digital, there might be some basic mechanical components too.  And basic mechanical components might have bushings in them.  And bushings sounds like Bush. 

Hey, there's your reason.  It is BUSH'S fault.  How do you like that dirty Repubican so-and-so, forcing people to use ATM's and kiosks, causing the unemployment rates to rise way higher than they ever were when he was President.

Thanks once more Mr. Obama.  Now we understand perfectly.

Ken Berwitz

Is this some kind of "be good to the folks on the other side of the aisle" day?  I think it must be, because Democrats are doubling down on their ludicrous, dishonest claim that "voter ID is vote suppression".

Here is the latest email from DSCC head Guy Cecil.  Read it and shake your head in amazement: 

Dear Arleen,

You need to know this: Republican governors and state legislatures are working to pass laws to suppress voter turnout in 2012. Texas, Wisconsin and Florida have already passed legislation including restricting early voting. Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maine might be next.

These are all crucial swing states in 2012. If Republicans can prevent Democratic voters from exercising their right, we could lose the White House. And we could lose the Senate. It's that simple.

Republicans can't win on the merits – look how unpopular their plan to kill Medicare is. But they might very well capture the Senate if they keep Democrats from voting. I need your help to fight back now. We need 100,000 people to stand with us and draw attention to the undemocratic actions of these Republican state legislators and governors. Will you add your name?

Click here to call out the Republican tactics to suppress voter turnout. Trying to prevent Americans from exercising their right to vote is wrong, and we won't stand for it.

After you've signed, be sure to forward this email to friends. All Democrats need to join together and draw attention to these disgusting Republican tactics. We won't stand quietly by while they try every trick in the book to steal an election. It's undemocratic, and it must end.

Sincerely,

Guy Cecil

Did you notice that nowhere in this email is the term "voter ID" mentioned?  Herre are the two most likely reasons for this "omission":

1) A large majority of citizens want voter ID laws.  Illustratively, just last month, in "purple" (neither red nor blue) Minnesota, the decidely Democrat-supporting Minneapolis Star-Tribune conducted a statewide survey to see how people felt about voter ID.  The findings?

Please tell me if you would favor or oppose … requiring Minnesota voters to show a photo ID in order to vote.

	Favor	Oppose	Don't know/refused
Total	80%	18%	2%
Men	78%	20%	2%
Women	82%	16%	2%
Republicans	94%	3%	3%
Democrats	64%	33%	3%
Independents	83%	16%	1%
18-34	84%	15%	1%
35-44	80%	16%	3%
45-64