Ken Berwitz

Are President Obama and his disgraceful toady sock-puppet of an Attorney General, eric holder, intentionally trying to invent a race war to get Mr. Obama re-elected?

Ken Blackwell and Ken Klukowski seem to think so.  And they have plenty of evidence to back it up.  

Here are a few excerpts from their commentary at dailycaller.com. See for yourself:

Eric Holder’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has launched an all-out war on voter-ID laws and other measures designed to safeguard the electoral process. Although Holder’s actions are purportedly to prevent African-Americans from being disenfranchised, the reality is that they serve the crass political purpose of ensuring that Holder’s boss gets re-elected next year.

 

The clearest example of this trend is through voter-ID laws.

 

Such laws combat voter fraud that we see on Election Day, especially in certain parts of the nation.

 

It’s not cynical to say this. The 12 or so battleground states that will decide the 2012 presidential election suggest Obama’s re-election strategy. These states include Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Missouri. All of these states have large African-American populations.

 

The African-American community has a staggeringly high unemployment rate under President Obama. So black Americans will not vote for this president because of any prosperity he’s brought to that community. Instead, he has to gin up their votes by painting a picture of racial conflict in which he — and the governmental agency dealing with such things, DOJ — is their champion.

 

This is also seen in Holder’s incessant playing of the race card. First he says we’re a nation of cowards about race. Now that he’s on the ropes for DOJ’s scandalous Operation Fast and Furious gun-running scandal, he has the audacity to say that he and President Obama are being attacked in part because they’re both African-Americans.

 

Voting is a fundamental right.  But there is another voting right. It is the right not to have your legal vote diluted by fraudulent votes. As we explain in our Yale Law & Policy Review article “The Other Voting Right,” every invalid vote cancels out one valid vote. Each such cancellation undermines our democratic republic and reduces the legitimacy of election results.  

Is that what Mr. Obama and holder are up to?  Trying to get Black citizens to forget how completely this administration has failed them by concocting a phony "issue" and pretending there is racism involved? 

What an ugly, cynical, dishonest strategy.  How insulting to Black voters.  How insulting to their intelligence and powers of comprehension.  And, lamentably, for some people you can bet that it is going to work. 

Let's hope most are smart enough not to buy what Mr. Obama and holder apparently are selling.

Ken Berwitz

The Associated Press has a story today about a man convicted of setting fire to a topless coffee shop (no, silly, the coffee shop had a roof.  I mean that kind of topless) because he believed his ex-girlfriend, a waitress there - presumably in uniform, such as the uniforms are in a topless place -  was having an affair with the owner.

The name of this former establishment?  The Grand View Coffee Shop.  If there is such a thing as commercial onomatopoeia, that has to be a great example.

I could post excerpts from the story, but you've already got a link.  Besides, like the upper part of the shop's waitress uniforms, there really isn't anything more. 

But reader comments?  That's another story.

Let me end with a sampling of them - which, I assure you are all completely authentic:

-I really live in the wrong state.

-Oh well the coffee shop is gone now. Thanks for the mammaries.

-My 68th cup and its only 6am!!!

-They have the breast coffee around.

-Is it me or is this excerpt... ""a volatile man" who was quick to anger because his former girlfriend was having a relationship with the shop's owner, the Bangor Daily News reported." not ironically funny? Bangor daily?? Really???

-A topless coffee shop will get you up in the morning!

-I am glad we have been kept abreast of this situation. . . . .

-The coffee couldn't have been that bad.....

-this article needs pictures

-It is always that one guy that wants to screw it up for the rest of us!

-how awkward would it be to ask for milk there?

-Imagine what might of happened if they sold pie?

-This is udderly ridiculous

-Do you really want to look at boobs first thing in the morning?  Yeah I do too.

-I'll take a "C-cup" of coffee please

-Well at least the fire insurance does not have to pay for a new roof since it was a topless coffee shop.

-Be kind to boobies they out number people 2 to 1

-I'm shaking a fist full of ones in anger!!

There were also a couple of serious comments, but I prefer the ones said in chest.  (Sorry, couldn't resist)

Ken Berwitz

I'll make this short and sweet.

Yesterday, December 30th, we ordered photos on line from Kodak. 

We then received an email which began as follows:

Dear Ken,

 

Thank you for shopping at the KODAK Gallery! We have received your order.

 

We will send you an email once your order has shipped. Your card will not be billed until your final shipment has shipped. And good news—your shipping has been upgraded to ensure everything arrives by 12/23!

Well, you can't fault them on logic.  If the photos come a week before we ordered them, that certainly would be an upgrade in shipping.

Unless, of course, they mean 12/23 of 2012 which, taking into account that 2012 is a leap year, is 359 days from yesterday.  If so, I have to double-check on how long regular shipping would have taken.

Still wondering why Kodak is going broke?  I didn't think so.

Ken Berwitz

Here, for your reading pleasure, is the latest compaign email from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC).  This one went out under James Carville's name.  Mr. Carville is, of course, known far and wide for his careful avoidance of incivility and overheated political rhetoric.  

Read on and see how delicately he has positioned this reasoned, good-hearted solicitation:

Dear (Recipient),

Listen, what you do on New Year’s Eve is your business. Get rowdy, dance like a fool – I won’t judge.
 
But if you let that ball drop without doing something to keep the GOP’s hands off the Senate majority, you just might wake up with one heckuva political hangover.
 
That’s because this is our last chance to batten down the hatches before Karl Rove and his gang of hyenas come at Elizabeth Warren and the rest of our Democratic candidates with every sleazy attack they can dream up.  
 
Remember: If Republicans had their way, New Year’s Day would bring something much worse than a headache – a middle-class tax hike.  President Obama and Senate Democrats stopped them.
 
But with 23 seats to defend – and only four seats protecting our majority – taking our foot off the gas pedal in the last few hours of 2011 is exactly the kind of mistake that could cost us.
 
Don’t be That Guy (or Girl) who wakes up tomorrow wishing he'd (or she'd) made better decisions. Click here to contribute $5, $10 or more to help the DSCC raise the last $50,000 it needs to beat Rove and the GOP before the midnight deadline!
 
Right now, we’ve got ten seats that are pure toss-ups. And if we don’t hit our last mark of 2011, we risk letting the GOP gain an edge as 2012 gets underway.
 
If that happens in just four of those races, guess what – the party’s over.  Republicans will get to work erasing health care reform, middle class tax cuts – even Medicare. And all we’ll have is regrets.
 
In just a few hours, the books will be closed on 2011. We won’t get another shot at this goal. And if you’ve been putting off doing your part to save our firewall by saying you’ll get to it later, guess what: We’ve run out of “later.”
 
Click right here, right now, and let’s get this done. We’re $50,000 away from hitting our mark and starting 2012 off on the right foot. Please contribute $5, $10 or more!
 
If you end up wearing a lampshade tonight, you might feel a little silly in the morning. But if we let the DSCC fall short of its goal – and Karl Rove gets an edge that allows him to beat up on folks like Elizabeth Warren and deal a devastating blow to President Obama and the Democrats – we’ll feel way worse than silly.
 
So this year, skip the regret (and maybe that last shot of tequila). Click here to help the DSCC finish the year strong by contributing $5, $10 or more towards our year-end goal!
 
It’s your last chance to stand up to the far right in 2011. Make it count.
 
Thanks, and have fun tonight.
 
James Carville

What a sweet sentiment.

In just a few paragraphs, Mr. Carville has managed to:

-call Karl Rove’s campaign people a gang of hyenas,

-accuse them of sleazy attacks (unlike calling people hyenas, I guess),

-claim – dishonestly – that Democrats prevented Republicans from raising taxes on the middle class,  

-claim that Republicans will “erase health care reform” (that one is correct – and, based on every major poll, most of the country would cheer it),

-erase middle class tax cuts – a lie,

-and erase Medicare – not only a lie, but, according to the usually reliably-leftward politifacts.com, the single biggest political lie of 2011.

I think this is wonderful.  I am elated that Democrats, who made such a point of condemning incivility and overheated political rhetoric earlier this year, are so assiduously holding to their principles.

I mean, hey, it's not like Carville called Republicans hyenas and lied about their agenda, and……..oh, wait.

Ken Berwitz

Here is the latest news from the "we are the 99%" crowd.  It comes to us via the following excerpt from an article at WBTV  in Charlotte, NC:

CHARLOTTE, NC (WBTV) - Four protesters, including the spokesman of Occupy Charlotte, were charged after setting fire to two American flags early Friday near the Occupy camp in Center City, police said.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg police weren't sure earlier if the four men who set fire to two flags were associated with the Occupy Charlotte movement.

But, WBTV has learned that one of the men is the media spokesman for the Occupy group and has been the contact person listed on press releases from Occupy Charlotte.

The fires happened with in feet of the group's encampment.

Just curious:  do 99% of the people you hang out with burn American flags?   Because, if they don't, they must be part of that reviled 1% the "Occupy" people keep talking about.

Other than a few places where cowardly and/or sympathetic mayors (like Jean Quan in Oakland, who qualifies on both counts) allow them to continue breaking laws and damaging the economy (and, ironically, the environment as well), the "Occupy" movement has largely faded from existence. 

But it has not faded from media, has it?

The pathetic reality is that our Accomplice Media are doing their unlevel best (not level best which, incorrectly, suggests evenhandedness) to keep it alive.  So the "news stories" continue.  The Today Show alone could stand as "Occupy Central" for the number of features they have done on what is left of this movement.

John Hinderaker, of powerlineblog.com has an opinion which, I am sure, is shared by many other conservatives: 

“With luck, the Occupations will continue right up to the November 2012 election.”

Ken Berwitz

Tom Blumer writes a political blog called bizzyblog.com, and also is a contributor to newsbusters.org. 

Mr. Blumer is exasperated by "journalists" who misrepresent how our current 15+ trillion dollar deficit came to be - which means he is perpetually exasperated.  And every now and then he puts up a commentary which shines a light on the fiction constantly being pumped out about it by so-called "journalists" - along with some of the key facts which somehow keep eluding them.

His latest exercise in sisypheanism occurred yesterday, and I thought you might like to read it. 

So here is a taste, to whet your appetite...and then you can click here to read it all:

There are press memes which won’t go away no matter what, and no matter how often disproven. One, repeated in an Associated Press report a couple of weeks ago as our troops were about to leave Iraq, claimed that “No WMD were ever found” there. The truth: Yes they were — along with 550 metric tons of yellowcake uranium found in Iraq after Saddam was overthrown, specifically “the stuff that can be refined into nuclear weapons or nuclear fuel.”

Another meme which won’t die and fails to pass the truth test was in an AP item by Julie Pace about President Obama’s decision to defer raising the debt ceiling by $1.2 billion today. In it, she repeated the leftist line about how the national debt has grown so large (HT to an NB emailer):

The debt limit is the amount the government can borrow to finance its operations. It has soared because the government has run record deficits over the past decade. The borrowed money has helped pay for two wars, stimulate the nation’s economy after the worst recession since the Great Depression and keep intact broad tax cuts initiated during the Bush administration.

Mr. Blumer goes on to tear Ms. Pace's claim apart - using nothing but easily checkable numbers and facts.

In other words, he does what Ms. Pace, and countless other "journalists" could, but do not, do.  And - marvel of marvels - their inability (disinclination?) to do so is highly beneficial to Democrats in general and President Barack Obama in particular.

What an amazing stroke of coincidental luck for them...........

Ken Berwitz

In the old movie cliché, a kid comes home with a bloody nose and a black eye, and tells his father "you oughtta see the other guy".

If the dollar could talk, it might be saying that about the euro.

Excerpted from Robin Wigglesworth's article in London's Financial Times:

Almost $6.3tn was erased from global stock markets this year as the eurozone financial crisis reverberated across the world in the latter half of 2011, calling into question the future of the world’s largest currency bloc.

Global stock market capitalisation dropped 12.1 per cent to $45.7tn according to Bloomberg data, while the euro ended the year as the worst performing major currency after finally starting to succumb to the continent’s financial and economic woes in December.

The euro had proved resilient for much of the year – burning hedge funds that bet on a steeper decline – but on Friday touched a 10-year low against the Japanese yen, and is near lows against the dollar last touched a year ago.

How can a currency common to a group of countries with wildly varying economic circumstances, that have hated and fought each other for centuries, continue to exist?  Well, the answer is that maybe it can't continue to exist.

I'm far from a financial expert to say the least.  But if I were betting, I'd bet that the Euro will not last through 2012.   

Buckle your deutschmarks, francs liras and drachmas; it's going to be a bumpy year.

Ken Berwitz

President Obama and his people have repeatedly embraced the "Occupy Wall Street" movement.  Mr. Obama has sung their praises and even told a group of "Occupy" protesters that they were the reason he ran for public office.  Just this week Guy Cecil, executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) used the "99%" line in an email solicitation for contributions.

So why do President Obama and his fellow Democrats accept so much money from Wall street?  And what are they giving Wall Street for the money?

Excerpted from Deroy Murdock's (typically) excellent column at humanevents.com:

NEW YORK--President Obama headlined three separate fundraisers in Gotham City on Wednesday. Despite his wailing about Wall Street, it is impossible to imagine that Obama's $2.4 million haul did not include Wall Street cash yet again.
 
Wall Street's fat cat bankers, as he calls them, are among those whom Obama loves to hate. And yet he has pocketed their supposedly tainted funds for years.
 
According to opensecrets.org, the Center for Responsible Politics indispensable campaign-finance database, Obama has collected $4,164,417 in donations for the 2012 election from individuals in the Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate sector. Through November 14, this included $1,778,628 from the Securities and Investment industry (his fifth-largest donation source), $584,384 from Miscellaneous Finance, and $251,324 from Commercial Banks. Bank of America employees, for example, have coughed up $26,562. OpenSecrets.orgs categories aggregate Federal Election Commission data.
 
For his 2008 presidential bid, donors in the Securities and Investment industry were Obama's No. 4 source of campaign loot, just behind Education. Wall Street, broadly defined, poured $15,798,904 into Obama's treasure chest. Overall, contributors in the Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate sector pumped $42,047,073 into Obama's quest for hope and change. Tose top contributors included those at Obamas No. 2 campaign spigot, Goldman Sachs ($1,013,091). Other leading donors included staffers at JPMorgan Chase ($808,799), Citigroup ($736,771), UBS ($532, 674), and Morgan Stanley ($512,232).
 
Even for Obama's 2004 U.S. Senate race, the Securities and Investment industrys PACs furnished $61,500. Individuals wrote checks for $1,490,697. Total: $1,552,197.
 
If Wall Street really is so disgusting, Obama easily can purify himself of this supposed infection: Return all this money and reject further funds from financiers. If Wall Street and its denizens really are as repulsive as Obama insists, he eagerly should refund their nasty money and refuse any more of it.
 
If Barack H. Obama fails to do this, Americans should conclude that the H does not stand for Hussein. It means Hypocrite.

The one issue I take with Mr. Murdock is his suggestion that if President Obama does not refund the Wall Street lucre we should conclude he is a hypocrite.  My problem is that it suggests we haven't already concluded he is a hypocrite for a raft of reasons, only one of which is his finger pointing at Wall Street with one hand, while stuffing their money into his pockets with the other.

This is a hypocritical, corrupt administration that has done the country great harm.  Next November we have a chance to rid ourselves of it.

Lets.

Ken Berwitz

Chris Christie - who never can seem to convince our media that he is not running for President no matter how clear he makes it - spoke in support of Mitt Romney earlier today, at a rally in Iowa.

The commentary was a little silly and a little repetitive (these things are wont to happen at unscripted rallies), but Chrstie did get off a pretty good line:

“President Barack Obama came out to Iowa three years ago, and he talked to you about hope and change. Well, let me tell you, after three years of Obama, we are hopeless and changeless”

You can see the video by clicking here.  And be sure to let it run completely through....because the fun part is the last 15 seconds, when one "Occupy" protester is being led away from the crowd, while screaming "You, are, the 1%!, you, are, the 1%!", and is paying so little attention to where she is going that she trips on something, either wires or a pole, and goes down in a heap.  Just like the movement she is a remnant of.

You can't say there isn't humor value in a single protester screaming to a crowd of hundreds of people, that they, not she, comprise the 1%.  

Just like Code Pink, just like NOW, just like cindy sheehan, etc., the one and only thing propping up this obviously moribund "movement" is media. 

And what a media they are!  They gave the "Tea Party" movement the back of their hand every way they could, and it prospered.  By contrast, they did everything they could to keep the "Occupy" movement going, and it is barely on life support. 

But they think they're real journalists.  Maybe a few of them even think they have a pulse on what is going on in this country.

Er.....they aren't.  And they don't.

Ken Berwitz

I just read this mind-numbing slice of "logic" at Mark Finkelstein's blog for newsbusters.org.  It comes to us from Joe Klein, who, in recent years, has become an increasingly fecund (or is that fecal) source of such idiotica.

Klein has come to the conclusion that Iran, whose leadership used to pretend it wasn't acquiring nuclear weapons - a lie even in what remains of Klein's mind - has been doing so to protect itself from Israel (and Pakistan).   Here is his exact quote, made on today's "Morning Joe" show:

"By the way, you know, the reality is that we're probably not going to be able to stop Iran from getting a bomb, the way, if that's what they choose to do. And the way we're going to react to it is the same way we reacted to the Soviet Union.  It's going to be containment and deterrence. That is not an unreasonable policy. The Iranians took a million casualties in the war with Iraq in the 1980s.  I mean, I spent time there. And that is one of the most, the foremost facts of life in Iran. Those guys don't want to go to war again.  If they got a bomb it would just be to deter Israel and Pakistan."

Has Joe Klein gone completely out of his effing mind?

Let me refresh Klein's memory, with three quotes from Iranian "leader" (via a thoroughly discredited "election" in 2009), mahmoud ahmadinejad.  In reading them, please note that there are many more to choose from; I have selected these three in the interest of brevity, and because I think they make the point so crystal-clear that you don't need any more.

“Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation's fury,”

"Those who think they can revive the stinking corpse of the usurping and fake Israeli regime by throwing a birthday party are seriously mistaken.  Today the reason for the Zionist regime's existence is questioned, and this regime is on its way to annihilation.”  

“Israel must be wiped off the map”

Try and find similar quotes from any Israeli head of state about Iran.  I dare you.

Does that look like Iran's interest is to deter Israel?  Or does it look like Israel's interest is in deterring Iran?  Please use about 1% or 2% of your intellectual capacity to answer, because it is all you will need.

Evidently Joe Klein either uses a lot less than 1% or 2% of his intellectual capacity, or has become so completely compromised by his lurch to the lunatic-fringe left that it is all he's got anymore.

Incidentally, Joe:  since, in your words, "The Iranians took a million casualties in the war with Iraq in the 1980's", wouldn't it follow that, if Iran needs to deter a country, the country just might be Iraq?  Evidently not:  you figured out that it was Israel...all by yourself, I'll bet.

Mark Finkelstein starts his blog by saying "Joe Klein waited till the very end of 2011, but has managed to make a strong bid for Most Asinine Assertion of the Year."  Mark is being far too kind.

Ken Berwitz

My pal Toyman Bob sent me the Intercollegiate Studies Institute's civics literacy exam - not a simple one, either - which I then gritted my teeth and dove into.

There are 33 questions.  I won't tell you how I made out (modesty forbids...heheheh).  But if you want to give it a shot, just CLICK HERE and have a ball.

Happy head-scratching.

Ken Berwitz

President Obama and his Democrat cohorts won a great victory by forcing Republicans to accept a two month payroll tax extension.  That's what most of our wonderful "neutral" media tell us, therefore it must be so.

Right?  Well..............

Tell you what:  Read this excerpt from Andrew Restuccia's article at thehill.com, and you might want to reconsider:

Republicans who lobbied aggressively for a measure to force President Obama to make a speedy decision on the Keystone XL pipeline have ensured the project’s demise, environmental groups say.

The activists said Obama will be forced to reject the pipeline — which would carry oil sands crude from Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the Gulf Coast — under a measure in the two-month payroll tax cut extension that requires the administration to make a decision on the project within 60 days.

“The president is going to have no choice but to reject the pipeline,” said Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, director of international programs at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). “I don’t see any wiggle room.”

The GOP-backed provision forces Obama to weigh in on the pipeline well before the 2012 election, a scenario the president sought to avoid. The pipeline is a thorny political issue for the White House, as its splits parts of Obama’s base. Environmental groups vehemently oppose the project, while some major labor unions support it.

Are you still sure that President Obama won a "political victory"?

Well, the greenies see it as a win, on the grounds that it forces President Obama to a) decide about the Keystone pipeline project early next year, and b) forces him to come out against it.

But pleasing greenies doesn't necessarily make sense - and it certainly doesn't win elections. 

As Andrew Restuccia points out (and - pardon the immodesty - as I pointed out last week), because the payroll extension is for only two months instead of a year, and the Keystone pipeline provision will still be in the bill at the end of that period, President Obama will be forced to take a position on it during the election campaign, not afterwards.  And saying "no" to Keystone means he is opposed to:

-Easier access to oil,

-which is being supplied by a friendly country rather than one that hates our guts,

-and positions him as against the tens of thousands of jobs - union jobs - the pipeline would create. 

How do you suppose the union sector, which Mr. Obama must have the support of to win re-election, will feel about this? 

And how do you think Republicans are going to talk about Mr. Obama's decision?  If you want a hint, read this excerpt from yesterday's Investors Business Daily's editorial on the subject:

As our enemy Iran threatens to close a vital waterway for the shipping of oil, plans for a secure, job-creating supply from our ally Canada gather dust on the president's desk.

We find it more than passing strange that while we ponder an armed conflict to keep this economic lifeline open, we deny ourselves our own secure energy riches and that of our friend and ally to the north, Canada.

President Obama has said we must wean ourselves from foreign oil and the energy sources of the past.

Yet as energy prices rise and job numbers fall, he must address the needs, and the threats, of the present. The Keystone XL pipeline, parts of which have already been built, would bring Alberta oil to Gulf Coast refineries.

It could also transport oil extracted from the oil-rich shale formations of the Rocky Mountain West, bringing needed energy and jobs.

One would think the "blood for oil" crowd would be the first to line up in support of Keystone XL. A tweet from Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, reads: "With Iran threatening to block the Straits of Hormuz, doesn't the Keystone XL pipeline make even more sense?"

Of course it does.

Definition of a great political situation:  when there is a wedge issue that the public sides with you on, instead of your opponent.  That is where the Republican candidate will find himself on the Keystone pipeline.

Now:  are you still sure that President Obama won a "political victory"?  I didn't think so.

Sometimes things are a little more nuanced than they appear on the surface.  And - note to our media - this is one of them.

Ken Berwitz

Earlier this year, President Obama, after waffling for a period of time (his signature reaction to most crises) decided to push hard for the ouster of Egypt's Hosni Mubarak. 

How has that worked out?  Has it made things better or worse?

Well, read the following excerpts from Ilan Berman's article for Forbes, and judge for yourself:

When it released its National Strategy for Counterterrorism back in June, the Obama administration had a lot to crow about. Al-Qaeda mastermind Osama Bin Laden had been killed a month earlier by U.S. special forces in his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Persistent operations by the United States and its Coalition partners over the preceding year had succeeded in degrading the organization's capabilities in a number of key theaters (including Afghanistan and Pakistan). And counterterrorism operations then underway would net major gains in the months that followed, not least the late September death by Predator drone of influential Yemeni ideologue Anwar al-Awlaki.

 

But, as U.S. and European policymakers are discovering, it is far too soon to count the Bin Laden network out. Indeed, the past half-year has seen new signs of life to the terror cartel, as it seeks to capitalize on the turmoil generated by the multiple revolutions taking place in the Middle East and North Africa in order to expand its strategic reach. And in at least one geographic location—Israel's southern border—alarming signs suggest that the organization has begun to put down fresh roots.

 

How did we get here? For years, the desert region that separates Egypt from Israel was both stable and peaceful. Demilitarized as part of the "cold peace" concluded between Cairo and Jerusalem at Camp David in 1978, it served as a critical strategic buffer for both countries in the more-than-three decades that followed.

 

Over the past year, however, the so-called "Arab Spring" has changed all that. The ferment which brought down aging Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak this spring also left the Sinai increasingly lawless and ungoverned.

 

Criminality quickly filled the void, drawing radical elements into the area in the process. By May, Egyptian military officials were warning that more than hundreds of al-Qaeda members had made their way to the Peninsula, creating a real threat to both Egyptian and Israeli security.

 

The situation, moreover, is poised to get much worse. Since Mubarak's ouster, Egypt has headed in an increasingly dangerous geopolitical direction. The country's economic fortunes have plummeted, ethnic and sectarian tensions have risen, and Islamist factions—long relegated to the margins of national politics—have emerged ascendant.

 

All of which is a boon to the radical elements now flourishing on Israel's southern border.

As we have discussed many times in this blog, the problem is that when you remove a head of state - even a corrupt one such as Hosni Mubarak - there are no guarantees that the people who replace him will be any better.  They may be a lot worse.

Egypt was a relatively secular country under Mubarak.  But the Muslim brotherhood was always lurking just below the surface.  And if given a chance to choose sides, there was virtually no doubt that, outside of Cairo and a couple of other major cities, the Egyptian masses - with little education, high illiteracy, devout obeisance to the Koran and a knowledge base primarily comprised of whatever the local "clerics" told them - would side with the Muslim brotherhood. 

Well, Mr. Obama's actions gave them that chance.  And that is what they are doing.

How could the Obama administration not have read this?  How could they have conned themselves into thinking that a handful of wistful dreamers with twitter accounts, marching around Cairo's Tahrir Square talking about freedom and democracy, would wind up in charge? 

Where are those dreamers now?  They are gone.  Instead, we have an Egypt that is rapidly devolving into a shari'a law state, more interested in forcing its population to live by the Koran (whether they want to or not) than in continuity of a relatively free (by Arab standards) society, and the peace with Israel  it has so greatly benefitted from for the past 32 years.

That is your "Arab Spring".  In reality it is an Al-Qaeda spring.  One that makes President Obama's victory dance over the killing of osama bin laden - a killing facilitated by procedures that were in place when Mr. Obama took office, which he vehemently spoke against and would never have implemented if it were up to him - look ridiculous. 

bin laden may be gone (or so we assume, since we never saw the body), but al-qaeda lives on - in no small part because of what a great many of our Accomplice Media call Barack Obama's "foreign policy victory" in Egypt.

They are not acting as serious journalists.  And Barack Obama is not performing as a competent President.

Ken Berwitz

Normally I don't censor profanities.  But I did so in the title, so that people who don't like to see this kind of language should - I hope - know to avoid reading the following blog.  Consider yourself warned

Jim Messina is President Obama's 2012 campaign manager.  And he has put out a 3:21 video, in which he describes various ways that Mr. Obama can win enough electoral votes to be re-elected. 

At 2:48 in the video, he graces  his audience with this:

“People have speculated this is a billion-dollar campaign.  That’s bullshit. We don’t take PAC money unlike our opponents. We fund this campaign in contributions of three dollars or five dollars or whatever you can do to help us expand the map, to put more people on the ground, to build a real grassroots campaign that is going to be the difference between winning and losing.”

Lovely.

Remember, this is not some spontaneous outpouring by a man who doesn't realize what he is saying.  It is a professionally recorded video.  Messina most definitely wanted it to go out exactly that way.

Ok, so we know about his casual use of a profanity.  But what about the claim? 

Well, if you're going to say "bullshit" I suppose you might as well be bullshitting.  And that is exactly what Mr. Messina is doing, because what he said was an absolute, unadulterated lie.

From the New York Times - which isn't exactly what you'd call a charter member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy:

Despite a pledge not to take money from lobbyists, President Obama has relied on prominent supporters who are active in the lobbying industry to raise millions of dollars for his re-election bid.At least 15 of Mr. Obama’s “bundlers” — supporters who contribute their own money to his campaign and solicit it from others — are involved in lobbying for Washington consulting shops or private companies. They have raised more than $5 million so far for the campaign.

Does that establish Messina's claim as bullshit?  Yep.  But it is just the tip of the iceberg.  What about all those big-time Obama bundlers who got loan guarantees in the Green Scandal?  Were they bundling $3 and $5 donations? 

And it's not like the green bundlers are the only ones.  According to Ed Morrissey at hotair.com, Mr. Obama currently is utilizing a total of 357 bundlers - none of whom, I assure you, are collecting three singles or one fiver at a time.  (Incidentally, the link to Ed's blog gets you to the Messina video as well).

Then, of course, there were all those fundraisers where attendees paid five figures to eat a rubber chicken and listen to Mr. Obama's dulcet tones - several of which went up as high as $38,500 a seat and maybe even more.  Let's see....one $38,500 guest equals 12,833.33 three dollar contributors...

The moral of this story is, if you want bullshit you go to a bullshitter.  Which leads you straight to Jim Messina who, with that $3 and $5 claim, is tossing a huge pile of it -- on behalf of the biggest bullshitter of them all.

How can you trust a word these people say?

Ken Berwitz

On Monday, after several days of our wonderful "neutral" media gleefully reporting that President Obama got the better of Republicans on the payroll tax extension, Gallup's daily tracking (actually, a three day rolling average) had Mr. Obama in positive territory for the first time in quite a while, at 47% approve and 45% disapprove.

On Tuesday's Today Show, Savannah Guthrie, subbing for Meredith Viera, had this to say about it:

“For the first time I think since July, the latest Gallup tracking poll has his approval higher than his disapproval. He's no longer upside-down on that number.  Is this a reflection of things getting better in the economy, or people not liking the Republicans and coming back to President Obama?”

But that was then.  And this is now.  The latest Gallup data show a reversion right back to the usual numbers, with Mr. Obama at 41% approval and 50% disapproval:  a negative turnaround of 11% in three days.

I eagerly await Ms. Guthrie's analysis tomorrow morning..........

Ken Berwitz

She would retire right now, if the donors she has didn’t want her to stay so badly. They know she wants to leave, though. They think she’s destined for greatness. She has very few days left. She’s 71, she wants to have a life, she’s done. It’s obligation, that’s all I’m saying:  Alexandra Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi’s daughter.

That's what is stopping her?  Well, maybe.  But not necessarily the way you might think.

I'm guessing that the issue is not donors to Nancy Pelosi's campaign - she couldn't lose her district if she tried.  The issue is donors who, as minority leader, Ms. Pelosi can promise enough to so that they will give $$$ for Barack Obama, as well as Democrats in vulnerable congressional districts. 

Interestingly, however, Alexandra Pelosi's comment does raise the prospect that momma Nancy, her donor value provided, might resign after the 2012 elections.  Now there's a possibility I would not bet against.

Ken Berwitz

Remember all the hoo-ha earlier this month over the drop in unemployment from 9.0% to 8.6% (which puts it exactly where President Obama said it would be if we did not pass the so-called "stimulus package")?

Well, let's see if this news gets as much play:  the latest data show a rise of 15,000 unemployment claims - from 364,000 to 381,000.  You might notice that the jump appears to be 17,000, not 15,000.  That is because the unemployment data from last week was adjusted upward - as it always seems to be during this administration.  Funny how that keeps happening....

I am rooting very hard for a fast, significant economic recovery. However, regardless of what I think of Barack Obama's performance as President (and as any regular reader knows, it isn't very much), my concern about the country's economy far supersedes it.  

But my expectation is that the unemployment rate will rise again, for two key reasons: 

1) Despite the "seasonally adjusted" data shown above supposedly taking it into account, I think the post-holidays employment dropoff will take its toll.

2) As we read more and more about a supposed recovery, people who stopped looking for jobs - and, by so doing, artificially lowered the unemployment rate, since they are not counted in it - will start looking again and thus be counted again.

The fact that lower unemployment data are in no small part due to the "discouraged and not looking" factor is a little something much of our Obama-supporting media carefully avoid mentioning to their sucke...er, viewers, listeners and readers.  It will be a little hard to avoid if they come back into play.

The only guarantees I can offer are that the Obama administration will do everything it can to put a happy face on the awful economy it has overseen these last three years....and that at least some - maybe a great many - of our Accomplice Media will back up whatever the administration says, regardless of the fact that its policies have put us an additional 5 trillion dollars in the hole, resulting in higher rather than lower unemployment.

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

Ken Berwitz

I just read the Daily Caller's top 10 stories of 2011. 

What a terrific blog!!   How worth your time to read it! 

The DC handles each one of them with the appropriate flavor - whether serious (Operation Fast & Furious....the #1 story of 2011, yet one that - with full-tilt partisan disdain for journalistic professionalism - neither NBC Nightly News nor ABC World News has done so much as a single story on all year) or at least somewhat comical (Anthony Weiner's pictorial downfall:  I laughed out loud when I read that it was proof he leaned left).

I am not going to to steal the DC's thunder by posting any more of its top 10 than that.  But I can't resist putting up one of the "honorable mentions":

HONORABLE MENTION: Nearly one in five Obamacare waivers went to businesses in Nancy Pelosi’s district

 

In April, the Obama administration approved 204 waivers exempting businesses from the restrictions and requirements of  Obamacare. And lo and behold, 38 of them went to restaurants, nightclubs, day spas and hotels in the swanky California congressional district represented by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

 

Shocked. We were shocked. But the D.C. press corps didn’t seem to care, the White House played the nothing-to-see-here-let’s-all-move-along card, and a follow-up waiver for the AARP soon emerged. But in the face of consistent outrage from conservatives, what passed for “transparency” rapidly deteriorated into comic theatre.

 

It later emerged that the health care reform law never gave the Department of Health and Human Services the authority to issue the waivers in the first place. Ultimately, a Government Accountability Office report doomed the waiver program, which got the axe in June — a move that the Obama administration quietly buried in a Friday evening press statement.

Ken Berwitz

Michelle Malkin has written another excellent, fully referenced column.  No surprise there.

But this one is special.  It is truly a breath of fresh air - and a cold splash of water - for the Obama-gushing "journalists" who have, against all facts, logic and reality, convinced themselves that the President is running a nearly scandal-free administration.

In reality, Obama & Co. is as corrupt as any administration I have seen in my lifetime (which began during the Truman years, so that's a lot).

I am not going to excerpt any of the material Ms. Malkin has put together.  Instead, I am providing this link, so that you can read it yourself.

Please take your time, be sure to click on the documentation for each scandal, then marvel at a) how many there have been and b) how ridiculous the Obama gushers are when pretending they don't exist.

To quote (more or less) Forrest Gump's mother, "pathetically inept, partisan journalism is what pathetically inept, partisan journalism does."

Ken Berwitz

What do you call it when a company gets rich by convincing impressionable children - often of limited means - that spending a ridiculous amount of money for a pair of sneakers is somehow a significant, positive event in their lives?

What do you call it when that company then makes sure to release its newest version of the sneakers it has marketed this way around Christmastime - for three years running - which maximizes the buying frenzy it has so successfully created?

Excerpted from a truly disheartening article by Jay Scott Smith at thegrio.com:

DETROIT - Since its debut in 1985, the Nike Air Jordan sneakers have been more than a basketball shoe in the black community. They have become everything from a fashion accessory to a status symbol.

"Jordans came out as a rebel sneaker," said Jason Johnson, a shoe expert and owner of Bob's Classic Kicks in downtown Detroit. "They were banned from the NBA because of the color. It came in as a rebel. Over the years, (Jordan) changed the whole game."

Jordan's iconic status made the shoes a must-have item, even amongst a group of kids who never saw him play in his glory days in Chicago: "These kids have seen the Washington Jordan, not the Chicago Jordan," Johnson said.

In the early 1990s, at the height of hip-hop's Renaissance period, the shoes became synonymous with rap music and hip-hop culture. In many cities -- including Detroit, Chicago, and New York -- the shoes became popular targets for thieves as people were often mugged, and in some cases killed, over Jordans.

"You saw it on all the Spike Lee movies and the hip-hop culture picked up on it," said Antonio Jones, a DJ and "sneaker head" from Detroit. "Once they embraced Jordan like that, it was like if you got his sneaker, you were the man.

When Nike debuted the Air Jordan 11 Concords -- a retro version of the most popular Jordans -- on Dec. 23, reports of fights, vandalism and other disturbances spread across the nation. The pre-Christmas shopping rush had a Black Friday feel to it as huge crowds of shoppers overwhelmed stores and nearly spawned riots from Seattle to Atlanta.

For the third straight year, Nike released the newest retro Jordans right before Christmas. In 2009, the Air Jordan 11 Retro 'Space Jams' were released, while the highly popular 'Cool Grey' Jordans came out last year, though neither came with the mayhem that followed the Concords.

"We're adults, it's nothing for us (to get shoes)," Johnson said. "We're not standing in line and waiting for them. We'll get online and do our thing. But these kids that are just standing in line, that's authentic." 

A story like this makes me want to cry.

This is culture?  CULTURE?  Hip hop, basketball, and the sneakers that are worn in Spike Lee movies? 

Is this some kind of a test to see how many racial clichés can be stuffed into one story?  It reads like a KKK handout.

 How proud Michael Jordan and Spike Lee must be to help instill such wonderful values in these children.

And just in case you aren't aware, Air Jordans list for $180 a pair.  But the demand - based solely on a slicker-than-slick marketing job by nike - has caused them to be sold for up to $1,000.

Is it even remotely fathomable that this makes sense for urban Black kids, many if not most of whom have limited funds?  That nike's marketing has generated so insane a level of fanatacism that "In many cities -- including Detroit, Chicago, and New York -- the shoes became popular targets for thieves as people were often mugged, and in some cases killed, over Jordans"? 

And assuming Mr. Smith's information is correct, why would we assume the only crimes related to Air Jordans are being committed against people who have already bought them?  How many kids do you suppose are mugging and killing to get the money to buy them in the stores?

What do you call a company that markets this way to Black kids, knowing that it gets this result?

How about unconscionable?  Sick?  Depraved?  

If you're looking for examples of racism - real racism - this just might be an excellent place to start.

Ken Berwitz

Here are updates on two unrelated subjects I have covered - one from last week and one for the past four years.

LAST WEEK:

Nancy Dillon, who writes for the New York Daily News, did two articles lst week about jules manson, that unsuccessful political candidate from Carson, California guy who tweeted an overtly racist suggestion about assassinating President Obama and his family.  In one of them she called manson a rabid tea partier, and in the other she called him a rabid follower of tea party favorite Ron Paul.  But manson's web site called him a Libertarian and had no mention of any kind that he was involved with the tea party.

So I emailed manson and asked.  And he made it very clear to me that he had nothing to do with the tea party, derisively referring to them as "teabaggers". 

I blogged about this on Saturday.  I also emailed the information to Ms. Dillon, and ended by saying:

With all due respect, it would seem reasonable to conclude that if you
had made the same request of manson, he would have provided you with the
same information.

It seems to me you owe your readers an update.

If you want to discuss any part of this with me, just email and I'll be
happy to oblige, either by email or phone.

That was four days ago, and I have heard nothing since, nor have I seen anything by Ms. Dillon in the Daily News which retracts the connection she made between manson and the tea party movement.

If this status changes in the future I will let you know.  But, until then, I am forced to conclude that Nancy Dillon has no problem posting incorrect information, and leaving it that way even after she knows better.

FOR THE PAST FOUR YEARS:

Suddenly the media have picked up on the fact that ron paul has a racist, anti-Semitic history. 

Whoopie doo.  I have been blogging about this for over four years.  

The information which demonstrates these claims has been out there and available to anyone who cares to find it.  How disheartening that, only now, it is cropping up across mainstream media.

If I didn't know better, I just might get the impression that an awful lot of "journalists" are lazy and unprofessional......

Ken Berwitz

Although I consider Mitt Romney the best of the candidates right now, and will certainly support him over Barack Obama if he wins the Republican nomination, I am not specifically endorsing him at this time.  The title, instead, refers to an endorsement by John Hinderaker of powerlineblog.com.

He has written extensively (as blogs go) about why he is making this choice.  And they are highly persuasive. 

You can - and should - read his entire piece by clicking here.  But let me give you just a small portion of it:

It is time for Republicans to get serious. After flirting with just about every candidate in a large presidential field, is is time to come home to the one candidate who has the demonstrated ability to run the largest organization in the United States, the Executive Branch of the federal government; who has never been touched by the slightest taint of scandal; whose success in the private sector makes him the outsider that Republicans say they are looking for; and who has by far the best chance of beating President Obama: Mitt Romney.

 

In electing a president, we are choosing someone to run the Executive Branch. A leader, to be sure, but not a speechmaker, a bomb-thrower, a quipster, a television personality or an exemplar of ideological purity. At this point in our history, the United States desperately needs a leader who understands the economy, the world of business, and, more generally, how the world works. We have had more than enough of a leader who was good at giving speeches and was ideologically pure, but who had no clue how the economy works or how the federal government can be administered without resort to graft and corruption. It is time for a president who knows what he is doing.

Personally, I am still not 100% sure that one or more other potential candidates, sensing a deadlock, won't jump into the race.  If I were, I'd have endorsed Romney already. 

But it is undeniable (at least to me) that John's reasoning is clear, understandable and loaded with good sense. 

Your call.

Ken Berwitz

I feel some recognition is in order.

Let's recognize some of the super-rich people who feel guilty about their wealth.  The ones who salve their consciences by giving lots of money to the radical leftist, anti-capitalist "occupy" people, whom they fantasize having something in common with.

This list of the 25 or so richest "Occupy" supporters was put together in a blog written by Paul Wilson of newsbusters.org, from information he got at Celebrity Net Worth.  Read it and laugh along with me:

1. Yoko Ono - $500 million

2. Jay-Z - $450 million

3. David Letterman - $400 million

(tie) Stephen King - $400 million

5. Russell Simmons - $325 million

6. Sean Lennon - $200 million

7. Mike Myers - $175 million

8. George Clooney - $160 million

9. Brad Pitt - $150 million

(tie) Don King - $150 million

11. Roger Waters (Pink Floyd) - $145 million

12. Jane Fonda - $120 million

(tie) Miley Cyrus - 120 million

14. Al Gore - $100 million

15. Roseanne Barr - $80 million

(tie) Deepak Chopra - $80 million

17. Kanye West - $70 million

(tie) Dan Rather - $70 million

19. Alec Baldwin - $65 million

(tie) Matt Damon - $65 million

21. Tom Morello - $60 million

(tie) Mia Farrow - $60 million

23. Katy Perry - $55 million

24. Michael Moore - $50 million

(tie) Susan Sarandon - $50 million

It's funny, isn't it?  These people have so much money that, no matter how much higher the tax rate is for their subsequent income, they will remain among the super-rich. 

But demanding the higher taxes does make them feel good, and clean, and principled, and courageous - even if they're demanding it from the living room of their mansion, or the terrace of their penthouse, or the beach of their private island.

If you ever wondered why the word "hypocrite" was invented....this is why.

Ken Berwitz

Every now and again you read an obituary that makes you blink your eyes and read it again, to be sure you got it right the first time.

Cheetah, the chimp who accompanied Tarzan during his adevntures in the 1930's, has passed away at the age of 80.  He died, presumably with many friends around him, at the Suncoast Primate Sanctuary in Palm Harbor, Florida.  The cause of death was kidney failure.

For the record, there were four actors who played Tarzan during the 1930's:

-Johnny Weismuller, who died in 1983;

-Buster Crabbe, who died in 1984;

-Herman Brix (also known as Bruce Bennett) who died in 2007 (at the age of 100);

-Glenn Morris, who died in 1974.

Congratulations to Cheetah for outliving them all.

May he rest in vine-ripened peace.

Ken Berwitz

george soros is a far left, anti-USA, anti-Israel self-hating Jew.

As a teen, he was a nazi collaborator.  As an adult, he is a convicted inside trader who makes billions of dollars manipulating currencies.

Here is his latest "project", as excerpted from a terrific piece by Daniel Greenfield, whose writes a blog with the far too trivial name (in my opinion anyway), sultanknish.com:

If you have been seeing coverage of gender segregation issues in Israel then you may not be aware that you are actually seeing another Soros project in motion. The name of the game, as usual, is divide and conquer. Soros funded NGO's embed themselves into a society and leverage its weakness to create confrontations that empower its activists and agendas.

Soros' money helps fund the New Israel Fund, a radical anti-Israel group operating inside the country which serves as the mothership of smaller left-wing Israeli organizations targeting demographic groups and organizing them under the umbrella of its movement.

In this video, Rachel Liel, the executive director of the New Israel Fund, talks fairly openly about the New Israel Fund's goals and its shift in tactics from funding confrontations between religious and secular Jews, to funding internal confrontations among religious Jews.

 

The material is old hat for anyone familiar with how Communist and New Left groups operate, the game here is to leverage the billions of dollars at the disposal of the American Left to sow discord within the State of Israel, and to create a constituency for the New Left with the endgame of destroying the country. The money passes through multiple NGO's as grants and trickles down through the New Israel Fund to groups that can be used to carry out its agenda.

The left's blueprint remains the same-- exploit social problems within a target country, recruit a fifth column of the disaffected and build a permanent political base for permanent power, while at the same time overturning the culture and its values.

In the video Liel explicitly spells out the NIF's goal of recruiting people from within a target community who "speak the language" and can help the left infiltrate and disrupt those communities. The effort is not limited to Israel. The left has similarly targeted Orthodox Jews in America using a leftist seminary known as Yeshivat Chovevei Torah which has given birth to Uri L'Tzedek, an Anti-Jewish leftist pressure group which has conducted boycotts and spread hatred against the Jewish community while pretending to be members of that community.

 

Tracking where that money comes from and where it goes is a full time job. Take Uri L'Tzedek whose funders include the Joshua Venture Group. The Joshua Venture Group is partly funded by the Nathan Cummings Foundation. The Cummings Foundation is also a funder for Repair the World, which is another funder for Uri L'Tzedek. The Cummings Foundation is run by Lance E. Lindblom, a former  officer at the Ford Foundation and Executive Vice President at Soros' Open Society Institute.

Over and over again the tracks lead through a series of family foundations, through Chicago and New York, and all the way back to the black rotten heart of a Nazi collaborator and his cronies still funding a war against the Jews in the name of "social justice".

The greatest irony of soros' quest to rid the world of Israel is that if he ever succeeded - thus leaving it to the tender mercies of hamas, which is in full control of Gaza and tacit control of Judea/Samaria (the west bank) - it would be that much less safe for him personally.  Does this money-manipulator even begin to understand that, no matter how effectively he enables Israel's enemies, no matter how much they owe him, they will still see him as nothing more than a Jew?  A useful tool of a Jew, but a Jew nonetheless?

As the hamas charter reminds us in its Article 7 (bold print is mine):

Hamas is one of the links in the Chain of Jihad in the confrontation with the Zionist invasion. It links up with the setting out of the Martyr Izz a-din al-Qassam and his brothers in the Muslim Brotherhood who fought the Holy War in 1936; it further relates to another link of the Palestinian Jihad and the Jihad and efforts of the Muslim Brothers during the 1948 War, and to the Jihad operations of the Muslim Brothers in 1968 and thereafter. But even if the links have become distant from each other, and even if the obstacles erected by those who revolve in the Zionist orbit, aiming at obstructing the road before the Jihad fighters, have rendered the pursuance of Jihad impossible; nevertheless, the Hamas has been looking forward to implement Allah’s promise whatever time it might take. The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him! This will not apply to the Gharqad, which is a Jewish tree (cited by Bukhari and Muslim).

Congratulations to soros and his equally "brilliant" helpers, in their quest to facilitate this end.  No one can say you are not working to bring all Jews together as one. 

Ken Berwitz

I am not angry at bill maher.  I understand what he is doing. 

I understand that, like michael moore with his intentionally outrageous comments, and like stefani germanotta, who performs as "lady gaga" with those ridiculous outfits, he is doing it to make money.

And I understand that there is an extremely lucrative market for this kind of material - enough so that talented people (and all three have talent) will happily keep going further and further out there, so they can get richer and richer.

The latest maher "hey, look at me, I'm even more outrageous than you thought" attempt is his tweet about Denver Bronco quarterback Tim Tebow, while Denver was losing to Buffalo. 

maher takes great exception to the fact that Tebow is a devoutly religious Christian.  But instead of just disagreeing strongly with it and accepting the fact that Tebow has a right to his beliefs, maher has decided to make money by attacking and insulting him in the most disgusting way possible.

Here is what maher tweeted.  WARNING:  It is intentionally obscene and blasphemous. 

"Wow, Jesus just fucked TimTebow bad! And on Xmas Eve! Somewhere ... Satan is tebowing, saying to Hitler "Hey, Buffalo's killing them"

This is sick pigsty waste -- but, no doubt, a laugh riot to bill maher fans. 

The way it works is that, the more incensed most people are at maher's "humor", the more loyalty he generates, thus the more money he makes from people who find it funny.

maher, like michael moore, has correctly figured out that, if you can behave so extremely that 90% of the country hates your guts and 7 - 8% either dislikes or is indifferent to you, the remaining 2 - 3% will be intensely loyal to you, love you to bits and will eat up everything you do. 

In the USA - population about 320 million, more than half of whom are old enough to spend money on their idols -  that's a market of about 4 - 8 million intensely loyal people.  You can make a lot of money from 4 - 8 million intensely loyal people.

In my opinion, a lot of maher's audience is probably comprised of the same kind of people you see on those HBO specials (HBO puts on a lot of this stuff, doesn't it?) who fall all over themselves laughing every time a comedian says "fuck" - as if that, in and of itself, were somehow funny. 

They're welcome to him.  But he's not funny to me.

Ken Berwitz

Guy Cecil, Executive Director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) has sent out a new, and old email.

It is new in the sense that, chronologically, it is his latest email.  It is old in the sense that it is selling the same raw class warfare we have seen from Cecil in his previous emails - and is wholly dishonest as well.

Here, let me show you:

XXX,

If it doesn’t help billionaires and huge corporations, Republicans can’t be bothered.

John Boehner’s radical Republicans left town rather than pass a bill to protect middle class families from a $1,000 payroll tax hike. But Senate Democrats stood firm. Boehner caved. The interests of the 99 percent were protected.

This time.

10 Senate races are dead heats. If Republicans flip 4, they will seize complete control of Congress.  We wouldn’t be able to stop their next attack on the middle class.

That’s why we must stop them now. And we only have 4 days to do it.

We’re still $234,000 short of meeting our Dec. 31 FEC deadline. If we miss this goal, the first stories of 2012 – election year – will be how Democrats fell short. We will lose momentum. Republicans will surge. We can’t let that happen.

Did he miss a buzzword?  A talking point?  A cliché?

An astute observer might wonder how the fact that Republicans were demanding a one year extension of the payroll tax instead of the Democrats' two months' extension would qualify as not being bothered with anyone but billionaires and huge corporations.

That same observer might also wonder, concomitantly, how Democrats, who demanded nothing other than a two month extension, could then position themselves as more concerned than Republicans about the middle class.

And then, of course, there is that "99%" jazz - i.e. Cecil and the DSCC are talking "Occupy" language to the Democrat faithful - something they are most certainly not doing in mainstream media.  It sort of tells you where they think the party is, doesn't it?

I can't wait for the next DSCC email.  Maybe this time Cecil will tell us that demanding approval of the Keystone pipeline, with its estimated 20,000 or so jobs, is also a demonstration that Republicans don't care about anyone but corporations and billionaires.

Ken Berwitz

The holiday season should be a time for warmth, family and general happiness.  For many of us it will be.  But for many others it will not.

Sadly, I must advise you that Christians around the world are under siege, at the hands of some (by no means all) Muslims. 

If this reference were to isolated instances in a couple of countries, I would not be blogging about it.  But that's not the way of things.

Raymond Ibraham, of the Middle East Forum (meforum.org) has compiled a list of some of the more egregious examples.  I assure it is far from complete.  Here are just a few:

Ethiopia: More than 500 Muslim students assisted by Muslim police burned down a church, while screaming "Allahu Akbar" (and thus clearly positing their attack in an Islamic framework); the church was built on land used by Christians for more than 60 years, but now a court has ruled that it was built "without a permit."

Indonesia: Hundreds of "hard-line" Muslims rallied to decry the "arrogance" of a beleaguered church that, though kept shuttered by authorities, has been ordered open by the Supreme Court. Church members have been forced to hold services on the sidewalk, even as Indonesia's leading Muslim clerics warned Christians that it would be "wise and sensible" for the church to yield to "the feelings of the local believers, specifically Muslims."

Nigeria: Islamic militants shouting "Allahu Akbar" carried out coordinated attacks on churches and police stations, including opening fire on a congregation of "mostly women and children," killing dozens.

Afghanis around the world are being threatened for leaving Islam and converting to Christianity. One exile, who changed his name after fleeing Afghanistan in 2007 when an Islamic court issued an arrest warrant for his conversion, is still receiving threats:

Algeria: Five Christians were jailed for "worshiping in an unregistered location."

Iran: Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani, who caught the attention of the world after being imprisoned and awaiting execution for leaving Islam, remains behind bars as officials continue to come up with excuses to force him to renounce Christianity, the latest being that "everyone is [born] a Muslim." A Christian couple "who had been snatched and illegally-detained" by authorities for eight months without any formal charges, were finally released, beaten again, and have since fled the country. While imprisoned, they were "ridiculed and debased" for their Christian faith.

Kashmir: Muslim police arrested and beat seven converts from Islam in an attempt to obtain a confession against the priest who baptized them.

Nigeria: The Muslim militant group, Boko Haram, executed two children of an ex-terrorist and "murderer" because he converted to Christianity. General Killings

Egypt: After a Christian inadvertently killed a Muslim in a quarrel begun by the latter, thousands of Muslims rose in violence, "collectively punishing" the Copts of the village. Two Christians "not party to the altercation" were killed; others were stabbed and critically wounded. As usual, "after killing the Copts, Muslims went on a rampage, looting and burning Christian-owned homes and businesses." Even so, "Muslims insist they have not yet avenged" the death of their co-religionist, and there are fears of "a wholesale massacre of Copts." Many Christians have fled their homes or are in hiding.

And there are plenty of others.

Importantly, when reading this, I fervently hope you don't come away with the impression that all Muslims are intolerant toward Christians.  Because it is not true. 

Illustratively, one look at the USA, where most Muslims want nothing other than to live their lives in peaceful coexistence with non-Muslims, should (I would hope) prove this to you.

But it does not change the fact that, in many other places, intolerance is king, and horrific atrocities are being committed.  This blog it written because you should know about them.

So let's all enjoy the holiday season.  But let's also keep in mind that not everyone has the luxury of doing so, and appreciate our society all the more.

Ken Berwitz

Why is California going down the tubes economically?  Why are businesses either fleeing the state, moving part of their operations elsewhere or closing altogether?

The Orange County Register has a terrific editorial on this subject, that explains it in plain, easy-to-understand terms - and also explains why how the Democrat majority's sneering "business as usual" reaction is helping California's business flight along.

Here it is:

Editorial: Even profitable firms fleeing California

California businesses can expect little sympathy from leadership in Sacramento.

 

Democratic reaction to the news that Waste Connections, a $3.6-billion company and major Sacramento-area employer, is headed to Houston to seek a friendlier business climate tells other businesses all they need to know about the attitudes of those who run California's government.

 

State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, gave these clueless and snarky remarks in response to the news: "In this instance you have a company that is, in fact, profitable, making significant revenue gains in 2011 and 2010. That doesn't speak to a bad business climate here in California when a good company is able to thrive in that way. So whatever Mr. Middelstaedt's (company CEO) reasons are to leave the great state of California, I know I'm pushing back."

 

Steinberg claims to have worked on improving the state's business climate, but from what we see in Sacramento, Steinberg and the party he helps lead have been pushing hard mainly for additional regulations and much higher taxes. The California Democratic Party's attitude long has been that businesses are basically trying to rip off the public, and the source of all wealth and advancement can be found in the public sector, When businesses leave. Steinberg and Co. show little sympathy.

 

Is it really the Senate president's role to determine the proper profit margin for a privately owned company? Talk about arrogance.

 

"The decision by Waste Connections to relocate, despite the 17 percent revenue increase and the $18 million cost to move to Texas, illustrates that businesses will endure short-term costs to ensure long-term prosperity," wrote state Sen. Mimi Walters, R-Laguna Niguel, in response to Steinberg's message. Walters quotes business-relocation expert Joe Vranich of Irvine, who notes that businesses typically save 40 percent in costs by leaving California because of lower taxes and more manageable regulations found elsewhere.

 

State Democratic leaders ignore the obvious. Liberal-leaning think tanks have produced studies alleging that few businesses actually leave the state. That is true on its surface, although Fox News reported that more than 2,500 employers, accounting for 109,000 jobs, have left California in the past four years.

 

While a limited number of businesses go through the trouble of pulling up stakes and high-tailing it to Texas, Nevada or Arizona, many others just quietly go out of business. Others keep their headquarters here, but expand their operations elsewhere. Many jobs are never created or opportunities pursued because of the punitive regulatory and tax climate in California, where Steinberg's true constituency – the public-sector unions that enforce the myriad regulations and laws – does its work.

 

If California wants to improve its business climate and reduce its double-digit unemployment rate, its officials need to understand what companies such as Waste Connections are saying, rather than simply dismiss their concerns.

Exactly right. 

And California is not the only one either.  Another state just like it is Illinois - which, faced with a huge budget deficit due to spending money it does not have, dramatically raised its taxes on businesses.  Again. 

The "don't lower spending, just soak the business sector" strategy used to work, when the deficits were lower and times were better.  But now?  Watch the companies run away.

When will the voters in these states wise up?  When will the Democrats in these states, the ones who understand what a disaster their party is creating,  speak up?

There's no time like the present.

Ken Berwitz

If you believe in the old maxim "Better late than never", especially when it comes to exposing the pervasive crony capitalism practiced by President Obama and his woefully unethical administration, this should be very satisfying to you.

Excerpted from Joe Stephens and Carol D. Leonnig's article in yesterday's Washington Post:

Linda Sterio remembers the excitement when President Obama arrived at Solyndra last year and described how his administration’s financial support for the plant was helping create hundreds of jobs. The company’s prospects appeared unlimited as Solyndra executives described the backlog of orders for its solar panels.

 

Then came the August morning when Sterio heard a newscaster announce that more than a thousand Solyndra employees were out of work. Only recently did she learn that, within the Obama administration, the company’s potential collapse had long been discussed.

• The Solyndra Scandal

“It’s not about the people; it’s politics,” said Sterio, who remains jobless and at risk of losing her home. “We all feel betrayed.”

 

Since the failure of the company, Obama’s entire $80 billion clean-technology program has begun to look like a political liability for an administration about to enter a bruising reelection campaign.

 

Meant to create jobs and cut reliance on foreign oil, Obama’s green-technology program was infused with politics at every level, The Washington Post found in an analysis of thousands of memos, company records and internal ­e-mails. Political considerations were raised repeatedly by company investors, Energy Department bureaucrats and White House officials.

 

The records, some previously unreported, show that when warned that financial disaster might lie ahead, the administration remained steadfast in its support for Solyndra.

 

“What’s so troubling is that politics seems to be the dominant factor,” said Ryan Alexander, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan watchdog group. “They’re not talking about what the taxpayers are losing; they’re not talking about the failure of the technology, whether we bet on the wrong horse. What they are talking about is ‘How are we going to manage this politically?’ ”

 

The administration, which excluded lobbyists from policymaking positions, gave easy access to venture capitalists with stakes in some of the companies backed by the administration, the records show. Many of those investors had given to Obama’s 2008 campaign. Some took jobs in the administration and helped manage the clean-
energy program.

Translation:  Give enough money to the Obama campaign and President Obama, whose entire career has been built on spending spending other people's money, will make sure the US Taxpayer backs your solar company - footing the bill if it doesn't work out.

And in case you think Solyndra is the only example, please don't forget Evergreen Solar.  Or SunPower.  Or NextEra Energy.  Or the Granite Reliable Power project.   And others as well.

So while I am more than a little distressed at how long it took for the Washington Post to jump in - and even more distressed that they published it on Christmas day, which pretty much guarantees a lesser degree of readership, I am gratified to finally see this chapter-and-verse exposé of the scandalous, overt acts of crony capitalism by Obama & Co. on its pages.

Now:  When do the New York Times, the network news, etc. etc. etc. also wake up?  Ever?

Their epiphanies (if they ever happen) - and the 2012 elections -  cannot come fast enough.

Ken Berwitz

This is how far down the slope of racial politics our Department of Justice has descended under the disgraceful toady, Obama sock-puppet, lying, incompetent eric holder:

Excerpted from Jerry Markon’s article in today’s Washington Post:

The Obama administration entered the fierce national debate over voting rights, rejecting South Carolina’s new law requiring photo identification at the polls and saying it discriminated against minority voters.

Friday’s decision by the Justice Department could heighten political tensions over eight state voter ID statutes passed this year, which critics say could hurt turnout among minorities and others who helped elect President Obama in 2008. Conservatives and other supporters say the tighter laws are needed to combat voter fraud.

Justice Department lawyers, facing intense pressure from civil rights groups to act against the new laws, are still reviewing Texas’s statute.

In its first decision on the laws, Justice’s Civil Rights Division said South Carolina’s statute is discriminatory because its registered minority voters are nearly 20 percent more likely than whites to lack a state-issued photo ID. Under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, South Carolina is one of a number of states that are required to receive federal “pre-clearance” on voting changes to ensure that they don’t hurt minorities’ political power.

“The absolute number of minority citizens whose exercise of the franchise could be adversely affected by the proposed requirements runs into the tens of thousands,” Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez said in a letter to South Carolina officials.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) called the decision “outrageous” and said she plans to seek “every possible option to get this terrible, clearly political decision overturned so we can protect the integrity of our electoral process and our 10th Amendment rights.”

The law, passed in May and signed by Haley, requires voters to show one of five forms of photo identification. The state can now try to get the law approved by a federal court or seek reconsideration from Justice.

Let’s see how many things are wrong with this.

First, there is the article itself.  Writer Jerry Markon tells us that “critics say” the Voter ID statute could hurt turnout among minorities.  But “conservatives and other supporters” say the laws are needed to combat voter fraud.  

Got that?  critics – completely generic – say it could hurt turnout but “conservatives”, then other supporters, feel it combats fraud.  Why is the political label only applied to supporters?  Why doesn't the article also refer to “liberals and other detractors”?  Do you need me to tell you the answer?  I doubt it.

Next we have the fact – assuming it even is one - that "its registered minority voters are nearly 20% more likely than Whites to lack a state-issued photo ID":

-According to the Census Bureau, Blacks account for about 28% of South Carolina’s total population. So, if we assume that, for the sake of discussion, about 85% of White South Carolinians are registered to vote and have photo ID's, this means less than 17% of Black registered voters do not.

 

-17% of 28% is slightly less than 5% of the voting public - a pretty hefty chunk, considering that we are told that they cluster in Black (thus almost always Democrat-voting) areas.  But is there a little more to it?

 

-In aggregate, Black South Carolinians have lower household incomes and lower educational levels than White South Carolinians.  Has the Department of Justice compared White South Carolinians in similar economic and educational circumstances to Black South Carolinians?  I'm betting that if they did they would find that at least some - maybe most - of the difference is not racial at all, but rather that lower economic/lower income folks, regardless of color, are less likely to have photo IDs.

 

-(In this connection, it should be noted that the law stipulates photo ID's will be free of charge to all voter-age residents). 

Third, we have the fact that, regardless of the reasons for this disparity, there are far simpler, far more logical remedies than denying South Carolina the photo ID requirement.

Illustratively, if it is argued that registered Black voters are less able to get photo ID's (which is a gross insult to Black people, as noted further on), simply putting photo ID locations – even if just a storefront or two – in heavily minority districts for a few months would resolve the issue without so much as breaking a sweat.  

Had the DOJ demanded that remedy, I doubt Governor Haley would have any problem with it.  So how come the DOJ wants to stop all Voter ID instead?  Why do you suppose?

And, finally, let’s turn to the truly ugly part of this fiasco:  its inherent racism.

When the Department of Justice and/or so-called “civil rights” groups tell us that it is unfair to expect that minorities provide the same Voter ID required of White people, they are telling us, in so many words, that they consider minorities less capable than White people of getting Voter ID’s.  They are telling us that minorities are unable to do the same things that White people can do.  They are telling us that Black people are inferior.

Maybe one day Jerry Markon, or someone else at the Washington Post, or the New York Times, or the Morning shows, or the Network News, etc. etc. etc. would like to pick up on this angle of the story, by noting a) how implicitly racist such an assumption is and b) where this implicit racism is emanating from.

The bottom line?  If you think the DOJ lawsuit has anything to do with justice for minorities, I suggest you think harder.  A lot harder.  I also suggest you entertain the possibility that it just might have nothing to do with minority voting rights, and everything to do with enabling voter fraud in traditionally Democrat areas.  

If a state cannot check for a valid voter ID, it cannot uncover voter fraud.  And the eric holder-led Department of Justice demands that states should not be allowed to check for a valid voter ID. When you realize this, the real issue - the real intent of the holder-led DOJ - becomes crystal clear.

And don’t doubt for a minute that holder’s boss, President Barack Obama, is 100% on board with it.

The 2012 elections cannot come fast enough.  Let’s just hope the DOJ does not prevent them from being run legitimately.

Ken Berwitz

For readers who have had a problem logging on until now, I apologize.   The server had some kind of glitch which has now been resolved.  I know this because I spoke to one of the partners, who was rousted from his post-Christmas day off to take care of it.

All better now....

Ken Berwitz

Lynn Samuels, the veteran radio talk show host with that grating (to most non-New Yorkers) accent and usually-but-not-always hard left views, has died.  She was found in her apartment yesterday after she did not show up for her morning show on Sirius XM.  No cause of death has been reported yet.

Ms. Samuels graced (or soiled, depending on your point of view) the airwaves for over 30 years, starting at WBAI in New York, eventually moving to WABC and then to Sirius. 

You might not always have agreed with Samuels.  But you never wondered where she stood, and you never wondered why.  I always respected her for that - even when her opinions made me shake my head in amazement (if she knew mine, she'd probably have done the same).

In Lynn Samuels, we have lost a one-of-a kind personality, who added richness and thought-provoking views to the airwaves.  I'll miss her a lot.

May she rest in peace.

Ken Berwitz

President Obama's "energy policy" (if you can call it that):  ridiculous enough to be comical -- if it weren't so damaging to the economy. 

Excerpted from Robert L. Bradley Jr.'s article at Investors Business Daily:

Obama's Delay On Keystone Carries A Large Cost

The Keystone XL pipeline has become a political football.

In November, the White House announced it would delay deciding on the project until after next year's election. Administration officials claim they need more time to evaluate the potential environmental impacts of the $7 billion, 2,100-mile project to transport crude oil from Alberta, Canada, to major American refineries in the Gulf Coast.

Not content to wait until 2013, Republicans inserted a Keystone approval provision into the payroll tax extension. The result of that move is still in flux, as House Republicans have rejected the Senate's measure.

Regardless of the outcome, President Obama's desire to delay the pipeline is just the latest example of his pernicious proclivity for putting politics over sound policy when it comes to energy regulations.

But organized labor, another one of Obama's prized constituencies, is as disappointed as extremist environmentalists are elated.

Canada's oil will go somewhere. The market demands it. If not to the U.S. Gulf Coast — as currently planned — the oil could easily flow west, where China will pick it up in tankers at a port in British Columbia.

The Canadian government has already instituted rigorous protections to ensure the area surrounding oil extraction points aren't damaged. And the State Department recently concluded a wide-ranging study of Keystone and determined that there were no potential environmental effects from the pipeline requiring further investigation.

Keystone XL requires miles of pipe to be welded and installed, and at least 30 new pumping facilities to be constructed. American workers would staff many of those operations.

Indeed, if Keystone XL were allowed to proceed as planned, oil sands development and related operations would directly create thousands of new jobs. Tens of thousands additional positions would be created indirectly at businesses along the pipeline's pathway.

But politicking has now gotten in the way of good thinking. This administration and its allies are holding up vital new energy projects — and it's costing Americans new jobs.

And if the oil is exported by tanker to destinations such as China, Obama will have left the environment and the economy worse off. Lose-lose rather than win-win — now that would be monumental.

Does this make any sense to you?  Well, as bad as it looks, it is even worse. 

Read the entire article and you'll find that, with the same ham-handed approach to politics over the welfare of the economy, Mr. Obama is also supporting environmentalists' suppression of the Marcellus shale; a huge deposit of natural gas in the Northeast, the extraction of which might create as many as 80,000 additional jobs - and make us that much less energy-dependent in the bargain.

What does Barack Obama have against energy independence for our country?

Why is his distaste for it so great that, even with the most rigorous environmental safeguards in place, he fights any attempt to free us from energy hegemony by other countries, some of which clearly hate western civilization in general and the USA in particular?

What does he have against energy?  What does he have against us?

The Keystone Kops were a group of buffoonish, completely inept policemen, created by movie pioneer Mack Sennett and featured in a series of silent movies which ran from 1912 to 1917 - just a little more than the time it takes to complete one term as President. 

Given his energy policy, his foreign policy, the so-called "stimulus package", ObamaCare, etc. etc. etc., Could they have performed less capably than President Obama?

Maybe it would be best if the Obama presidency had about the same run as the Keystone Kops.....actually about a year shorter.

Ken Berwitz

A quick break from politics.

Last year we saw the European version of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo".  We thought it was terrific.

Two days ago we saw the new English-language version, starring Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig.  It was at least as good; if anything, even better.

The movie is very dark, some of the scenes are very disturbing, and the sex - which is plentiful - is very explicit.  But, importantly, none of this is gratuitous; it all works, and works terrifically well.

Ms. Mara, whose familial background (as her name suggests) involves two NFL football dynasties, certainly did not grow up with any personal empathy for her role.  The fact that she plays it so magnificently is a testament to the quality of her acting. 

If  The Help's Viola Davis (my personal preference) does not win an academy award for best actress of 2011, I'm rooting for it to be Ms. Mara.  And even if she doesn't, coming in second against Ms. Davis - which is a little like Lou Gehrig being seen as not quite as good as Babe Ruth - ain't exactly chopped liver.

Ken Berwitz

Could it be?  Could the Russian version of "The Protester" Time Magazine was talking about actually be taking hold and affecting the March elections?  Could the movement have become so large that even a KGB operative with a trail of dead opponents like vladimir putin can't stop it?

Well, read the first few paragraphs from this Reuters article by Thomas Grove and Guy Faulconbridge, and you tell me:

(Reuters) - Tens of thousands of flag-waving and chanting protesters called Saturday for a disputed parliamentary election to be rerun and an end to Vladimir Putin's rule, increasing pressure on the Russian leader as he tries to win back the presidency.

The protesters shouted "Russia without Putin" and "New elections, New elections" as one speaker after another called for an end to Putin's 12-year domination of the country at the second big opposition rally in two weeks in central Moscow.

"Do you want Putin to return to the presidency?" novelist Boris Akunin asked from a large stage. Whistling and jeering, protesters chanted: "No!"

Witnesses said at least as many people turned out as at the last big Moscow rally on December 10 to protest against alleged vote-rigging in the December 4 election won by Putin's United Russia party.

Police said at least 28,000 attended the rally on Prospekt Sakharova (Sakharov Avenue), named after Soviet-era dissident Andrei Sakharov. But one of the organizers, liberal politician Vladimir Ryzhkov, put the crowd size at 120,000. Some climbed lamp-posts or trees to get a better view.

putin, like yugo chavez of Venezuela, started out as an elected head of state.  But then, also like chavez, he decided that dictatorship was a better idea, and started dismantling the democracies which elected him.  chavez arrests his opponents on trumped up charges and puts them in jail.  putin appears to prefer more conventional KGB methods:  they die in various ways.

It has become so bad in Russia that fear of putin increasingly is outweighed by revulsion with what he is turning Russia into - or should I say back to.  That is why you see those crowds in the streets of Moscow and other Russian cities. 

And it could get worse.  A lot worse.  putin may conclude that the only way to stop the forces demanding his ouster is by following in the path of  folks like moammar qaddafi (how'd that work out?) and bashar al-assad (he better get ready, there is a good likelihood he is about to be qaddafi'ed as well).  

Should we fear what might happen?  You bet we should.  A bloody civil war in Russia is about the last thing the United States should want - especially given its status as a major power with immense nuclear capacity.  But I honestly do not know what President Obama can do about it; how he can prevent what may be about to happen.

I hope he and his people are a lot more clever than I am about finding a way.....

Ken Berwitz

As anyone who has watched footage of the various "Occupy" protests certainly knows, they are about as diverse as a school of goldfish.

Why would that be?

Well, conservative columnist Larry Elder has written an excellent, insightful column on the subject.   I strongly suggest that you use the link I've provided, and read every word of it.

Here are a few excerpts:

As Person of the Year, Time magazine named "The Protester." The subhead read, "From the Arab Spring to Athens, From Occupy Wall Street to Moscow."

Well, yes, but what about the lack of American black protesters? Good Lord, where is the racial diversity/inclusion/proportional representation?

Back in the day, the Tea Party's alleged lack of black participants was beyond worrisome to the media. The lack of black faces in the crowd allowed the major media to describe the Tea Party as racially exclusionary, if not ... racist!

So the formula is set: Lack of blacks plus "overwhelmingly white" equals racism. Right? Not so fast.

This formula does not apply to the Occupy Wall Street movement, which is as white as an Idaho picket fence. A Washington Post opinion piece cites a survey that found "African Americans, who are 12.6 percent of the U.S. population, make up only 1.6 percent of Occupy Wall Street."

Why so few blacks in the Occupy movement?

...there's the Obama factor. For some blacks, joining the Occupy protests would be an admission that the president has failed to deliver on his promises to make things better, to squash special interests, to diminish the influence of lobbyists, etc.

The economy of the early '80s saw higher inflation, interest rates and unemployment than during the so-called Great Recession. But unlike Obama, President Reagan deeply and broadly cut taxes, continued deregulation and slowed down the rate of domestic spending. The result? Black adult and teen unemployment fell dramatically, much faster than it did for white adults and teens.

The real question is not why so few blacks belong to the Occupy movement. The real question is why so many blacks still belong to the Democratic Party.

Let me again remind you that this is only a taste of Mr. Elder's fact-filled, common sense-filled commentary.  You don't do it justice unless you read it all.

That said, however, isn't it amazing that the same media which jumped all over the tea party movement for its alleged racism - despite how little of it there actually was, and how much was cooked up out of thin air - are blissfully unconcerned about how few Black people are in the "Occupy" movement (what's left of it), not to mention how many anti-Semitic signs, and ranters, there were at "Occupy" locations?

Y'know, a feller could almost get the impression that media - those fiercely neutral reporters of facts, just facts; just ask them - have been displaying a rooting interest for "Occupy" people over tea partiers.

But, forget I even said that.  We all know that media never take sides.  Don't we?

Ken Berwitz

Whether you celebrate Christmas, Chanukah, kwanzaa or even festivus (that's for you Seinfeld fans), I wish you a happy one.

Ken Berwitz

Time Magazine, the barely relevant (if that much) former giant of a news magazine, declared its Person of the Year to be "The Protester". 

Although the magazine's cover featured an apparently Arab woman, thus suggesting its designation was aimed at protesters in places like Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria, Time also mentioned the "Occupy Wall Street" movement.

So, in the spirit of good fun, good cheer (or something), Benjamin Johnson of Accuracy In Media (AIM) asked some of the Washington DC "Occupy" contingent, for their reactions. 

Here is what he found out (if you have trouble seeing the video, just click here:

Tell me:  Does this look like "the 99%" to you?  Would 99% of your friends, relatives and acquaintances fit right in among these folks?

If you're into delusions of grandeur, baby, this should make your day.

Ken Berwitz

Five Days ago, I posted a blog about jules manson, the unsuccessful Carson, California political candidate (now running for office again) who became nationally known because one of his facebook entries said, about President Obama and his family, "Assassinate the fucken nigger and his monkey family".

Countless blog sites have cited manson's comment, assured their readers he is a member of the tea party ("tea party darling" was the specific term used by many of them) and used this comment to "prove" that the tea party is a racist movement.

Me?  I read manson's facebook page and web site, but could not find any reference to the tea party movement at all.  So I emailed mansion and asked the following:

Two quick questions: 

-Are you the same Jules Manson who posted that very offensive facebook comment about President Obama and his family?  It is possible that was another person with the same name

 

-Are you in any way affiliated with the Tea Party movement? 

Thanks in advance for your answers.

I promised that  if manson answered I would post his comments verbatim.

Well, he did.  And here they are:

Unfortunately I am the person that the press is reporting on. No I am not a teabagger because it was hijacked by the Republican Party. If they can disinfect themselves of this contamination I would have been a supporter of this once fine non-partisan organization. But I do admire their determination and activism. I also admire the occupy any street people. I do not align myself with any one party. But I can best be described as a libertarian and an atheist. I do not wish to disclose who I support because I do not want this to hurt his or her campaign or reflect on them.

Penn Jillette is so well loved among the public that I believe it is safe to say that I greatly admire him. He also mirrors many of my own views. I am currently watching the following as I write this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJGxVeQw3SE

It appears that you may be from the press or at least an editor or contributor to an online site. I would be very happy to reveal many more of my views on many pressing matters (especially corporatism, New World Order, drug prohibition, and 9/11) that this country is dealing with if you ask. Take care.

Jules Manson
Candidate for Member of the City Council, City of Carson, CA

So, is jules manson a tea partier?  Is his tea partier status contaminating the Republican Party?

Well, manson says he says he is not a tea partier.  He derisively refers to them as teabaggers.  And he tells us his reason for rejecting the tea party movement is because "it was hijacked by the Republican Party".

Based on those statements, the answers, pretty obviously, are "no" and "no".

But what about the fact that manson agrees with some of what the tea party movement says?  That, folks is irrelevant.  So does the "Occupy" movement.  Illustratively, I agree with some tenets of communism, and admire much of the moral philosophy of Christianity.  But I am neither a communist nor a Christian.  Agreeing with part of a given philosophy does not make you one of its followers.

On the ugly side, one thing manson does not do in his email:  he does not disavow the threatening, racist reference to the Obamas.  I therefore assume he remains ok with it.  As you might expect, this is why I do not use capital letters while writing manson's name; I won't afford him that level of respect.

Now:  what about all those leftward web sites - like crooksandliars.com, to name just one - which were so hot to use manson as a poster boy for their contention that the tea party is a racist movement - and, since the tea party has a major influence on the Republican Party, Republicans must be racist as well?

Would you say a correction is in order?  Maybe an apology, and an admission that there was no evidence at all to make that claim?  I sure would.

Let's see if any is forthcoming......

Ken Berwitz 

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen...:  Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Ralph Waldo Emerson died in 1882.  But his words could easily have been written about the little town of Aurelia, Iowa in 2011.

Excerpted from Fran Spielman's article in the Chicago Sun-Times:

Retired Chicago cop’s service dog not welcome in Iowa town

For 32 years, nearly half as a tactical officer, Jim Sak was a cop chasing down bad guys on the streets of Chicago.

Now that he’s retired and living in tiny Aurelia, Ia., the townsfolk are chasing him — to get rid of “Snickers,” a five-year-old Pit bull-mix service dog he needs after suffering a debilitating stroke that left him with no feeling on the right side of his body.

On orders from the Aurelia City Council, a heartbroken Sak has shipped his beloved protector off to a kennel just outside of the Iowa town where he moved last month to be closer to his ailing, 87-year-old mother-in-law. If he hadn’t gotten rid of Snickers, city fathers had threatened to seize and destroy the dog.

“I have spasms on my right side where the leg gives out whenever I get upset or try to do too much. When Snickers sees that my hand is moving, he sits down by me right away and waits for me to tell him what to do. Usually, he goes to get my wife so she can help me get back in the chair. Without him, I feel lost.”

He added, “I was a policeman for 32 years. I understand there’s black and white, but there’s also a grey area where you have to use your head. They’re not using their heads.”

Peggy Sak, Jim’s wife, said she’s “appalled and embarrassed by the town I grew up in…They have made our lives a living hell since we got here.”

“They called us to a city council meeting Dec. 14 and voted 3 to 2 to make no exceptions. I had to get him out of the house by the next day. That dog has never been away from us a night in his life. He’s the sweetest, most good-natured dog you’d ever want to meet,” Peggy Sak said.

“I left the meeting and threw up on the street outside the place. I can’t stop crying. Jim, being the Chicago cop, is stoic, but very depressed. It’s terrible. I’m afraid to leave him. My mother is now helping take care of Jim because the dog isn’t here to help him.”

George Wittgraf, an attorney representing the Iowa town, said Aurelia is “simply exercising its authority to protect and preserve the rights and property of its residents — whether or not that’s trumped by” federal law.

City Clerk Barb Messerole said the ordinance was approved in March, 2008 after a meter reader was bitten by a pit bull.

Are these people idiots?  Mean-spirited misanthropes?  Both?

I'll bet that sometime between 2008 and now there has been a car accident in Aurelia.  Are they banning cars?

I'll bet that sometime between 2008 and now a man has beaten his wife in Aurelia.  Are they banning men?  Married couples?

This is so stupid, so disgusting that it is hard to believe these hopeless satraps could even think of separating a disabled man from his service dog, let alone do it.  But do it they did.

I'm guessing that a torrent of negative publicity will force them to embarrassedly reverse field in this instance and allow "Snickers" to return to Jim Sak.  At any rate I certainly hope so.

Then the Aurelia city council can go back to what it apparently does best:  making imbecilic laws that fly in the face of reason, judgment and common sense, so they can hurt innocent people. 

Iwish them as merry a Christmas as they deserve.

Ken Berwitz

Our dear friends, Myra and Bob, just sent us a terrific email. 

If you are of a certain age, and especially if you have any connection to the great borough of Brooklyn, New York - my birthplace and home (until they tore down the post-WWII prefab housing we lived in, after which we moved to what then was our idea of the country:  Queens), you are going to love this.  I guarantee it.

Just CLICK HERE, and be transported back in time to a place that will make you smile, laugh, and maybe even shed a tear or two.

Enjoy.

Ken Berwitz

With a tip of the hat to the late, great, Jimmy Cannon, here is my latest version of....

Nobody Asked me, but....

-If Alan West survives Florida's redistricting** he is very likely in line for a leadership position within the Republican Party;

-John Boehner is not as inept as he is coming across as being.  he can't be.  I think....

-That goes for Eric Cantor as well, who at one time seemed to be a fast-rising star in the Republican Party, but now looks more like a journeyman with no special talent;

-I know I've said this before in numerous posts, but every day that eric holder is the Attorney General of the United States is a day that office is disgraced.  This country needs a "man" like him about as much as it needs a flu epidemic;

-No one makes better blueberry muffins than Balthazar's bakery, on Spring Street in Manhattan.  And that's not the only Balthazar item I could say this about.  If there is a better bakery in the New York City, I have yet to find it.

-My pal Brad just told me that his biggest pet peeve of the moment (not by any means his only one) is people who, when making a left turn, cut across the left lane of the street they are turning onto.   As you might expect, this is because it happened to him this morning.  I should also point out that a close second for Brad is people who talk on their cell phones while driving - a peeve which is shared by, oh, about 50,000,000 others;

-I wish Bob Beckel wouldn't insist on wearing suspenders instead of a belt.  Suspenders, to me, screams "pretentious".  And, yes, that's exactly how I've always felt about Larry King;

-I just read that, as of January 15th, the powerball lottery will go up to $2 a ticket.  The prizes will be higher too.  I don't know for sure, I'm betting a) that the prizes are not going up by the same 100% that the ticket cost is and b) that the volume of sales will drop because some of the $1 ticket buyers won't be willing to double their "investment".  We'll see.....

-Since NBC and ABC have not reported even one story about Operation Fast and Furious this entire year, I wonder what will happen if eric holder is forced to resign as Attorney General because of it.  Will they find a way not to report that too?

-I was just told by a friend and colleague that she and her husband went to Restaurant Nicholas in Red Bank, New Jersey, one of the highest-rated in the state.  She said the food was excellent, but the portions were so tiny that, despite having a relatively slight frame, she left hungry.  At $65 a pop, before "extras" (there are always "extras" in restaurants like this), plus a premium-price wine list (she got away easy with a $48 dollar bottle), you should at least walk out feeling like you finished a meal.   This pretty much dissuades me from ever going there.

-By contrast, Whispers, in Spring Lake, is rated just about as high as Nicholas for food by Zagat (27 vs. 28)) but, while hardly inexpensive, it costs a good deal less - and it's BYOB, which means you don't get your backside handed you for ordering a decent glass or two of wine.  My wife and I have gone there several times and have never been anything but thrilled with both the food and service.  And, yes, we always walk out with full, happy stomachs.

-Chris Matthews has degenerated so completely that he isn't even fun to watch for humor value anymore;

-The only time I ever watch either American Idol or X Factor is when my wife puts one of them on.  But I have watched enough of both to know that the host of American Idol, Ryan Seacrest, is about 10 times more engaging than Steve Jones, the cold, distant host of X Factor.  However well X Factor does ratings-wise, I can't help thinking it would generate more viewership with someone else.

-The New Jersey Nets were a marginal basketball team to begin with.  But now that the team's star center, Brook Lopez, is out for maybe 6-8 weeks with a stress fracture of the foot, I'm not sure they're even competitive.  Given that a) they don't draw many fans under the best of circumstances, b) this is their last year in New Jersey, which certainly does nothing for fan interest and now c) they're missing one of the few really good players they have.......well, you do the math;

-How much longer before Egypt explodes, even more than it is exploding now?  How much longer before Syria explodes, even more than it is exploding now?  How much longer before Iraq explodes, even more than it is exploding now?  If this is an "Arab Spring" I hope I never see an "Arab Winter".

-Wegmans' Cinnamon Squares are better tasting, and less expensive, than any other cinnamon dry cereal I've ever had.  That's a nice combination.

-The new Tom Hanks movie, "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" is getting mixed, but generally negative, reviews.  This, however, does not trouble me at all, since "The Descendants", a thoroughly unlikable movie about thoroughly unlikable people in thoroughly unpleasant situations, got great reviews.  For some reason, the more dysfunctional the characters in a movie are, the better critics like that movie - which certainly explains why The Descendents made out so well.  How can any critic tell me what I like anyway?

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

**In the original post I also mentioned that Alan Grayson was trying to win back the seat he lost to West.  That, of course, was wrong.  Alan Grayson is certainly trying to win his seat back, but he did not lose it to Rep. West, he lost it to Daniel Webster.  Sorry about that.

Ken Berwitz

My thanks to Clay Waters of newsbusters.org for calling to my attention the December 17th pack of lies, also known as the feature article on Iraq by Mark Landler of the New York Times.

Let me show you a couple of the more egregious lies in this article.  Then, if you have the stomach for it, you can find other ones on your own.

Let's start with the first paragraph:

WASHINGTON — President Obama has made good on his campaign pledge to end the Iraq war, portraying the departure of the last troops as a chance to turn to nation-building at home.

That is a lie.  President Obama's campaign pledge was to bring home all the troops, either as "the first thing I am going to do", or in 12 months, or in 16 months, depending on which day he was speaking and which audience he was speaking to. 

This is the 36th month of his presidency.  Did he make good on that pledge?

In reality, all President Obama is doing is making good on President Bush's pledge, which was to remove all combat troops by the end of 2011. 

That's, right, President Bush.  The S.O.F. (Status of Forces) agreement was completed in November, 2008 by Mr. Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki.  Not by then-senator Barack Obama.

Don't believe me?  Then read all about it in this article which, for irony's sake, I have pulled from....you guessed it:  The New York Times.  Today's edition, in fact.

But since we're talking about the troop removal, here's a fair question that Landler did not ask:  given the circumstances on the ground right now, would President Bush have simply followed through with the complete pullout, or would he have attempted to renegotiate it back to a partial pullout so that US forces might help stem the incipient civil war that is taking place? 

We will never know the answer.  But, given Mr. Bush's capacity for rethinking and adjusting, as shown by his willingness to engage in the surge that turned the war around, we have to think the answer might well have been yes

Now let's move on to a further point in the article, where Landler claims:

Mr. Obama made much of his commitment to a multilateral foreign policy, in contrast to President George W. Bush’s unilateral invasion of Iraq. That, his advisers say, grew out of a conviction the United States needed to work with others and forge consensus to restore its moral standing.

Unilateral invasion?  Unilateral???? 

If the invasion was unilateral, maybe Mr. Landler, and/or the Times, can explain this:

Can the Times, or anyone else, explain how our action was "unilateral" when we were joined by 30 other countries?  I'll wait; and it will be a long one.

Yes, there are other problems with this article as well.  Please feel free to use the link I've provided above, and find them yourself.  But these two, blatant as they are, should give you an excellent idea of what the New York Times has become. 

Keep in mind that Mark Landler did not write this article, er, unilaterally:  it had to be vetted by editors and who knows how many other personnel.  Therefore it is a product not of him personally, but of the Times as an overall entity.

Please, please remember what you just read - especially when you come across any other political coverage from this formerly great newspaper. 

Why would you trust a thing it says?

Ken Berwitz

Today Senator Joe Lieberman, the senior Senator from Connecticut and chairman  of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Afffairs Committee, launched an investigation of  Operation Fast and Furious - which, so far, has claimed hundreds of lives, including two US agents, Brian Terry and Jaime Zapata.

This is in addition to 90 members of the house of representatives either supporting a no-confidence resolution against Attorney General eric holder, demanding his resignation, or (in the majority of cases) both,  because of his incompetent performance and lying about this catastrophic "operation".

But, incredibly, neither tonight's NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams nor ABC World News with Diane Sawyer mentioned Operation Fast and Furious.   Not as a lead story, not as a second-tier story, not at all. 

Incredibly, through a year of revelations about Operation Fast and Furious, neither NBC nor ABC has ever reported about it.  Not even once.

Credit to CBS News for reporting this story and therefore fulfilling its responsibility as a news venue.

But NBC Nightly News and ABC World News?  How can they call themselves news shows? 

And how can Brian Williams and Diane Sawyer call themselves journalists?

Ken Berwitz

As the "Occupy" movement fades further into the distance (except for the very few places where sympathetic mayors are allowing it to fester), a new venue has sprung up:  New Canaan Connecticut.

John Hinderaker of powerlineblog.com has written a tiny, but very funny blog about it - too short to excerpt (he can lift anything I write anytime, of course).  Here it is:

Most Pitiful Occupation Ever

 

I am pretty sure this is not a parody, but rather a straight news story about an effort to Occupy Darien, Connecticut: First Day of Occupy Darien Draws Small Crowd:

The first day of the Occupy Darien demonstration got off to a slow start at a wet Tilley Park in Darien on Wednesday morning with about 10 protesters coming out for the event.

Cole Stangler of New Canaan was the first to arrive, carrying a sign that said, “End the Wars, Tax the Rich.”

This is one of the great photos and photo captions of all time:

Trudi Goldberg delivers a speech to Cole Stangler, Richard Duffee and Bennett Weiss at Occupy Darien.

A demonstration where those who attended can be identified individually, by name–hilarious! The Occupation movement is a gift; let’s hope it keeps on giving.

Another unoccupied occupation.  These are gettting more and more frequent.

But never forget:  they are the 99%!!!.

Ken Berwitz

I don't get it.

President Obama, Harry Reid, etc. are demanding a 2 month extension in the payroll tax cut - which means by the time the ink is dry it is over.

Republicans are demanding a one year extension - which is no great shakes either, but pretty preferable for anyone who thinks the payroll tax extension is a good idea (and there are very good reasons not to). 

So how can Republicans come out on the grinch side of this issue?  You have to be pretty inept politically for that to happen, don't you?  Well, don't you, Mr. Boehner and Mr. Cantor?

Sometimes you have to pinch yourself to believe things are happening.....

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

UPDATE:  This afternoon, Republicans, under immense pressure, appear to have agreed to the 2 month extension. 

On MSNBC, Chris Matthews is deliriously happy over this Republican "loss" - with the formerly reasonable and now safely-in-the-leftwing-fold Howard Fineman, and Jonathan Martin of politico.com, delighted to agree with him.

It will be interesting to see what happens in two months, when Republicans remind voters that this is not a settled issue for the rest of the year only because Democrats insisted it not be.  Mr. Matthews might have a different view of things then.

Ken Berwitz

As if we needed it.........

Here is more proof that Attorney General eric holder has lied to our faces about Operation Fast and Furious.

Click here, and watch the video of his Deputy Attorney General, David Ogden, over 2 1/2 years ago, detailing the steps that he and holder were taking against Mexican Drug Cartels - and specifically referencing Project Gunrunner, which is the previously used name for Operation Fast and Furious.

Listen to him say:

"The president has directed us to take action to fight these cartels and Attorney General Eric Holder and I are taking several new and aggressive steps as part of the administration's comprehensive plan….DOJ's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is increasing it's efforts by adding 37 new employees in 3 new offices using $10 million dollars in Recovery Act funds and redeploying 100 personnel to the southwest border in the next 45 days to fortify it's Project Gunrunner- which is aimed at disrupted arms trafficking between the United States and Mexico

In testimony last May, holder told us that he first heard about this operation "a few weeks ago".   That, self-evidently, is a complete lie.  And it is far from the only lie this dishonest, incompetent sock-puppet has told.

eric holder disgraces the office of Attorney General.  He disgraces the Obama administration.  He disgraces the country.

Fire him.  Fire him now.

Ken Berwitz

Here is a story - a huge story - that most of our media apparently are determined not to report.

In an effort to effect shari'a law throughout Egypt, Coptic Christians (about 10% of the Egyptian population) are under siege by the Muslim brotherhood and the apparently compliant military.

First read this excerpt from Charles Jacobs' account at bigpeace.com.... 

“The “Arab Spring” seems to be rapidly springing shut on Middle East Christians, most clearly in Egypt where Islamists scored a landslide victory in the first of a three-stage parliamentary election there. The Muslim Brotherhood – whose goals include world conquest in the name of Allah, and whose motto is “Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope” – gained 40 percent of the vote, and the Salafists – who are said to be even more radical – garnered 25 percent. And that’s just in the big cities. As Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick surmises, the results will only get worse as results trickle in from the more religious hinterland.

 

Meanwhile, Egypt’s yuppies – the grand hope of dreamy Westerners – Twittered and Facebooked themselves a pathetic 15 percent of the vote. They will likely fade away, be absorbed or be wiped out.

 

On December 7, Cynthia Farahat, a Coptic writer and human rights activist, testified before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission about the plight of her people. Farahat’s colleague Michael Mosad was one of the Christian men crushed by a military vehicle during the October 9 Maspero massacre, triggered by Copts protesting the burning of their churches by Islamist thugs. Farahat told the commission:

 

His legs were nearly severed from his body. As [Michael’s fiancée] sat next to him …soldiers gathered … brutally beating and kicking his motionless body. Vivian threw her body over his to protect him … but military officers beat and cursed her; they called her an infidel, ‘Christian sons of dogs,’ and worse–

Then, by all means, click here to read Mr. Jacobs' entire piece, which includes video of the horrific testimony by Egyptian writer Cynthia Farahat, detailing what Christians in Egypt are currently going through, and you will know what our media are not telling you.

Why are most mainstream media burying this story  How can they do it?

-Is it because President Obama's fingerprints are all over the Egyptian horror show? 

-Is it because they were touting his involvement in Hosni Mubarak's resignation as some kind of great foreign policy achievement, instead of the enormous catastrophe it, in fact, is? 

-Is it because to factually report what is really happening in Egypt - i.e. that the so-called "Arab Spring" is, in reality, a religious war against Christians, makes them look as bad as President Obama does?

I do not know the answers to these questions.  But I do know that Christians in Egypt are being subjected to a murderous siege, specifically because of their religious beliefs, and that most of our media - our Accomplice Media - are effectively collaborating with the perpetrators by withholding this information from the public. 

How can they call themselves journalists?  How can they even face themselves in the mirror?

Ken Berwitz

Remember how Democrats, along with a great many in the Accomplice Media, accused Sarah Palin of responsibility for the shooting of Democrat Gabrielle Giffords - the shooting being done by a deranged lunatic, who had such "Republican" views as atheism, a preference for "The Communist Manifesto", and heavy metal rock, and who never mentioned Sarah Palin even once in all his ravings?  Remember their demands that Republicans town down the incivility and overheated rhetoric? 

Well, would you consider these claims to be less than civil and a tad overheated?:

Republicans deny children health care, kill medicare as we know it (which politifact.com calls the "single biggest lie of the year"), hand over cash to the corporations and the wealthy on the backs of everyone else, rip away workers' rights, prevent you from voting, declare war on women, screw consumers and increase taxes on the middle class.

That's pretty uncivil and overheated to me.  But every one of those charges, and more, are in the latest Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) email from its Executive Director, Guy Cecil.

Here, see for yourself:

XXXX,

2011 is almost over, and that means everyone’s making Top 10 lists. I decided to get in on the action too. Here’s my compilation of the 10 Worst Republican Actions of 2011.
 
Which do you think is the worst? Click here to vote:

• Bring Back “Pre-Existing Conditions”: Health care reform is one of President Obama’s signature achievements. No longer can children born with health conditions be denied insurance. No longer can insurance companies deny care for “pre-existing conditions.” About 2.5 million young adults who lacked health insurance now are covered by their families’ plans. So what did Republicans do? Try to repeal “Obamacare” and put control back in the hands of insurance companies.

• Kick Grandma Off Medicare & Give Her a Coupon: Republicans all lined up in favor of Republican Rep. Paul Ryan’s extreme budget plan earlier this year that would kill Medicare as we know it and turn it into a voucher program. Thank goodness the Democratic Senate was there to stop them and keep our promise to seniors.

• Hand Over Cash to Corporations and the Wealthy: Another part of Paul Ryan’s plan: Give huge tax cuts to corporations and the wealthy. While the middle class struggles to get ahead, Republicans tried to make things worse by reducing taxes on the wealthiest – and sticking everyone else with the bill.

• Rip Away Workers’ Rights: When Republicans won the governorships in Wisconsin and Ohio, among other states, one of the first things they did was go after public workers, including taking away the rights of teachers and prison guards to bargain for better pay and benefits. Bad move. They clearly overstepped their bounds, and voters will remember at the ballot box in 2012. 

• Prevent You From Voting: Republicans this year decided that when it comes to elections, if you can’t beat, then cheat. From Florida to Wisconsin to Ohio, Republicans passed laws that will have the effect of suppressing Democratic turnout in these crucial swing states. The Brennan Center for Justice estimates that more than 5 million voters will be affected by these laws – a number higher than the margin of victory in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. Senate Democrats are holding hearings on the Florida laws in January.

• Declare War on Women: It was bad enough that Republicans tried to eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood and other family planning programs. Then they tried to change federal law to redefine rape and to allow hospitals to deny lifesaving care for pregnant women. So much for the Republican promise to have a “laser focus” on jobs. The Republican War on Women is alive and well.

• Shove Gay Soldiers Back Into the Closet: It was a huge victory for civil rights and basic human dignity when President Obama signed the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell into law. Finally, all Americans could serve openly in the military. Or not. This year, Republicans tried to bring back the policy, and some Republican presidential candidates have said reinstituting discrimination is one of their top policy priorities.

• Launch Assaults on Sesame Street and Lake Wobegon: I don’t know what Republicans have against Big Bird and Garrison Keillor, but they will do almost anything to shut off their microphones. In fact, earlier this year, Republicans vowed to shut down the federal government if NPR and PBS weren’t defunded. Luckily, Senate Democrats were there to stop the nonsense, and “Sesame Street” and “A Prairie Home Companion” were given a reprieve – for now.

• Let Consumers Fend For Themselves: One of the most important reforms passed by Democrats in decades was the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to prevent big banks from ripping off their customers with dangerous financial products – some of the same products that contributed to the Great Recession. But Republicans hate anything that puts customers ahead of corporations. So they’ve fought the bureau – and people chosen to lead it – tooth and nail.

• Increase Taxes for Middle Class Families. And last but certainly not least, this week House Republicans refused to support tax relief for the middle class, even as they demand it for billionaires and huge corporations. If your taxes go up next year, you’ll have nobody but Republicans to blame.

Evidently, if Republicans have a different way of accomplishing things, Mr. Cecil and his DSCC translate that into being against them.  Do you really think Republicans are against children getting health care, against women, against, seniors, against workers, against consumers, against the middle class, etc. etc. etc. ad infinitum, ad nauseam?  That would leave them with...wait, doing the math.......no one to vote Republican.  No one at all.  You cannot show me even one voting bloc that does not fit into one or more of those categories.

But isn't it nice that Democrats are living up to their standard of avoiding incivility and overheated political rhetoric? 

And with people like Guy Cecil backing up Barack Obama's campaign, I'll just bet they hold to these high standards throughout the 2012 campaign.

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

UPDATE:  Immediately after posting this, I read the following, from cnsnews.com:

In an editorial meeting in early November with the Des Moines Register, which endorsed him for the Iowa caucuses pending on Jan. 3, Romney was asked, “How do you feel about gays serving openly in the military?”

 

Romney said, “That’s already occurred. I’m not planning on reversing that at this stage.”

 

The reporter followed up, “But you’re comfortable with it?”

 

Romney answered, “I was not comfortable with making the change during a period of conflict, by virtue of the complicating features of a new program in the middle of two wars going on. But those wars are winding down, and moving to that direction at this stage no longer presents that problem.”

Mitt Romney, you don't need me to tell you, is a - probably the - favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination.  Does that sound like he intends to - what was it that Guy Cecil said...oh yeah - "shove gay soldiers back into the closet"?   I didn't think so.

And let's remember that this interview took place a month and a half ago, so Cecil certainly knew about it when he wrote this email.

That should tell you plenty about the honestly level of the DSCC under Guy Cecil. 

Well, at least it dovetails with the organization's civility and political rhetoric standards....

Ken Berwitz

Ed Schultz, radio host and TV host on MSNBC, is lying again (yawn).

From his radio show last Friday, after being reminded that he told listeners not to vote in the 2010 elections): 

“At no time have I ever told people don't go vote. I have never done that.”

Oh yeah?

Here is the transcript of what he said on that same radio show, July 30^th, 2010.  You decide if he is telling the truth (bold print is mine):

“I think the best way for the 99ers (Schultz's pre-Occupy name for those without work nearly two years) to get the attention of the Congress is to form an unemployed coalition and just flat-out tell the Democrats, we're not voting in the midterm…We’ll just have to go through this generational fight and make it a lesson for the Democrats and make sure that they know that the grass-rooters are serious, that we mean business, and you gotta do it for people and if you don't, we're not going to vote!

“And I'm announcing today, I'm not gonna vote in the midterm. I'm not gonna do it! You can say it's un-American. No, it's rather revolutionary is what it is. I'm at that point. I'm checking out. I'm checking out of the Democrats because they are proving to me that they don't know how to handle these big babies over on the right that say no.”

Maybe it’s just me, but that sure looks like he’s telling people not to vote.   Then again, I haven’t had my reading comprehension checked in years, and I suppose it’s possible that it has fallen below kindergarten level, so I might be misreading Schultz’s words.

If I am wrong, I apologize to Ed Schultz for my inability to understand the nuanced commentary he offered at that time.  If, on the other hand, I am right, I suggest that Ed Schultz admit it and apologize for lying again.  

Your call.

Ken Berwitz

Do you think Truman sent a condolence note to Germany when Hitler died in that bunker?

I didn't think so.

But, if the North Korea central news agency is telling the truth this time, the worst President - and, far and away, the worst ex-president - of our time, jimmy carter, sent one to kim il jong's son, the new dictator of that unbelievably deprived, repressed nation.

Excerpted from the Associated Press:

“In the message Jimmy Carter extended condolences to Kim Jong-Un and the Korean people over the demise of leader Kim Jong-Il,” the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported.

It said the message was sent on Monday, the same day that the communist state announced its longtime leader had died of a heart attack aged 69, urging people to rally around his youngest son and successor Kim Jong-Un.

“He (Carter) wished Kim Jong-Un every success as he assumes his new responsibility of leadership, looking forward to another visit to the DPRK in the future,” KCNA said, using the initials for the North's official name.

jimmy carter wishes a madman's son who, by all accounts, is at least as bad as his father, "every success"?

Well, carter - with agreement from Bill Clinton, in one of the worst things Clinton did as President - certainly helped along North Korea's "success" in getting nuclear weapons.  So why not continue the fun by wishing kim jong un success in continuing to starve his people and disallow them any news outside of the government controlled press, while he lives high and accumulates nuclear arms?

jimmy carter is living proof that no matter how much worldliness and education you confer on a hopeless simpleton, he can remain a hopeless simpleton.  And, given his support of one repressive regime after another, along with his abject hatred of Israel, that truly is the nicest thing I can say about him.

When does his own party finally, at long last, tell him to just shut the hell up?

Ken Berwitz

Last week, Vice President Joe Biden told Leslie Gelb of Newsweek:

"Look, the Taliban per se is not our enemy. That’s critical.  There is not a single statement that the president has ever made in any of our policy assertions that the Taliban is our enemy, because it threatens U.S. interests. If, in fact, the Taliban is able to collapse the existing government, which is cooperating with us in keeping the bad guys from being able to do damage to us, then that becomes a problem for us."

That's right.  According to the Vice President of the United States, the taliban, which allowed osama bin laden to operate the al-qaeda training camps that spawned 9/11 and who knows what else (until President Bush went in and obliterated them) is not our enemy.

So, needless to say, this idiotic comment was all over the media, right?   Well, right?

Excerpted from Tim Graham's blog at newsbusters.org:

ABC, CBS, and NBC have totally skipped it on air. The Washington Post and The New York Times show no coverage in Nexis -- which often includes their blog postings. USA Today and NPR had nothing. Even the Associated Press has been absent.

Unbelievable?  No, just our Accomplice Media at work.  Keep 'em ignorant and you own 'em.

How do they call themselves journalists?  How do they even face themselves in the mirror?

Ken Berwitz

Apropos of nothing (well, maybe something:  you decide), here is a list of US cities, their poverty levels (2008 data), and how many consecutive years they have had Democrat mayors:

Oh, and then there is Washington D.C., which was at 16.9% poverty in 2008 - but jumped up to 18.9% in 2009, Barack Obama's first year as President.  DC has never had a Republican Mayor.  Not even one.

Make of it what you will..........

Ken Berwitz

Here is the latest in a series detailing real incidents of racism - as opposed to the phony ones we are sometimes "treated" to.

Excerpted from Michael Martinez' article at cnn.com:

37-year-old white supremacist, Kevin William Harpham, was sentenced Tuesday to 32 years in prison for placing a bomb-laden backpack along the route of a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade in Spokane, Washington, in January, the U.S. Justice Department said.

Harpham, an unemployed electrician from Colville, Washington, pleaded guilty in September to charges of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and attempting to commit a federal hate crime.

Shrapnel in the "improvised explosive device" contained anticoagulant to prevent blood clotting, authorities said.

After he is released from prison, Harpham will serve the rest of his life under court supervision, federal prosecutors said.

 

"Harpham admitted that he is a white supremacist and white separatist, and that he placed the explosive device at the march with the intent to cause bodily injury to the person or persons in order to further his racist beliefs," a Justice Department statement said.

Is there racism out there?  You bet your life there is, and plenty of it.

Which makes it all the more sad when the term is trivialized by people who use it to deflect legitimate criticism - like, most recently, our lying, incompetent Attorney General eric holder. 

No, eric holder, you are not being criticized because you are Black.  You are being criticized because you are a lousy Attorney General and because you lied to our faces about Operation Fast and Furious.

It is people like holder who do all victims of real racism a disservice.  They should (but probably never will be) ashamed of themselves for it.

Ken Berwitz

With four more additions over the past couple of days, there are now 80 co-sponsors of a non-binding "no-confidence" resolution in the house of representatives, aimed at the lying, incompetent, disgraceful toady and Obama sock-puppet, Attorney General eric holder.

A total of 60 (and counting) house members have also called for holder to resign.  In all, 90 members of the house of representatives - almost 20% of the entire body - now are in one or both of these lists.

They join two US senators (so far), and two Governors (so far) - both numbers very likely to rise.

The primary reason is holder's incompetent performance, and outright lying, regarding Operation Fast and Furious, which has cost at least two US agents (Brian Terry, Jaime Zapata) their lives and - according to Mexican authorities - at least 300 Mexican citizens as well.

NOW will our wonderful "neutral" media start reporting on how many elected representatives have gone on record in this manner, and most importantly, their reasons for doing so?

Or are they going to continue as Accomplice Media for holder and his boss?

Ken Berwitz

John Stossel has written a terrific column for townhall.com, in which he explains - and therefore blows away - the effect that ObamaCare is having on business, even before its implementation.

You can read it all by clicking here - and you would be cheating yourself to miss even one word.  But, for the meantime, let me give you a look:

President Obama says his health care "reform" will be good for business.

Business has learned the truth.

Three successful businessmen explained to me how Obamacare is a reason that unemployment stays high. Its length and complexity make businessmen wary of expanding.

Mike Whalen, CEO of Heart of America Group, which runs hotels and restaurants, said that when he asked his company's health insurance experts to summarize the impact of Obamacare, "the three of them kind of looked at each other and said, 'We've gone to seminar after seminar, and, Mike, we can't tell you.' I think that just kind of sums up the uncertainty."

Brad Anderson, CEO of Best Buy, added that Obamacare makes it impossible to achieve even basic certainty about future personnel costs:

You would think a piece of legislation more than a thousand pages long would at least be clear about the specifics. But a lot of those pages say: "The secretary will determine ..." That means the secretary of health and human services will announce the rules sometime in the future. How can a business make plans in such a fog?

John Allison, former CEO of BB&T, the 12th biggest bank in America, pointed out how Obamacare encourages employers not to insure their employees. Under the law, an employer would be fined for that. But the penalty at present -- about $2,000 -- is lower than the cost of a policy.

"What that means is in theory every company ought to dump their plan on the government plan and pay the penalty," he said. "So you don't really know what the cost is because it's designed to fail."

Of course, then every employee would turn to the government-subsidized health insurance. Maybe that was the central planners' intention all along.

Is it not clear that ObamaCare is not clear? 

Is it not clear that the only certainty of ObamaCare is that there is no certainty at all - until the Obama administration tells you, after the fact, what its parameters are? 

Is it not clear that businesses cannot function under these circimstances - and certainly cannot hire, without knowing what it will cost to take on employees?

Is it not clear that ObamCare is a fiasco that can wind up costing untold amounts of money with bad results - just like the so-called "stimulus package"?

Thank you Mr. Stossel for this clear explanation.  And something-else you Mr. Obama and your equally arrogant, incompetent pals for foisting this catastrophe on us. 

Let's hope that the US Supreme Court recognizes the unconstitutionality of another part of this legislation - namely that it coerces people into taking insurance - and strikes it down.

Ken Berwitz

Yesterday, on "The View", while discussing the death of Korean's communist dictator kim jong il, Whoopi Goldberg said this:

“If you say that this is how our culture is and then you send your child to a Swiss boarding school — you know, this is what happens with communism. It’s a great concept. On paper it makes perfect sense. But once you put a human being in power, it shifts. We saw it in Russia, we’ve seen it all around the world. It’s nuts. But, I keep my fingers crossed.”

Is she right?

Well, yes and no.

The "yes" part is that communism makes perfect sense.  Sure it does.  People working according to their ability and compensated according to their need is as good as it gets.  In an ideal world that would be the only palatable system. 

And communism does work perfectly - in limited form.  Family businesses usually have major elements of communism (grandma works the counter because she can't lift those heavy boxes - that's for our sons to do.  And we have to give extra money to Martha this year because she's having a baby, etc.).  So do business co-ops.  

The key to communism's workability in those instances is that it is being implemented among people who know and trust each other.

But the minute this system is expanded beyond those extremely limited circumstances, it fails.  Why?  Because most folks are not going to put in extra hours so some guy in the next town, whom they never met and who might or might not reciprocate, will get more.  We know for certain there are people who will always do less if they think someone else's work will make up the difference (one look at the social services provided in this country will tell you that) and most of us don't want to be suckers. 

Plus, people who are better, and/or smarter, and/or more productive usually feel that their greater contribution should entitle them to more than less productive people get.  That's human nature.

So when Whoopi Goldberg suggests that communism is a failure because one guy at the top is a hypocrite, she is wrong.  The problem isn't an individual hypocrite, the problem is the system.  No matter how much she crosses her fingers.

Speaking of hypocrisy, I wonder how often Ms. Goldberg crossed her fingers for our system to work when George Bush was in the White House.  Not very, I suspect. 

Ken Berwitz

Congratulations are in order!

I congratulate the Democrat Party for telling the single biggest lie of the year:  that Rep. Paul Ryan's budget proposal would eliminate Medicare.

This is not my opinion, folks.  This, er, honor comes straight from politifact.com, the pulitzer prize-winning fact-check web site, run by the (decidedly leftward) Tampa Bay Times (formerly the St. Petersburg Times) - which, it should be noted, gave the previous two "lie of the year" awards to Republicans.

You can read all about the Democrat Party's great achievement by clicking here.  Meanwhile, I've posted links to each of the nine different occasions politifact debunked the party's claims that Republicans were tossing grandma and grandpa under the fiscal bus:

Says U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget proposal "eliminates Medicare" in 10 years.

Joe Biden, Tuesday, August 30th, 2011.

Ruling: False | Details

Says state Sen. Sheila Harsdorf wants to "eliminate Medicare" as we know it.

Shelly Moore, Friday, July 8th, 2011.

Ruling: Pants on Fire! | Details

There is a Republican "plan to end Medicare."

Sherrod Brown, Monday, June 20th, 2011.

Ruling: False | Details

Says U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan promised to "end health care for our seniors."

Sandy Pasch, Monday, June 6th, 2011.

Ruling: Pants on Fire! | Details

"Rep. Robert Hurt voted again today to end Medicare and raise health care costs for Virginia seniors."

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Wednesday, June 1st, 2011.

Ruling: False | Details

The Paul Ryan budget proposal would leave the country "without Medicare."

The Agenda Project, Tuesday, May 17th, 2011.

Ruling: False | Details

"Seniors will have to find $12,500 for health care because Republicans voted to end Medicare."

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Monday, April 18th, 2011.

Ruling: Pants on Fire! | Details

The newly proposed House Republican budget "abolishes Medicare within 10 years."

MoveOn.org, Wednesday, April 6th, 2011.

Ruling: False | Details

Says Majority Leader Eric Cantor called for "abolishing Social Security and Medicare."

Americans United for Change, Thursday, March 31st, 2011.

Maybe I'm just an inveterate pessimist but, to tell you the truth, I don't expect to see much of this on President Obama's re-election literature.

Ken Berwitz

From Investors Business Daily's great Michael Ramirez:

:

Ken Berwitz

Would you believe that a Vice President of the United States could possibly say that the taliban - which, while running Afghanistan, welcomed osama bin laden into the country and allowed him to operate the al-qaeda training camps which spawned 9/11 - is not our enemy?

Well, pick your jaw off the ground, because a Vice President of the United States said just that;  which should explain the title of this blog.

From Joe Biden's interview, last week, with Leslie Gelb of Newsweek:

"Look, the Taliban per se is not our enemy. That’s critical.  There is not a single statement that the president has ever made in any of our policy assertions that the Taliban is our enemy, because it threatens U.S. interests. If, in fact, the Taliban is able to collapse the existing government, which is cooperating with us in keeping the bad guys from being able to do damage to us, then that becomes a problem for us."

Incredible?  Impossible?  Inexplicable?  No, just Joe Biden.

And in case you think Biden's boss disagrees, here is what White House Press Secretary Jay Carney (what a perfect last name for his job) was trotted out to say yesterday, as excerpted from an article at foxnews.com:

The White House on Monday defended Vice President Joe Biden for saying that the Taliban isn't an enemy of the United States despite the years spent fighting the militant Islamic group that gave a home to Al Qaeda and its leader Usama bin Laden while he plotted the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

 

"It's only regrettable when taken out of context," White House spokesman Jay Carney said of  the vice president's remarks in an interview published Monday. 

Out of context?  Out of context????  Someone show me how that is out of context.  I dare you.

So how does at least one leading Republican presidential aspirant feel about what Mr. Biden said?  Here, again from the foxnews.com article, is Mitt Romney's reaction:

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said Biden's remarks -- as well as Biden's and President Obama's belief that the Taliban are not the enemy -- are "bizarre, factually wrong and an outrageous affront our troops carrying out the fight in Afghanistan." He said the comments also reflect the administration's policy of "appeasement."

 

"The Taliban harbored the terrorists who killed 3,000 Americans on Sept 11. The Taliban continues to wage war against us and our allies, a conflict in which we have lost over 1,800 troops. The Taliban receives arms and training from Iran. And the Taliban seeks to reinstate a tyrannical government that violently rejects basic notions of human rights and oppresses minorities. The Taliban is clearly a bitter enemy of the United States," Romney said in a statement late Monday. 

Exactly.  Thank you Mr. Romney.

Not for nothing do I call him Jackass Joe. 

And, by the way, where are the rest of our wonderful "neutral" media on this?  If Dick Cheney had ever said anything this ridiculous while Vice President do you think it would receive as little coverage, as little mention as what Biden said?

I call them the Accomplice Media.  This is why.

Ken Berwitz

This has nothing to do with politics, but my wife and I have laughed so much about what our (absolutely beautiful) granddaughter said that I want to post it here.

Like most two year olds, she struggles with certain words and sounds.  One of them is the the word "finished":  for some reason she always substitutes an "n" for the "f".  So when she is through doing something, she says "I'm ninished".  As professional grandparents, we find that very cute.

But only Sunday did we find out that she does the same thing with the "d" in donuts.  And we have been laughing for two days about it.

Well, at least it's better than when our nephew used to pronounce an "f" instead of the "ptr" part of dumptruck. 

Ok, back to politics.

Ken Berwitz

Excerpted from an article at Agence France Presse:

US President Barack Obama said Monday that Venezuela's government threatened "basic democratic values" and expressed concerns about its ties to countries like Iran and Cuba.

 

"We're concerned about the government's actions, which have restricted the universal rights of the Venezuelan people, threatened basic democratic values, and failed to contribute to the security in the region," Obama said in an interview with the Venezuelan daily El Universal.

 

"Moreover, it's unfortunate that the Venezuelan government is often more interested in revisiting the ideological battles of the past than looking forward to the future that we could build for our citizens."

For three years Venezuela under yugo chavez (that's not a typo:  "yugo" refers to his quality as a leader) has been exactly as President Obama stated above.

But for three years we did not hear those words.  Until now.

What is different about now?  Well, what's different is that we are within a year of the 2012 elections. So, magically, Mr. Obama is speaking out against the tyranny chavez inflicts on the people of Venezuela in a way we have not heard before. 

And if he wins?  Will it be buried again, the way it was buried for three years until now?  What do you think?

I do not know how anyone can trust a thing Barack Obama says.

Ken Berwitz

If you had to name one person as the single most prolific source of far-left, anti USA, anti Israel anti democratic propaganda, it would have to be george soros.  No one else even comes close.

Sam Blumenfeld of The New American has written a terrific piece about soros and his "Shadow Party" of subversives.  Though most of Mr. Blumenfeld's focus is on soros' efforts to destroy Israel as we know it.

That might surprise some people, given that george soros was born a Jew.  But it is more understandable if you realize that soros spent part of his teen age collaborating with nazis in his native Hungary).  And he has no guilt at all about it; not then and not now. 

Here is a transcript of Steve Kroft interviewing Soros December 20, 1998, exactly 13 years ago today.  See for yourself:

KROFT: (Voiceover) To understand the complexities and contradictions in his personality, you have to go back to the very beginning: to Budapest, where George Soros was born 68 years ago to parents who were wealthy, well-educated and Jewish.

When the Nazis occupied Budapest in 1944, George Soros' father was a successful lawyer. He lived on an island in the Danube and liked to commute to work in a rowboat. But knowing there were problems ahead for the Jews, he decided to split his family up. He bought them forged papers and he bribed a government official to take 14-year-old George Soros in and swear that he was his Christian godson. But survival carried a heavy price tag. While hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were being shipped off to the death camps, George Soros accompanied his phony godfather on his appointed rounds, confiscating property from the Jews.

(Vintage footage of Jews walking in line; man dragging little boy in line)

KROFT: (Voiceover) These are pictures from 1944 of what happened to George Soros' friends and neighbors.

(Vintage footage of women and men with bags over their shoulders walking; crowd by a train)

KROFT: (Voiceover) You're a Hungarian Jew...

Mr. SOROS: (Voiceover) Mm-hmm.

KROFT: (Voiceover) ...who escaped the Holocaust...

(Vintage footage of women walking by train)

Mr. SOROS: (Voiceover) Mm-hmm.

(Vintage footage of people getting on train)

KROFT: (Voiceover) ... by -- by posing as a Christian.

Mr. SOROS: (Voiceover) Right.

(Vintage footage of women helping each other get on train; train door closing with people in boxcar)

KROFT: (Voiceover) And you watched lots of people get shipped off to the death camps.

Mr. SOROS: Right. I was 14 years old. And I would say that that's when my character was made.

KROFT: In what way?

Mr. SOROS: That one should think ahead. One should understand and -- and anticipate events and when -- when one is threatened. It was a tremendous threat of evil. I mean, it was a -- a very personal experience of evil.

KROFT: My understanding is that you went out with this protector of yours who swore that you were his adopted godson.

Mr. SOROS: Yes. Yes.

KROFT: Went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews.

Mr. SOROS: Yes. That's right. Yes.

KROFT: I mean, that's -- that sounds like an experience that would send lots of people to the psychiatric couch for many, many years. Was it difficult?

Mr. SOROS: Not -- not at all. Not at all. Maybe as a child you don't -- you don't see the connection. But it was -- it created no -- no problem at all.

KROFT: No feeling of guilt?

Mr. SOROS: No.

KROFT: For example that, 'I'm Jewish and here I am, watching these people go. I could just as easily be there. I should be there.' None of that?

Mr. SOROS: Well, of course I c -- I could be on the other side or I could be the one from whom the thing is being taken away. But there was no sense that I shouldn't be there, because that was -- well, actually, in a funny way, it's just like in markets -- that if I weren't there -- of course, I wasn't doing it, but somebody else would -- would -- would be taking it away anyhow. And it was the -- whether I was there or not, I was only a spectator, the property was being taken away. So the -- I had no role in taking away that property. So I had no sense of guilt.

Lovely.  Someone else would have done it if he didn't, so no problem, no guilt, no nothing.  Using that "logic", soros could also have joined in the WWII fun as nazis slaughtered 6 million Jews and 5 million non-Jews.  Hey, if he didn't do it, someone else would have, right?

This is the quality of "human being" that supports today's herculean attempts to overthrow the world's democracies. 

Now, explain to me why our media barely ever mention his background and associations. 

Oh, did I mention that soros is also a huge - maybe the single most huge - contributor to the Democrat Party?  Hey, I think we have an explanation already.

Ken Berwitz

When President Obama brags that the unemployment rate has dropped to 8.6% (exactly where he warned us it would rise to if we did not pass his so-called "stimulus package", it should be noted that Alabama is gaining jobs faster than any other state.

And the reason should be noted as well:  namely that, since Alabama passed the strongest anti-illegal laws in the country (yes, stronger than those of Arizona), unemployment has dropped from 9.8% in September, to 9.3% in October, to 8.7% in November.

What's happening?  Illegals are streaming out of the state, vacating jobs they were holding - often at depressed wages and without benefits.  Those jobs are now available to legals, who are pretty obviously snapping them up.

But...but....aren't those supposed to be "the jobs that nobody wants"?  Isn't that the mantra illegal alien advocates have been reciting to us for years?

Well, read Alabama's unemployment data again.  Then you tell me if anyone wants them.

To the other states:  It seems that Alabama has found a solution to both the illegal alien issue and its too-high unemployment problem.  Any of you guys paying attention out there? 

And how about you nice folks in the mainstream media?  Are we going to see a feature or two on how the lower unemployment President Obama is busy taking credit for is due to actions he and his sock-puppet Attorney General, eric holder, are both dead set against?  

Not for nothing do I call them the Accomplice Media.

Ken Berwitz

Did you ever hear of someone named jules manson? 

Personally, I did not until today.  But the internet is buzzing about a facebook entry (since taken down) in which manson, a former unsuccessful candidate for political office in California, describes President Obama and his family as.....well, read it below and see for yourself:

The term "racism" is tossed around a lot, sometimes exaggeratedly.  But there is nothing exaggerated in this instance. 

Could this be more disgusting?  Sicker?  I don't know how.

That said, I have noticed that many of the web sites characterize jules manson as a tea party darling, tea party favorite, etc -- which, if true, provides ammunition for the leftward narrative that the tea party is comprised of racists. 

The problem with this claim, however, is that I cannot find evidence that manson is in any way aligned with the Tea Party movement (I'm not saying it isn't there, only that I can't find it, at least not as of yet)

His own web site makes no reference to the Tea Party.  But, in promoting himself as a candidate for the Carson, CA city council, it does say:

When you go to the polls on March 8th, please remember, I am not a member of nor a registered voter with either of the two parties who control government at all levels. I am however a member of the Libertarian Party (constitutional conservative) but I am not loyal to any political party, institution, or business. My only loyalty lies with you because, I am you.

If anyone has evidence that Manson is a tea partier, please tell me about it.  This blog welcomes the truth, whatever that truth might be.  But, so far, I have not yet seen any

On the other hand, I have seen evidence that jules manson is a big fan of ron paul - no surprise at all to me, since I have detailed paul's sordid racist past in previous blogs.  On paul's facebook page, manson wrote:

“I may be an atheist but Ron Paul is my God.”

Welcome to the club, jules.....there are plenty of ron paul supporters just like you.

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

UPDATE:  In looking at the facebook page, the picture next to manson's racist entry is not the same as the picture on his personal web site.  And his web site also has this:

Once upon a time African Americans of both sexes and women of all ethnicities had to struggle to have their voices heard. It is a blasphemy to freedom for all that such oppression still occurs in some parts of the world today.

As you can see, it flies in the face of the racist material posted above. 

For this reason, I have to at least entertain the possibility that - though not mentioned on the numerous sites condemning him - the facebook poster might be a different jules manson, or somebody playing a very dirty trick on the real one.  I have contacted manson by email, and will let you know what response, if any, I get.

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

UPDATE:  jules manson has not responded to my email, at least not so far.

But based on reviewing numbers of other web sites, along with manson's facebook page, I am now convinced that it was him who put up the ugly, overtly racist filth shown above. 

Also from manson's facebook page, it turns out that he has decided to run for the California State Senate -- as a Democrat (I'm sure this will just thrill Jerry Brown & Co. no end). 

Regarding the tea party, however, I still cannot find one iota of evidence that jules manson has anything to do with it.  As mentioned before, I welcome any information about this:  if you have it, let's see it.

Ken Berwitz

You cannot make this stuff up.

Here is an exchange from al sharpton's radio show last Thursday, between sharpton and equally leftward, equally race-obsessed writer/professor Karen Hunter:

SHARPTON: But isn’t it to you [Karen Hunter] a strategy cause I think you eluded to this, isn’t it a strategy that the Republicans seem to be concentrating on everything but really dealing with issues?  Let’s try to change voter ID, let’s try to do this and that about this and that rather than deal with the real problems of the economy the real problems of health care and all, it’s like distraction.


HUNTER: Well, that’s the tool of Satan, you know chaos, distraction and all that, lies.

Answering the semi-coherent sharpton:  The idea isn't to change Voter ID, it is to require that people provide identification to prove they are legitimate voters.  And the requirement is 100% applicable to everyone - Blacks and non-Blacks alike.

Answering the bizarre response of Hunter.  No, it is not satanic to expect people to identify themselves when they vote.

Allow me to remind you that al "this and that about this and that" sharpton has his own show on MSNBC.  No surprise there.......

Ken Berwitz

Here, pulled from www.drudgereport.com, are links to a group of stories about the Egyptian "Arab Spring".

Egypt clashes move into 4th day; US worried...

Ancient books, maps burned...

Islamists claim sweep of second round vote...

Blast hits gas pipeline to Jordan, Israel...

This is what so many in our wonderful "neutral" media are calling a foreign policy victory for President Obama.

Does it look like a foreign policy victory to you?

Ken Berwitz

Samuel Johnson, the great 18th century author, famously said that "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel".

If he had lived today, Mr. Johnson might have said "Racism is the last refuge of the Black Scoundrel".  Because, in the case of Barack Obama, and now his disgraceful toady and sock-puppet of an Attorney General, eric holder, to criticize either man for their voluminous (and increasing) list of failures is to immediately be called a racist.

In Mr. Obama's case, he has been smart enough to rarely make such a charge, electing instead to have surrogates make it for him.  But holder is not that smart, as you can see in the following excerpt from Matthew Boyle's latest blog for dailycaller.com:

Attorney General Eric Holder accused his growing chorus of critics of racist motivations in a Sunday interview published in the New York Times. When reached by The Daily Caller Monday morning, the Department of Justice provided no evidence to support the attorney general’s claims.

 

Holder said some unspecified faction — what he refers to as the “more extreme segment” — is driven to criticize both him and President Barack Obama due to the color of their skin. Holder did not appear to elaborate on who he considered to make up the “more extreme segment.”

 

“This is a way to get at the president because of the way I can be identified with him,” Holder said, according to the Times. “Both due to the nature of our relationship and, you know, the fact that we’re both African-American.”

 

Holder’s accusations come as resignation calls mount from a growing list of 60 congressmen, two senators, every major Republican presidential candidate and two sitting governors, spurred on by the congressional investigation into Operation Fast and Furious.

 

Additionally, seventy-five congressmen have signed onto a House resolution for a vote of “no confidence” in Holder as attorney general. Between the two lists, there are 86 total in the House who no longer trust Holder to head the Department of Justice.

Simply stated, eric holder's charge is ridiculous. 

Demands for holder's resignation stem primarily (though not exclusively) from the Operation Fast and Furious debacle, during which he has shown himself to be both an incompetent and a flat-out liar.  In addition to Fast and Furious, holder made a joke of the Justice Department by vacating a default judgment against the Black panther thugs in Philadelphia, who clearly intimidated people from voting during the 2008 election. 

There is more.  But isn't this enough?  More than enough?

As someone who has ongoingly criticized eric holder (I won't even afford him the respect of capitalizing his name), and who regularly speaks out against racism, I cannot tell you how much I resent the claim that to be against holder and/or Mr. Obama is to be a racist.

Fortunately, however, the claim is being put forward by someone I do not respect.   That makes it a bit easier to take.

eric holder is a disgrace.  And the Obama administration disgraces itself every day it retains him as Attorney General.

Ken Berwitz

Let's start at the end.  No, 8.6% unemployment is not an economic recovery.  It is a drop in the unemployment rate to the level President Obama warned us we would rise to, unless his so-called "stimulus package" was passed. 

The only good thing I can say about 8.6% is that, relatively speaking, it is an improvement on the much higher levels he has given us during his nearly three years as President.  And the drop to 8.6% might be only temporary, since it is probably due to seasonal empoyment during the holidays, and will go back up in the following months (I certainly hope this won't happen, but we have to be realistic).

In any event, the reason I ask the question is because it is what substitute Today show host Carl Quintanilla asked guest Bill O'Reilly this morning, at the end of a very well done interview - a much better interview than I am used to seeing when Matt Lauer sits in that chair.  Mr. Quintanilla's posed it this way:

“And the jobless rate, having gone from 9 to 8.6, at what point does he have credibility in saying we’re in some kind of recovery?”

I didn't much care for Mr. O'Reilly's answer:  "It's up to the folks.  The folks decide, not me.  I mean a lot Americans are scared, and that's what's hurtin' the President".  I don't even know what that means.   

O'Reilly had just stated, definitively, that President Obama's presidency failed on the economy, without laying it off on "the folks" to decide.  Why, after doing so, he would then duck this question, is anybody's guess.

But the question was a good one, and deserved an answer; not a deflection.  Since Mr. O'Reilly's deflected, I decided to fill in the void and supply an answer for him.  No need to thank me, Bill.

Ok, next case.

Ken Berwitz

kim jong il, the sickening sack of excrement who starved his people so that North Korea's military could look impressive, has died at the age of 69.  The reported cause was heart failure - an impossibility, because he did not have one.

He ruled for 17 years, after succeeding his father, who was, if anything, even worse.

Sadly, however, there is little likelihood the North Korean people will have it any better under his successor, who, if the military allows it, will be his son, kim jon eun. 

If I had my way, kim jong il would have died a long time ago, and the circumstances of his death would have been a lot less benign. 

I am ashamed to be a member of the same species as kim jong il.   May he rot in hell.

Ken Berwitz

Well, the sun rose up in the east, there was traffic on the Belt Parkway, the Chicago Cubs did not win the World Series, and Ed Schultz doesn't know what he's talking about. 

Some things never change.

Jack Coleman of newsbusters.org, has written about the latest mangling of facts from Mr. Schultz, who has a show on MSNBC (where else?).  You can read it by clicking here, and I recommend that you do.

In this latest instance, Schultz has tried to convince his viewers (and, unfortunately for them, it's a pretty good bet that viewers loyal to Ed Schultz won't need much convincing), that the genesis of Time Magazine's selection of "The Protester" as its person of the year was the orchestrated protests against Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker - that this spawned the protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and the "Occupy Wall Street" movement (actually non-movement, since it appears to be pretty dead right now). 

I kid you not.  He really said that.  Here is the transcript of his conversation with Michael Tate, head of the Wisconsin Democrat Party, to prove it:

SCHULTZ: I see that Time magazine, we did a story on this last night (on MSNBC's "The Ed Show), Time magazine has named "The Protester" as the person of the year.

TATE: Yup.

SCHULTZ: And they talked about the uprisings in the Middle East, and I just had to get a little line in there, folks, it started at the capital in Madison, Wisc.

TATE: Yup.

 

SCHULTZ: It really did. There were, there were protests there before they were anywhere else worldwide.

Ken Berwitz

Our wonderful "neutral" media are currently heralding President Obama as the man who ended the war in Iraq.  From NBC News' account:

“For President Barack Obama, the military pullout is the fulfilment of an election promise to bring troops home from a conflict inherited from his predecessor that tainted America's standing worldwide”

Is that true?  Did President Obama end the war in Iraq? 

No he did not.  President Bush did. 

I used NBC’s report (complete with its misspelling of “fulfillment”) to show you how compromised that sorry excuse for a news source is.  But countless other media venues are just as compromised for pumping out the same BS.

Now that we've seen NBC's account, let's counter with facts and reality.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama's pledge, depending on which audience he was speaking to at the time, was that he’d get the troops out of Iraq in 16 months, in 12 months, or as “…the first thing I will do, I will get our troops home, we will bring an end to this war.  And you can take that to the bank”. (watch the video and see/hear for yourself).

But December, 2011 is the 36th month of President Obama's administration - over a year and a half past his outermost promise to bring the troops home. 

Ken Berwitz

Yesterday I reposted a blog I originally wrote four years ago, about ron paul's sordid racist, anti-Semitic history. 

I didn't know the half of it.

James Kirchick, of the Weekly Standard, has uncovered a great deal more from the political newsletter paul used to put out. 

You can - and most definitely should - read Mr. Kirchick's entire piece .  Here is just a tiny portion of what you will see:

Ken Berwitz

Remember that Egyptian "foreign policy victory" President Obama was tooting his horn about?  Remember how this was the advent of an "Arab Spring"?

Well, here is the latest from that sad part of the world:

REPORTING FROM CAIRO -- Troops in riot gear stormed Tahrir Square on Saturday as clashes with protesters demanding an immediate end to Egypt’s military rule continued for a second day.

At least nine demonstrators have been killed and 361 others wounded since the clashes began Friday, the Health Ministry said.

Television footage showed military police beating protesters with sticks as they cleared the Cairo square, the epicenter of the popular uprising that toppled President Hosni Mubarak in February.

The violence reflects growing tension between the military council that took over after Mubarak’s fall and the young activists who helped drive him from power, even as the country holds parliamentary elections that have been dominated by Islamists.

The Muslim Brotherhood, whose Freedom and Justice Party appears to have a commanding lead in the first two rounds of the election, Friday expressed its "utter shock and dismay at the sight of the army killing and wounding people in large numbers."

These realities, in all their "glory", are the result of President Obama's successful efforts to remove Hosni Mubarak from power.

The Egyptian military is beating and killing the very same protesters President Obama somehow convinced himself he was helping to take over the government, while the hardline Islamist, shari'a law, Muslim brotherhood is taking over instead.

-Is this a "foreign policy victory"? 

-Is this an "Arab Spring", laden with peace and democracy? 

-Is this a triumph that President Obama will be able to campaign on next year, or a disaster that his Republican opponent will be able to campaign on?

-Is there anything Barack Obama and his administration has not bungled?  Try and name one.

But who do we have to blame?  Ourselves, that's who.  We elected a Chicago machine politician, with no qualifications for the Presidency, who was in 100 miles over his head.  And we elected huge Democrat majorities for him in both houses of congress.

That is why we have the so-called "stimulus package" which has ravaged our economy, and the "ObamaCare" debacle which fewer and fewer people want.

We went part of the way to undoing this grotesque mess in the 2010 elections.  How about let's go the rest of the way in 2012?

Ken Berwitz

If you were in a predominantly liberal/leftward city of over 7,000,000 people, within a mostly liberal/leftward metropolitan area of over 20,000,000 people, and you represented 99% of the overall population - not just the liberal/left but everyone........wouldn't you expect to get more than 1,400 people actively working for you?

And if you didn't get more than 1,400 people actively working for you.......wouldn't you reconsider that 99% jazz?

Excerpted from today's article at msnbc.com:

Occupy Wall Street makes bid for new New York City camp

NEW YORK, NY -- Occupy protesters will mark the movement's third-month anniversary with a major direct action on Saturday that could give them a new home -- a central headquarters that plays a "crucial role" in their movement -- as authorities continue to shutter camps nationwide. 

But their potential new landlord, Trinity Church, has voiced strong opposition, and the move by Occupy is seen by some as applying strong pressure to them to cave in and let the protesters set up camp.

Under the banner of "Re-Occupy," the protesters said they've assembled more than 1,400 people -- elders of the civil rights movement, prominent artists, faith leaders and community members -- to help them in their bid to try and set up camp in a nearly half-acre plot about one mile northwest of their former camp at Zuccotti Park, from which they were evicted on Nov. 15.

"Outdoor public space plays a crucial role in this civic process and encourages open, transparent organizing in our movement, unbeholden to a broken political system. As we saw in Liberty Square (Zuccotti Park), outdoor space invites people to listen, speak, share, learn, and act. It is a source of inspiration and empowerment," Occupy Wall Street said in a statement.

Trinity Church has provided the protesters with meeting rooms and use of their neighborhood center but is opposed to having them stay at the Duarte Square lot. An attempt to move in there on Nov. 15 was rejected by the church.

“In all good conscience and faith, we strongly believe to do so would be wrong, unsafe, unhealthy and potentially injurious,” its rector, The Rev. Dr. James H. Cooper, said in a statement dated Dec. 9 and posted to the church website. “The health, safety and security problems posed by an encampment here, compounded by winter weather, would dwarf those experienced at Zuccotti Park. Calling this an issue of ‘political sanctuary’ is manipulative and blind to reality.”

That's some helluva "99%" movement. 

And even Trinity Church, which apparently is quite sympathetic to the protesters, realizes what a major-league mistake it would be to let them take over Duarte Square.  It's good to see that they learned from the Zuccotti Park fiasco - complete with its tons of garbage and hordes of angry neighbors and business owners.

These people seem to think they are visionaries.  But, in reality, they are delusionaries. 

And the public - even the many who agree with some or most of the points they raise about Wall Street (which, ironically would include me), understand that their demands comprise an unacceptable alternative.

So, until they convince some other sucke...er, sympathetic land-owning entity into giving them free space, the "Occupy Wall Street" crowd has nothing to occupy.

What a great time to start looking for jobs, and pay off some of that college tuition.....

Ken Berwitz

I often point out instances where Democrats are nailed for corruption, but media reports mention their party affiliation either as inconspicuously as possible (buried in the detail of the story) or not at all.  The latest example was Jon Corzine - for whom you would have to dig and dig to find out that he was a Democrat US Senator and Governor.

But I have to confess this doesn't always happen.

Here is a perfect example:  the first three paragraphs of an article excerpted from today's Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

Minnesota Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch resigned from her leadership post the day after fellow Republicans confronted her about allegations that she had an "inappropriate relationship" with a staff member.

"We're here today with a lot of humility and some sadness and even shock," interim Senate Majority Leader Geoff Michel said Friday at a hastily called Capitol news conference.

Koch, the state's first female majority leader, was widely considered a hard-working and savvy campaigner who helped Republicans win control of the Senate last year for the first time in four decades. Her sudden resignation stunned Republicans, ending one of the shortest tenures for a Senate majority leader since 1933. The move will reshuffle the Senate leadership a month before the legislative session and less than a year before a high-stakes 2012 election in which Democrats are vowing to win back control of the Senate and the GOP will campaign for a proposed constitutional amendment that would preclude gays from marrying

Three paragraphs, and already four mentions of "Republican" and "GOP".  Does anyone have to wonder which party Ms. Koch is in?  Nope, it is the Party of Immediate Identification.

By contrast, click here to read the Star-Tribune's original October 31 article about Jon Corzine and MF-Global.  Tell me when you see the word "Democrat" in it.  I don't mean in the first three paragraphs, I mean anywhere at all in the article.  The closest it comes is mentioning that Corzine was a major bundler for President Obama --- in paragraph 17.

The next day?  Another article, 17 more paragraphs.....and not one mention of his Democrat party affiliation, even though the article noted that he had unsuccessfully run for re-election as New Jersey's Governor.

And please note that, while I am picking on the Star-Tribune because of the Amy Koch story, this same pattern was replicated in countless other media venues.

These, folks, are the people who call themselves neutral journalists.

You could have fooled me.

Ken Berwitz

I did not watch Steve Kroft interview Barack Obama on 60 Minutes last Sunday.  I have been told by different people that this part of the interview was, and was not aired.

But the important thing is that it exists.  He said it.  Which is why I was able to take the following quote straight from 60 Minutes' transcript. (you can too, by clicking on the link and reading the very last part of the page).

When Kroft asked "...what have you accomplished?" Mr. Obama said:

“I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president, with the possible exceptions of Johnson, F.D.R., and Lincoln, just in terms of what we’ve gotten done in modern history.

Now there's humility for you.  Barack Obama says he has been superior to all but four Presidents in United States history.  But he acknowledges that Johnson (I'm assuming Lyndon, not Andrew), FDR and Lincoln may have accomplished more.  May.

And what are the great "accomplishments" he is bragging about?  Well, there are two:

-There is the so-called "stimulus package" which has put us another 5 trillion dollars into debt with the "benefit' that unemployment immediately rose after its passage and has remained higher ever since, and

-"ObamaCare" which is a disaster of epic proportion that, according to the latest polling, sports a gaudy 29% approval rating/

Is there a more self-impressed, narcissistic man in the country?  On the planet?

The 2012 election cannot come soon enough.

Ken Berwitz

The Chevy Volt has been out there for year or so. 

Almost nobody is buying it.  And those who do must be crossing their fingers that the engine won't explode.

Through November, Volt has unloaded a grand total of 6,142 vehicles.  Way below its extremely understated first-year goal of 10,000. 

The reason?  Well, Audi North America President, Johan de Nysschen had a rather indelicate opinion about that well before Volts hit the showroom - September, 2009 to be exact.  Here is what he said:

“No one is going to pay a $15,000 premium for a car that competes with a (Toyota) Corolla,” he said. “So there are not enough idiots who will buy it.  (The Volt is) "for the intellectual elite who want to show what enlightened souls they are.”

Did Mr. Nysschen have a point?  You be the judge.

Personally, I hope that non-gas vehicles (which the Volt is not, by the way) become hugely successful.  The less fossil fuels we use, the better off we are in many, many ways.

But a stinker is a stinker.  And this one reeks.

Ken Berwitz

Israeli Benjamin Netanyahu has written op-ed pieces for the New York Times in the past.  But, apparently (and justifiably) his limit finally has been reached.  

Here, in its entirety, is the letter Mr. Netanyahu's senior adviser, Ron Dermer, wrote to the Times' Op-Ed editor, Sasha Polakow-Suransky, declining the paper's request:

Dear Sasha,

I received your email requesting that Prime Minister Netanyahu submit an op-ed to the New York Times.  Unfortunately, we must respectfully decline.

On matters relating to Israel, the op-ed page of the “paper of record” has failed to heed the late Senator Moynihan's admonition that everyone is entitled to their own opinion but that no one is entitled to their own facts.

A case in point was your decision last May to publish the following bit of historical revision by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas:

It is important to note that the last time the question of Palestinian statehood took center stage at the General Assembly, the question posed to the international community was whether our homeland should be partitioned into two states. In November 1947, the General Assembly made its recommendation and answered in the affirmative.  Shortly thereafter, Zionist forces expelled Palestinian Arabs to ensure a decisive Jewish majority in the future state of Israel, and Arab armies intervened. War and further expulsions ensued.

This paragraph effectively turns on its head an event within living memory in which the Palestinians rejected the UN partition plan accepted by the Jews and then joined five Arab states in launching a war to annihilate the embryonic Jewish state.  It should not have made it past the most rudimentary fact-checking.

The opinions of some of your regular columnists regarding Israel are well known.   They consistently distort the positions of our government and ignore the steps it has taken to advance peace.   They cavalierly defame our country by suggesting that marginal phenomena condemned by Prime Minister Netanyahu and virtually every Israeli official somehow reflects government policy or Israeli society as a whole.  Worse, one columnist even stooped to suggesting that the strong expressions of support for Prime Minister Netanyahu during his speech this year to Congress was "bought and paid for by the Israel lobby" rather than a reflection of the broad support for Israel among the American people.

Yet instead of trying to balance these views with a different opinion, it would seem as if the surest way to get an op-ed published in the New York Times these days, no matter how obscure the writer or the viewpoint, is to attack Israel.    Even so, the recent piece on “Pinkwashing,” in which Israel is vilified for having the temerity to champion its record on gay-rights, set a new bar that will be hard for you to lower in the future.

Not to be accused of cherry-picking to prove a point, I discovered that during the last three months (September through November) you published 20 op-eds about Israel in the New York Times and International Herald Tribune.   After dividing the op-eds into two categories, “positive” and “negative,” with “negative” meaning an attack against the State of Israel or the policies of its democratically elected government, I found that 19 out of 20 columns were “negative.”

The only "positive" piece was penned by Richard Goldstone (of the infamous Goldstone Report), in which he defended Israel against the slanderous charge of Apartheid.

Yet your decision to publish that op-ed came a few months after your paper reportedly rejected Goldstone's previous submission.  In that earlier piece, which was ultimately published in the Washington Post, the man who was quoted the world over for alleging that Israel had committed war crimes in Gaza, fundamentally changed his position.   According to the New York Times op-ed page, that was apparently news unfit to print.

Your refusal to publish “positive” pieces about Israel apparently does not stem from a shortage of supply.   It was brought to my attention that the Majority Leader and Minority Whip of the U.S.  House of Representatives jointly submitted an op-ed to your paper in September opposing the Palestinian action at the United Nations and supporting the call of both Israel and the Obama administration for direct negotiations without preconditions.   In an age of intense partisanship, one would have thought that strong bipartisan support for Israel on such a timely issue would have made your cut.

So with all due respect to your prestigious paper, you will forgive us for declining your offer.  We wouldn't want to be seen as "Bibiwashing" the op-ed page of the New York Times.

Sincerely,

Ron Dermer
Senior advisor to Prime Minister Netanyahu

Good for the Jerusalem Post, which obtained a copy of this letter and published it (that's where I got it). 

And good for Prime Minister Netanyahu!! 

Regular readers know that, for years, I have been writing about the non-stop Israel-bashing which emanates from the (Jewish-owned) New York Times - and has for the many years I have been reading this formerly great newspaper. 

It is long past time that a prominent Israeli told the Times where to get off.  And there is no Israeli more prominent than the Prime Minister.

In the immortal (albeit paraphrased) words of Chuck Berry:  roll over, Suransky, and tell Sulzberger the news.

Ken Berwitz

Since ron paul is making something of a surge in Iowa I feel the need to blog about his past.

But since I have already done so, there is no need to re-invent the wheel.

I wrote the following commentary about ron paul four years ago.   Most of the facts remain the same, so the commentary will remain the same as well.

It is eating me alive that almost no one is talking about the sickening group of nazis and white supremacists that ron paul attracts, or the reasons they are atrracted to him.

 

Do you support ron paul? Congratulations. So does a voluminous list of nazis and White supremacists, including (but not limited to) david duke, hal turner, don black, jamie kelso, hutton gibson (Mel's looney-tune holocaust denying father) and those wonderful folks at www.stormfront.org, whose home page provides you with a convenient link to donate to the paul campaign.**

 

ron paul has never disavowed one penny from stormfront.org nor said he would refuse it. Are you comfortable with this? Is this the candidate you would support?

 

Did you know that, last year, paul voted against re-authorizing the 1965 voting rights act? Did you know that he also voted against the house resolution condemning hezbollah?

 

Did you know that, at one time, paul published a newsletter which contained overtly racist material in it which, among other things,called 95% of all Blacks in Washington DC criminals and advocated trying 13 year old Black children as adults? Years later, he claimed he wasn't the writer of that material, that someone else wrote it. But that doesn't wash; the newsletter was all of 8 pages long and went out under his own name. Even if he didn't write the words themselves he allowed them to be published under his name. You know better than to think he wasn't aware of the content of an 8 page document he'd be responsible for. Personally, I assume he wrote the racist garbage himself.

 

paul also had columns published by "American Free Press" which is put out by willis carto. Do yourself a favor; google the name "willis carto" and see who he is. If you have any decency at all, you'll be sick to your stomach. While it can be argued that carto was able to publish ron paul's material without his ok, it is also true that paul could have publicly disavowed its presence in "American Free Press". He has never done so.

 

Bottom line: There are good reasons for nazis and White supremacists to flock to ron paul. You support him and you support them and their reasons. That's how they'll position it, and they have a point.

 

If all this is ok with you, congratulations again. If not, I suggest you think harder about ron paul.

 

It would not at all surprise me if ron paul made another presidential run in 2012.  And it would not at all surprise me if the same hate groups and assorted nutcakes and freaks came running to support him again.

 

I can only hope that the information posted above is blasted all over our media so that people understand who and what he is.

 

We need ron paul about as much as we need an advanced bowel virus.  And the bowel virus would have a better smell.

Yes, Ron Paul is a very smart man.  Yes, he has some very good ideas on some issues.

But Ron Paul is also a man who has no problem wallowing in hate, and who attacts haters like dog excrement attracts flies.  That makes him so repugnant that he is beyond redemption.

When do Republicans finally, decisively, squash this stink-bug?

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

**This was true in 2007.  It is not true now; at least not yet.

Ken Berwitz

The following "You can't make this stuff up" classic comes to us from Nancy Pelosi, during a briefing today:

"The unemployment insurance extension is not only good for individuals. It has a macroeconomic impact. As macroeconomic advisers have stated, it would make a difference of 600,000 jobs to our economy”

What a great point!!   Let's encourage Nancy Pelosi to introduce a bill that will extend unemployment insurance to 20 years.  Heck, that should drive joblessness down to nothing.

Everyone who wants Democrats to take back the house and make Pelosi Speaker of the House again, raise your hands....

Hey, where are those hands?  Don't you want to solve the job problem?

Ken Berwitz

As the "experts" (what do they actually know, anyway?) analyze, parse and dissect last night's Republican presidential debate, I thought you might also be interested in the results of a newly-released poll.

Excerpted from an Associated Press article, detailing the latest AP-GfK poll data :

For the first time, the poll found that a majority of adults, 52 percent, said Obama should be voted out of office while 43 percent said he deserves another term. The numbers mark a reversal since last May, when 53 percent said Obama should be re-elected while 43 percent said he didn't deserve four more years.

Obama's overall job approval stands at a new low, with 44 percent approving and 54 percent disapproving. The president's standing among independents is worse: Thirty-eight percent approve while 59 percent disapprove. Among Democrats, the president holds steady with an approval rating of 78 percent while only 12 percent of Republicans approve of the job he's doing 

That doesn't look very good, does it?  But it's even worse:

The poll found unpopularity for last year's health care overhaul. About half of the respondents oppose the health care law and support for it dipped to 29 percent from 36 percent in June. Just 15 percent said the federal government should have the power to require all Americans to buy health insurance.

Even among Democrats, the health care law has tepid support. Fifty percent of Democrats supported the health care law, compared with 59 percent of Democrats last June. Only about a quarter of independents back the law.

Let's review.  If these data are correct, since May:

-The percentage of people who think President Obama should be re-elected has dropped from 53% to 43% ;

-Only 44% approve of the job he is doing as President - with independents, the group most likely to swing elections, at a sub-anemic 38%;

-Support for his signature legislative issue, "ObamaCare", has dropped below 30%, with independents even lower.

And this is before the Republican Party has coalesced around a candidate, whomever that candidate might be.

That is one hell of a jump-start for Republicans.  If you want President Obama to be a one-termer, you better hope (as I do) that they don't blow it with a selection that makes the hardliners feel okey-dokey, but gives Mr. Obama the opening to return for another four years.

Ken Berwitz

Yesterday, cancer did what no debater could.  It won out over Christopher Hitchens.

A year and a half after being diagnosed, Mr. Hitchens has succumbed to esophageal cancer.

Hitchens was a graduate of Oxford, and a highly successful writer in the UK, before emigrating to the United States in 1981.  He became a citizen in 2007. 

For the last 20 or so years, Hitchens wrote for Vanity Fair.  And, regardless of whether you agreed with Hitchens' positions on individual issues, that writing was absolute heaven.  No one was more brilliant.

On a personal level, I saw Hitchens debating a hopelessly overmatched opponent at Cooper Union a few years ago.  Although he was quite possibly the most arrogant man I have ever come across, he was among the most knowledgeable -- and probably the single best debater as well. 

One thing he never took both sides of, however, was religion.  Hitchens was not a believer, and railed against organized religion throughout his entire adult life.

I like to think I can argue pretty persuasively.  But I would rather have swum with sharks and pirhanas than debated against Christopher Hitchens.  On anything.

A couple of my favorite Hitchens quotes:

On Michael Moore:  "Europeans think Americans are fat, vulgar, greedy, stupid, ambitious and ignorant and so on. And they've taken as their own, as their representative American, someone who actually embodies all of those qualities.”

On Jerry Falwell, after Falwell said 9/11 was God's punishment for pagans, abortionists, feminists, gays, lesbians, the ACLU and People for the American Way:  “I think it's a pity there isn't a hell for him to go to. The empty life of this ugly little charlatan proves only one thing: that you can get away with the most extraordinary offenses to morality and to truth in this country if you'll just get yourself called Reverend.” 

May Mr. Hitchens rest in peace – unless he finds out that he was wrong about religion.   If that is the case, with his debating skills he probably has already convinced half the saints that they don’t even exist.

Ken Berwitz

As of today, the number of politicians demanding that disgraceful toady and Obama sock puppet, Attorney General eric holder resign has grown to 59 house members, 2 US Senators, 2 current Governors and God alone knows how many others.

But now there is even more.

Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) introduced a resolution expressing "No Confidence" in holder.  It has been out there for a couple of days - and already has 73 co-sponsors.  This almost certainly insures that the number of congresspeople demanding his resignation is about to bump upward again.  Read all about it on Matthew Boyle's blog at dailycaller.com.

NOW will the New York Times start reporting it?  NOW will NBC news start reporting it?  NOW will the leftward-only lineup at MSNBC start reporting it?

Just how determined are they, and so many other venues, to continue being Obama Accomplice Media?

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

UPDATE:  It is about 7:25AM.  The Today Show has been on for almost a half hour.  And not one word about holder.  Therefore anyone who relies on Today for their news does not know a thing about this.

How do they call themselves journalists?  How do they even face themselves in the mirror.

Ken Berwitz

The Today Show - given its huge support of Barack Obama - made a big mistake this morning.  It allowed John McCain to talk about what a mess Mr. Obama has made in how he has drawn down the war in Iraq.

Click here to see the video.  You won't want to miss a word.  If there is one thing John McCain knows it is military - and he blows Mr. Obama's incompetence on Iraq away, with facts and logic. 

Mr. McCain's commentary about the Obama administration's bungling of Iraq builds on what he said on the floor of the senate yesterday.  Excerpted from an article at newsmax.com:

"It is clear that this decision of a complete pullout of United States troops from Iraq was dictated by politics, and not our national security interests," the Arizona Republican said on Wednesday from the Senate floor. "I believe history will judge this president’s leadership with the scorn and disdain it deserves.”

McCain, who ran against Obama for the White House in 2008, famously remarked in that campaign that he would not object to maintaining a U.S. troop presence in the area for "a hundred years." **

McCain also blasted the president for not giving credit where credit is due. Obama failed to acknowledge in a speech at Fort Bragg, N.C., on Wednesday that the end of the Iraq war had come about as a direct result of former President George Bush's surge strategy — a policy that Obama vehemently opposed as senator, McCain pointed out.

"All I will say is that, for three years, the president has been harvesting the successes of the very strategy that he consistently dismissed as a failure," McCain said . "I imagine this irony was not lost on a few of our troops at Fort Bragg today, most of whom deployed and fought as part of the surge."

Today better be careful.  A few more interviews like this and we might start (gasp!!) thinking that they intend to present more than one side of the story.

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

**My only carp with the Newsmax excerpt is that it leaves a misimpression about what Senator McCain said regarding 100 years in Iraq. 

McCain did not just say it was ok with him to stay for 100 years; there were specific defining criteria.  Let's not leave them out.

Here is his exact quote, after being asked how many years we might stay in Iraq.  The bold print is mine:

"Maybe 100, as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed, it's fine with me, and I hope it would be fine with you if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where al Qaeda is training, recruiting, equipping and motivating people every single day."

Ken Berwitz

Since I'm on the subject of Voter ID, I would like to call your attention to an article by Bill Glauber, which appeared in yesterday's Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. 

Mr. Glauber has written a piece which works mightily to make the case against Wisconsin requiring a valid ID.  In it, he presents exactly one case of someone who claims it will prevent her from voting.

Let's stop here and remind ourselves that virtually every law ever created for anything, no matter how useful and logical, is nevertheless going to adversely affect someone somewhere.  There is no such thing as a law that benefits everybody. 

But, that aside, let's look at this one example Glauber uses to show what an awful idea Voter ID's are. 

Her name is Ms. Ruthelle Frank.  And, according to the article:

Ruthelle Frank doesn't have a driver's license, doesn't have a birth certificate and hasn't been able to get a state identification card, which means that she could be out of luck the next time she tries to vote.

"The whole thing upsets me," Frank said Wednesday. "You could live in the U.S. of A., live in the same house all these years and you don't have the right to vote."

Frank is a plaintiff in the lawsuit filed Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union against the state over the new law that requires voters to show government-issued photo identification.

Fascinating.  Except those are not the only ID's accepted under Wisconsin's law.  Here, straight from its Government Accountability web site, is the full list:

A Wisconsin DoT-issued driver license

 

A Wisconsin DoT-issued identification card

 

An identification card issued by a U.S. uniformed service

 

 A U.S. passport (Identifications above must be unexpired, or if expired, have expired after the date of the most recent general election.)

 

A certificate of naturalization that was issued not earlier than two years before the date of an election at which it is presented

 

An unexpired driving receipt issued by Wisconsin DoT.

 

An unexpired identification card receipt issued by Wisconsin DoT.

 

An identification card issued by a federally recognized Indian tribe in Wisconsin

 

An unexpired identification card issued by a Wisconsin-accredited university or college that contains the following:

-- Date of Issuance
-- Signature of Student
-- Expiration date not later than two years after Date of Issuance

In other words, Ms. Frank, and her string-pullers at the ACLU, are telling us that she doesn't have any of these forms of ID.

Do you smell something malodorous here?  Something very, very, very malororous?  Because I sure do.

But wait:  there's more:

"I was born paralyzed on my whole left side, and I came out head first with a big scar at the top of my head," Frank said.

"My dad pushed me to be what I am," she added, recalling how her father, Elmer, tied her right hand to her body so that she would learn to use her left hand.

After graduating from high school, she worked eight years at the local paper mill. She also learned to sew, cook and dig in the garden.

"I can do anything I want to do, but sometimes it takes me a little bit longer," she said.

And one thing she wants to do is vote in person.

"You can get an absentee ballot as along as you're indefinitely confined to a residence," she said. "But I don't want to do that. That's not truthful. I'm capable of walking."

In other words, we are being asked to believe that Ruthelle Frank, who assures us that she is physically capable of doing anything she wants to do, finds getting a voter ID an indefensibly difficult hardship.

Did I say this was malodorous?  I retract that, on the grounds that it doesn't begin to describe what this is.  It stinks like the bottom of a 50 year old outhouse during a mid-summer heat wave.

But look at it well, folks.  Because Ruthelle Frank is the focal point of the ACLU's argument that no one should be expected to identify themselves with a valid ID before voting. 

That stinks the worst of all.

Ken Berwitz

As of yesterday, 55 members of the house of representatives, 2 US senators and 2 sitting Governors are demanding that Attorney General eric holder resign, over his incompetence and his lying about the disastrous Operation Fast and Furious (F&F) debacle.

The New York Times has barely covered F&F in all the months since it became a story. Not even after the killings of  two US agents (Brian Terry and Jaime Zapata) and Mexico's current estimate of 200-300 of its citizens, involving the thousands of assault weapons this country sold to Mexican drug cartels - the weapons they were going to track back to the drug kingpins, but didn't bother doing so.

But there is an editorial in today's New York Times about eric holder:  its lead editorial, in fact.  Must be about F&F, right? 

Nope.

The Times' editorial is a love-note to holder, because he has decided to fight tooth and nail against states requiring a valid ID for voters.

You can read this exercise in idiotica by clicking here.  You can marvel at the whining that having a valid ID makes it harder to vote for Democrats.  You can shake your head in amazement at passages like this one:

These efforts, Mr. Holder said, have led many Americans “to believe that we are failing to live up to one of our nation’s most noble, and essential, ideals.” Quoting John Lewis, the Georgia congressman who was beaten in the 1960s while advocating voting rights for blacks, he said those rights are under attack by “a deliberate and systematic attempt” to prevent millions of voters from exercising their constitutional right to engage in democracy.  

Translation:  It is an assault on democracy to expect people to demonstrate they are who they say they are, before casting ballots.

Operation Fast and Furious?  Not worth talking about.

Going to court to protect people's right to vote without any identification?  Lead editorial, complete with 100% support.

That, folks, is today's New York Times.

Well, at least they have a good crossword puzzle.

Ken Berwitz

MSNBC finally has found something it considers worthy of an apology.   My congratulations to them, because - given what MSNBC sludge-pumps to its viewers every day - that is not an easy find.

Here is what the apology was for, from Chris Ariens' article at mediabistro.com:

On “Hardball” this evening, Chris Matthews apologized for a story that ran in an earlier hour on MSNBC. During the 11amET hour, anchor Thomas Roberts read this short item:

So you may not hear Mitt Romney say Keep America American anymore, because it was a rallying cry for the KKK group, and intimidation against blacks, gays and Jews. The Progressive American blog was the first to catch on to that.

Matthews called it “irresponsible and incendiary” to run the story, adding, “it showed an appalling lack of judgment. We apologize. We really do, to the Romney campaign.”

Comparing Mitt Romney to a ku klux klanner apparently exceeds the boundaries of what MSNBC considers good taste and propriety.

Now let's take a quick look at what MSNBC does not apologize for, or consider outside of good taste and propriety.

A good place to start would be this comment about Newt Gingrich, from the same Chris Matthews, on the same show during which he "apologized" to Romney: 

“You don't give WMD to someone known even by his old former allies to be in a crunch, or even whenever things get edgy, to be himself a weapon of mass destruction"

Or this comment, also by Matthews about Newt Gingrich, from Monday, just three days before (bold print is mine):

"Let me finish tonight with this. The Republican Party is about to seal a Faustian deal with the devil. Every observer from left to farthest right knows what's going on here. The Republicans, led by the angriest among them, are about to give away their partisan souls for one all-consuming political purpose, the destruction of Barack Obama. They're about to begin the nomination for President of a figure who represents the Mephistopheles of what they preach.  He is nasty, brutal, ready to fight and kill politically, a man of no discernible commitments or values, who has nothing to offer but a sharp-as-hell intellect and a wicked rapier of words. For the right price and a presidential nomination is his [sic], Newt is ready to jump on a dime and hit any opponent where he shows weakness. Why are they on the verge of enlisting in the army of Newt? Because he voices in cold, nasty, deadly tones the words of their contempt, because he's an opportunist ready to seek any route to his opponent's heart and thereby kill it. He's a political killer, a gun for hire. But he offers a prize so precious, he cannot be resisted."

Or this comment from Matthews earlier in the year, which managed to hit a trifecta of sorts by being offensive to Tea Partiers, the right in general and native Americans as well:

“The tea party is out for scalps”

 

“So the Muslim Brotherhood has a parallel role here with the Tea Party, they’re the ones who keep you honest and decide whether you’ve stayed too long? Whether you’ve got a ‘Sell By’ date looming?”

 

“There’s some craziness out there on the right and the fact that these war-whooping nut bags, some of them, are deciding who the senators should be, should make the Democrats . . . f