I
have bought numerous suits, pants, sport coats, blazers, shirts, ties,
shoes .. you name it from The Men’s Wearhouse – but that’s over now. In
an effort to show solidarity with the Occupy Oakland protest, an Oakland store displayed the sign pictured to the right and joined the movement in its call for a national general strike.
Founder and Chairman George Zimmer has a history of supporting
progressive candidates. That much I can deal with. To directly support a
cause that calls for the fall of capitalism is despicable, hypocritical
and outright wrong when you’ve benefited from it. How is it that a
successful capitalist suddenly believes that one persons success comes
at a cost to another?
It’s the zero sum lie. If I work my way up from my humble beginnings –
somehow, someone else must be deprived of the same ability. It doesn’t
work that way and either Zimmer knows it or he’s smoking something.
Displaying outright ignorance in the store window is even worse. The
Occupy this and that movement is just a few hundred useful idiots being
organized by every major anti-USA organization imaginable. They do NOT
represent 99% of Americans. They don’t even represent 99% of democrats.
Perhaps Mr. Zimmer thought that he was really standing with 99% of
consumers and felt that it was a ok if he lost maybe 1% of possible
clothes buyers. Unfortunately for Mr. Zimmer, the 2-3% of America
represented by the Occupy park benchers were never going to buy anything
in his stores. For a brilliant business founder, George doesn’t seem to
understand basic math.
Prior to today, I had been a Men’s Wearhouse customer. I imagine many
middle-income earners like me shopped there. They offer quality
clothes, well-trained staff at reasonable prices. Considering that
George doesn’t believe that I should have the ability to get ahead like
him, I can no longer continue buying merchandise in his stores.
The Men’s Wearhouse is not a franchiser. So if the store did this and
HQ didn’t immediately offer an apology – there is implied support. I am
not asking for a nationwide boycott against the chain of Men’s clothing
stores. I just won’t ever shop there again.
The Men’s Wearhouse did respond on facebook. Their awful attempt at
explaining the action takes the previously implied consent and pushed it
to outright, full-blown support of the anti-capitalist movement. From their fan page:
We closed our store near Oakland City Hall today, for one
day, to express the company’s concern for the issue of wealth disparity
in our country. The issue affects our employees and customers across
the political spectrum.
If You Repeat a Lie Often Enough, Does It Become the Truth?
John Mariotti, Contributor, Forbes Magazine 11/11/11
Image via Wikipedia
The mainstream media is already in its full campaign (liberal bias)
mode. The comment I have heard quite often is about “how weak the
Republican primary field is.” What a joke. They are exactly wrong on
this point. Although I think it is time to narrow down the field and
remove some of the “also-rans,” something struck me during the CNBC
debacle (what debate?).
Every single candidate on that stage was substantially more qualified
and more experienced than Barack Obama when he was elected. On the
stage were:
Three accomplished governors: Romney-1 term MA,
Huntsman-2 terms UT and Perry-3 terms TX (two of them also have
considerable other experience—Romney, extensively in business, founding
Bain Capital and turning around the Salt Lake City Olympics, Huntsman in
both his big family business and as Obama’s ambassador to China)
Four experienced, current or former members of Congress:
Gingrich (a former speaker of the House), Paul, Bachman and Santorum,
all of whom have much greater experience and more accomplishments than
Barack Obama had in his brief (146 day) foray in the US Senate.
One experienced, successful businessman: Cain, who also served as President of the National Restaurant Association and Chairman of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank.
Contrast that to Obama’s incredibly thin background: The first
“black” Editor of the Harvard Law Review, a Community Organizer,
part-time U. of Chicago law professor, and an undistinguished stint in
the IL State Senate. In every case, Obama was using “somebody else’s
money” to pay for his role. No wonder he’s so good at spending American
taxpayers’ money. His “vast” supervisory experience consists of 80
editors of the Harvard Law Review (and any one who has spent any time in
academia knows that they didn’t “work for him” one bit.)
Thus I will tell you that this “weak field” is actually a much stronger field
than the current president. This “weak field” willingly went on cable
news networks CNN and CNBC, and endured hostile moderators, setup
non-questions, “gotcha” questions, and positioning questions (attempting
to frame questions by “putting words in the candidates mouth” like
lawyers do during depositions, leaving the candidate no easy way to
answer, and setting them up as admitting to something they didn’t say).
Newt Gingrich has been noteworthy for calling out the moderators for
the inanity of their questions. “Each of you tell us what you would
replace Obamacare with after you repeal it—and you have 30 seconds
each!” Really?
Now all of the Obama acolytes and admirers can warm up your comments
and vitriol like the last time I criticized “The Chosen One.” I will
grant you this: Obama is doing the best he knows how to do.
Because Obama is clueless about how to do anything more than what he is
doing. This failed economy reflects that. He can’t lead with Congress
because he has alienated even some of those in his own party in the
Senate. (Note the failure of the pieces of his “jobs bill” to even pass
the Democratically controlled Senate.)
Congress has resorted to drafting new legislation (bi-artisan) that
bypasses Obama’s demands, while he stumps the country campaigning and
criticizing Congress for not passing his ridiculous non-solutions into
law. No wonder the American people have such a bleak outlook on their
country.
www.biginsight.com
Note the “coincidence” of Obama’s arrival to the White House and the
rapid decline of consumer sentiment. Arguably the best answer of last
night’s debate was uttered by Mitt Romney, and will get virtually no
play on any of the liberal biased mainstream media. Romney’s answer on
what to do about the economy: “Do the exact opposite of what Obama has done.” That
correlates exactly to my opening: “the weak field” of the Republican
candidates are all—each and every one of them—stronger, and more
experienced than the current president. And that is something to worry
about, especially if somehow, Barack Obama were to get reelected.
Here’s a jobs proposal that will jump start the US economy, but you
must wait until Nov. 2012 for it: Replace Barack Obama and give the GOP
control of the Senate and the House–and hold their “feet to the fire”
to perform and deliver on the economic recovery. It will take a year or
two to build up a head of steam, but I for one am betting they will
deliver–whichever one of that weak field is in the White House (but I’d
prefer either Romney or Gingrich because they were clearly the two most
astute guys on the stage).
An Open Letter to President Barack
Obama and All Members of the Legislative Body:
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen:
Our Founding Fathers had one thing
in mind when they wrote the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution,
that government would be of the people, for the people and by the people.
You seem to have forgotten that.
Instead of sitting back in your smug
sanctification, thumbs in lapels, you should be rolling up those shirt sleeves
and working even harder. American government is not about how your
"team" - Republican, Democrat, Tea Party - can get one over on the
others. It is about working together, strengthening ties and building a better
country. Stop pointing fingers and focusing on what's wrong. Figure out how to
make it better.
It is not about being an elite class
of legislators and career politicians; it is about serving your country.
Representatives in our government have lost the vision of the privilege
and honor it is to be elected, and instead follow the path of greed, power and
condescending attitudes. Do not tell me what I want or need. I am quite
capable of knowing myself.
In order to keep from moving toward
Pax United States, perhaps we need to back up and start again.
Want to cut the budget?
Here are some ideas: cut all your
salaries to 10% of what you are making now. Not the staff, but the elected
officials. This is not a career; you are representing the people you live
with, worship with and presumably work for.
Health care coverage for you and
your family ends at the end of your tenure in public office. Nothing more.
Most Americans do not get full
coverage after they leave a position, neither should you.
Congress and Senate limited to three
terms each. The president only gets two terms, why should
you be around longer than the leader of our country?
Change taxes to a straight
percentage. It’s fair for everyone.
Instead of months long paid vacations
and recesses, start working alongside your constituents to see how they
are struggling. Forget the rhetoric - get to know us.
Stop the bickering. Even
preschoolers know how to share and work together. How is the world to
follow our lead if we consistently show how badly we can behave?
It’s time to show the world the
greatness that was the United States can be again.
-Carol
Lord
August 4, 2011
Juan Williams’ Wife: NPR Liberals Are Hypocrites
Wednesday, 20 Jul 2011 11:34 AM
By Ronald Kessler
Delise Williams, the wife of Fox News contributor Juan Williams, tells Newsmax that “so-called liberals” at NPR treated her — a light-skinned African-American — as if she didn’t exist.
“The NPR people were hypocrites because they are supposed to be the liberals who are accepting of all kinds of people and inclusive, and they were the most exclusive group in my experience of going to events related to work that I have ever seen,” says Delise, a former social worker who is the daughter of a doctor.
Juan Williams’ book “Muzzled: The Assault on Honest Debate” hits bookstores next week. It reveals that for years before NPR fired him, NPR executives harassed him over what he did or did not say on the air.
NewsmaxTV interviewed Juan about the book, including how Fox News President Roger Ailes expanded Juan's role at Fox and made sure he would not suffer a pay cut because NPR had fired him over what he had said on Fox.
In the meantime, Delise says that she and Juan were the only blacks at NPR parties, a point confirmed by Juan. In general, both say, African-Americans were found only in low level jobs such as security guards.
Asked for comment, Anna Christopher, NPR’s director of media relations, said, “We aren’t sure which parties Juan and his wife are referring to, but all events we have sponsored in recent memory have included a mix of guests. Diversity of opinions, ideas, sources, voices, and staff is very important to NPR.”
A former Washington Post reporter, Juan is one of Washington’s most respected journalists. He and Delise are invited to top parties at the White House and elsewhere. But because she felt NPR personnel treated her like a second-class citizen, she says she stopped going to NPR social gatherings.
In contrast to NPR, “Even though politically I’m on the other side, the Fox people, included me much more in the interactions and in the gatherings, and I never felt like I was on the outside,” Delise says.
“The Fox gatherings are much diverse,” she says. “They have both African-American and whites. It’s great because when I sometimes go down to Fox and wait for Juan in the green room, they all speak to me as if they know me and are very friendly. I feel very comfortable there. With the NPR people, I did not feel comfortable.”
In fact, she says, “I would never drop into NPR, or if I was going over to meet Juan, I sat in the car and waited for him.”
Fox News has never told Juan what he could or could not say, she says. In contrast, NPR constantly criticized him when he expressed views that diverged from what they thought a black man should think, Delise says.
“My friends would often argue with me before this whole thing came up and say, ‘Oh, how could you watch Fox?’ and I would say, ‘No, you need to listen to the news and other shows, and you will see that it’s not biased,'” she says.
At Fox, “They encourage debate, and I’ve even gotten my friends to watch Fox,” Delise says. “It gives you information about what is happening in both political parties, information on both sides."
“It’s as if at Fox they feel they certainly have their bias, but they believe so strongly in what they feel that they are open to having the other argument there because they believe their audience is intelligent enough to decide for themselves.”
In my Newsmax TV interview with Juan, he tells for the first time how he had to tell his wife that he had been fired for saying on Bill O’Reilly’s “The Factor” what most Americans, including many Muslims, feel: that when getting on an airplane and seeing passengers dressed in Muslim garb, he feels apprehension.
Juan went on to say on the Fox show that we must distinguish between moderate Muslims and Muslim terrorists and protect the rights of the vast majority of Muslims who are peace-loving.
NPR consists of “pseudo-liberals,” Delise says. “I think liberal means being tolerant. You may have a certain set of beliefs, but you do not reject someone who may have a different set of beliefs or who looks different.”
As noted in my story "The Juan Williams I Know," Juan is a rarity these days — a fair-minded journalist whose views run the political gamut. Because he is an independent thinker, he is respected by both liberals and conservatives. His book includes blurbs from the likes of Karl Rove and Roger Ailes as well as from David Axelrod, former senior adviser to President Obama.
At Juan’s book party given by Fox News anchors Bret Baier and Shannon Bream and others, Fox News contributors Charles Krauthammer, Stephen Hayes, and Baier all expressed their esteem for Juan despite their often differing views.
But NPR has said it won’t be inviting Williams to discuss his book on any of its shows.
“I guess I thought there was an opportunity for us to move past what happened and that they understood that some things had been done improperly to me and that there was no reason to fire me,” Juan tells me. “It was unjust, and their own investigation by their group of lawyers led to people leaving the organization. I thought this was an opportunity to have some healing, some reconciliation. But they are still suppressing the other side.”
Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com. He is a New York Times best-selling author of books on the Secret Service, FBI, and CIA. His latest, "The Secrets of the FBI," is to be released on Aug. 2.
Conservative Leaders Privately Favor Romney
Monday, 11 Jul 2011 03:12 PM
By Ronald Kessler
In the stock market, it’s known as the whisper number. It’s the stock market analysts’ consensus on what earnings a company will report. Because they give their forecasts anonymously, the analysts tend to be more honest. Over time, the whisper number has proven to be more accurate than the figure analysts cite on the record.
In politics, it works the same way. When speaking publicly, conservative leaders usually hedge their bets. They don’t want to be seen as favoring one candidate over another.
In private, it’s a different matter. In those off-the-record conversations, a range of conservative leaders I have chatted with favor Mitt Romney for president.
In public, conservative leaders invariably speak well of Sarah Palin. They cite her loyal following and her ability to whip up crowds and articulate a conservative message. In private, they diss her for her high unfavorability ratings, the fact that she quit as governor of Alaska, and the disorganization of her staff and her chaotic personal scheduling.
An exception to the rule of silence is David Keene, former chairman of the American Conservative Union, who just took over as president of the National Rifle Association. In an interview, Keene says Palin is not ready for a run at the presidency.
Unlike former governors such as Romney, Ronald Reagan, or George W. Bush, Palin did not establish her credentials before leaving office, Keene has told me. Whining about the media is not a winning strategy, Keene noted.
To be sure, each potential candidate has flaws. But conservative leaders I have talked to see Romney as the best bet to win the presidency. He looks and acts presidential. He has the experience and chops to handle the economy. He takes a tough approach to dealing with foreign adversaries. And traditionally, Republicans who win the presidency have run previously for the office.
Bachmann, Pawlenty, and the '20,000 Millionaires' Myth
Tuesday, 21 Jun 2011 01:06 PM
By John Berlau
“Michele Bachmann would knock 20,000 millionaires off tax rolls.”
So reads the glaring headline on a blog post by Howard Gleckman of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center that this Saturday was No. 2 among the “most viewed" stories on The Christian Science Monitor website. It even edged out an Anthony Weiner piece for the top spot. But on policy substance, the piece doesn’t even edge out the National Enquirer, or maybe even The Globe.
Gleckman tries to play a “gotcha” game with Minnesota Rep. and GOP Presidential candidate Bachmann, who in the famous “Von Mises at the beach” interview with The Wall Street Journal’s Steve Moore, decried the fact that 47 percent of Americans don’t pay income tax and “there is no tie to government benefits that people demand.”
Gleckman argues that this sentiment is “strikingly at odds” with her plan to eliminate capital gains taxes, as well as that of Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty to also scrap taxes on dividends and interest.
Bachman’s “step would remove 23,000 millionaires from the income tax rolls,” Gleckman proclaims, and under Pawlenty ‘s plan “57,000 households making $1 million or more would avoid paying any income tax.”
But Gleckman reveals no contradiction here, just some deceptive writing on his part. He never acknowledges that these individuals would still effectively be taxed when the firms they invest in are taxed.
Under both Bachmann and Pawlenty’s plans, no millionaire would “avoid paying” taxes. They would pay the taxes, as they do now, when the corporations in which they own shares pay the corporate income tax. They just wouldn’t face double taxation of earned income and a tax bias against saving.
And to Bachmann’s point in the WSJ, these investors would certainly still see the “tie to government benefits that people demand” when they scrutinized the levels of taxation their firms were paying in the profit-and loss statements.
This aspect of Bachmann and Pawlenty’s tax plans are consistent with comprehensive tax reform proposals. Variants of the Hall-Rabushka flat tax and the FAIR national sales tax both would eliminate taxation on investment income to correct the tax code’s current bias in favor of consumption over savings.
Under the free-market flat tax, earned income at the individual and corporate level is taxed only once.
Today, the rich face little tax penalty when using the dollars they have earned on mansions, luxury cars, or corporate jets. But if they instead forgo this conspicuous consumption and invest in an innovative new industry that could create the jobs of tomorrow, and take the risk of losing the money they put in, the tax code punishes them if the investment is successful.
The 2003 Bush tax cuts on dividends and capital gains did indeed spur economic and job growth that revived an economy that had been in a slowdown since the last year of the Clinton administration. Growth halted in 2000 — third-quarter GDP in that year had even contracted — due in substantial part to what economists call real income bracket creep.
The Clinton tax hikes of the early '90s were reducing incentives for growth at the end of the decade, their negative effects having been delayed by the positive economic effects of the trade agreements and bipartisan deregulatory policies of that era.
The Bush tax cuts meant steady economic growth for most of his administration, though this growth was less strong than it could have been because of the regulatory drags — namely the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 — of this supposedly deregulatory era.
And the financial crisis of 2008 was fomented largely by the misguided pro-housing policies of both parties, as summed up by the American Enterprise Institute’s Peter Wallison in his minority report for the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.
Even the Democratic majority report, which mostly faulted lack of regulation, never suggested that the Bush tax cuts had anything to do with the crisis.
Eliminating completely double taxation on investment income today would kick-start investment in new entrepreneurial firms. It would also have the side benefit of decreasing concentration of industry, a supposed objective of progressives, as investors would face no tax impediment to taking their money out of established corporations — either through dividends or stock sales that produce capital gains — and placing it in new ventures.
Perhaps it would be a slightly easier political sell (though this would no doubt be demonized too) to eliminate the corporate income tax and just have investors pay taxes on their shares of corporate earnings. This would achieve the same effect in eliminating the tax bias, though it might be more costly in terms of compliance.
Regardless, critics like Gleckman should be honest enough to admit they are arguing in favor of double taxation, and let the chips fall where they may.
John Berlau is director of the Center for Investors and Entrepreneurs at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and blogs at OpenMarket.org. E-mail him at jberlau@cei.org.
Yale Shutters Anti-Semitism Initiative
Wednesday, 15 Jun 2011 07:50 AM
By Alan Dershowitz
At a time of increasing — and increasingly complex — anti-Semitism throughout the world, Yale University has decided to shut down the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism, YIISA.
Founded in 2006, YIISA is headed by a distinguished scholar, Charles Small, with an international reputation for serious interdisciplinary research. The precipitous decision to close YIISA, made without even a semblance of due process and transparency, could not have come at a worse time. Nor could it have sent a worse message.
I recently returned from a trip abroad visiting England, Norway, South Africa, among other countries, where I experienced the changing face and growing acceptability of anti-Semitism. Sometimes it hid behind the facade of anti-Zionism, but increasingly the hatred was directed against Jews, Judaism, Jewish culture, the Jewish people and the very concept of a Jewish state (by people who favor the existence of many Muslim states).
In England, a prominent and popular Jazz musician rails against the Jewish people, denies the Holocaust and apologizes to the Nazis for having once compared the Jewish state to Nazi Germany, since in his view Israel is far worse.
In Norway, a prominent professor openly criticizes the Jewish people as a group (and Jewish culture as well) as a collective deviation. In Johannesburg, the university severs its ties with an Israeli university, while in Cape Town a newspaper headline welcomes me with the following words, “Dershowitz is not welcome here” and an excuse is found to cancel a scheduled lecture by me at the university.
Throughout my visits to European capitals, I hear concern from Jewish students who are terrified about speaking out, wearing yarmulkes, Stars of David or anything else that identifies them as Jews.
In the United States, and particularly at American universities, matters are not nearly as bad. There are of course some exceptions, such as at several campuses at the University of California where Muslim students have tried to censor pro-Israel speakers and have been treated as heroes for doing so, while those who support pro-Israel speakers are treated as pariahs. The same is true at some Canadian universities.
One university that has been a model of tolerance, up until now, has been Yale, where Jewish and pro-Israel students feel empowered and comfortable, as do Muslim and anti-Israel students. Perhaps this is why the Yale administration had no hesitancy in dropping YIISA. It can easily defend itself against charges of bias by saying, “Some of my best organizations are Jewish!” But this is no excuse.
Since Yale has thus far refused to release the so-called study on which it claims to have based its decision — or even to show it to those most directly affected — it is impossible to know the real reasons behind this controversial action.
The two offered by Yale do not satisfy academic criteria.
The first, that there was insufficient faculty interest in the initiative, is simply not true. Many faculty members, both inside and outside of Yale, have supported the initiative and have participated in its programs. I myself have delivered a lecture and serve on an advisory board. Several distinguished academics from around the world have also participated. But even if it were true, a lack of interest by the Yale faculty in the growing problem of anti-Semitism, would be a symptom of the problem and not an excuse for refusing to study it.
The second claimed reason was a lack of scholarly output from this relatively new institution. This too is doubtful since numerous articles, books, conferences and other scholarly output have been generated over the past several years — with the promise of more to come.
I have been in and around American academic institutions for more than half a century. Never before have I seen such a lack of process and fairness in the termination of a program. Generally, if there is any dissatisfaction with the program, university administrator sit down with those in charge and seek ways of improving it.
Rarely if ever is the program simply shut down, as this one has been. Yale has some explaining to do. Even better, it should reconsider its decision, solicit input from outsiders who have participated in the program and figure out a constructive way of keeping the important work of the initiative going.
One of the most important human rights issues of the 21st century is whether Israel’s actions in defense of its citizens, or indeed its very existence, will provide the newest excuse for the oldest of bigotries.
There has rarely been a more important time for the interdisciplinary study of the spreading phenomenon of anti-Semitism in the world today. Yale has a chance to be at the forefront of this study. Instead it has taken a cowardly step away from the controversy. It’s not too late to undo its mistake.
The Era of Cain
By Stephen Guy Hardin
June 5, 2011
One of my biggest reasons for
supporting the long shot GOP nomination drive of Herman Cain is that it puts
the Democrats on the race defensive,
which is where they belong.It is a well
know and often stated fact within the conservative political community that the
Democrat Party is the party of hate, racial division and racial prejudice.
It is the entrenched operational doctrine
of the Democrat Party to label, separate and segregate Americans based solely
upon their race, religion, and sexual orientation. The party of Jefferson
Davis, Bull Connor, Robert Byrd, Lester Maddox, Albert Gore, Sr. and Al Sharpton,
to name just a few, has streamlined the principle of divide and conquer into a
monolith of racial oppression and political suppression. The more Democrats,
with the gleefully willing help of the progressive national media, can create false
coalitions of pseudo oppressed victims, the longer they can maintain their grip
on the voting booth and their death grip on the American dream of life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness.
The increasingly high profile of Mr.
Cain, as well as the explosion of fellow Republican Allen West onto the national
political scene, is proving that the real vision for the future of the American
black community is being revealed on the right. The true voice of black political
and economic empowerment is growing too strong to be ignored.The only political party in the United States
that offers the African-American culture any chance for survival is the party
of Lincoln, the Republican Party.
A recent Gallup poll showed Cain
with the highest voter intensity score of any Republican presidential contender.
Looking at the numbers, Cain is beating
out the top tier of presumed GOP front runners from Palin to Romney. Cain’s
name recognition has risen 16 points since March and with each passing day and
each thundering sound bite the Cain star is on the ascendant.
After being declared the winner in the
first GOP debate in South Carolina last month and then winning the straw polls
at the Tea Party Patriots convention in February and the Conservative Values Conference
in Iowa in March, a noticeable change of momentum has begun to shape the
perception of the political novice from outside the D.C. establishment.
While many of the so-called
professional political talking heads dismiss any real chance of Mr. Cain
getting the GOP nomination he is pushing all the right buttons for an
electorate that is weary of the barely concealed yellow, liberal streak that
has permeated the Grand Old Party. The level of excitement for Herman Cain’s
out spoken conservatism has highlighted what has been missing in the Republican
Party since John McCain drove us off the cliff in 2008.
But I digress.
Herman Cain’s strong conservative
stances has stood him well within the ranks of Tea Party activists nationwide,
who have grown frustrated and angry at being labeled racists by a progressive
national media dedicatedto reelecting
Barack Obama.The Tea Party, far from
being the racist reactionaries that the east coast liberal media elites wish
they were, recognize the promise and the real
hope for an America based on values and individual liberty that a Cain
presidency would represent.
“Tea party people
love him,” said Jenny Beth Martin, the
co-founder of Tea Party Patriots. “He’s
not a senator or a governor. He’s just a mister.”
After witnessing
the soul killing, cultural destruction sown upon countless generations of
African-American families by a Democrat political agenda, whose sole purpose was
the generational enslavement of a permanent voting bloc, a growing number of
leaders within the black community are standing up, speaking out and fighting
to take back the political future of their people.
In a
history fraught with enslavement, persecution, prejudice and injustice, the hope
for the future lies not with more entitlements and more false promises, but with
the realization of true political freedom. The only path to true political freedom
is through the removal of the yoke of political enslavement placed upon the
black culture by the Democrat Party.
Political enslavement, indeed.
In the
years to come people will look upon this time in our history, not as the age of
Obama and the hypocrisy of his campaign promises, but the rising up of black
conservatives, the rebirth of a proud people who have been oppressed by the
party claiming to speak for them and the beginning of the era ofCain.
Newt Gingrich as ‘Professor Cornpone’
5:02 pmJanuary 31, 2011, by jgalloway
If you’re a presumptive Republican candidate for president, tearing across crucial states such as Iowa and Ohio, you don’t want to lose a news cycle to a biting editorial generated by the Wall Street Journal.
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich waits to speak at the Renewable Fuels Association summit in Iowa last week. Associated Press
The former Speaker blew through Des Moines last Tuesday for the Renewable Fuels Association summit, and his keynote speech to the ethanol lobby was as pious a tribute to the fuel made from corn and tax dollars as we’ve ever heard. Mr. Gingrich explained that “the big-city attacks” on ethanol subsidies are really attempts to deny prosperity to rural America, adding that “Obviously big urban newspapers want to kill it because it’s working, and you wonder, ‘What are their values?’”
One senses a generational gulf in this next paragraph:
Mr. Gingrich is right that ethanol poses an intellectual problem, but it has nothing to do with a culture war between Des Moines and New York City. The real fight is between the House Republicans now trying to rationalize the federal fisc and the kind of corporate welfare that President Obama advanced in his State of the Union. We’ll dwell on this problem not merely because Mr. Gingrich the historian brought it up, but because it and he illustrate so many of the snares facing the modern GOP.
Finally, the knife with a twist:
Some pandering is inevitable in presidential politics, but, befitting a college professor, Mr. Gingrich insists on portraying his low vote-buying as high “intellectual” policy. This doesn’t bode well for his judgment as a president. Even Al Gore now admits that the only reason he supported ethanol in 2000 was to goose his presidential prospects, and the only difference now between Al and Newt is that Al admits he was wrong.
A note to younger readers: The key to understanding the “Professor Cornpone” label can be found in an essay by Mark Twain, published after his death, discussing the self-interest embedded in opinions generated for public consumption.
Stripped of dialect: “Show me where a man gets his corn-pone ground, and I’ll tell you what his opinion is.”
In today’s Washington Post, I write about the prospects that Senator Olympia Snowe will be the next Tea Party target when she runs for re-election in 2012. Snowe is deeply unpopular with Maine Republicans, pulling the support of only 29 percent of GOP voters, compared to 63 percent who want to replace her on the Republican ballot with a more conservative candidate. And with the election of Tea Party-backed Republican Paul LePage as Maine’s new governor, Snowe can hardly argue that nominating a conservative insurgent to take her place would be electoral suicide. If a credible challenger emerges, she is in trouble.
But Snowe is not the only GOP senator who might face a conservative insurgent in 2012. Senator Orrin Hatch saw his Utah colleague Bob Bennett fall to insurgent challenger Mike Lee, who went on to win Bennett’s seat in November. Hatch may now face a primary challenge from Representative Jason Chafetz. Unlike Snowe, there is virtually no risk in challenging Hatch. Utah is a safe Republican state that will likely elect whomever GOP voters choose as their nominee. The same is true in Texas, where Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison was trounced in the Republican gubernatorial primary this year, and could face a strong primary challenge from Railroad Commissioner Michael Williams, among other potential candidates. And in Tennessee, Tea Party activists are urging Representative Marsha Blackburn to challenge Senator Bob Corker. Others could emerge to challenge these and other GOP senators seeking re-election.
With their success in electing candidates such as Marco Rubio, Pat Toomey, Mike Lee, and Ron Johnson, Tea Party activists are energized and emboldened—which means we will likely see more conservative insurgents emerge in the next election cycle.
Posted on Saturday, July 24, 2010 8:45:43 PM by ranair34
The One has made His intentions known to control the internet, along
with Amerika itself. His administration has been been attempting
(ofttimes succeeding) to censor and silence writers including this one,
working to block me from getting news releases out to various media
sites. Persecution and censorship of writers has begun.
However,
this one takes the ultimate censorship cake. . According to the
Communist News site, People’s World, a new internet software blocker
titled, GodBlock is now up and running. Its purpose, according to its
designers, “Is to test each page that your child visits before it is
loaded, looking for passages from holy texts, names of religious
figures, and other signs of religious propaganda. If none are found,
then your child is allowed to browse freely.”
Obama’s Marxist
implementors have argued that children need to be protected from some of
the truly horrifying imagery in the religious texts. Penn Jillette (a
most disgusting vulger blasphemous man), of the comedy-magic duo Penn
and Teller, said of GodBlock via Twitter, “Finally some software to help
your children avoid dangerous crazy violent sick sh*t that we have
proof does real damage.” Really!
David Silverman, national
spokesperson and vice presdent of American Atheists, told the People’s
Word that, “There are some disgusting things in the Bible. They’re
talking about smashing babies against the rocks, talking about drinking
urine and eating dung. There’s really horrible stuff: the genocide, of
course, the hate, it’s all in there. The whole process of killing people
because they’re different-’suffer not a witch to live’ - that stuff.”
Mr. Silverman, please provide us chapter and verse.
He goes on to
say that extreme right-wing Christians have often tried to ban things
they found offensive, and mentioned how New York City Mayor Rudy
Giuliani tried to shutter the Brooklyn Museum because of a controversial
art work.....hold on there...that “art” work was a Crucifix with Christ
submerged in urine! This was an unacceptable slam on the religion of a
majority of the people of the world, as well as their culture which is
dear to their hearts. So this was not merely offensive, it was an out
and out attack on people of faith.
Supporters of GodBlock, which
includes the Obama Administration and the Communists who gloat that they
have already taken over America, say that “ the program is necessary to
shield kids from information that will lead them into organized
religion.” “Even children raised in a secular household,” says
GodBlock.com, “are vulnerable to content on the web.” This new blocking
software has ONLY STARTED under the deception that it protects kids.
Their goal is to have this software become hardware that will control
every word that goes out on the internet. All references to God as well
as any and all Scripture passages will be blocked from ever being seen
again. The kids are the starting point only. The intent is to block God
from the entire population.
And notice the Communist inspired
logo of Godblock. As you examine it you see an image in the center which
can be seen clearly as the Marxist trademark, the Hammer & Cycle.
The American people and the churches have become so impotent that the
Stalinists don’t even bother to try and hide their true identity or
intent. Sleep well America.....or....get up and on your feet...for God’s
Sake!
Obeying President Obama's dictum that it's always educational to check in with what the other side is saying, I checked in with MSNBC's Countdown the other night.
Sure enough, there was Keith Olbermann himself barking up I will admit, interesting leftist views on issues A, B, or C. But what got my attention was, well, a bit of outright, easily verifiable factual untruth. If we were talking Joe Biden, the word would be gaffe.
It seems Keith, who has never had an easy time with women or blacks in authority if they have decided to take a stroll off the liberal plantation, has taken his usual disdain for conservative women and zeroed in on Nevada's GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle.
Fair enough. Angle is a Senate candidate and criticism from people like Olbermann comes with the turf.
But what came next was what amazed. If you will follow this link, nicely provided by our friends at Real Clear Politics, you will see the Big Guy launch into a side comment Angle made in response to a questioner on a local radio show. The questioner, clearly an Angle admirer, had believed her not capable of winning the Senate nomination and was now confessing his sin. To which Angle replies: "Well, you know, it's just like Abraham Lincoln. He lost quite a few but he won the big one…."
Olbermann, who delights in calling her Sharron "Obtuse" Angle " -- pounced.
And promptly shot himself in the foot. Both feet, actually.
Instantly picking up on the Lincoln reference, Olbermann could barely contain his glee at the notion of Angle as Lincoln.
"Just for the record do you how many elections Abraham Lincoln lost in his lifetime?" he asked, leering into the camera. With drama benefitting Gloria Swanson as the fading star in Sunset Boulevard, Olbermann holds up a solitary finger. Then goes on to say: "The Illinois state assembly in 1832. He prevailed in four elections for state assembly, one for Congress, two for president…. seven of eight he won."
Ouch. As if this wasn't embarrassing enough -- the blithely unknowing host ends by saying this, an allusion to the famous Lloyd Bentsen "I-knew-Jack-Kennedy and Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy" line to Dan Quayle.
Said Keith:
"Sharron Angle, I knew Abraham Lincoln's won-loss record and you're no Abraham Lincoln."
Ouch. Ouch. And ouch again. You have to wonder -- was there a single MSNBC suit sliding under their desk at this point? Did they even know enough basic American history to know they might wish to consider the option? Was there anybody who had the guts to say to this barking fountain of factual error:
"No, Keith, you don't know Abraham Lincoln's won-loss record. Not even close."
For the record -- drum roll please -- Sharron Angle was 100% correct in saying Lincoln lost a "few" elections.
Here's Abraham Lincoln's actual score with elections.
He did indeed win four state assembly elections, and lose in 1832, just as Olbermann says. In fact, Abe ran 8th in a field of 13 candidates back there in 1832.
Alas for Keith, who apparently relies on some crackpot if unmentioned website as opposed to checking with, say, the works of Pulitzer Prize winning Lincoln biographer Carl Sandburg, Ms. Angle has the goods:
Here's Lincoln's record with voters, per Sandburg:
1832-- Lost his first race for the state assembly
1834-- Won a seat in the state assembly
1836-- Won re-election
1838-- Won re-election
1840-- Won re-election
1842-- Lost a race for Congress to John Hardin (per biographer Sandburg. Lincoln actually came in behind a friend, Edward D. Baker -- losing his own Sangamon County delegates to Baker. Later, he would name one of his sons for Baker). Lincoln structures deal that Hardin, Baker and finally himself would each serve back-to-back single terms in Congress.
1846-- Wins congressional seat, succeeding his friend Baker, who had succeeded Hardin. As per the Lincoln deal.
1854-- Elected again to the Illinois legislature, but loses a race for the United States Senate to Lyman Trumbull. Writes to a friend: "I regret my defeat moderately, but I am not nervous about it." Mary Lincoln was so enraged at this loss that she never again spoke to Trumbull's wife Julia -- who had been a bridesmaid at Mary and Abe's wedding.
1856-- Loses the vice-presidential nomination of the new Republican Party to William L. Dayton, a former U.S. Senator from New Jersey. Dayton received 259 votes to Lincoln's 115, becoming the running mate of John Charles Fremont. Hearing of his defeat, Lincoln laughs and says, "It must be some other Lincoln."
1858-- Lincoln loses a race for the United States Senate to legendary rival Senator Stephen A. Douglas. In the course of the campaign, the two travel Illinois in what are known to history as the "Lincoln-Douglas" debates. The debates help make Lincoln -- and his pro-union, anti-slavery argument -- famous.
1860 and 1864-- Elected and re-elected president.
In other words, Keith Olbermann was not only wrong but so wide of the truth and the facts as to give Bill Clinton on Monica a good reputation. Sharron Angle, on the other hand, was right. Making her remark 100 percent factually correct.
Lincoln ran 13 times, according to biographer Sandburg, not eight as Olbermann said with such assured smugness. Lincoln lost not once, as Mr. Drama Queen asserted, but, again according to the Pulitzer winning biographer, five times. Once for the state assembly, once for Congress, once for vice-president and twice for U.S. Senator. The latter Senate race famous to this day.
None of this would matter a hill of beans for the red-faces at MSNBC if they weren't pinning so much of their stuff to, say, mocking Glenn Beck for not knowing what he, Beck, is talking about. One understands network rivalries. Fox is beating the pants off MSNBC. Which is why Olbermann goes after Fox or Beck or O'Reilly or, on radio, Rush. If you can't get the ratings yourself tag on to those who can is the apparent strategy. Be that as it may -- or maybe especially be this as it may -- one would think the suits at MSNBC would be smart enough to know that such a flamboyantly obvious mistake about a basic fact of American history adds to the network's reputation for not simply being biased but just shamelessly not telling the truth and caring less about it.
Question: Is Keith Olbermann secretly on Sharron Angle and Glenn Beck's payroll? Come on. Really. How much does Roger Ailes pay him to do this stuff?
Ya just can't make it up.
Obama should return to 'peace through strength'
By Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) - 05/05/10 02:45 PM ET
During his successful presidential campaign against Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan introduced the American electorate and the broader international community to a new doctrine that would contribute greatly to defeating the Soviet Union. His idea of achieving “peace through strength” still resonates in today’s world and President Obama should welcome it as cornerstone of his Administration’s strategy to protect America.
Recent decisions by the President and several high-ranking officials within his Administration suggest the Commander-in-Chief is intent on following a different approach. As Congress crafts the defense authorization bill in the coming weeks, Republicans on the Armed Services Committee will look to alter the Administration’s path and put forth a set of priorities to defend America.
First, Republicans are committed to providing our troops the time and resources they need to win in Iraq and Afghanistan. We supported the President’s decision to increase our troop commitment in Afghanistan. However, many of us questioned whether the increase of 30,000 warfighters was actually a cap, which could squeeze out key enablers. Our members will seek to make certain that any real or perceived troop cap does not mean key life-saving assets, such as medical evacuation, force protection, and ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) capabilities, are withheld from our brave troops.
Military families are under enormous stress. We will continue to ensure our troops and their families continue to receive the support they have earned. Additionally, Armed Services Committee Republicans will ensure military families continue to have access to high quality health care at an affordable price.
While winning the current conflicts must remain our top priority, we feel that winning those should not preclude us from posturing our military appropriately so America can effectively deter future adversaries. Decisions made by the Administration in near- and long-term investments could jeopardize our ability to deter future aggressors.
Armed Services Committee Republicans will work to reshape the Department of Defense’s Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), which was designed to forecast future threats and shape the Pentagon’s investment decisions to meet those challenges. This year’s QDR provided the force structure of 2009 instead of a force structure for 2029, as required by the statute.
Additionally, we will look to press the Administration to design plans to deal with Iran’s nuclear and military ambitions. In an effort to appease some in the international community, the President scrapped plans for a robust missile defense system in Europe that would have protected the United States homeland and our European allies from an Iranian missile threat. Republicans will hold the Administration accountable for designing and deploying its own missile defense plan for Europe, as well as continue developing long-range interceptors as a hedge against overly optimistic threat assessments and design schedules.
Finally, Republicans will make it clear that we do not support importing terrorists detained at Guantanamo Bay into the United States—neither for confinement nor trial. Too many former Guantanamo detainees have returned to the battlefield and are actively trying to harm Americans. We will hold President Obama accountable and demand he finally develop a comprehensive set of policies and procedures for the detention and prosecution of terrorists captured in the ongoing war on terror.
By embracing President Reagan’s “peace through strength” mantle, Armed Services Committee Republicans will offer stronger alternatives to defend America against current and future threats. The price to our collective security could be too high if we wait to act.
This blog is part of Heritage’s Protect America Month, a series of products and events showcasing why we must commit to protecting America in an increasingly dangerous world.
U.S. Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-CA) serves as the senior Republican on the House Armed Services Committee. McKeon represents California’s Twenty-Fifth Congressional District, which includes Fort Irwin, Edwards Air Force Base, Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, and the Marine Mountain Warfare Training Center.
The views expressed by guest bloggers on the Foundry do not necessarily reflect the views of the Heritage Foundation.
By:Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent April 30, 2010
(AP)
We know one thing for sure about the fight
over Arizona's new immigration law. Civil-rights groups will file a
lawsuit trying to kill the law and will ask a federal judge to issue an
injunction to keep it from taking effect as scheduled this summer. What
we don't know is how those proceedings will be affected by the Obama
Justice Department, which is contemplating the highly unusual step of
filing its own suit against the state of Arizona. Also unknown is the
influence of President Obama himself, who has gone out of his way to
raise questions -- some of them strikingly uninformed -- about the law.
The
drafters of the law knew the lawsuit was coming; a lawsuit is always
coming when a state tries to enforce the nation's immigration laws.
What the drafters didn't expect was Obama's aggressive and personal role
in trying to undermine the new measure.
"You can imagine, if you
are a Hispanic American in Arizona ..." the president said Tuesday at a
campaign-style appearance in Iowa, "suddenly, if you don't have your
papers and you took your kid out to get ice cream, you're going to be
harassed." On the same day, Attorney General Eric Holder said he was
considering a court challenge.
"The practice of the Justice
Department in the past with states involving immigration has been to let
the courts settle it and not weigh in as a party," says Kris Kobach,
the law professor and former Bush Justice Department official who helped
draft the Arizona law. Having Justice intervene, Kobach and other
experts say, would be extraordinary.
The problem for Obama and
Holder is that the people behind the new law have been through this
before -- and won. Arizona is three-for-three in defending its
immigration measures. In 2008, the state successfully defended its
employer-sanctions law, which made it a state crime to knowingly employ
an illegal immigrant. Facing some of the same groups that are now
planning to challenge the new law, Arizona prevailed both in federal
district court and at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, the nation's
most liberal federal appeals court.
In federal court in 2005,
Arizona successfully defended Proposition 200, which required proof of
citizenship for voting and also restricted benefits to illegals. And in
2006, officials won a state-court challenge to Arizona's human smuggling
law.
The arguments that liberal groups make against the new law
are similar to those made in the past. Foremost among them is the claim
that only the federal government can handle immigration matters, and
thus the Arizona measure pre-empts federal law.
Lawmakers thought
of that ahead of time. "This law was carefully drafted to avoid any
legal challenge on pre-emption in two ways," explains Kobach. "One, it
perfectly mirrors federal law. Courts usually ask whether a state law is
in conflict with federal law, and this law is in perfect harmony with
federal law.
"Two, the new law requires local law enforcement
officers not to make their own judgment about a person's immigration
status but to rely on the federal government," Kobach continues. Any
officer who reasonably suspects a person is illegal is required to check
with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "As long as the state
or city is relying on the federal government to determine immigration
status, that will protect against a pre-emption challenge," says Kobach.
But
what if the Obama administration argues that the law is a burden on the
federal government? Or refuses to assist Arizona in determining a
person's legality? The drafters thought of that, too. There's a federal
statute -- 8 USC 1373, passed during the Clinton years -- requiring the
feds to verify a person's immigration status any time a state or local
official asks for it. The federal government cannot deny assistance to
Arizona without breaking the law itself.
Given all that, Obama and
Holder will have a hard time stopping this law. Their best hope is that
a judge might be swayed by the political storm that has erupted, mostly
on the left, by opponents raising the specter of fascism, Nazism, and a
police state in Arizona.
That was one thing the drafters didn't
expect. As they see it, the old employer verification law was broader in
scope and more serious in effect than the new law, and it didn't set
off this kind of national controversy. That tells Kris Kobach one thing
about the current battle: "It's more about the politics of 2010 than it
is about this particular law."
Byron York, the Examiner's
chief political correspondent, can be contacted at byork@washingtonexaminer.com. His column appears on
Tuesday and Friday, and his stories and blog posts appears on
www.ExaminerPolitics.com ExaminerPolitics.com.
Muslim
suicide bombers in Britain are set to begin a three-day strike on Monday
in a dispute over the number of virgins they are entitled to in the
afterlife. Emergency talks with Al Qaeda management have so far failed
to produce an agreement.
The unrest began last Tuesday when Al
Qaeda announced that the number of virgins a suicide bomber would
receive after his death will be cut by 25% next January from 72 to only
60. The rationale for the cut was the increase in recent years of the
number of suicide bombings and a subsequent shortage of virgins in the
afterlife. ...
The suicide bombers' union, the British
Organization of Occupational Martyrs (or B.O.O.M.) responded with a
statement that this was unacceptable to its members and immediately
balloted for strike action. General secretary Abdullah Amir told the
press, "Our members are literally working themselves to death in the
cause of jihad. We don't ask for much in return but to be treated like
this by management is a kick in the teeth."
Mr Amir accepted the
limited availability of virgins but pointed out that the cutbacks were
expected to be borne entirely by the workforce and not by management.
"Last Christmas Abu Hamza alone was awarded an annual bonus of 250,000
virgins," complains Amir. "And you can be sure they'll all be pretty
ones too. How can Al Qaeda afford that for members of the management but
not 72 for the people who do the real work?"
Speaking from the
shed in the West Midlands where he currently resides, Al Qaeda chief
executive Osama bin Laden explained, "We sympathize with our workers'
concerns but Al Qaeda is simply not in a position to meet their
demands. They are simply not accepting the realities of modern-day
jihad, in a competitive marketplace. Thanks to Western depravity, there
is now a chronic shortage of virgins in the afterlife. It's a straight
choice between reducing expenditure and laying people off. I don't like
cutting wages but I'd hate to have to tell 3,000 of my staff that they
won't be able to blow themselves up." He defended management bonuses by
claiming these were necessary to attract good fanatical clerics. "How am
I supposed to attract the best people if I can't compete with the
private sector?" asked Mr. Bin-Laden.
Talks broke down this
morning after management's last-ditch proposal of a virgin-sharing
scheme was rejected outright after a failure to agree on orifice
allocation quotas. One virgin, who refused to be named, was quoted as
saying "I'll be buggered if I'm agreeing to anything like
that........it's too much of a mouthful to swallow".
Unless some
sort of agreement is reached over the weekend, suicide bombers will down
explosives at midday on Friday. Most branches are supporting the
strike. Only the North London branch, which has a different union, is
likely to continue working. However, some members of that branch will
only be using waist-down explosives in order to express solidarity with
their striking brethren.
Our state continues to respond to two emergencies – the storms that struck Madison Parish over the weekend and the ongoing efforts to mitigate the possible effects of oil on our coast from the rig that exploded offshore last week. In honor of the 11 people who are now believed to have lost their lives in the explosion, we ordered all state flags to be flown at half-staff. We know that offshore work can be dangerous, but this is one of the worst kinds of tragedies imaginable. When Louisiana families are hurting, our whole state grieves. The families and friends of these workers continue to be in our thoughts and prayers.
In order to remain ready to respond to the threat of the oil leaking from the rig, our Homeland Security Office continues to operate their Crisis Action Team 24 hours a day. We have also asked all emergency response officials to prepare their plans for the possibility of oil impacting our coast, and we are beginning work to mitigate any effects the oil may have on our wildlife and fisheries.
On Sunday, I toured Madison Parish to get a first-hand look at the destruction there following the Saturday storms that impacted Louisiana and Mississippi. Thankfully, all of the injured residents have been released from the hospital, but damage from the tornado remains and residents are now working to rebuild. I was impressed with the resilience of our people who have already begun to help their neighbors clean up and, as I told the Monroe News-Star, we are working on getting assistance to folks there to help get them back on their feet as quickly as possible.
Our efforts to help people recover and rebuild aren’t just confined to Louisiana. Recently, I announced that the Louisiana National Guard will lead a military task force on a humanitarian mission to rebuild the island nation of Haiti following their catastrophic earthquake. The Louisiana National Guard has particular expertise in rebuilding after disasters and, as I told the New Orleans Times-Picayune, I know they will serve the people of Haiti well in their time of need.
On the economic development front, our state received more good news when the Baton Rouge Advocate reported that Site Selection magazine ranked Louisiana second among U.S. states in their 2009 Competitiveness Award competition. The criteria for the award includes new plant developments as well as per capita gross domestic produce, the unemployment rate, and new business startups. Additionally, we were excited to learn last week that CenturyLink became the third Fortune 500 Company headquartered in Louisiana. As I told the News-Star, as excited as we are to learn of CenturyLink’s achievement, we are even more excited by their recent commitment to add 350 new professional jobs in our state.
I was also honored to recently award 615 military veterans and their families in the Terrobonne/Lafourche area with the Louisiana Veterans’ Honor Medals. As I told the Thibodaux Daily Comet, when destiny called these brave men and women they did not sit idly by - they answered the call to serve others above themselves. It is so important to honor the service and the sacrifices of our veterans with these honor medals. I personally enjoy every chance I get to say those two important words – Thank You.
At a rally in Maine, President Obama pushed back a bit on Republican assertions that the new health care legislation would herald the end of days.
Darren McCollester/Getty ImagesPresident Obama speaks to a crowd of supporters in Portland, Me., on Thursday.
Mr. Obama, speaking to a boisterous crowd in Portland, noted that the House Republican leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, was among those to predict catastrophic results.
“John Boehner called the passage of this bill Armageddon,” Mr. Obama said, struggling to finish his sentence over boos at the mention of Mr. Boehner’s name.
“You had others who said this is the end of freedom as we know it,” he continued. “So after I signed the bill, I looked around.”
The laughter began to build.
“I looked up at the sky to see if asteroids were coming,” Mr. Obama said. More laughter.
“I looked at the ground to see if cracks had opened up in the earth,” he continued, echoing remarks he made at a rally in Iowa last week. “You know what, it turned out it was a pretty nice day. Birds were still chirping. Folks were strolling down the street. Nobody had lost their doctor. Nobody had pulled the plug on Granny. Nobody was being dragged away to be forced into some government-run health care plan.”
Then, the comedian-in-chief had a few choice remarks for commentators in the media.
“You have to love some of the pundits in Washington,” he said. “Every single day since I signed the reform law, there’s been another poll or headline that said, ‘Nation still divided on health care reform. Polls haven’t changed yet.’ Well, yeah. It just happened last week. It’s only been a week.
“Can you imagine if some of these reporters were working on a farm? You planted some seeds, and they came out the next day, and they looked, and nothing’s happened! There’s no crop! We’re going to starve! Oh, no! It’s a disaster!”
Mr. Obama urged patience. “It’s been a week, folks,” he said. “So before we find out if people like health care reform, we should wait to see what happens when we actually put it into place. Just a thought.”
Of course, Republicans say they will have the last laugh when the midterm elections roll around in November.
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
Is the White House press corps teetering (possibly tweeting) on the brink of obsolescence?
That is, are Twitter, Facebook and YouTube—to say nothing of slick video vignettes and candid shots of a triumphantly appealing President Obama on WhiteHouse.gov—poised to supplant the often-skeptical journalistic stylings of CBS, CNN, and The New York Times?
It’s an inexcusably heretical thought, especially to the wizened veterans who occupy the coveted reserved seating in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, just off the West Wing, during presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs’ daily Q&As.
Members of the press corps who wish to cover the president’s trip to Prague this week will have to make their own way by flying commercial.
“We’ve been on the brink of that longer than just this presidency,” said CBS senior White House correspondent Bill Plante, who has been covering the beat since Ronald Reagan's term. “When I came here in 1981, Mike Deaver made no secret of the fact that he wanted to reach out beyond us to the public, by having events where the president would be presented to the public unfiltered—and that has been the goal of every White House since.”
For as long as there has been a White House, a healthy tension has existed between the president, who seeks to convince the citizenry with calibrated messages and images, and the middlemen of the Fourth Estate, who traditionally convey, interpret, rebut, deride, and otherwise filter those messages and images. Every so often, the president takes his revenge, as Obama did on Friday, mocking skeptical reporters who have been questioning the positive impact of health-care reform. "Can you imagine if some of these reporters were working on a farm and you planted some seeds and they came out next day and they looked—Nothing’s happened! There’s no crop! We’re gonna starve! Oh, no! It’s a disaster!" Obama told a town meeting in Maine. “It’s been a week, folks. So before we find out if people like health-care reform, we should wait to see what happens when we actually put it into place. Just a thought.”
Until relatively recently, middlemen like Plante had the upper hand, and the media filter was robust—notwithstanding persistent and clever attempts by various White House communications gurus to bypass the journalistic kibitzing. But these days, as Plante acknowledges, the filter is fraying.
And the MSM’s relevance is up for grabs.
At the very moment that social media and enhanced technology are proliferating and gaining audience share by the tens of millions, giving President Obama powerful interactive tools to communicate directly with the public, the old media are in a world of hurt.
With their audiences eroding along with advertising revenue, long-established television and print outlets are painfully cinching their belts. They are shutting down Washington bureaus, firing hundreds of experienced journalists and—as with a planned presidential trip this Wednesday to Prague, where Obama will sign an arms-control deal and meet with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev—not even anteing up for the usual White House press charter. Members of the press corps who wish to cover the visit will have to make their own way to Prague by flying commercial.
Next stop: The Filterless Presidency?
“I don’t think we’re anywhere near that,” said Deputy White House Press Secretary Bill Burton, by way of denying that gambling is going on in Casablanca. Burton resists the notion that he and his colleagues are scheming to undermine the trained professionals in the pressroom, in order to have a clean shot at disseminating their spin. “We do take advantage of the new technology to give more information to as many people as we can. The president made a commitment to the transparent White House, and we are working for that effort with new media—working in any way we can to get more images and information to the public.”
Of course, now more than ever, technology gives this White House—which boasts an increasingly sophisticated new-media department based in the Old Executive Office Building—the ability to distribute content to millions over the Internet without relying on third parties.
Thirty-one-year-old White House aide Macon Phillips, who directs President Obama’s new-media operation, said the White House has 1.7 million followers on Twitter, around 500,000 fans on Facebook, and 70,000 email subscribers, though he declined to reveal how many unique visitors and page-views the White House Web site regularly receives. “We haven’t released those numbers,” he told me—suggesting that they’ve got a ways to go before competing with mainstream outlets like the Times (which indeed far outranks the WhiteHouse.gov on such Internet traffic-tracking sites as Alexa.com).
“I would say this notion of replacement is a false choice—this is more an expansion of the playing field generally,” Phillips said. “It’s healthy for everyone to have access to more content. People are getting their news from a variety of sources.”
One morning last week, the sardonically world-weary Plante, who looks a decade younger than his 72 years, was sitting in shirtsleeves with CBS Radio reporter Mark Knoller in the network’s glass-doored cubby just behind the briefing room.
“Technology has made it much easier now for the White House,” Plante went on. “The availability of all this material means that people have to do their own filtering. The so-called mainstream media, which believes it has the experience to do the filtering, isn’t there to do it for them, and for a lot of people that’s just fine. They resent the hell out of us anyway.”
So what’s wrong with that?
“In the end, who gets the decent information? The people who rely on trusted filters, whether they’re online or on the air,” Plante replied. “If you do it all yourself, you’re gonna get a load of crap!”
At which point Knoller jokingly agreed, booming out in his radio voice: “YEAH! What HE said!”
Knoller, the press corps’ unofficial statistician who has covered the White House beat since George H.W. Bush, said Obama hasn’t held a formal press conference in nine months, since July 22. Since then, Knoller told me, the president has regularly conducted one-on-one interviews with various privileged television personalities and more than a dozen town meetings, a setting in which Obama shines. Of course, much of that conforms to the traditional tactics employed by past administrations.
What is new, Knoller said, is Press Secretary Gibbs’ use of Twitter exclusively to announce important information—such as Gibbs’ recent tweet that the president was canceling a long-planned trip to Indonesia in order to be on hand in Washington for a critical period in health-care legislating. That tweet put the noses of several pressroom regulars out of joint. Bill Plante, for one, said he doesn’t have time for Twitter.
“With Twitter, Gibbs doesn’t send a note to the press—it’s sending a note to anybody that follows him,” Knoller told me. (Gibbs has around 52,000 followers.) “I’ve got no problems with him using Twitter. I’m on Twitter, too. But I never retweet his tweets. I rewrite them and I put them in context, because it’s not my job to give him access to all of my followers. [Knoller has 23,600 followers.] I’m not a retweeter, I’m a reporter.”
A small but satisfying victory, to be sure.
NBC White House correspondent Savannah Guthrie—who co-anchors MSNBC’s 9 a.m. show Daily Rundown with her colleague Chuck Todd—pointed out that sometimes, instead of giving photojournalists access to newsworthy events, the White House lets Pete Souza, the president’s talented personal photographer, post behind-the-scenes images on Flickr—a development that has prompted protests in the press room.
“There are some wonderful pictures, like one of Hillary Clinton raising her arms to congratulate Obama on passing health care, and it seems like the White House has sought to humanize Obama and the entire first family with these photos,” Guthrie told me.
ABC's Jake Tapper is not amused. “That’s not photojournalism; it’s hagiography,” he told me.
The redoubtable Helen Thomas—who started at the White House covering JFK for United Press International, and still has a front-row seat in the briefing room—is worried that all the downsizing at media outlets will result in less-reliable coverage of the president.
“It’s a tragedy in my book—it means less accountability,” Thomas, now a columnist for Hearst, told me, looking up from her newspaper (actual ink on newsprint). “We certainly haven’t had any news conferences in a long time, which reminds me of Watergate in the sense of a long time of not having press conferences. Obama has given a lot of interviews, but that doesn’t reveal the whole picture at all.”
Thomas, at 89, might have slowed down a bit since her wire-service days, but she’s still combat-ready with a sharply honed question. “The difference between a news conference and interviews is that the questions from the ‘rabble’ will come from left field,” she said, “and they will ask something that will really startle him” and push the president off his talking points.
Thomas is naturally skeptical of the new media and all the Facebooking and tweeting. “I think we’re all suffering from the real lack of true communication,” she said. “We can be ignored totally—almost. The White House feels they have other ways.” She also lamented the proliferation of bloggers, some of whom are formally accredited to the White House.
“There’s no accountability for a blogger,” she scoffed. “They can ruin lives, reputations, and once you send something into the air, it’s going to land, and there’s nothing that can curb them from saying anything they want. Everybody with a laptop thinks they’re a journalist, and everybody with a cellphone thinks they’re a photographer.”
But that’s another story
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
For more of The Daily Beast, become a fan on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
A columnist's pointed critique of the president appears to have come from White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel -- or did it?
The president is surrounded by acolytes of the Cult of Obama. They consider him to be a "transformational figure" who need not sully himself with the usual rules of politics. The president himself subscribes to this point of view, rejecting suggestions that he recalibrate his Olympian ambitions.
That's not me saying that. It's not even one of my knuckle-dragging, baby-eating, right-wing brethren. It's Dana Milbank, the liberal Washington Post writer widely seen as Maureen Dowd in drag by most conservatives.
Milbank wrote a column Feb. 21 arguing that all the president's problems can be attributed to a single factor. "Obama's first year fell apart in large part because he didn't follow his chief of staff's advice on crucial matters," writes Milbank, referring to Rahm Emanuel, apparently the only senior staffer who hasn't drunk the Obama Kool-Aid. "Arguably, Emanuel is the only person keeping Obama from becoming Jimmy Carter."
Milbank's column sent political junkies into a frenzy of dime-story Kremlinology. Did Rahm plant the story? Did he talk to Milbank? Will Obama, Zeus-like, hurl a lightning bolt at his major domo?
Milbank insists he didn't interview Emanuel. But that just underscores how fiendishly clever Emanuel is, claim his enemies. He had his friends advance the story line, without leaving his fingerprints on anything. Aha, say others, if all can see through that ruse, how clever could he have been?
What really got tongues wagging is the ugliness of the White House chief of staff seeming to blame the president for his problems. Normally, a chief of staff falls on his sword for the boss, not shoves it into the boss' back.
But Milbank makes an important point. "It's worth noting," he wrote in a Post chat-room discussion, "that nobody seems to
be questioning the argument itself . . . which I take to be a good sign."
I don't know what he means by a "good sign." Good for Obama? Emanuel? The country? But Milbank is right that no one's disputing his basic point: Obama and his sycophants are the problem.
If reports are to be believed, Emanuel wanted Obama to be less ambitious ideologically but more aggressive politically. Emanuel likes winning, and so he thinks the president should pick battles he can win. Emanuel opposed the idea of shutting down Guantanamo Bay within a year. He argued that Obama should have gone for a smaller, more digestible healthcare bill that expanded coverage and attracted bipartisan support. He offered similar advice on a cap-and-trade bill. But on these and other issues, Obama opted to follow the lead of ideologically committed House liberals.
While so much of the hoopla over Milbank's column focuses on personalities -- Emanuel has earned many enemies -- I think it all masks a more profound ideological insecurity, indeed a political identity crisis.
America is, quite simply, a center-right country. Many have cited polling data showing that self-described conservatives outnumber liberals 2 to 1. But that's not nearly so telling as the fact that self-identified conservatives have outnumbered liberals in every year since 1968; when combined with self-proclaimed moderates, the country is enduringly 65% to 75% moderates and conservatives.
Bill Clinton initially governed as if he'd won a more left-leaning mandate than the voters intended. Clinton admitted, in a 1995 interview with the then-columnist Ben Wattenberg, that he'd gone astray philosophically. With the help of the Machiavellian pollster Dick Morris, Clinton recalibrated to the center and saved his presidency.
No surprise that Emanuel's most politically formative years were spent as a Clinton strategist. Yet Obama has indicated he never considered the Clinton model appropriate or appealing. He wants to be "transformative" like Ronald Reagan. But such a transformation requires an electorate capable of being transformed. Obama and his acolytes misread the public, thinking voters were as worshipful as they were.
Beyond the disloyalty and all that, the real reason the Milbank column has enraged so many left-wing bloggers and liberal columnists is that Emanuel's understanding of the political landscape puts him in the reality-based community. And that is a community the Obama cult refuses to join.
jgoldberg@latimes
columnists.com
A Hillary Clinton Primary Challenge in 2012?
January 27, 2010 04:42 PM ET
By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
When President Barack Obama asked New York Sen. Hillary Clinton to join his cabinet as secretary of state, the move was widely praised. Clinton, his principal rival for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, added a measure of gravitas to his team of advisers and would, it was suggested, help unite the president's party at a time the Republicans appeared to be on the verge of complete collapse.
At the time, comparisons were made to Abraham Lincoln. Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin recounts in her book Team of Rivalshow the 16th president of the United States invited others who held leadership claims on the new Republican Party into his cabinet in an effort to present a united front. But Lincoln's decision to invite his rivals for the 1860 Republican nomination--William H. Seward, Edward Bates, and Salmon P. Chase--into his administration was also a matter of political preservation. Their inclusion in the cabinet kept them inside the tent looking out rather than outside the tent looking in, forcing an alliance with Lincoln as the Union threatened to come apart.
It will be up to history to judge whether Obama's selection of Clinton falls in the same category. Whether it does or not depends on what Clinton decides to do.She is not, unsurprisingly, speaking publicly about her intentions beyond saying, as she told PBS's Tavis Smiley in an interview that airs Wednesday night, that she is "absolutely not interested" in running again for president of the United States. But in the same interview Clinton also allows that her current job is a difficult and time-consuming one and that, while she is honored to have it, she cannot see herself serving in the same post in a second Obama administration.
The ongoing decline in the president's approval ratings has more than a few Democrats concerned. The Democratic defeats in the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial elections and the Massachusetts Senate race have a number of them running scared, in much the same way that the party's poor performance in 1978 helped propel Sen. Edward M. Kennedy forward to challenge incumbent President Jimmy Carter in 1980.
The chatter has increased in recent days about Clinton leaving the cabinet sometime in the first term, likely over some matter of principle, so that she can position herself to challenge Obama in 2012. Perhaps it is just wishful thinking on the part of those Democrats who have already grown tired of Obama. What is true is that Clinton can still mobilize the political infrastructure necessary to mount an effective challenge to the sitting president. A primary challenge against a sitting president whose approval numbers are above 50 percent and one mounted against an incumbent who is below 50 percent are two very different things, a fact of which the Clinton political team is surely aware.
The air is seeping out of the Obama balloon. He has fallen to below 50 percent in the poll approval ratings, a decline punctuated by his party's shocking loss in the Massachusetts special election.
Why?
Barack Obama was undoubtedly sincere in what he promised, even if his promises were within the normal range of political exaggeration. The first trouble is that his gift for inspiration aroused expectations, stoked to unprecedented heights by his own staff, that he would solve the climate crisis on Monday, the jobs crisis on Tuesday, the financial crisis on Wednesday, the education crisis on Thursday, Afghanistan on Friday, Iraq on Saturday, and rest on Sunday. His oratorical skills were highlighted by the contrast with President Bush, who mangled words so much that his incoherence became, as Tina Brown wrote, "a metaphor for incompetence." Expectations were spurred, too, by Obama's recognition that Americans yearned for a new kind of politics, a rejection, as he put it, of "politics as usual."
Perhaps the inevitable outcome was disappointment—and on this Obama has not disappointed. Alas, he has accelerated the deflation of hope with his extraordinary volume of public appearances. In his first six months, he gave three times as many interviews as George W. Bush, four times as many prime-time news conferences as Bill Clinton, and more interviews than both combined: 93 for Obama and 61 for his two immediate predecessors. He appeared on five Sunday talk shows on the same morning, followed the next day by David Letterman, the first-ever presidential appearance on a nighttime comedy show. In another week, he squeezed in addresses to the U.S. Climate Change Summit, the U.N. General Assembly, the U.N. Security Council, and a variety of press conferences.
His promiscuity on TV has made him seem as if he is still a candidate instead of president and commander in chief. He—and his advisers—have failed to appreciate that national TV speeches are best reserved for those moments when the country faces a major crisis or a war. Now he faces the iron law of diminishing novelty.
Despite this apparent accessibility, Obama's reliance on a teleprompter for flawless delivery made for boring and unemotional TV, compounding his cerebral and unemotional style. He has seemed not close but distant, not engaged but detached. Is it any wonder that the mystique of his presidency has eroded so that fewer people have listened to each successive foray? The columnist Richard Cohen wryly observed that he won the Pulitzer Prize for being the only syndicated columnist who did not have an exclusive interview with the president.
Poor results. But Obama's problems are more than a question of style. There is doubt aroused on substance. He sets deadlines and then lets too many pass. He announces a strategic review of Afghanistan, describing it as "a war of necessity," only to become less sure to the point that he didn't even seem committed to the policy that he finally announced. As for changing politics in Washington, he assigned the drafting of central legislative programs not to cabinet departments or White House staff but to the Democratic congressional leadership of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, the very people so mistrusted by the public. Who could be surprised that the critical bills—the stimulus program and healthcare—degenerated under a welter of pork and earmarks that had so outraged the American public in the past?
Pelosi benefited from $54 million to relocate a Bay Area wine train, not to speak of a secret deal with the drug industry lobby to preclude negotiations on Medicaid drug prices and exclude drug imports from Canada, concessions that had previously been strongly rejected by Obama. Reid favored the gambling industry by arranging an earmark for a Los Angeles-to-Las Vegas high-speed monorail, even though it won't be built for years. Some components of the stimulus did help soften the recession, yet only roughly a third of the $787 billion stimulus has been spent, and too much was spent on programs supported by liberal Democrats, which explains why so much of the stimulus money went toward education, health, energy conservation, and other activities, mostly worthy but not geared to achieving recovery and getting people back to work.
Taxpayers have thus come to see politics as usual masquerading as economic recovery. Indeed, both the stimulus and healthcare plans were voted on so quickly that the lawmakers had no time to read the bills. In both cases, the White House created the impression it was interested in passing anything, no matter how ineffectual. This was epitomized by Obama's chief of staff essentially asserting that a healthcare bill would be passed even if all it consisted of was two Band-Aids and an aspirin.
Most critically, Obama misjudged the locus of the country's anxiety: the economy. Instead of concentrating on jobs, jobs, jobs, he made the decision to "boil the ocean" and go for everything, from comprehensive health reform to global warming to a world without nuclear weapons ... and the beat goes on.
This was more than the Congress could absorb and more than the country could understand. Obama, the theoretician in a hurry, made no allowance for the normal resistance to dramatic change and the public's distaste for big government, big spending, and big deficits. He didn't seem to realize that Americans understand in the most personal terms that excessive debt has real consequences, given how many have mortgages that exceed the value of a home and credit lines that are too much to carry. Yet this was what the president seemed to be getting us into. Over 60 percent of the country believes that government spending is excessive; Obama's lowest approval ratings come from his mishandling of the present and future deficits.
Delayed stimulus. It is not as if the limited stimulus program has done the job either, since unemployment rates soared over 10 percent (compared with the 8 percent ceiling that was promised). Shelby Steele asked a good question in the Wall Street Journal: "Where is the economic logic behind a stimulus package that doesn't fully click in for a number of years?" Yes, we might have just escaped a depression, but as the Economist magazine observes, voters will not thank the president for averting a depression that did not come but are "more likely to blame him for the recession that did." On top of all this, and not all Obama's fault, a financial crisis usually produces weak recoveries in jobs, so a good number of Americans are likely to remain furious at the spectacle of the financial world doing well while so many ordinary folks lose their jobs and their savings. This anger will not subside while households see net worth slump to where it was 20 years ago and debt reach close to record highs at about 130 percent of disposable income, and while the residential real estate crisis continues unabated and the official jobless rate doesn't come close to reflecting the true extent of unemployment and ... and ... and ....
The White House might have at least demonstrated that it cares about fiscal restraint and independence from the leadership in Congress, but consistently Obama has failed to veto spending while centralizing power. A majority of Americans think it a mistake at this time of economic distress to embark on a costly healthcare program. As it was, the program's apparently stalled trip through Congress turned out to be another fiasco of political corruption, with millions of dollars allocated to buy votes, such as those of Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu and Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson. Anger with that process and the bill it produced helped fuel the stunning election of Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts.
The result is a widespread concern that progressive taxation to pay for the "nanny state" will snuff out future opportunities that Americans believe they deserve for themselves and their children. Obama misjudged the public's appetite for taxpayer-funded solutions; most people believe all the government does is waste money. In a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, only 23 percent said they "trusted the government just about always or most of the time"—the smallest proportion in 12 years, and the all-important independent swing voters who decide elections now favor Republicans by 52 percent, up from 30 percent.
Unfortunately, there is not much solace in international affairs either, where, again, expectations were so pumped up. America's image is better, no doubt, but uncertainty and procrastination prevail. One major international political leader recently put it well: "Not only does the leadership of this region not think that Obama is strong enough to confront his enemies; they aren't sure he is strong enough to support his friends." The administration seems "hopelessly naive," according to one Arab foreign minister, and unable to face the full truth about Islamic terrorism. The public frustration over the administration's mismanagement of the latest jihadist attempt to blow up a plane with all its innocent travelers (on Christmas Day) was captured in the New York Daily News headline "Mr. President, it's time to get a grip!"
The consequence is that there isn't a single critical problem on which the president has a positive public rating. Only a minority of Americans now believe the president will make the right decisions for the country. Nor can he any longer take refuge in the rejoinder that "we inherited a terrible situation." Or blame it on fat-cat bankers and insurance companies. Blaming others, including Bush, for the country's predicament is less and less persuasive. "At some point you own your presidency," wrote Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal. "At some point the American people tell you it's yours."
More worrying for the administration is that while Obama gets the approval of 76 percent of non-whites, his approval among whites is down to 41 percent, according to Gallup. This is a huge change that literally puts the Democratic control of Congress at risk. The Republicans have hardly been stellar either, but there is now a renewed openness in the country to hear what they have to say. Obama's political realignment of America is over. We no longer believe that he will "change the world" and "transform the country."
This brings to mind why an adviser to President Roosevelt in the 1930s, Bernard Baruch, told electors to vote for the person who promised them less. In this way, he said, "you would be less disappointed." There is still time for Obama to change and turn things around. But the first year is the critical year, one in which the public defines the president, and it has to be said that broad swaths of the country are deeply disappointed.
The announcement by Alabama Rep. Parker Griffith that he is switching to the Republican Party is just the latest warning sign that the Democratic Party -- my lifelong political home -- has a critical decision to make: Either we plot a more moderate, centrist course or risk electoral disaster not just in the upcoming midterms but in many elections to come.
Rep. Griffith's decision makes him the fifth centrist Democrat to either switch parties or announce plans to retire rather than stand for reelection in 2010. These announcements are a sharp reversal from the progress the Democratic Party made starting in 2006 and continuing in 2008, when it reestablished itself as the nation's majority party for the first time in more than a decade. That success happened for one major reason: Democrats made inroads in geographies and constituencies that had trended Republican since the 1960s. In these two elections, a majority of independents and a sizable number of moderate Republicans joined the traditional Democratic base to sweep Democrats to commanding majorities in Congress and to bring Barack Obama to the White House.
These independents and Republicans supported Democrats based on a message indicating that the party would be a true Big Tent -- that we would welcome a diversity of views even on tough issues such as abortion, gun rights and the role of government in the economy.
This call was answered not just by voters but by a surge of smart, talented candidates who came forward to run and win under the Democratic banner in districts dominated by Republicans for a generation. These centrists swelled the party's ranks in Congress and contributed to Obama's victories in states such as Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia, Colorado and other Republican bastions.
But now they face a grim political fate. On the one hand, centrist Democrats are being vilified by left-wing bloggers, pundits and partisan news outlets for not being sufficiently liberal, "true" Democrats. On the other, Republicans are pounding them for their association with a party that seems to be advancing an agenda far to the left of most voters.
The political dangers of this situation could not be clearer.
Witness the losses in New Jersey and Virginia in this year's off-year elections. In those gubernatorial contests, the margin of victory was provided to Republicans by independents -- many of whom had voted for Obama. Just one year later, they had crossed back to the Republicans by 2-to-1 margins.
Witness the drumbeat of ominous poll results. Obama's approval rating has fallen below 49 percent overall and is even lower -- 41 percent -- among independents. On the question of which party is best suited to manage the economy, there has been a 30-point swing toward Republicans since November 2008, according to Ipsos. Gallup's generic congressional ballot shows Republicans leading Democrats. There is not a hint of silver lining in these numbers. They are the quantitative expression of the swing bloc of American politics slipping away.
And, of course, witness the loss of Rep. Griffith and his fellow moderate Democrats who will retire. They are perhaps the truest canaries in the coal mine.
Despite this raft of bad news, Democrats are not doomed to return to the wilderness. The question is whether the party is prepared to listen carefully to what the American public is saying. Voters are not re-embracing conservative ideology, nor are they falling back in love with the Republican brand. If anything, the Democrats' salvation may lie in the fact that Republicans seem even more hell-bent on allowing their radical wing to drag the party away from the center.
All that is required for the Democratic Party to recover its political footing is to acknowledge that the agenda of the party's most liberal supporters has not won the support of a majority of Americans -- and, based on that recognition, to steer a more moderate course on the key issues of the day, from health care to the economy to the environment to Afghanistan.
For liberals to accept that inescapable reality is not to concede permanent defeat. Rather, let them take it as a sign that they must continue the hard work of slowly and steadily persuading their fellow citizens to embrace their perspective. In the meantime, liberals -- and, indeed, all of us -- should have the humility to recognize that there is no monopoly on good ideas, as well as the long-term perspective to know that intraparty warfare will only relegate the Democrats to minority status, which would be disastrous for the very constituents they seek to represent.
The party's moment of choosing is drawing close. While it may be too late to avoid some losses in 2010, it is not too late to avoid the kind of rout that redraws the political map. The leaders of the Democratic Party need to move back toward the center -- and in doing so, set the stage for the many years' worth of leadership necessary to produce the sort of pragmatic change the American people actually want.
The writer was secretary of commerce in the Clinton administration and chairman of Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign.
The health care reform bill currently being debated in the Senate contains a provision known as the Bo-Tax — so called because it would levy a 5 percent tax on cosmetic surgery procedures. The idea is to tax those who indulge in medically unnecessary procedures in order to pay for medical necessities for everyone else.
This sounded like a refreshingly good idea to me, until I read that Terry O’Neill, the president of the National Organization for Women, is against it.
“Now they are going to put a tax on middle-aged women in a society that devalues them for being middle-aged?” she complained to The Times.
Could this possibly be the voice of NOW, the country’s premier women’s rights group?, I wondered. Could this be the same feminist movement that in 1968 filled a “Freedom Trash Can” outside the Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City with bras, girdles and false eyelashes to protest the “ludicrous ‘beauty’ standards we ourselves are conditioned to take seriously,” as Robin Morgan, an organizer of the protest, put it at the time?
Yes, standing up for the rights of middle-aged women to have access to cosmetic enhancement is part of the work of contemporary feminism, O’Neill told me this week. It’s the sorry consequence of a number of sorrier truths: The economy is terrible. Middle-aged women, many of whom reduced their working hours, limiting their earning power and ambition, when they had kids or, later, found themselves having to care for their parents, are in a particularly vulnerable spot these days, as they’re increasingly called upon to supplement or take over the lion’s share of family money-making. And any number of studies have shown that people with better (read: younger) looks have a better chance of getting a good job. Particularly women.
“I am 57 years old. I really sympathize with women who are out of the job market, wondering, will anyone even take me seriously?” O’Neill explained. “The women’s movement is not overly concerned with the more superficial aspect of clothing or beauty or fashion trends. The more important question is whether we are participating fully in the lives of our communities. And middle-aged women really aren’t. I know a lot of women whose earning power stalled out or kicked down as they entered into their 50s, unlike their male counterparts’, whose really went up.”
And now a lot of men are out of work. Which means that, in this economy, getting the old face and belly looking tighter may, for many middle-aged women, be as crucial as having an eye-catching résumé.
“I’ve met women who’ve had to lie their ages down as much as 20 years to get or keep jobs as everything from waitresses to high-level consultants,” Gloria Steinem, who herself had cosmetic eye surgery some decades ago, told me this week. “They gave up pensions and benefits because they couldn’t produce documents, and employers colluded because they saved money.”
How disfiguring it can be when reality bites.
We are constantly hearing about the different phases, themes, lives and deaths of feminism. First wave, second wave, “victim,” “raunch,” etc.
“Looks are the new feminism, an activism of aesthetics,” Alex Kuczynski wrote in the introduction to her 2006 book on America’s obsession with cosmetic surgery, “Beauty Junkies.” At first glance, this seems ridiculous. And yet it says something true enough about the way many younger women understand feminism at a time when organized, real-world activism has hit wall after wall of political impossibility. Sneaker ads teach that feminism is all about taking control — of your figure.
This is what happens when equal pay stalls, abortion rights wither, and attempts to improve child care and workplace flexibility die on the legislative vine year after year. Women’s empowerment becomes a matter of a tight face and a flat belly. You control what you can control. And so many middle-aged women feel particularly out of control now, as indeed they are, in these life plan-wrecking economic times.
“Bag-lady syndrome,” the fear many women have that their financial security will disappear in a heartbeat, leading them to live out their remaining years on the streets, is shockingly pervasive. In 2006, before the current economic crisis hit, 90 percent of women surveyed by a Minnesota life insurance company said they felt financially insecure; 46 percent of those women overall said they had a “tremendous fear of becoming a bag lady,” including 48 percent of those with an annual income of more than $100,000. These days, more women than men — following a recession in which the men, overwhelmingly, lost the jobs — report being significantly stressed about money.
The inner bag lady, wrinkle-faced and unkempt, is no joke. She’s the worst-case scenario future. And while it’s easy to point to her as an irrational creation of women’s overly self-doubting imaginations (how else to explain the fact that wealthy, successful women like Katie Couric, Lily Tomlin and Steinem herself have all admitted to carrying around the fear — long after it was even remotely rational — of finding themselves one day, in old age, out on the streets?), she points to something very real: women’s economic status in this country is not what it should be. Middle-aged women with families shouldn’t be so scared.
I wonder if we haven’t entered into a period of what should be called “adjustment” feminism. The women’s movement is having to adjust to the realities of life in our culture, where many of its basic goals — including the very basic liberation of women from their pop culture status as a “mindless-boob-girlie symbol,” to borrow a phrase again from Robin Morgan — have stalled or are even backsliding. This week, for example, not only brought a public statement by the head of NOW acknowledging that the fight to have women valued for their inner beauty is essentially a wash; it also found NOW in the very bizarre position of urging senators to preserve the dictates of the Hyde Amendment, which for over 30 years has guaranteed that Medicaid funds would not be used to pay for most abortions for poor women. The House of Representatives’ recently-passed the Stupak amendment, which effectively prohibits both private health insurance plans participating in the future-envisioned insurance “exchange” and whatever public option may come into being, from offering abortion coverage to any woman, and the Stupak-like proposals currently circulating in the Senate are so much worse, after all. Hyde suddenly seems bearable.
Or maybe we should talk about having entered into the middle age of feminism — a moment when stock is taken, dreams are deferred and real life is faced in all its ugliness. Because to do otherwise is no longer youthfully idealistic, just foolhardy. Because you’ve got to hold onto what you’ve got, consolidate your gains and avoid potentially disastrous future losses.
With so much male unemployment, so much underemployment, so many people “lucky” to have jobs with reduced hours and benefits, women need good work options like never before. We need flexibility with security, options that will let us build wealth while taking sufficient care of our families.
Barring this, I guess we’ll go for eye lifts and Botox.
Nancy Pelosi, having renamed the Public Option, the ‘Consumer Option,’ triumphantly trotted out this morning the Hose version of the Health Care Reform Bill, now called The Affordable American Health Care Bill. (“Affordable” – what does that mean, exactly? Affordable to whom?) But then Steny Hoyer proclaimed the process of crafting the bill the most open, transparent process he’s seen in over thirty years in Congress. (Really??) And finally, the President followed up on Teleprompters to announce that finally we have a bill that will cover the 36 million uninsured, not cost the taxpayers anything extra, improve the quality of our health-care system, and bring down the costs of health care. Speaker Pelosi assured us that this bill represents the principles of “…opportunity, choice, competition, and innovation.”
How can you tell when they’re lying? Their lips are moving.
They think you’re stupid. It’s understandable that they should think that, because though they may on occasion listen to you, they never really hear you. Hence, the only frame of reference for feedback on their incredibly absurd redistributive ideas, tax-and-spend proposals and unprecedented treasury-busting health care take-over bills…comes from their own constituents, the Democrats. Whoops and hollers, cheers and laughter, nods, smiles, enthusiastic ‘yes-we-cans!’… as they serve up yet another heaping portion of socialist slop you’ll be expected to grab your ankles and pay for. They think you’re stupid.
As the entire Democratic Party has now been fully commandeered by the hard Left, I wrestle daily with the following quandary: Are they evil? Or merely dense?
Anyone paying attention and not mired in self-deceit can easily see that everything the current administration and Democrat-controlled Congress is doing and attempting to do is based in Marxian principles of redistribution, government takeovers of private industry and control of the American citizenry. And anyone with just a rudimentary knowledge of basic economic principles and merely a modicum of historical perspective can see that capitalism lifts up and advances any civilization it touches; whereas socialism degrades quality of life by enriching the government as it dis-empowers the individual. Freedom-loving people worldwide have been battling these statist oppressors throughout the millennia. The failure of a modern American voting populace to intellectually link the smiling promises of today’s ‘free’ lunch with the blood, death and horror of tyrants of the past is to shame us all with a new definition of national myopia.
They’re lying to us. A bill crafted behind closed doors, excluding participation by the opposition party, the Republicans, and rejecting all alternative ideas about health care reform like freedom to shop insurance plans interstate? Or TORT reform, so that doctors don’t have to practice defensive medicine? Or how about cutting down government red tape so hospital administrators don’t have to add the cost of voluminous paperwork to medical bills, and pairing back excessive government regulations so that hospitals and doctors can drive down costs through healthy competition? But Steny Hoyer called it an open and transparent process. Right.
Timothy Geithner is asking the government for more control over the Fed. That’s certainly comforting. His answer to current economic woes is to borrow more hundreds of billions from China…and print more money. But – if they’re printing billions and billions of more dollars, doesn’t it make the dollars already in my hand…worth… less? Uh…yeah. And just wait until next year when the banks start to put these newly printed dollars into circulation. And gold shoots sky high and the dollar plummets. Then the fun begins…
They’re stealing from you.
Not only are they working around the clock to shore up their losses and lunatic-lefty programs, but they are preparing to raise your taxes through the roof. Some of them will be hidden ‘fees.’ (Watch for them to pop up like measles spots when the virus begins.) Some of them will be overt, you’ll be able to see them, at least for the ‘wealthy’ – you know, anyone earning over 100K. But once inflation kicks in, pretty soon that will be the greater majority of us. And they’ll expect us to be happy we’re earning so much. And never mind the fact that those dollars we’re earning are becoming ever-increasingly worthless, and our standard of living is starting to tank. Shortages, rationing, loss of services… Anyone remember the long lines at the gas stations in the Carter years? Odd-and-Even days to fill up? Fist fights at the pumps…station owners wearing side-arms?
But our leader smiles endearingly and promises us that it will all work out. After all, there is a beautiful rainbow in the sky and if we just follow his dream for America we will find at the end of it (after eight short years)…a pot of gold. We merely have to Believe. Just close our eyes, stare at his picture, click our heels three times and the Leprechaun in Chief will deliver us a pot of gold.
As the media and the Marxists march us to the edge of the bottomless pit of total government control of our wealth, our businesses, our property…our very lives…(some call this tyranny)…we are left with this question about our current leaders: Are they evil…or merely stupid? Or both?
And more importantly…what are you going to do about it?
Originally published 04:45 a.m., September 21, 2009, updated 05:55 a.m., September 21, 2009
BREITBART: The politicized art behind the ACORN plan
Everything you needed to know about the unorthodox roll out of the now-notorious ACORN sting videos was hidden in plain sight in my Sept. 7 column, "Katie Couric, Look in the Mirror." ACORN was not the only target of those videos; so were Katie, Brian, Charlie and every other mainstream media pooh-bah.
They were not going to report this blockbuster unless they were forced to. And they were. What's more, it ain't over yet. Not every hint I dropped in that piece about what was to come has played itself out yet.Stay tuned.
When filmmaker and provocateur James O'Keefe came to my office to show me the video of him and his friend, Hannah Giles, going to the Baltimore offices of ACORN - the nation's foremost "community organizers" - dressed as a pimp and a prostitute and asking for - and getting - help for various illegal activities, he sought my advice. In the past, Mr. O'Keefe created brilliant social satire that rocked his college campus and even made its way on to the talk-radio and cable-news shows, but the magnitude of his latest adventure had the potential to rock the political establishment.
I was awed by Mr. O'Keefe's guts and amazed by the footage, but explained that the mainstream media would try to kill this important and illuminating expose about a corrupt and criminal political racket, and that the well-funded political left would go into "war room" mode, with 25-year-old Mr. O'Keefe and 20-year-old cohort Miss Giles in the cross hairs. I felt I had a moral obligation to protect these young muckrakers from the left and from the media, and to devise a strategy that would force the media's hand.
Once the American public saw with its own eyes the grotesque, common practices of ACORN's housing offices, Mr. O'Keefe and Miss Giles could no longer be a legitimate focus of media scrutiny. Kill the messenger doesn't work with the American people when they realize that the message is so devastating and honest. I think the video exposed the misuse of public funds and systemic manipulation of the tax code in the name of "helping the poor."
If Mr. O'Keefe dumped the videos on YouTube, the political powers would have killed the expose before it got traction. I half-joked that he should secretly tape pitching the major television networks exclusive use of his videos for their nightly news broadcasts. But a simpler, less controversial method proved as fruitful.
I told him that in addition to launching his compelling and stylized Web videos, we needed to offer the full transcripts and audio to the public in the name of transparency, and to offer Fox News the full footage of each video before each was released.We had to devise a plan that would force the media to see the evidence before they had enough time to destroy these two idealistic 20-something truth seekers. Mr. O'Keefe agreed to post the full audio and full transcript of his video experiences at BigGovernment.com.
Thus was born a multimedia, multiplatform strategy designed to force the reluctant hands of ABC, CBS, NBC, the New York Times and The Washington Post.
Videos of five different ACORN offices in five separate cities would be released on five consecutive weekdays over a full week - Baltimore, Washington, New York, San Bernadino and San Diego. By dripping the videos out, we exposed to anyone paying attention that ACORN was lying through its teeth and that the media would look imbecilic continuing to trot out their hapless spokespeople.
If the media, as expected, pretended that the story didn't exist, they'd have another debacle on their hands comparable to the failure to report the shocking views of the White House's "green jobs czar," Van Jones. If they invested in the story, I told Mr. O'Keefe, they would do ACORN's defense work. I told him the focus needed to be on the message, not the messenger. Otherwise, the mainstream media would attempt to direct attention away from the damaging video evidence.
The best example of this came from ABC's anchor, Charlie Gibson. "I don't even know about it. So you've got me at a loss," he told WLS radio when asked about it. "But my goodness, if it's got everything, including sleaziness in it, we should talk about it in the morning." But he also said that what was seen on these videos was best left for the "cables."
Is this not malevolent arrogance?
That evening, Katie Couric and "The CBS Evening News" cried uncle and did a story. Six days into an underground media sensation that caused the White House to force the Commerce Department to delink ACORN from the census on day two, CBS knew it could sit on the sidelines no longer. Especially since ACORN spokespeople were issuing what to me was clearly lie after lie, and CBS could only assume that more videos were coming.
CNN made the most sustained effort to blame the messenger and make the videos the issue. Producers aggressively called Miss Giles, Mr. O'Keefe and me, imploring us to explain our journalistic tactics. I told them repeatedly that if they offered the videos a fair airing and let their audience decide, we'd agree to a Time Warner grilling. I also said we could have the debate on journalistic ethics after this story played out at a journalism school of their choice.
Instead, the media repeated ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis' growing body of lies, never holding her accountable for her shameless hackery. Jonathan Klein, CNN's president, is emerging as symbol of the mainstream media's last depressing days.
No wonder Jon Stewart delivered a stinging and hilarious rebuke of the real newspeople on his "Daily Show" parodies every night: "Where were the real reporters on this story? ... Where the hell were you?"
High praise to you, Mr. Stewart. It's nice to see there's someone out there in liberal media-land who would recognize there's something terribly wrong on these videos. And yes, there are more to come.
At the very least, filmmaker James O'Keefe and actress Hannah Giles deserve a Pulitzer Prize for their expose of deep corruption and unspeakable immorality at the ACORN housing division. But more important, I won't rest until they receive a grant to continue their partisan artistry from the National Endowment for the Arts.
That's this week's mission.
• Andrew Breitbart is publisher of the news portals Breitbart.com and Breitbart.tv. His latest endeavor, Big Hollywood (http://bighollywood.breitbart .com), is a group blog on Hollywood and politics from the center-right perspective.
Commentary: Conservatism is far from dead
Story Highlights
Julian Zelizer: When Obama won, some thought conservatism was dead
He says this summer has shown the resilience of conservative views
Conservatives have been energized by health care reform effort, he says
He says changing public opinion and policies is very difficult no matter who's elected
By Julian E. Zelizer Special to CNN
Editor's note: Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. His new book, "Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security -- From World War II to the War on Terrorism," will be published this fall by Basic Books. Zelizer writes widely about current events.
Julian Zelizer says conservatism has proved far stronger than some Democrats expected.
PRINCETON, New Jersey (CNN) -- As the White House and Senate Democrats move toward Sen. Max Baucus' compromise on health care, there is a growing sense among Democrats that the political power of conservatism remains much stronger than some observers believed after Barack Obama's victory in November 2008.
The White House has sent strong signals that the president is willing to abandon key components of the legislation that liberals have demanded, such as the public option, and to work with Baucus, whose proposal is far less ambitious than what other Democrats, including the president, have been pushing for.
With Republicans lined up against the administration, centrist Democrats insisting on big reductions in the scale of the program and public support for Democratic health care proposals having fallen, some of the president's top advisers have concluded that now is the time to settle for what they can get rather than walk away with nothing.
The struggles with health care came as a surprise to some Democrats who felt that after the 2008 election, the era of conservatism had ended. President George W. Bush finished his presidency with historically low approval ratings. Democrats had won control of Congress and the White House, with a presidential candidate who did not shy away from liberal causes such as the need to pass comprehensive health care reform.
Conservatives seemed intensely divided, and it was -- and remains -- unclear who the next generation of GOP leaders will be. One BBC story at the time pronounced, "The Reagan era is finally, comprehensively, over."
President Obama never bought the argument, and when asked whether the conservative revolution was over, he was skeptical. In one interview, Obama argued: "What Reagan ushered in was a skepticism toward government solutions to every problem, a suspicion of command-and-control, top-down social engineering. I don't think that has changed. I think that's a lasting legacy of the Reagan era and the conservative movement, starting with Goldwater. But I do think [what we're seeing] is an end to the knee-jerk reaction toward the New Deal and big government."
So what accounts for the persistence of conservatism even after the severe problems it encountered by the end of the Bush presidency?
The first reason is that conservatism taps into a basic anti-government ideology that has existed in the nation's political culture since the Revolution. Anti-government sentiment has ranged from opposition to federal taxation to an unwillingness to create strong centralized bureaucracies.
When the United States has created government programs, they have often relied on decentralized administration, minimal levels of funding and even private organizations to administer benefits.
The second reason that conservatism has survived the defeat at the polls in 2008 is that since its emergence in the 1970s, the conservative movement has focused on building a strong organizational infrastructure that could outlast any specific president or congressional majority.
Conservatives created new think tanks and expanded existing ones. They developed a vibrant network of grass-roots organizations that could quickly mobilize voters through tactics like direct mail. Conservatives established media outlets, starting with magazines and talk radio and extending into network television. During the 1990s, the right strengthened its ties to Washington-based interest groups that were able to exert pressure inside the Beltway and mount "Astroturf" operations back in the districts.
When conservatives have mobilized this summer in opposition to health care reform, they have been supported by this formidable infrastructure, most of which remains in place.
And, finally, the reality is that in American politics, institutions, policies and public opinion are always hard to change, regardless of whether a liberal or conservative is in the White House.
Despite the conventional wisdom, presidential and congressional elections rarely result in the kinds of dramatic changes that pundits predict and politicians promise. Conservatives like Ronald Reagan learned this after the 1980 election when many popular programs like Social Security proved impossible to retrench.
Liberals are quickly finding that following several decades of deregulation and tax cutting, it is difficult to find public support for passing major new programs.
Democrats have also fueled conservative passions since attempting to move forward with health care reform, which is historically one of the most explosive issues that any president can tackle.
As the president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Committee told The Washington Post, "Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and Henry Waxman have done more to energize Christian conservatives than any conservative leader could have done with this health care package. I, who never believed that we were dead, did not believe that it would happen this quickly."
Even though conservatism might be in a state of crisis, the reports of its death were greatly exaggerated. This summer, conservatives have been able to demonstrate the kind of damage that they can inflict on a once enormously popular president in the most difficult of economic times.
Many Democrats now understand what Obama was talking about -- that his White House governs in an era in which the influence of conservatism remains formidable.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Julian Zelizer.
Is Criticism of Obama Based on His Race?
Monday , September 14, 2009
By Bret Baier
Racial Issue?New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote on Sunday, September 13 that Wednesday's (September 9) outburst by South Carolina Republican Congressman Joe Wilson during President Obama's address to a joint session of Congress was racially motivated. As we told you earlier, Wilson shouted, "you lie," when the president said his health care plan would not cover illegal immigrants.
Dowd writes: "What I heard was an unspoken word in the air — you lie, boy!... Wilson clearly did not like being lectured and even rebuked by the brainy black president presiding over the majestic chamber."
Liberal columnists are not alone in suggesting that any opposition to the president is race-driven. Texas Democratic Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson tells the Politico: "As far as African-Americans are concerned, we think most of it is."
And California Democratic Congressman Mike Honda adds: "There's a very angry, small group of folks that just didn't like the fact that Barack Obama won the presidency. With some, I think it is (about race.)"
But White House press secretary Robert Gibbs says to CNN: "I don't think the president believes that people are upset because of the color of his skin."
Help Wanted
The White House is filling policy positions at two of the most important departments to the president's domestic agenda at a slower rate than elsewhere in the administration.
Despite overseeing one of the largest financial rescue plans in history, the Treasury Department has filled just 11 of 33 high-level posts requiring Senate confirmation. And just eight of the top 20 positions have been filled at the Health and Human Services Department, although it is responsible for responding to a potential outbreak of the H1N1 flu.
Only the Justice Department has had a slower rate of confirmation.
Number Confusion
There have been conflicting reports on the number of protesters who marched on Washington this weekend in opposition to what they see as out-of-control federal spending and the expanding size of government.
Some media outlets put the number at 60,000, while FOX News reported the number to be in the "tens of thousands." A spokesman for the D.C. Fire Department says 60,000 was an early estimate and that the real figure was in excess of 75,000. But that continued to grow throughout the day.
But a time-lapse video making the rounds online indicates there may have been even more than that. Capitol Hill police were not giving estimates and have refused to do so following past criticism that their estimates were somehow politically motivated.
— FOX News Channel's Zachary Kenworthycontributed to this report.
President Obama did an excellent job, in both delivery and substance, when he addressed a joint session of Congress last week. As I listened to him, I was reminded of my own days in Congress. Before I left Congress in 1977 to serve as Mayor of New York City, I attended similar addresses of Presidents Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. I sat in the House of Representatives Chamber thinking how lucky I was to live in such a great country and to have been given the opportunity to represent my fellow citizens in Congress.
I recall when President Johnson appeared in that Chamber in January 1969 after President Nixon had been elected but before he took office. As Johnson entered the Chamber and walked down the aisle past me, I reached over and patted him on the shoulder. Although he was unaware of my touch, I said to myself, "I forgive you." I was referring to the Vietnam War, the results of which caused him not to run for reelection.
President Johnson had hugely increased the number of American soldiers sent to South Vietnam. I believe he ultimately poured in more than 50,000 combat troops. His enormous good works and reputation, as a result of his civil rights legislative record and "Great Society" initiatives, were lost as he became responsible in the public's collective conscience for the war and was blamed for the casualties, deaths and billions of dollars spent to prop up a corrupt Vietnamese government in an ongoing civil war. The United States was ultimately required to pull out in a publicly humiliating way. As the North Vietnam troops were entering Saigon, later renamed Ho Chi Min City, we ferried American military and civilians, as well as Vietnamese civilians, by helicopter from the roof of our embassy in Saigon to our Navy ships offshore.
Many people, myself included, do not believe we can win the war in Afghanistan. The British and the Russians gave up on Afghanistan, as probably did Alexander the Great of ancient Macedonia. Even if we were to win, what would we have won?
The convenient fantasies of President Obama
By: Michael Barone Senior Political Analyst September 9, 2009
President Barack Obama gestures during his interview with The Associated Press, Thursday, July 2, 2009, in the West Wing of the White House in Washington. (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
The resignation over the Labor Day weekend of White House "green jobs" czar Van Jones tells you some interesting things about the Obama administration. One of them is that a man who proclaimed himself a "communist" in the 1990s and signed 9/11 "truther" petitions suggesting Bush administration complicity in the Sept. 11 attacks was considered fit for a White House appointment. Liberal columnists have been attacking Republicans because some of their voters are "birthers," believers in the absurd charge that President Obama was not born in Hawaii and thus is not a natural-born U.S. citizen. But they have failed to identify any "birther" who occupied a position in the Republican firmament comparable to that of "truther" Van Jones in the Obama administration.
Another interesting thing about Jones is that the administration seems enamored of his "green jobs" concept. There's an understandable political reason. Legislation to restrict carbon emissions that is supported by the administration would undoubtedly kill a large number of jobs by increasing the cost of energy, and so you can see why its advocates might want to argue that there will be a compensating number of "green jobs" created -- at least if the government spends a lot of money on them.
But this sounds like fantasy. If there were money to be made in green jobs, private investors would be creating them already. In fact big corporations like General Electric are scrambling to position themselves as green companies, gaming legislation and regulations so they can make profits by doing so. Big business is ready to create green jobs -- if government subsidizes them. But the idea that green jobs will replace all the lost carbon-emitting jobs is magical thinking.
Obama's approach to health care legislation, unless he makes a major course correction in his speech to the joint session of Congress tonight, is of a piece with his hiring of Van Jones. By ceding the task of writing legislation to congressional Democratic leaders and committee chairmen, he has been following a "no enemies to the left" strategy.
By refusing to rule out the government option -- which its architects see as the road to a single-payer government insurance system -- Obama has prevented the emergence of a set of policies that have a chance of passing the Senate. The Senate Republicans in the "gang of six" who have been negotiating with Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus are not going to agree on a bill without assurance from the White House that they won't get rolled by hard-left House Democrats in conference committee.
Yesterday Baucus came out with his own plan, which includes a tax on high-value health insurance policies. But this is likely to be rejected by the Left, by labor unions that have negotiated such benefits from employers, and by members of Congress from states like New York, where, because of state policies, almost all health insurance costs that much.
There is an element of convenient fantasy as well in Obama's health care statements to date. We are going to save money by spending money. We are going to solve our fiscal problems with a program that will increase the national debt by $1,000,000,000,000 over a decade. We are going to guarantee you can keep your current insurance with a bill that encourages your employer to stop offering it.
The list goes on. We are going to improve health care for seniors by cutting $500,000,000,000 from Medicare. We aren't going to insure illegal aliens, except that we won't have any verification provisions to see that they can't apply and get benefits.
Most politicians like to promise voters all good things at once. Democrats got in the habit of doing this over the past 14 years when they could not pass legislation by themselves. Van Jones' moment in the White House is over. Exposure of his record in conservative media made him politically unacceptable, even though mainstream outlets like the New York Times ignored the issue entirely.
The Democrats' health insurance bills remain under consideration, and with large majorities in both houses, passage of some bill cannot be ruled out. But August town hall meetings and national polls have put the Democrats on the defensive. No-enemies-to-the-left and convenient fantasies may work in Chicago. They don't work so well when your constituency is the whole United States.
Michael Barone, The Examiner's senior political analyst, can be contacted at mbarone@washingtonexaminer.com. His columns appear Wednesday and Sunday, and his stories and blog posts appear on www.ExaminerPolitics.com ExaminerPolitics.com.
The Liberal Lion, With Asterisks
A Commentary By Froma Harrop
Thursday, August 27, 2009
They called him "The Liberal Lion." Ted Kennedy deserved that title, though with some asterisks added. There's no reconciling Kennedy worshippers with the Kennedy haters. But those who can deal with shades of gray will pay tribute to the legendary Massachusetts senator who championed landmark legislation through bipartisan cooperation -- but whose sense of family privilege didn't always serve the interests of democracy.
No one can deny Kennedy's contributions. He pushed through the Civil Rights Act, Freedom of Information Act and the Occupational Safety and Health Act. Through his odd-couple relationship with Utah conservative Sen. Orrin Hatch, Kennedy helped win major AIDS legislation. And we hope that his four-decade crusade to extend health coverage to all Americans will end in victory this year.
Less commendable was the senator's penchant for capitalizing on Kennedy nostalgia to further family interests. Ted's three brothers died young and under tragic circumstances. Joe fell heroically in World War II. Two brothers, President John F. Kennedy and New York Sen. Bobby Kennedy, were assassinated. Kennedy used the powerful brew of public emotion to fuel unwarranted political ambition.
Ted did not create the Kennedy Dynasty: While he was in diapers, his father Joe was already long on the project. True democrats (with a small "d") frown on the notion of ruling families, but Ted tirelessly worked the "Kennedy mystique" to advance himself and kin.
After Bobby died, Ted made this claim to the presidency: "Like my brothers before me, I pick up a fallen standard." That would have been a fine speech for a Shakespearean prince assuming his father's throne. But it should have troubled a country born out of opposition to hereditary rule more than it did.
Then Chappaquiddick happened, and the closest he would ever come to the presidency was a 1980 protest challenge against incumbent Jimmy Carter. Questions still swirl around Kennedy's conduct that night, when he drove a car off a bridge and a female passenger drowned. That and his expulsion from Harvard for cheating on a test would have ended most political careers, but Kennedy had the family name to propel him into a 47-year tenure in the Senate.
Kennedy subsequently "placed" his son Patrick into a House seat from Rhode Island. Patrick is a very appealing person, but his serial problems with drugs and alcohol -- crises that continue -- should have disqualified him for this kind of responsibility.
Earlier this year, Kennedy tried to slip his niece Caroline Kennedy into the New York Senate seat left vacant when Hillary Clinton became secretary of state. Several hard-working New York Democrats were already vying for that office. Caroline had never run for anything and proved herself temperamentally unsuited for the rough-and-tumble. Still, it was startling to see an airhead faction of the Democratic elite so eager to throw their longtime public servants overboard for Kennedy sparkle.
In the year since Ted's dire diagnosis, Massachusetts Democrats have been pondering which Kennedy will take his Senate seat, as though the voters have little to do with it. "According to local conventional wisdom," writes Joan Vennochi in The Boston Globe, Bobby's son Joe "has the right of first refusal." (Tom Paine must be turning in his grave.)
America was founded on ideas, not royal families. That's why recent talk of lawmakers' voting for health care reform as "a tribute to Ted Kennedy" is so off base. Congress should pass it because the legislation would be good for the country. And if in doing so, they wish to praise Kennedy's fine ideas and hard work in creating the reforms, that would be entirely appropriate.
May the good that Ted Kennedy has done live after him.
Many of you have read my blogs. I have been a producer, writer and stand up comedian in LA for about 10 years. I am now taking on a new project by running for Congress and in so doing, challenging Henry Waxman for his seat.
A wise man once made the observation that all politics is local and a critical issue that I am challenging Henry Waxman on is how local television and film production are disappearing from the LA area.
Henry Waxman has been in office since 1975 and has presided over a massacre in the local entertainment business and been completely out of touch with the constituents’ needs on this issue. If a Congressman from any other district in the nation allowed a local mill or industry to go out of business or move away, that elected official would have had to answer to his constituents and would have been forced to pay attention to the local crisis and provide solutions and financial relief for the industry in order to preserve the jobs and livelihoods dependent upon the industry’s existence. Henry Waxman has done none of this and now is the time for the people of this district to show him the way to a new job and elect me, a leader who is in touch with the district’s needs to save and protect this industry.
The entertainment business is a source of jobs and revenue for the regions of Southern California but it is much more to our nation. For the whole of the country the entertainment business provides a unified popular culture that unites diverse people from different regions of the country with a common social fabric. This, along with sports and music gives a common denominator of understanding between people who have little in common other than that they are American. This leads to national unity and to a great extent, peace.
Henry Waxman’s Congressional career has been 17 terms long thus far and in that time local film and TV production has headed north to Canada, South to Australia, East to Poland and Bulgaria and West to Hong Kong and Bollywood. Recently Domestic box office revenue has been eclipsed by foreign revenue. This is not such a bad thing upon initial inspection until the true cost is quantified. The true cost being that foreign entities and interests now control the content of American entertainment projects.
Soon Sharia compliant financing entities from Dubai and Saudi Arabia will be financing even more content. This is one of the reasons why, along with political correctness that we rarely see Muslim villains instead of Neo-Nazis, skinheads, white supremacist, capitalists, serial polluters or the nefarious Belgians as the bad guys in most action films.
American entertainment is being tailored not for Pete in Peoria but for the elitists from Cannes and San Sebastian or for Yachting oligarchs on the Amalfi coast.
What can a humble Congressman do to resolve this? Well, if you are Henry Waxman Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee in The House of Representatives, quite a bit actually. If he cared to he could get federal tax breaks and incentives for production activity in the district. Pass special revenue tax exceptions for local filmed material. Help production entities streamline their interfacing with state and local officials to make the permitting process easier and that’s just the beginning. In short, it would be easy for him. Unfortunately, Henry Waxman’s interests lie elsewhere. Our voters must learn that our interests lie with someone other than Waxman. Our interests lie with someone like me.
June 28, 2009
Breakthrough on the Authorship of Obama's 'Dreams'
Within days of my going public last September with the speculation that terrorist emeritus Bill Ayers helped Barack Obama write his acclaimed memoir, Dreams From My Father, I learned that I was not alone in that intuition.
Since then, I have received helpful contributions from serious people in at least five countries and any number of states and have integrated many of their observations into my ongoing narrative, summarized here. If you are unfamiliar with this research, please read this before going forward.
About a week ago, however, I heard from a new contributor. I will refer to him as "Mr. West." Like most contributors, he prefers to remain anonymous. The media punishment that Joe the Plumber received has much to do with this nearly universal reticence.
A week before that, I heard from another excellent contributor, Mr. Midwest. Their collective contribution should dispel the doubts of all but the willfully blind that Ayers played a substantial role, likely the primary role, in the writing of Dreams.
As a reminder, there is no reliable computer science for determining authorship. In assessing the value of the existing science, think polygraph, not DNA. Polygraph-level scholarship may suffice for harmless speculation about the authorship of Midsummer's Night Dream, but not for Dreams From My Father. Too much is at stake for the latter.
The experts in the field have told me to stick with old-fashioned literary detective work, and I have done just that. Mr, Midwest has helped. His most recent contribution is a good example of keen-eyed detection.
Going forward, I will be referring to five books. These include Ayers' 1993 To Teach, his 1997 A Kind and Just Parent (shorthand: Parent), his 2001 memoir Fugitive Days, and Obama's 1995 Dreams From My Father (Dreams). Casual critics of this research have repeated the canard that I attributed both Obama books, Dreams and the 2006 Audacity of Hope (Audacity), to Ayers. I never have. From the beginning, I have asserted that the two books appear to have two different authors, and so I will leave Audacity out of the equation until the end.
What Mr. Midwest noticed recently is that both Ayers in Parent and Obama in Dreams make reference to the poet Carl Sandburg. In itself, this is not a grand revelation. Let us call it a C-level match. Obama and Ayers seem to have shared the same library in any case. Both talk of reading the books of Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Dubois and Frantz Fanon among others. In fact, each misspells "Frantz" as "Franz."
Ayers and Obama, however, go beyond citing Sandburg. Each quotes the opening line of his poem "Chicago." From Dreams:
He poured himself more hot water. "What do you know about Chicago anyway?"
I thought a moment. "Hog butcher to the world," I said finally.
From Parent:
"At the turn of the century, Chicago had a population of a million people and was a young and muscular city - hub of commerce and industry, the first skyscraper city, home of the famous world exposition, "hog butcher to the world" - bursting with energy."
This I would call a B-level match. What raises it up a notch to an A-level match is the fact that both misquote "Chicago," and they do so in exactly the same way. The poem actually opens, "Hog butcher for the world."
Last week, the first email I received from Mr. West had in the message box "759 striking similarities between Dreams and Ayers' works." This claim seemed so outsized I did not take it seriously. When I was unable to open the documents, I emailed Mr. West back, asked him to reformat, and then forgot about the email. He resent his documents a few days later.
This time I was able to open them and was promptly blown away. Mr. West's analysis was systematic, comprehensive, and utterly, totally, damning. Of the 759 matches, none were frivolous. All were C-level or above, and I had no doubt of their authenticity. I had been gathering many of them in my own reserve waiting for a book-length opportunity to make my case. Mr. West had done the heavy lifting. He even indexed his matches. This represented months of works. As I learned, he had been patiently gathering material since November when he first began building on my own research.
I read through all 759 matches and culled out those that I would consider B-Level or above. There were 180 of these. As a control, I tested them against my own 2006 book Sucker Punch, like Dreams and Fugitive Days a memoir that deals extensively with race. In that I am closer to Ayers in age, race, education, family and cultural background than Obama is, our styles should have had more chance of matching. They don't. Of the 180 examples, I matched, strictly speaking, on six. Even by the most generous standard, we matched on only sixteen.
Let me just cite a few matches between Ayers' work and Dreams that I found intriguing. Rather astonishingly, as Mr. West points out, at least six of the characters in Dreams have the same names as characters in Ayers' books: Malik, Freddy, Tim, Coretta, Marcus, and "the old man." Many of the stories involving these characters in Dreams seem as contrived as their names.
In one instance, Obama reflects on his own first days as a ten year-old at his Hawaiian prep school, a transition complicated by the presence of "Coretta," the only other black student in the class.
When the other students accuse Obama of having a girlfriend, Obama shoves Coretta and insists that she leave him alone. Although "his act of betrayal" buys him a reprieve from the other students, Obama understands that he "had been tested and found wanting."
Ayers relates a parallel story in Parent. He tells of a useful reading assignment from the 1992 book, The Kind of Light That Shines on Texas, by black author Reginald McKnight. The passage in question deals with the travails of Clint, the first black student in a newly integrated school, who repudiates Marvin, the only other black boy in the school. Upon reflection, Clint thinks, "I was ashamed. Ashamed for not defending Marvin and ashamed that Marvin even existed."
As Mr. Midwest pointed out in a recent missive, Ayers' interest in education bleeds into Dreams. The tip-off once again is the contrived name, in this case "Asante Moran," likely an homage to the Afro-centric educator, Molefi Kete Asante. Moran lectures Obama and his pal "Johnny" on the nature of public education.
"The first thing you have to realize," he said, looking at Johnnie and me in turn, "is that the public school system is not about educating black children. Never has been. Inner-city schools are about social control. Period."
"Social control" is an Ayers' bugaboo. "The message to Black people was that at any moment and for any reason whatsoever your life or the lives of your loved ones could be randomly snuffed out," he writes in Fugitive Days. "The intention was social control through random intimidation and unpredictable violence."
In Dreams, "Moran" elaborates on the fate of the black student, "From day one, what's he learning about? Someone else's history. Someone else's culture. Not only that, this culture he's supposed to learn is the same culture that's systematically rejected him, denied his humanity."
If this character were real, and Obama had actually met him, there would be no reason to phony up his name. In fact, however, Moran is spouting exactly the same educational philosophy that Ayers does in To Teach.
"Underneath it all," Ayers says of standard school textbooks, "the social studies and literature texts reflected and promoted white supremacy. There were no pictures or photographs of African Americans . . . there was throughout an assumed superiority and smug celebration of the status quo."
Both authors, by the way, use the phrase "beneath the surface" repeatedly. And what they find beneath the surface, of course, is the disturbing truth about power disparities in the real America, which each refers to as an "imperial culture." Speaking of which, both insist that "knowledge" is "power" and seem consumed by the uses or misuses of power. Ayers, in fact, evokes the word "power" and its derivatives 75 times in Fugitive Days, Obama 83 times in Dreams.
More exotically, both authors evoke images of a "boy" riding on the backs of a "water buffalo" and prodding the beast not just with sticks, but with "bamboo sticks." Ayers places his boy in Vietnam. Obama puts his in Indonesia.
Both authors link Indonesia with Vietnam. In each case, clueless officials - plural -- with the "State Department" try to explain how the march of communism through "Indochina" will specifically imperil "Indonesia." The Ayers account, however, at least sounds vaguely real. The Obama account sounds like an Ayers' memory imposed on Obama's mother. She allegedly discussed these geo-political strategy sessions in Indonesia with her pre-teen son.
Ayers and his radical friends were obsessed with Vietnam. It defined them and still does. To reflect their superior insight into that country, they have shown a tendency to use "Mekong Delta" as synecdoche, the part that indicates the whole.
In Fugitive Days, for instance, Ayers envisions "a patrol in the Mekong Delta" when he conjures up an image of Vietnam. Ayers' wife, Bernadine Dohrn, pontificated about "a hamlet called My Lai" in a 1998 interview, but to flash her radical chops, she located it "in the middle of the Mekong Delta," which is in reality several hundred miles from My Lai.
Given Obama's age, "Mekong Delta" was not likely a part of his vocabulary, but that does not stop him from writing about "the angry young men in Soweto or Detroit or the Mekong Delta." Ayers, of course, would also have had a much deeper connection than Obama to "Detroit," whose historic riot took place shortly before Obama's sixth birthday. Ayers worked in Detroit the year after those same riots.
Returning to the exotic, in his Indonesian backyard Obama discovered two "birds of paradise" running wild as well as chickens, ducks, and a "yellow dog with a baleful howl."
In Fugitive Days, there is even more "howling" than there is in Dreams. Ayers places his "birds of paradise" in Guatemala. He places his ducks and dogs together in a Vietnamese village being swept by merciless Americans. In Parent, he talks specifically about a "yellow dog." And he uses the word "baleful" to describe an "eye" in Fugitive Days. For the record, "baleful" means "threatening harm." I had to look it up.
Ayers is fixated with faces, especially eyes. He writes of "sparkling" eyes, "shining" eyes, "laughing" eyes, "twinkling" eyes, eyes "like ice," and people who are "wide-eyed" and "dark-eyed."
As it happens, Obama is also fixated with faces, especially eyes. He also writes of "sparkling" eyes, "shining" eyes, "laughing" eyes, "twinkling" eyes, and uses the phrases "wide-eyed" and "dark-eyed." Obama adds "smoldering eyes," "smoldering" being a word that he and Ayers inject repeatedly. Obama also uses the highly distinctive phrase "like ice," in his case to describe the glinting of the stars.
If Ayers is fixated on eyes, about eyebrows he is positively fetishistic. There are six references to "eyebrows" in Fugitive Days -- bushy ones, flaring ones, arched ones, black ones and, stunningly, seven references in Dreams -- heavy ones, bushy ones, wispy ones. It is the rare memoirist who talks about eyebrows at all.
On three occasions in Dreams, Obama speaks of people with "round" faces. On four occasions in Fugitive Days, Ayers does the same. Both speak of "grim-faced" people, people with "soft" faces, and, most unusually, people with "tight" faces.
Both Ayers and Obama describe acquaintances who smile like a "Cheshire cat." Some of their characters have a countenance -- grin, squint, or scowl -- that is "perpetual." Others are "suppressing" their smiles or their grins.
To this point, I have just skimmed the 759 items in the bill of particulars in my case against Obama's literary genius. Not familiar with the term "bill of particulars?" Uncertain myself, I looked that one up too. It means a list of written statements made by a party to a court proceeding. Ayers and Obama each refer knowingly to a "bill of particulars." Doesn't everyone?
The answer, of course, is no. In Audacity of Hope, Obama does not use this phrase or most of the distinctive words or combinations of words in Dreams. In Audacity, for instance, there are virtually no descriptions of faces or eyes, and the few that the author does use are flat and clichéd -- like "brave face" or "sharp-eyed." In Dreams, seven different people "frown," twelve "grin," and six "squint." In Audacity, no more than one person makes any of these gestures.
Mr. West independently came to the same conclusion that I did, namely that Ayers was not meaningfully involved in Audacity. These two Obama books almost assuredly had different primary authors. What should be transparent to any literary critic is that the author of Audacity lacked the style and skill of the author of Dreams. There are a few pockets in Audacity that evoke the spirit of Dreams but without the same grace.
A likely suspect for these imitative passages, perhaps the whole of Audacity, is Obama's young speechwriter, Jon Favreau. Favreau joined the Obama team in 2005, time enough to play that role. The London Guardian reports that Favreau carries Dreams wherever he goes and can "conjure up his master's voice as if an accomplished impersonator." If so, in Audacity he played the classic role of the ghostwriter -- one who absorbs his client's thoughts and relates them in a refined version of his client's voice.
Bill Ayers was no one's ghostwriter. The now overwhelming evidence strongly suggests that he used the frame of Obama's life and finished it off with his own ideas, his own biases, his own experiences, his own passions, his own friends, even his own romances, all of this toned down just enough to keep Obama viable as a potential candidate.
I would argue that Ayers played Cyrano to Obama's Christian. His personal history was too ugly for him to woo Roxane/America himself. But Obama -- "articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy," as Joe Biden reminded us -- could and did make America's heart melt.
THE CONTENT OF THIS WEBSITE DOES NOT NECESSARILY REPRESENT THE OPINION OF THE OWNER ... At least that's what my lawyer told me, but he was drinking pretty heavily at the time so...
COPYRIGHT HARDIN REPUBLIC, LLC 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012. All Rights Reserved.
