WTF? Part III

More Obama belt-tightening:

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama are both traveling to Copenhagen this week to promote Chicago's bid to host to the 2016 Olympic Games--and they will be making the 3,979-mile trip on separate airplanes.

The first lady left on Tuesday night, while the president will leave for Denmark on Thursday night.

Taxpayers will pick up the tab for both jets ferrying the president and first lady separately to Europe...

The White House announced on Monday that the president would be joining his wife on this European trip, despite indicating earlier this month that the first lady would head up the U.S. Olympic Committee delegation to Copenhagen while Obama remained in the United States to continue pushing for his health care reform plan.

Back on Sept. 11, the White House announced that the first lady would travel to Denmark but not the president...

As reported earlier by CNSNews.com, a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report cited two cost estimates for an hour of air travel by the president, vice president and first lady. One estimate comes from the White House Military Office, the other from the U.S. Air Force.

Using the CRS cost estimates and the inflation adjuster from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the cost for the one-way 7.5-hour trip from Washington, D.C. to Copenhagen on the first lady's plane would range from $29,532 (White House Military Office) to $107,717 (U.S. Air Force).

The cost for the president to fly Air Force One on the one-way 7.5-hour trip from Washington, D.C. to Copenhagen ranges from $343,448 (White House Military Office) to $567,089 (U.S. Air Force).

When asked by CNSNews.com why the president decided to travel to Copenhagen, a White House spokesman said Obama did not think the short trip abroad would harm his efforts to promote health care reform.

“The president decided to make the brief trip to Copenhagen when it became clear that he could do so without negatively affecting his efforts on health care and the other important challenges facing this country,” spokesman Joshua Earnest told CNSNews.com...

Also joining the president and first lady on the two planes are Chicagoans Oprah Winfrey, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

No word as to whether these Chicago representatives would also be there pitching the city: link

What California Really Needs...

is less electricity supplies! I'm tellin' ya, if there's one thing Cali-for-ni-a has it's too dang gum much electricity. Where's my fishin' pole?

In a development that could herald the largest dam removal in modern history, 29 parties signed a draft agreement today to destroy four dams on the Klamath River to restore salmon and steelhead runs that have been partially blocked for the better part of the past century on the California-Oregon border.

The agreement is the product of years of often bitter negotiations among electric utilities, government officials, fishers, farmers, native tribes and environmental groups. It calls for the breaching and removal of four Klamath River hydroelectric plants owned and operated by PacifiCorp....

Translation: PacifiCorp executives appear ready to remove the dams rather than pursue expensive fish-saving modifications that would have cost the utility more than $300 million. A study by the California Energy Commission determined that dam removal would cost about $100 million less than the modifications...

Under the agreement, PacifiCorp's ratepayers in Oregon would foot much of the bill, contributing up to $200 million for dam removal and river restoration. The agreement calls for proceedings at the Oregon and California public utilities commissions to raise money for removal through customer surcharges.

Oregon ratepayers would be responsible for up to $184 million of the project's cost. California ratepayers would be on the hook for far less, at no more than $16 million of the total cost...

Steve Rothert, California director for American Rivers, said today's signing means "the finish line is in sight." The group insists that PacifiCorp will be able to replace the lost power, which serves about 70,000 customers, with efficiency and renewable power.

The absolute BEST part of the story is that the rate payers not only have to pay to tear down dams that will no longer be providing them with electricity, but as an added bonus, will have to cut back or rely on more expensive "renewable power" supplies, instead.

I hope they at least get a free fishing license.

WTF? Part II

Well, they're doing such a bang up job they probably deserve it: Lawmakers jack up spending for themselves

Congress is on the verge of giving itself a bump in its annual budget — even as local governments, families and businesses across the country are tightening their belts in the worst recession in decades.

Under a House-Senate conference measure, approved by the House last week and poised for passage in the Senate on Wednesday, spending for the legislative branch will increase 5.8 percent this year, boosting Capitol Hill’s annual budget to $4.7 billion.

The measure includes a hodgepodge of new funding for lawmakers: a $500,000 pilot program for senators to send out postcards about their town hall meetings, $30,000 for receptions for foreign dignitaries and $4 million for consultants...

Funding for House office buildings will jump a staggering 128 percent, to $84 million...

“This is a fiscally responsible bill,” said Jake Thompson, spokesman for Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), chairman of the Senate’s legislative branch appropriations subcommittee...

The bill contains just one earmark — a $200,000 Nelson project for a museum in Omaha, Neb. — and it includes language added by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) to force the Senate for the first time to put its expenses online.

Nelson’s office said the $500,000 “pilot program” for office mailings was included at the request of Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) and has been in place since 2004...

It also said that the 5.5 percent increase that will go in part to increasing aides’ salaries was derived from cost-of-living-adjustment projections...

So retired people living off of Social Security will NOT be getting a COLA for the next two years, but, surprise surprise surprise - Congress' employees will. Yup, makes sense to me. And such restraint! Just one earmark? Indeed, the fiscal restrainedness has me flabbergasted. Why, here you go, Mr. Specter, half a mil to praise ourselves with more mailings!

Please, sirs, may we have some more?

No! We need new letterhead! Shut up and stop bothering us!

WTF?

Coming soon...Hitler Days on Capitol Hill and Ye Olde Stalin Faire at the St. Louis Arch?

The Empire State Building this week will illuminate red and yellow, celebrating China's 60 years of communist rule. There are many things to appreciate about China, but communism isn't one of them.

What was the Empire State Building thinking in lighting up in celebration of China's long communist rule?...

China's 6,000-year-old history and civilization are loaded with things to celebrate — from its invention of paper money and fireworks, to its great cuisines, its Taoist philosophy, the daring historic voyages of Sanbao (a possible model for Sinbad), millions of Overseas Chinese, and perhaps the awed arrival of Marco Polo into the Middle Kingdom, which ignited the Age of Exploration...

"Would the Empire State Building honor the government of Sudan or the birth of Nazi Germany?" asked Thor Halvorssen, whose Human Rights Foundation has an office in this building. "It's sad that a symbol of free enterprise honors the butchers of Beijing."

Communism is the root of the honor and nothing has harmed China so much. The nightmare began with Mao Zedong in 1949. He imported the alien ideology that is still around, diluted only because the authorities made such an economic hash of the country. By Mao's 1976 death, his successors had no choice but to open up.

Before that, the communist regime was responsible for wars, purges and famine on a scale untold in human civilization. According to University of Hawaii historian R.J. Rummel, the communist regime is responsible for the deaths of nearly 77 million people.

Seven Wonders

I wonder...

1. how many "serious" joggers think about how they look when they run. Not their workout gear, but how they actually look when they're out on the street or sidewalk running. Now note that I say "serious" and not serious runners. Serious runners, marathon competitors and such, they run with a clean, easy-on-the-eyes gait because it physically improves their performance, they can't be running like a three-legged hippo that just dropped acid and had an air horn blown in their face. Your regular, but not competitive runners...well, I wonder if they think about just how much like that they sometimes look. Sure, sometimes you only see them at the end of a run and they're gassed, but, c'mon, you know what I'm talking about. The one that runs like they're on wet ice wearing sneakers made of snow. Arms at their sides. Arms flailing wildly. I'm not knocking their effort, heck knows it would do me some good to run again, but I do wonder if some of those with ungainly gaits ever think about how odd they look.

About That Plan

Wasn't Obama's big speech to Congress (you know, the lie speech) supposed to be when he started selling his detailed health care plan to Congress and America as an alternative to the multitude of plans Congress is vomiting forth?

So, uh, how's that working out for you? Seen that "detailed plan", yet?

Right.

Keep Gloating, Conservatives - Loudly!

You'll notice I didn't say "republicans", I said "conservatives". Because republicans are just as culpable as democrats in this story:

The number of young Americans without a job has exploded to 52.2 percent — a post-World War II high, according to the Labor Dept. — meaning millions of Americans are staring at the likelihood that their lifetime earning potential will be diminished and, combined with the predicted slow economic recovery, their transition into productive members of society could be put on hold for an extended period of time.

The number represents the flip-side to the Labor Dept.'s report that the employment rate of 16-to-24 year olds has eroded to 47.83 percent...

Al Angrisani, the former assistant Labor Department secretary under President Reagan, doesn't see a turnaround in the jobs picture for entry-level workers and places the blame squarely on the Obama administration and the construction of its stimulus bill.

"There is no assistance provided for the development of job growth through small businesses, which create 70 percent of the jobs in the country," Angrisani said in an interview last week. "All those [unemployed young people] should be getting hired by small businesses."...

During previous recessions, in the early '80s, early '90s and after Sept. 11, 2001, unemployment among 16-to-24 year olds never went above 50 percent. Except after 9/11, jobs growth followed within two years...

Angrisani said he believes that Obama's economic team, led by Larry Summers, has a blind spot for small business because no senior member of the team -- dominated by academics and veterans of big business -- has ever started and grown a business.

Take a bow, conservatives, for our continued support of small businesses (instead of raising their taxes and number of regulations) and resistance to continual increases in the minimum wage. They don't mention it, but yet another minimum wage hike just went through - and guess who gets shafted the most from minimum wage hikes? Young workers. They say that the recession has affected young workers more than old - and that's true. But there's no reason to overlook the other elephant in the room - the continual ramping up of the minimum wage. This can only exacerbate the effect of the recession.

Look at it this way - your small business (the primary employer of these young workers) is struggling. You're going to have to get rid of one of your 4 workers. One is older, one is younger, two are middle-aged. The older worker has been doing their job, not just for you, for a long time and does it well. They get paid pretty well, too. The middle-aged workers have lots of experience and make Ok money. The kid is in their first job, still in school. No experience, but they help fill the gaps when you couldn't keep up with demand and it let you concentrate on growing your business instead of doing some grunt work. You didn't need to be paying $50K to another experienced worker, but paying a kid attending night school to make up the slack was a good deal and they're learning.

Who do you get rid of? In many, many cases the one that gets the ax is the kid, because not only are they not as experienced, but the government just mandated that you give them a nice raise, even though they're still very inexperienced and, frankly, not worth the money. As we read about in the local papers, owners were suddenly swabbing out bathrooms and sweeping up. Why? Because they had to let go of their experienced staff? Riiiiight. No, because they cut their high school part time kid...or their uneducated laborer that usually did the menial stuff for low pay, because at the time it was worth it to both of you. No more. That person just wasn't worth it to you anymore.

Now, of course I'm not saying the minimum wage is totally to blame in this economic climate...but don't you dare say it doesn't play a role, particularly when you note that, even during bad recessions like the early 80s (which, in many ways, was worse than today (although maybe not worse than tomorrow the way the Won is going)) the jobless rate for these young workers was not this bad - something has changed. The most obvious 'something', at least one that jumped out at me as a strong possibility, is that the minimum wage has gotten so ridiculously high that it just isn't worth it to employ young, inexperienced people for that much money - they're just not worth it.

Football Wrap Up

I kinda liked posting about football after the Pats/Bills game and might do it more often. If you're not interested, please scroll down to find something more to your liking. (As an added bonus - look! I bothered to find out how to do page jumps so you don't even have to scroll past long posts that don't interest you! The things I do for my readers...)

Gloating

Ah...the sweet smell of vindication...drink it deep, Mr. Laffer, drink it deep. A nice heaping helping of gloating is on tap today courtesy of the Daily Gazette. Thank you so much for making my day with a front page story of glorious vindication.

Taxing the wealthy no windfall for N.Y. (AP)

Early data from New York show the higher tax rates for the wealthy have yielded lower-than-expected state wealth. Gov. David Paterson, who had always warned targeting the rich could backfire, fears that just what happened.

Paterson said last week that revenues from the income tax increases and other taxes enacted in April are running about 20 percent less than anticipated....

So far this year, half of about $1 billion in expected revenue from New York's 100 richest taxpayers is missing. The state budget office says losses suffered in the recession could be largely to blame, and it may still come in next year when filers exhaust their extensions...

State officials say they don't know how much of the missing revenue is because some wealthy New Yorkers simply left.

But at least two high-profile desertions have sounded off on the tax changes: Buffalo Sabres owner Tom Golisano, the billionaire who ran for governor three times and who was paying $13,000 a day in New York income taxes, and radio show host Rush Limbaugh...

Donald Trump told Fox News earlier this year that several of his millionaire friends were talking about leaving the state over the latest taxes.

Repeat after me:

Arthur Laffer is CORRECT.

Conservatives are CORRECT.

Liberals are WRONG.

Demand-siders are WRONG.

When you raise taxes too high the wealthy will cut back their earnings, they will move money out of the state, they will flee if they can.

That is one of the keys at the heart of the Laffer curve, ridiculed by the foolish - but here, again, proven CORRECT.

Conservatives "whining" about high taxes as we spent the summer listening to the liberals cry out for MORE taxes on the wealthy, on MORE millionaire taxes, are, again, CORRECT for pointing at Laffer.

Liberals, whining about the rich not "paying their fair share" as they pay many times their "fair share" and pointing at the continually wrong Friedman, again are proven WRONG.

Say it with me - Laffer and his conservative cheerleaders are again proven CORRECT.

Liberals and demand-siders that think you can just keep on spending and raising tax rates on "the rich" to pay for it all are again proven WRONG.

People are not static projections - they have behaviors, they react, they think, they feel.

New York, just ranked 2nd worst business climate in the country by the Tax Foundation, might want to keep that in mind.

Go ahead and gloat, Mr. Laffer. Again you're proven correct.

Misleading (cough You Lie! cough) Items From Obama's Health Care Speech

Michael F. Cannon and Ramesh Ponnuru at NRO have compiled a list, complete with that pesky backing evidence stuff, of at least 20 misleading-to-outright untrue statements the Won made in front of Congress. You know the speech, the one where he said he'd come after anyone that "mislead" about his plan? Yeah, that one. Please click through for full linky-ness. Note that I have severely cropped this to save space, in case someone doesn't want to read through it. I just tried to leave in enough that you can skim it, and if you find it interest you, you can click through the read the article.

thanks to E at ConClub for the tip on this one.

You Mislead!

It is a good thing that other congressmen did not follow Rep. Joe Wilson’s lead. If they yelled out every time President Obama said something untrue about health care, they would quickly find themselves growing hoarse.

By our count, the president made more than 20 inaccurate claims in his speech to Congress. We have excluded several comments that are deeply misleading but not outright false. (For example: Obama pledged not to tap the Medicare trust fund to pay for reform. But there is no money in that “trust fund,” anyway, so the pledge is meaningless.) Even so, we may have missed one or more false statements by the president. Our failure to include one of his comments in the following list should not be taken to constitute an endorsement of its accuracy, let alone wisdom.

1. “Buying insurance on your own costs you three times as much as the coverage you get from your employer.” The Congressional Budget Office writes, “Premiums for policies purchased in the individual insurance market are, on average, much lower — about one-third lower for single coverage and one-half lower for family policies.”...

2. “There are now more than 30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage.”An outright falsehood, whether you use the president’s noncitizen-free estimate or the standard, questionable estimate of 46 million uninsured residents...

Malkin Roundup On Acorn and The Times

Michelle Malkin has a long, detailed roundup on the NY Times' sorry history regarding ACORN with tons of damning evidence. Worth your time to read.

Smart Readers At Wizbang

Thanks to the Wizbang readers that have voted my caption the best for the second time in recent weeks in the Weekend Caption Contest. Last win was here: link.

OK, self-congratulation mode = off ;)

Correction Requested

I have requested a correction about a letter in Friday's paper:

Regarding the letter from Don Steiner in Friday's paper - could you please tell me (you may check with Mr. Steiner first, if you feel it is necessary), when exactly the USA had "trillion-dollar surpluses"? Failing that, please print a correction as soon as practicable. I think we both know this is a flat-out untrue statement that fails to meet the Times Union's written standard of accuracy. Mr. Steiner has not expressed opinion in this statement, he has also not referred to imaginary future budget estimates in any way, he refers to "trillion-dollar surpluses".

As we are all aware by now, I would hope, thanks to a revenue spike from the dot.com bubble (before it burst) and spending control forced on Clinton by a Republican Congress (back when they were into that sort of thing), the end of the Clinton presidency (just before the economy slid into recession) was marked by mild "surpluses" (if you didn't look at inflation). There was certainly nothing approaching even 1 trillion, let alone "trillions".

Mr. Steiner's letter violates the Times Union's policy regarding accuracy, but it also is simply untrue.

Your Random Saturday

I picked Jonah Goldberg's piece out of many possibilities as the best at eviscerating the left's foul and phony racism claims:

Of all the poisonous, ugly and intellectually vapid controversies ginned up in my lifetime, the current breakout of St. Vitus' Dance over the "racist" opposition to Barack Obama may be the most egregious...

Magically, the alchemic powers of Obama's black skin transmogrify the same arguments and the same rhetoric into racism. Saying "you're wrong" to a white politician is a disagreement; saying it to a black politician is like shouting through Bull Connor's megaphone...

Left-wing writers spent the week droning on about how it's now racist to say "I want my country back." These amnesiacs are blissfully unaware that "taking back" America was the rallying cry of the Democratic Party for eight years under George W. Bush. Anti-white racists all?

Have Disney And Nickelodeon Gone Too Far?

Look. I'm not a prude. I often find Brent Bozell tiresome when he goes off on South Park or Family Guy. While I find both shows distasteful at times, more as they've gone on than at the beginning (in other words, when they've run out of ideas - they're both just running on 'shock' for the most part now), I think it's going too far to simply condemn them out of hand. In each of these very notable cases you have to overlook the underlying message of both shows and focus solely on the toilet humor, or zombie humor, or toilet zombie humor to be truly, truly offended. Both shows try to end on some sort of uplifting note (or they did), even if it's not the most conservative, straight-from-Proverbs note. More often than not when it seemed like they were going too far they were actually digging negatively at the thing they seemed to be glorifying. I don't know, maybe this is too much to get into at the moment. One thing I do agree with is that Family Guy is not suitable for the time slot they show it in.

Let me get back to the reason for the post...Disney. Disney, in my lifetime, has morphed from the happiest place on earth (be it on TV or in FL) full of wholesome family entertainment that you could bring your 3-year-old as well as Grandma to see and everyone would be happy.

Nickelodeon, when it first came around, was filled with educational, bright, colorful shows geared to children in a positive way. A lot of it was palatable to adults, unlike pablum such as Barney or those gay puppets that don't talk. It was age-appropriate and fun. When they added cartoons they were in the spirit of cartoons we grew up on - sure there was some mild 'gross out humor' in Rugrats or Rocko's Modern Life, but they were fun and smart like Looney Tunes, which routinely blew people up or baked animals in ovens.

Is that true today?

Decreasingly so.

From the whoring up of their teen starlets* doing pole dances on awards shows to their productions, Disney and Nick just don't seem to care about families more than money, anymore. Courtesy of Mr. Bozell, meet the straw that broke the camel's back, "Glenn Martin, DDS":

During his 20-year reign at Disney, Michael Eisner's commitment to family values was viewed with suspicion by many. The worries apparently were well-founded. His animation studio, Tornante, has a new clay-animated cartoon on Nick at Nite called "Glenn Martin, DDS." Eisner and Nick at Nite executive Cyma Zarghami claim it's a show for the entire family.

Even TV critics -- the crowd always wanting to applaud anything pushing the cultural envelope -- think it's outrageous to make that claim. "You know you're in for a bumpy ride when the first joke has to do with killing prostitutes," wrote Mike Hale of the New York Times. He wanted out of the dental chair when a tasteless joke about a "blood bath" of a circumcision by a "rabbi with Parkinson's" arrived...

One much-advertised episode is "The Grossest Show on Earth," where Conor, the hapless 13-year-old son of the dentist, finds a new career -- as a circus act where his head disappears into the rear end of the elephant, which the elephant enjoys immensely. Audience members are shown vomiting into their popcorn.

This might make for family viewing at the Eisner estate. What about your home?...

In a different episode, Conor consults a spirit guide in search of "major boobage." The guide promises clarity, to which Conor replies, "I don't need clarity. I need Serenity -- and I need to see her naked!" When his wish is granted, the guide tells Conor to "get up on that."

Another episode focuses on Dr. Martin helping a Mafioso with a bad tooth. Introduced to Mafia members in a club, he asks if the women beside them are their wives. A mobster berates him: "Don't talk about our wives in front of the whores!" A woman named Crystal tells him she's "no relation to Billy Crystal, although I have faked an orgasm in a diner."

One shocked parent protested on Metacritic.com that "Nickelodeon is supposed to be a children's network, and they have this on during the dinner hour? We live in the Pacific time zone, and I was exposed to this while making dinner for my daughters, who are 5 and 7, and they had just finished watching 'The Penguins of Madagascar.'"

That's not an accident. What is truly revolting is that Nick at Nite is really hoping young children will stay for the orgasm jokes. The show's website actually boasts to that effect. "The premiere week posted double-digit gains for Nick at Nite over last year's like time period with kid, tween and teen demos ... The premiere episodes held 89 percent of its lead-in ratings ("The Penguins of Madagascar") with kids 2-11."...

Eisner's awful judgment began with his inspiration for the show: a fellow Disney executive's dog had a rear end that was "beyond disgusting." He explained, "When the dog was in the room, you just couldn't even look at the dog because you would be obsessed with this part of the anatomy. And when the dog turned around and walked away from you -- it was like, please. So I just wanted this dog in a television show."

The family dog on "Glenn Martin, DDS" has a large red anus. They're so proud of it that they highlight it on the show's website. The New York Times reports that Nickelodeon commemorated Eisner's "inspiration" by handing out plastic toy dogs that excrete brown jelly beans.

Remember that old Simpsons episode, I think the one where a fortune teller envisions Lisa's marriage in the future or the one where Lisa becomes president, where an old Marge and Homer are in bed watching TV and Marge makes a remark that Fox's shift to a hardcore pornography channel was so gradual no one noticed...something to that effect? Who would've thought you could say the same about the Disney channel or Nickelodeon? You can now. Just think about that for a moment...they are trumpeting the fact that they've managed to get 89% of 2-11 year olds to watch a show a show with "major boobage", a kid sticking his head up a happy elephant's rear end, jokes about killing prostitutes and orgasms. Ages 2-11. Do I really need to ask if you want your 2-11 year old watching that?


* Rebecca Hagelin:

I'll always remember how magical it was to see Tinker Bell flitter across the TV screen. She would touch the top of Cinderella's Castle with her magic wand and release a million tiny sparkles that cascaded down the television screen and seemingly into my living room.

Since our family normally attended church on Sunday evenings, it was a rare treat to watch the Wonderful World of Disney. On that occasion when I was home and could steal away and turn on the TV, I was instantly transported into a world of fairytales and dreams. Disney was synonymous with innocence, happiness and hope - of Mickey Mouse, virtuous damsels and handsome heroes.

The Disney girls like Snow White and Cinderella were always so innocent, beautiful and kind. They taught little girls that we too should be generous and gracious - that our lives should be marked by goodness and virtue. The Disney message was clear: regardless of your circumstances, you can be lovely and thoughtful, and - if your heart is pure and with a little help from your fairy godmother - you might also find your handsome prince and live happily ever-after.

My, how times have changed.

This is not your mamma's Disney. The lifestyles and fantasies they are selling our young women are anything but wholesome. Disney has deliberately and successfully transformed its brand from one of innocence and family entertainment, to a purveyor of promiscuity.

A recent case in point is Disney star Miley Cyrus. Last week I wrote in this column how, once again, Disney created a young, innocent heroine and then morphed her into a tramp. (Is Miley a tramp in real life? I don't know. But she has agreed to be packaged as one.)

The larger point is that Disney itself has also morphed. They've gone from selling just childhood fantasies into also selling sexual ones.

This new corporate image was missed by many adults, but to my surprise, it seems that some teens recognize -and are beginning to reject - the newer, uglier, Disney.

After Miley's now infamous pole dancing routine before a nation of teeny-boppers, I remarked to my 17-year-old daughter, "Kristin, it looks like Miley has gone trampy on us."

"Of course," she responded, matter-of-factly.

Surprised by her immediate and total agreement, I asked, "Why do you say, 'of course'"?

"Because she's Disney," Kristin said simply.

Wow. I was stunned that my daughter knew what Disney had been up to.

"Who else has Disney turned into a tramp?" I asked.

"Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, the girls from 'High School Musical'- lots of others", she sighed.

More Bad News For The Fringe Media

They used to be the mainstream media, but their refusal to cover the news and instead simply acting as propagandists and useful tools of the Alisky-ites running the country has pretty much relegated them to the fringes. Sacred Heart has some more bad news for Katie Couric and the other "hard journalists" out there: NATIONAL SHU POLL FINDS ONLY ONE-QUARTER OF AMERICANS BELIEVE ‘ALL’ OR ‘MOST’ OF NEWS MEDIA REPORTING AND DECLARE OLD –STYLE JOURNALISM IS DEAD

The Sacred Heart University Polling Institute released its third survey on "Trust and Satisfaction with the National News Media." The national survey of 800 Americans was fielded from Sept. 8-11 and covered new subjects as well as updating results from 2003 and 2007.

ON MEDIA TRUST, INFLUENCE AND RATINGS…
Respondents were asked if they believed all, most, some, little or none of news media reporting. Just 24.3% indicated they believe all or most news media reporting. While this is up from 19.6% in 2007, it remains lower than the 27.4% recorded in 2003.

Just over half of all respondents, 54.0%, said they believe “some” news media reporting. This is down slightly from 55.3% in 2007. Those believing little or no news media reporting dropped to 20.4% in 2009 from 23.9% in 2007...

In 2009, 86.6% (87.6% in 2007 and 70.3% in 2003) strongly and somewhat agreed that the news media have their own political and public policy positions and attempt to influence public opinion. And, 85.3% (86.0% in 2007 and 76.7% in 2003) strongly and somewhat agreed that the news media have their own political positions and attempt to influence public policies...

Researchers were asked which national television news organization they trusted most for accurate reporting. Fox News was named by 30.0% of all respondents – up from 19.5% in 2003 and 27.0% in 2007...

The average, overall positive rating for the national electronic and print news media across eight service characteristics was 35.9%. Most organizations strive to attain and maintain customer satisfaction ratings in the high 80s and low 90s.

The highest positive ratings were recorded for "quality of reporting" (40.6%) and "meeting expectations" (40.0%). The lowest positive ratings were recorded for "presenting negative and positive news equally" (30.6%), "keeping any personal bias out of stories" (33.0%), "presenting an even balance of news" (33.6%) and "fairness" (33.1%)...

ON NEWS MEDIA VIEWING HABITS…
Researchers asked respondents which television news organization they turned to most frequently. The top five news organizations were Fox News (28.4% - up from 26.5% in 2007), CNN (14.9% - down from 16.0% in 2007), NBC News (10.6% - down from 11.8% in 2007), ABC News (9.3% - down from 11.0% in 2007), and "local news" (7.6% - down from 8.5% in 2007)...

Respondents were asked if they selected their favorite because they offer objective reporting or because they view the issues as they did. In results that were nearly three-to-one, 59.0% suggested they made their selection based on objective reporting, while 19.0% chose their favorite because they share the same views on issues. Another 21.0% were unsure or didn’t know...

ON THE FAIRNESS DOCTRINE…
While strong majorities of survey respondents (73.4%) believed the news media (newspapers, radio, TV and the internet) should provide equal time and space for multiple sides of issues, a similar percentage (70.9%) said the same media should be free from government involvement and allow the market to determine programming demand.

"The results once again show that Americans are not getting what they expect from the major news outlets, yet they don’t trust the government to fix the problem," says Dr. Castonguay...

More than three-quarters, 77.9%, disagreed with a statement suggesting tax dollars be used to prop up failing newspapers.

Two-thirds, 64.1%, agreed that the health of our democracy is directly tied to the health of journalism. And, 67.9% agreed with a statement that read: "Old-style, traditionally objective and fair journalism is dead." Just one quarter, 26.5%, disagreed while 5.6% were unsure.

ON MEDIA BIAS…
Poll results found 83.6% saw national news media organizations as very or somewhat biased while just 14.1% viewed them as somewhat unbiased or not at all biased. Some, 2.4%, were unsure.

A large majority, 89.3%, suggested the national media played a very or somewhat strong role in helping to elect President Obama. Just 10.0% suggested the national media played little or no role. Further, 69.9% agreed the national news media are intent on promoting the Obama presidency while 26.5% disagreed. Some, 3.6% were unsure.

Over half of Americans surveyed, 56.4%, said they agreed that the news media are promoting President Obama’s healthcare reform without objective criticism. Another 39.3% disagreed and 4.3% were unsure. Further, a majority, 57.6% of those surveyed agreed that the news media appear to be coordinating efforts to diminish the record of former Alaska Governor, Sarah Palin. One third, 34.6%, disagreed and 7.9% were unsure...

What This Country Needs Right Now...

So I've been kicking around what the best thing would be for the country to do right now to get our economy kick started again. How can we get people working so they can, you know, live - and buy things and pay taxes to get our governments out of hock. Get taxes coming in to pay for all these programs. Hmmm...what can we do to get that unemployment rate back where it belongs - all those states with 10+% unemployment, including California where more than 12% of the population is unemployed...how can we get them back working?


Hmmmm....


Hey! I know! Let's loosen the borders and let in more illegals! Yeah!!!!

Administration Will Cut Border Patrol Deployed on U.S-Mexico Border

Even though the Border Patrol now reports that almost 1,300 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border is not under effective control, and the Department of Justice says that vast stretches of the border are “easily breached,” and the Government Accountability Office has revealed that three persons “linked to terrorism” and 530 aliens from “special interest countries” were intercepted at Border Patrol checkpoints last year, the administration is nonetheless now planning to decrease the number of Border Patrol agents deployed on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Border Patrol Director of Media Relations Lloyd Easterling confirmed this week--as I first reported in my column yesterday--that his agency is planning for a net decrease of 384 agents on the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal 2010, which begins on October 1.

A Department of Homeland Security annual performance review updated by the Obama administration on May 7 said the Border Patrol “plans to move several hundred Agents from the Southwest Border to the Northern Border to meet the FY 2010 staffing requirements, with only a small increase in new agents for the Southwest Border in the same year.”

Easterling said on Tuesday that in fiscal 2009, 17,399 Border Patrol agents have been deployed on the U.S.-Mexico border. In fiscal year 2010, the Border Patrol plans to decrease that by 384 agents, leaving 17,015 deployed along the Mexican frontier. At the same time, the number of Border Patrol agents deployed on the U.S.-Canada border will be increased by 414, from a fiscal 2009 total of 1,798 agents to a fiscal 2010 total of 2,212...

In the May 7 update of its performance review, DHS said the Border Patrol’s goal for fiscal 2009 was to have 815 of the 8,607 miles of border for which the agency is responsible under “effective control.” The review also said the Border Patrol’s goal for fiscal 2010 was to again have 815 miles of border under “effective control,” meaning DHS was not planning to secure a single additional mile of border in the coming year...

The entire U.S.-Mexico border is 1,954 miles long, according to the International Boundary and Water Commission. While 697 of those miles are now under “effective control,” according to the Border Patrol, 1,257 miles are not under “effective control.”...

Mindless

Obama calls Kennedy replacement 'excellent choice'

Ummm...the guy had to agree not to run for the seat and to simply warm the seat and vote a strict party line until they figure out who to have the majority liberal sheep of MA vote to fill the seat. Well, maybe not fill it, it's probably a rather large seat to have supported Kennedy. 'Occupy' the seat? That's better.

A hamburger with a mechanical voting hand would be equally as brilliant a replacement. I'm not sure why they bothered instead of just automatically adding a vote to the Dem column for every matter brought up in the Senate.

Heck, if they could've gotten Trent Lott to agree not to run, propose anything, and vote with Harry Reid every time he would have been an equally wonderful choice.

At least this guy is already tight with the Kennedys, so there shouldn't be any embarrassing audio tapes coming out with him agreeing to give money to them for the seat *coughBurriscough*

Inspiration For The Day

Sometimes you have a little hope for the future. Class act, kid. If you missed it on Yahoo's front page, give it a read.

Oh, Dear

This is what conservatives feared when they spoke out against Obama's 'worship me' speech and lesson plan to school kids - before both were changed (we have to assume the speech was changed since it would not fit with the original lesson plan - therefore when the lesson plan was changed the speech must have been changed, also).

Obama's Healthcare Speech Study Guide

PS. Mr/Ms Anatomy teacher - "health care" is two words.

--

More uh-uh: link and link

The "Magic Bullet" In Front Of Their Faces

I read this story in the Gazette (Parenting the 'magic bullet' to reduce teen pregnancies) today, and a story sort of wrote itself. However, the point seems to have completely eluded Kathleen Morse of the Gazette.

I can pull out just the key parts and make a more logical argument than the people cited in this story...

Teen pregnancy is up again in Schenectady County, rising while the state average continues to fall...

Many schools throughout the state still only teach abstinence. But the Schenectady City School District goes as far as to offer classes in child development and other parenting concerns, and the local Planned Parenthood offers free exams and contraception.

If the involvement of Planned Parenthood, an organization that makes its living off of aborting minority pregnancies, doesn't set off alarm bells, you're not paying attention.

But, setting that aside...how much more obvious does this need to be? A slap in the belly with a wet fish?

The rest of the state is primarily teaching abstinence. Their teen pregnancy rates are going down.

Schenectady offers all sorts of perqs to pregnant and wannabe pregnant teens and offers contraception for free. Their teen pregnancy rates are going up.

Ummmm....can you say "D'uh"?

Apparently not...the state analyzes this data and decides that more contraception classes are the answer. Genius.

The Hybrid Debacle Comes To CDTA

I see the Gazette trumpeting the trumpeting by the CDTA and Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood of the purchase of some hybrid buses.

Great.

Talk about a waste of taxpayer money and more BS from the Obama administration and the greensleeves..."This shows how investing in green transportation not only helps the planet but creates jobs and strengthens our economy."

Right.

We're told they've been buying hybrids since 2005. Yet nowhere in the article do they tell us how much they're "saving" with these buses, monetarily. Why? Because there's pretty much no way they're done paying the hybrid premium.

The buses, they tell us, cost $180,000 more than diesels. They also explain that they get 5 mpg, which is 30% better than the diesels. That means the regular buses get about 3.85 mpg. So that means that the hybrids use 0.2 gal/mile. The diesels use 0.26 gal/mile.

How much is diesel going for...I dunno, let's use a comfortable estimate of $2 per gallon with bulk public pricing, it's probably less than that, but let's say $2.

Let's see if we can herd these cats into something we can work with. To make up the premium they need to save $180,000. Not until that point are the buses saving anyone any money. For every mile that the bus drives it saves 0.06 gallons of fuel. 0.06 gallons of fuel costs 12 cents...$0.12.

Getting an itch between the shoulder blades?

So, how many miles must the bus drive before it becomes economically feasible? Well, every mile it saves $0.12 and you need to make back $180,000 - that means that each of these CDTA buses has to drive about 1.5 MILLION MILES to make back the investment.

"strengthens our economy"?! Riiiiiight. In the same way that crowds of hooligans going around breaking store windows "strengthens our economy" by making store owners spend money replacing those store windows.

1.5 MILLION miles just to pay off the hybrid premium. Are these CDTA buses lasting 1.5 million miles? I have to say, I'm pretty skeptical. How many miles do these buses log a year? They don't say. I dunno, 15,000 40,000 miles? Great...they'll pay off the premium in 100 YEARS 37.5 years!

If you want to argue that they're "better for the environment" (ignoring the battery issues) - well, OK, I won't stop you based on this story...but you've got to have some super ultra giant sized balls to try to claim they're economically beneficial. And, because they're using "stimulus funds"...your grandkids are paying for this foolishness. Unless, of course, they're riding those same buses 100 40 years from now...

Hypocrites

As Glenn Beck, the over-the-top talk show host, has temporarily taken the lead in outing liberal perfidy - I have noticed something that gives us one of those nice demonstrable (there's that word again!) examples of media bias.

If Glenn Beck, as one example of the vast class of "right wing radio" (substitute your favorite vulgarity for this media you cannot crack if you're a liberal), is only popular because he preys on peoples' fears, exploits fears, etc. etc. fears fears fears...then please explain to me why the same people do not go after -

- Jimmy Carter for claiming opposition to Obama is result of racism (aka playing on fears of racism)

- Rep Hank Johnson who made the ludicrous claim that if Joe Wilson was not rebuked for impolitely calling Obama a liar as Obama lied to him and his colleagues: "I guess we'll probably have folks putting on white hoods and white uniforms again and riding through the countryside, intimidating people. That's the logical conclusion if this kind of attitude is not rebuked."

Is there even a word for the kind of hypocrisy exhibited by a press and talking head corps that can dismiss and deride Glenn Beck (who, by the way, just got ACORN largely defunded and defanged by Congress, just in time before the 2010 census) as being nothing more than hawking fears for ratings and attention, and yet speak worshipfully and respectfully and ponder the wisdom of the words of those that offer not a thing to justify unhinged rants preying on fears of racism and the KKK (shouldn't they be talking to Robert Byrd (D) about that?) to get attention?

Seriously. Why are there not calls for the resignation of a man that rounds up every camera he can to claim that the "logical conclusion" to not rebuking an inpolite comment is the KKK retaking the south burning crosses and lyching people? Is what he and his half a million friends on the furthest left crying 'racist!!!!!!' with spittle-flecked lips is not 'preying on fears'...then what is? Pointing out that Obama is inept and surrounded by corrupt communists?

Apparently.

CA Asks Corporations To Bail Out Their Parks

California is soliciting corporate donations of up to $2 million in hopes of keeping its state parks open...

Parks have been struggling since California announced mandatory one-day-a-week furloughs for state employees in March in response to a projected $26 billion budget deficit. Last month, the state increased camping and day-use fees at most parks, but the projected revenue is not enough to stave off closures.

So the parks department is soliciting donations of $500,000 to $2 million from businesses, Harris said.

"We're actively pursuing all the support from the private sector that we can find," Harris said.

"It's a somewhat touchy area," he added. "We're not talking about advertising. We're acutely sensitive to that."

But corporate donors would be recognized in the parks. "We're envisioning recognition of donors similar to what you might see when you go into a museum or a community center," Harris said. "We're proposing offering limited recognition, some simple signs."...

State parks have operated on the financial edge for decades, officials said.

While the number of visitors has risen 41 percent since the late 1970s, staffing has increased 13 percent and spending has dropped from $4.22 per visitor to $3.62...

"We must avoid the denigration of parks or mass advertising," said Caryl Hart, chairwoman of the state Parks and Recreation Commission. "Parks are a solace and refuge from the mass commercialization of society. We have to find a permanent source of funding."

Ummm...yeah...see, it's like this. Even though we've got half again as many visitors we can't actually manage to keep the parks operating. We're like so totally awesome at finances and economic management that we've got all these parks and can't actually pay for them so if you could, like, find it in your cold, greedy corporate hearts to stop buying each other gold private jets and lighting cigars with thousand dollar bills, could you maybe see your way to giving us a few million of your ill-gotten gains you gouged out of the poor people. In return we'll write your name on the wall of one of the comfort station toilet stalls and promise not to take your corporate headquarters by eminent domain to turn into another state park for at least 5 years. Be a friend and pony up, 'k?

The Myth That Won't Die

I guess I shouldn't be surprised...liberals are still going around saying the Supreme Court put Bush in office in 2001 despite the votes in Florida. The AP here rolls out another here to distract attention from the current bewildered kitten occupying the highest office in the world:

The Bush administration separately had the National Security Agency — without warrants — eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for terrorist activity. That controversial program ended before Bush left office.

I'm curious which program, exactly, they're referring to here. Is it the idea that was never implemented? Or was it the program that only "eavesdrop"ped on Americans talking to those outside the country with known or strongly suggested terrorist connections and "others inside the United States" talking to those outside the country with known or strongly suggested terrorist connections to monitor known terrorists and those with strongly suggested ties to terrorists to ensure that known and strongly suspected terrorists weren't actively plotting terrorist attacks?

Sorry, this gets a big ole BS stamp on it, this is nothing more than the baloney discredited years ago about "domestic surveillance" with NSA agents listening to every phone call in the United States hoping to hear terror attacks being plotted. Didn't (and couldn't) happen.

In With The Carbon Pollution, Out With The Heat Trapping Pollution

Breathing was so much easier as a kid. You breathe in, your body takes in the oxygen it needs - you breathe out, your body expels carbon dioxide waste. Well, good luck with that. Now we have to teach our kids that every breath they expel is a discharge of "heat trapping pollution", which, of course, is directly related to the imminent destruction of the entire planet.

Might be time to invest in more psychologists, Obama.

This whole language thing is just out of control. Speaking of 'invest', did I really just hear the Teleprompted Won talking about how we're "investing" in carbon capture? Yeah? So when's that investment going to pay out? Are we going to crack open these carbon vaults in 2045 and scream, "Jackpot!"? The guy couldn't talk straight to America for all the tea in China, our friendly enemy.

Check this report out from an environmental publication:

Say goodbye to "greenhouse gases." Say hello to "carbon pollution" and "heat-trapping emissions."

"We know that our planet's future depends on a global commitment to permanently reduce greenhouse gas pollution," President Obama said yesterday at the U.N. Summit on Climate Change in New York, one of several references to "greenhouse gas pollution" and "carbon pollution" sprinkled throughout his speech.

The president also referred to "carbon pollution" in April, during a much-publicized speech to the National Academy of Sciences, and again in June, in a press conference just before the House voted to pass a broad climate and energy bill. And he's not alone. Top Obama administration science officials, including Energy Secretary Steven Chu and U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, have also adopted similar vocabulary, a subtle linguistic shift in the ongoing climate debate.

In fact, during an hourlong June briefing to launch a major government climate change report, a panel that included White House science adviser John Holdren and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief Jane Lubchenco mentioned greenhouse gases just once -- instead warning about the perils of "heat-trapping gases" or "heat-trapping pollutants."...

More recently, the Obama administration has framed its climate policy as increasing "clean energy" development, a strategy endorsed by Democratic pollsters. "Voters are more energized around the energy debate than the climate change debate," concludes a recent report by public relations firm ecoAmerica, summarizing research by Democratic pollster Celinda Lake and Emory University psychology professor Drew Westen.

The ecoAmerica report also notes that linking climate change to pollution is a "strong approach."...

And as with everything related to climate, the word wars produce their own skeptics.

Myron Ebell, director of energy and global warming policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told E&E that "the cleverest thing that the global warming alarmists have done is to categorize carbon dioxide emissions as pollution, because it's not true."

Ebell is no stranger to the power of words in the climate debate. In 2006, in advance of the release of Al Gore's documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," CEI ran television ads with this memorable tagline: "Carbon dioxide. They call it pollution. We call it life."

But in the end, he said, a different linguistic tussle -- "cap and trade" versus "cap and tax" -- may prove more important as Democrats try to shepherd their climate policy through Congress.

The Obama Who Cried Wolf

If a black person is opposed to socializing health care, and I guarantee some of them are, then is their opposition motivated merely by the fact that Barack Obama is black and they can't accept that a black man is president and a black man ought not to be president?

If not, then, by definition, does that not mean that that black person has substantive (even if not substantial) reasons for opposing the socialization of health care in America? And, if a black person can have substantive reasons for opposing the socialization of health care in America, then does it not stand to reason that a white person could also have substantive reasons for opposing the socialization of health care in America?

If not, then where has my logic failed? Are blacks inherently wired to be able to reason in ways that whites cannot? Are whites unable to reason beyond the color of someone's skin when blacks have such an ability? If my reasoning if faulty, then why did Americans reject socialized health care when white-as-white-can-be Bill Clinton and his all-but-glowing white wife (you know what ah'm talkin'bout) tried to push it down our throats? If my reasoning is faulty, why are Americans demanding that Congress 'read the bill' and pointing out specific clauses in the bills moving through Congress instead of just mindlessly saying, 'No!'? Is it just a cover for their hatred of a black man as president?

Is it that, unlike a black person that can read the bills and find things with which to find fault, they are simply miming the actions of a non-blinded-by-race black person and pretending they oppose the bill on the same grounds on which that black person opposes it - but really it's just because more than half the country viciously hates black people to the extend that they are in near apoplexy that a blackish man is president - despite the fact that many of them voted for that very blackish man to be president?

If opposition is simply a sign of racism, then how do you prove it when logic dictates otherwise?

**

We all know the answer. Crying 'racism!' is merely intended to end the debate (Who, exactly is afraid to discuss race in America, AG Holder? Conservatives or liberals crying 'racist' more than Peter ever cried 'wolf'?). It's supposed to shut up the opposition.

But those days are over. The townspeople are sick of being called out by Peter's (or Al's or Jesse's or Maureen's) wails. They know there is no wolf in their house or that of their neighbor. Sure, there are some white wolves out there, here and there, still. But they're not in charge, they're not the vocal opposition, they're as despised by one side as the other. They know why they oppose socializing health care and they know it's not because the project's cheerleader is blackish. And I won't even go into the wolves of other colors at this time.

Of course, Obama's only half-black. Is it OK to oppose the white half of him?

Or maybe we only oppose half of his policies. For example, I support his policy of continuing to kill terrorist leaders by "bolts from the blue", aka missiles fired from Predators. Therefore, before anyone tells you what I am thinking, I will tell you what I think. I think that's his black half doing that. I support that. Socializing health care, which has been done in lily-white Scandanavia and very white Europe and Canada is a white thing. Therefore that must be Obama's white half. Therefore, when I oppose it, I am opposing merely Obama's white half.

There. Satisfactory?

Time to call off the hunters, Mr. President. There's no wolf. Stop tacitly allowing the hunt to continue. It's 2009 and a blackish man is president, elected over a liberal old white veteran guy.

Apollo Alliance - Remember That Name

IBD pulls back the curtain a bit on the radical Apollo Alliance and their current role in Obama's government:

The Labor Department reported Friday that 42 states lost more jobs than they gained in August, and that 14 plus Washington, D.C., reported unemployment rates of 10% or more.

Michigan's rate rose to 15.2%, highest in the nation. Nevada, represented by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, is second with 13.2%. California, home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is tied for fourth with Oregon at 12.2%.

Clearly, the stimulus bill that no congressman read is not working. As it turns out, no congressman may have written it either. It's largely the creation of a coalition of leftist organizations called the Apollo Alliance, whose primary interests are saving the Earth, environmental justice and redistributing wealth. They are not friends of job-creating capitalism.

On Apollo's Web site, Sen. Reid, whose state also leads in foreclosures, is quoted praising the group of which former green czar Van Jones was a board member.

"We've talked about moving forward on these ideas for decades," Reid is quoted as saying. "The Apollo Alliance has been an important factor in helping us develop and execute a strategy that makes great progress on these goals and in motivating the public to support them."

Jones, the former Oakland, Calif., community organizer and self-avowed communist, was on the board of the Apollo Alliance when he accepted the position in the Obama administration as green jobs czar...

Wade Rathke, founder of Acorn, was also on the Apollo board, as is Gerald Hudson, vice president of the Service Employees International Union, which provides the shock troops in the movement to pass government-run health care.

John Podesta, former chief of staff to President Clinton and now president of the leftist Center for American Progress, also sits on the Apollo board. Each day his group sends out talking points to the left side of the blogosphere. Mark Lloyd, diversity czar at the Federal Communications Commission, was a senior fellow at CAP.

According to Kerpen, the Apollo Alliance put together a draft stimulus bill in 2008 that included almost everything in the final $787 billion package. Little did the voters know that the congressmen and senators they would elect would pass a bill written by activist outsiders.

Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of all this is that an even more radical Jones (no relation) has a relationship with the Apollo Alliance. Jeff Jones was a domestic terrorist in the '60s and a fugitive from justice throughout the '70s who, with Bill Ayers, helped found the Weather Underground in 1969.

Ayers, Jones and the Weathermen participated in the violent Days of Rage riots in Chicago and a nationwide anti-government bombing campaign. Like Ayers, Jeff Jones has no regrets, saying: "To this day, we still, lots of us, including me, still think it was the right thing to do."

Today, Jones finds himself director of the Apollo Alliance's New York affiliate and a consultant to the national group. One of his clients is the Workforce Development Institute, a union-controlled organization.

No Need To Panic, Georgia

Toddler among 6 killed as storms drench Southeast

Surging floodwaters ripped apart a west Georgia trailer home, drowning a 2-year-old boy swept from his father's arms. In Atlanta, stranded motorists scrambled to the tops of their car as waters rose on one of the city's busiest highways. To the north, crews worked furiously to shore up a levee holding a surging river back from an isolated town.

Storms that pounded the Southeast on Monday turned sleepy creeks into rivers, and rivers into raging floodwaters. Six people were killed across the region, including five in the Atlanta area. Aerial shots showed schools, football fields, even entire neighborhoods submerged by the deluge, sending some unlucky residents scurrying for higher ground.

"It's a mess all over," said Lisa Janak of the Georgia Emergency Management Agency...

The storm came after days of rain pounded most of the region and saturated the soil. Some parts of Georgia have had more than 20 inches since Friday.

"Any rain that fell has no place to go," said Georgia climatologist David Stooksbury. "This rainfall on top of already saturated soils really made the situation worse."...

To the northwest, crews in the tiny Georgia town of Trion worked to shore up a levee breached by the Chattooga River and in danger of failing. The town evacuated more than 1,500 residents, and Red Cross workers quickly set up an emergency shelter able to help hundreds nearby.

"It's a grave situation for us," said Lamar Canada, Chattooga County's emergency management director.

Most of the dead were motorists trying to navigate the treacherous roadways. Seydi Burciaga, a 39-year-old woman from Georgia's Gwinnett County, was found dead in her vehicle after it was swept off a road by flooding, said Gwinnett County Fire Capt. Thomas Rutledge.

But the surging waters weren't just dangerous for drivers. A 22-year-old Alabama man, James Dale Leigh, drowned when a pond's rain-soaked bank collapsed beneath him, said Etowah County Sheriff Todd Entrekin.

Among the hardest-hit areas was Georgia's Douglas County, where as much as a foot of rain fell Monday. Flooding there was blamed for the deaths of a man and two women in three separate situations, said county spokesman Wes Tallon.

Emergency officials were often forced to improvise to rescue dozens of people stranded in their homes and cars.

"We're using everything we can get our hands on," Tallon said. "Everything from boats to Jet Skis to ropes to ladders."...

The forecast held little good news for Georgia: Another round of storms was expected to move in Tuesday from the west.

"Don't remind me," Carroll County Emergency Management Director Tim Padgett said of the forecast. "That's the worst news we could hear."

Fine. I'll say it.

Where's FEMA?

Where's Obama?

Oh, yeah. That's right. He's going to be on Letterman trying to sell his latest pig in a poke - socialized health care - to a public rejecting it as they rejected it when Clinton tried it (that was because of racism, too!).

So, not to worry, southerners. Flooding, mass devastation of infrastructure...b'ah. These are no challenge to Great Leader, just tune in and see who Captain Teleprompter insults like a 4th grader when forced to improvise on a comedy talk show, further proving how utterly bereft of 'gravitas' one can be and still fool enough of the people enough of the time.

Cheer up, it might start raining again, but maybe he'll insult crippled country singers or something like when he went on national TV to yuk it up cracking fat jokes about women while people were dying from ice storms in the midwest, wondering where the feds were. That helped...right?

The Next Investigation

As soon as the authorities wrap up start their ACORN investigation, and their 'why did the AG throw out clear voter intimidation cases against Black Panthers' investigation, and the 'why is Rangel the massive tax cheat still writing tax laws' investigation, they can get cracking on the 'why is the White House coordinating with the NEA, specifically NEA members that just got bundles of cash, and having them produce support for the President?' investigation.

This one's just heating up.

Personally, I don't know how you get much more self-incriminating than this:

“So bear with us as we learn the language so that we can speak to each other safely…”

"safely"? Like, so they don't get beaten up by drug dealers or bullies? No..."safely" so they end up putting self-incriminating evidence on a wiretap.

Not A Clue

It's bad enough that the Obamas have no clue how to do the big stuff right - totally bad enough. But their utter inability to do any of the little stuff right just makes a mockery of the Americans they duped into putting them into office after the right tried for months to warn them a failed community organizer with not a scrap of executive experience was not a fit choice for the chief executive of the most powerful nation in the history of the planet. "Overcharge" buttons...snubs of our allies...childish and moronic state gifts...the most inept vetting of appointees in the history of our nation...insulting Special Olympians and cracking fat jokes about singers on national TV...

wearing gaudy party frocks to a solemn ceremony awarding a Medal of Honor posthumously??!!

Obama: It depends on what the meaning of 'tax' is, racist!

Dang! George Snuffalupugus raked The Won over the coals. Looks like somebody just paid back some debt to the Clintons!

But in our most spirited exchange, the President refused to accept the argument that a mandate to buy health insurance is equivalent to a tax.

Here it is:

STEPHANOPOULOS: You were against the individual mandate...

OBAMA: Yes.

STEPHANOPOULOS: ...during the campaign. Under this mandate, the government is forcing people to spend money, fining you if you don’t. How is that not a tax?

OBAMA: Well, hold on a second, George. Here -- here's what's happening. You and I are both paying $900, on average -- our families -- in higher premiums because of uncompensated care. Now what I've said is that if you can't afford health insurance, you certainly shouldn't be punished for that. That's just piling on. If, on the other hand, we're giving tax credits, we've set up an exchange, you are now part of a big pool, we've driven down the costs, we've done everything we can and you actually can afford health insurance, but you've just decided, you know what, I want to take my chances. And then you get hit by a bus and you and I have to pay for the emergency room care, that's...

STEPHANOPOULOS: That may be, but it's still a tax increase.

OBAMA: No. That's not true, George. The -- for us to say that you've got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase. What it's saying is, is that we're not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore than the fact that right now everybody in America, just about, has to get auto insurance. Nobody considers that a tax increase. People say to themselves, that is a fair way to make sure that if you hit my car, that I'm not covering all the costs.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But it may be fair, it may be good public policy...

OBAMA: No, but -- but, George, you -- you can't just make up that language and decide that that's called a tax increase. Any...

STEPHANOPOULOS: Here’s the...

OBAMA: What -- what -- if I -- if I say that right now your premiums are going to be going up by 5 or 8 or 10 percent next year and you say well, that's not a tax increase; but, on the other hand, if I say that I don't want to have to pay for you not carrying coverage even after I give you tax credits that make it affordable, then...

STEPHANOPOULOS: I -- I don't think I'm making it up. Merriam Webster's Dictionary: Tax -- "a charge, usually of money, imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes."

OBAMA: George, the fact that you looked up Merriam's Dictionary, the definition of tax increase, indicates to me that you're stretching a little bit right now. Otherwise, you wouldn't have gone to the dictionary to check on the definition. I mean what...

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, no, but...

OBAMA: ...what you're saying is...

STEPHANOPOULOS: I wanted to check for myself. But your critics say it is a tax increase.

OBAMA: My critics say everything is a tax increase. My critics say that I'm taking over every sector of the economy. You know that. Look, we can have a legitimate debate about whether or not we're going to have an individual mandate or not, but...

STEPHANOPOULOS: But you reject that it’s a tax increase?

OBAMA: I absolutely reject that notion.

Question 1: Will Snuffy be berated as a racist tomorrow by the rest of the press?

Question 2: If you're "stretching" by using the textbook definition of something, then what the hell is Obama doing to the meaning of words?

Unanimous Decision At The Gazette

Well, it's unanimous - bigoted columnist Dan DiNocola agrees with bigoted columnist Carl Strock - opposition to Barack Obama = racism.

Nice of them to clear that up for us.

Sweating The Small Stuff

Sitting at a red light the other day I noticed that the gas station on the corner had dropped their price of regular by a penny. 'Good,' I thought, since I sometimes buy gas there.

But, as the light is a long one, I got to thinking. Specifically, I was thinking about the price at other stations.

Can you think of any other commodity, any service, in America that drives consumers to the same lengths as gasoline in 'chasing a bargain'? We'll drive all over town, go out of our way, to get to the station that's a penny cheaper than the other guy. We'll go 'the long way' to pass by the station that's a nickel less. We'll hope the car will keep going on fumes rather than stop at the only station for miles because their prices are sky-high (because they're the only station for miles).

For the first time I actually decided to see if it's worth it.

I figure that, without extra fill-ups for trips and such, which we can't really count because we're often out of our 'territory' and not able to compare and shop around anyway, I get gas about every two weeks on average. Just as a round number. So I'm filling up 26 times per year at an average of, let's say, 13 gallons.

So, again just using commuting and driving around gas, let's say I'm buying 338 gallons of gas per year. I don't think that's so very atypical. As they say, your mileage may vary ;)

Is it worth it for me to go out of my way to save a penny a gallon? I'd save $3.38 - a 12 pack of Coke.

But what about a more reasonable sum - going across the street where one guy is 3 cents cheaper than his competitor? I'd save a whopping $10.14 over the course of an entire year. The price of an entree at Applebees. That's it.

If the only choice is between two stations, sure, why not go to the one that's cheaper? But is it worth it to go out of my way for 3 or even 5 cents cheaper gas?

At the end of the day, or the year...no. It really isn't.

Being thrifty, I like to think that I'm making the smart choice by skipping this guy and going to that one to save a couple cents per gallon. But it turns out that it really isn't, using my own personal economics (gas consumption, finances, etc) it is not worth my time driving to another gas station instead of just filling up at whatever reasonably priced station I'm near when I need gas.

Now, of course none of this means that I should stop at that station near NYC that's selling gas for, on average, 60 cents more than anywhere else. I mean, that's nearly a year's worth of extra spending on just one fill up! I just mean in day-to-day driving - should I go to the Stewarts or drive a bit out of my way to the Sunoco? Or, vice-versa.

No. It isn't worth my time. Spending time finding the best price on a laptop, alternatively, is worth the time. In one swell foop I can save myself $100-$150 smackers. That is time well spent. When my book of days is closed, time well spent saving on that laptop will pay for a decade of just getting gas where I am and then getting where I'm going.

I still believe in pinching every penny, but time is money, too. And I think my time is worth more than sweating the pennies on gas every 2 weeks.

Interesting. To me at least.

Your Random Saturday

I slack off for a week, you pay the price with a long Random Saturday :)

Michelle Malkin explains to the liberals in and our of the press about the speech that was and the speech that wasn't:

This same "Do Something" ethos infected the U.S. Department of Education teachers guides accompanying the announcement of Obama's speech -- until late Wednesday, that is, when the White House removed some of the activist language exhorting students to come up with ways to "help the president." Education Secretary Arne Duncan had disseminated the material directly to principals across the country -- circumventing elected school board members and superintendents now facing neighborhood revolts.

O's bureaucrats can whitewash offending language from the Sept. 8 speech-related documents, but they can't remove the taint of left-wing radicalism that informs Obama and his education mentors.

Jonah Goldberg claims there's a communications breakdown:

Funny how the people who run the most sophisticated communication operation in the history of the presidency keep concluding that their difficulties stem from their inability to get their message out and never from what their message actually is.

And so, rather than change the substance of the message, they're grabbing an even bigger megaphone: an address to a joint session of Congress. Three out of the last four presidents gave just one address to a joint session of Congress, and all but one of them reserved such occasions for major international events, like a war or, in Ronald Reagan's case, a breakthrough with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Only Bill Clinton used such a venue for a domestic priority: health care reform.

Thomas Sowell's common sense on display:

One plain fact should outweigh all the words of Barack Obama and all the impressive trappings of the setting in which he says them: He tried to rush Congress into passing a massive government takeover of the nation's medical care before the August recess-- for a program that would not take effect until 2013!

Whatever President Obama is, he is not stupid. If the urgency to pass the medical care legislation was to deal with a problem immediately, then why postpone the date when the legislation goes into effect for years-- more specifically, until the year after the next Presidential election?

Rebecca Hagelin has another pretty good column about the one-sided gender wars:

As a mom of two sons and a youth leader I have seen how boys cringe when television shows depict boys as crude and stupid while the girls are always smart and powerful. I've experienced their confusion when girls snub them for opening the door. One day I observed the pained looks on the faces of male high school students when a teacher explained that a major assignment would be to watch a movie of their choice and write a paper on how women in the film are discriminated against...

I've also observed on countless occasions a minor, but powerful, display of how ours is quickly becoming a culture where men are having trouble being men: females struggling alone to lift a heavy suitcase into the overhead compartment on a plane all the while surrounded by men who pretend they don't see.

I usually hate to help promote this turd toad by even mentioning his name (I also refuse to watch any pre-game, mid-game, or post-game football coverage he's involved in and am not the only one), but Brent Bozell makes too start a point to ignore here as it is so very representative of so much of the hypocritical left:

Olbermann is outdoing himself on the hypocrisy meter. This holier-than-thou speech comes from the man who said President Bush "needlessly killed 3,584 of our family and friends and neighbors," and "urinated on the Constitution," a man he yelled at to "Shut the hell up!" He attacked Bush for "panoramic and murderous deceit" and yelled, "You're a fascist! Get them to print you a T-shirt with fascist on it! ...You, sir, have no place in a government of the people, by the people, for the people." He suggested Bush led "a government more dangerous to our liberty than is the enemy it claims to protect us from." Bush "imposed subjugation and called it freedom," and his policies "would constitute the beginning of the end of America."

And now he says conservatives are too nasty.

Olbermann is not alone in objecting to the American people saying anything of a critical nature about Obama. CNBC's John Harwood suggested parents who criticized Obama's school speech were stupid: "The biggest danger to kids in this whole thing is that a lot of the parents complaining aren't smart enough to raise them very effectively." (He suggested they're racists, too.) CNN's Roland Martin simply called anti-Obama parents "insane."

Lovely. They attacked tea-party protesters as "tea baggers" and town hall questioners as "quarrelsome masses"; the media now insist the school-speech critics are "insane."

It's not insane to wonder why our schools should be directed by the government to discuss how the Dear Leader is inspiring the young, and how the Dear Leader can be helped. Can you imagine how Keith Olbermann would have covered this presidential speech to children if the honor-the-president lesson plan had been sent to principals by that "fascist" Bush administration?

Jonah Goldberg on my favorite subject - education:

Good teachers aren't paid nearly enough, and bad teachers are kept around, draining budgets. Education bureaucracies siphon off vast resources better spent on classrooms. For example, in 2007, the Washington, D.C., school district ranked third in overall spending among the 100 largest school districts in the nation (about $13,000 per student) but last in terms of money spent on teachers and instruction. More than half of every education dollar went to administrators.

President Obama might be a hypocritical liberal for sending his kids to private school, but he's a good parent for it...

Tenure's defenders point to horror stories from half a century ago, as if getting rid of tenure would automatically subject teachers to political witch hunts and sexual discrimination. We now have civil rights laws and other employee protections.

Also, to listen to teachers unions, you'd think incompetent teachers are mythical creatures, less likely to be encountered than Bigfoot and unicorns. No wonder that from 1990 to 1999, the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest in the country with 30,000 tenured teachers, fired exactly one teacher.

Ben Shapiro on Van Jones exposing White House:

On Monday, Sept. 7, 2009, President Obama's hand-picked "green jobs czar," Van Jones, resigned. It was a week too late to prevent all the revelations about Jones: his admitted agreement with communist philosophy; his membership in the 9/11 "truther" movement; his racist views on environmental policy (he accused "white polluters and white environmentalists" of "steering poison into the people of color's communities"); his ridiculous ideas about school violence ("You've never seen a Columbine done by a black child … a black kid might shoot another black kid. He's not going to shoot up the whole school"); his unmitigated hatred for President George W. Bush (he compared Bush to a crack-pipe-licking cocaine addict, and accused him of using the American flag to "beat and whip and lynch" political opponents)...

We were told during the 2008 campaign that President Obama was the most technologically able candidate in our history. The Obama campaign ran commercials targeting John McCain's ignorance of the Internet. Obama was so connected that he wanted to keep using his BlackBerry from the Oval Office.

And yet he couldn't get a single member of his administration to do a simple Google search on Van Jones...

The Van Jones story isn't about another radical federal employee or even about President Obama's addiction to executive authority (he has appointed over 30 czars with whom he meets regularly, but he has held just one cabinet meeting since his inauguration)...

Ann's still snarking on health care lies:

(12) Only national health care can provide "coverage that will stay with you whether you move, change your job or lose your job" -- as Obama said in a New York Times op-ed.

This is obviously a matter of great importance to all Americans, because, with Obama's economic policies, none of us may have jobs by year's end.

The only reason you can't keep -- or often obtain -- health insurance if you move or lose your job now is because of ... government intrusion into the free market.

You will notice that if you move or lose your job, you can obtain car and home insurance, hairdressers, baby sitters, dog walkers, computer technicians, cars, houses, food and every other product and service not heavily regulated by the government. (Although it does become a bit harder to obtain free office supplies.)

Federal tax incentives have created a world in which the vast majority of people get health insurance through their employers. Then to really screw ordinary Americans, the tax code actually punishes people who don't get their health insurance through an employer by denying individuals the tax deduction for health insurance that their employers get.

Meanwhile, state governments must approve the insurers allowed to operate in their states, while mandating a list of services -- i.e. every "medical" service with a powerful lobby -- which is why Joe and Ruth Zelinsky, both 88, of Paterson, N.J., are both covered in case either one of them ever needs a boob job.

If Democrats really wanted people to be able to purchase health insurance when they move or lose a job as easily as they purchase car insurance and home insurance (or haircuts, dog walkers, cars, food, computers), they could do it in a one-page bill lifting the government controls and allowing interstate commerce in health insurance. This is known as "allowing the free market to operate."

Interesting item from Ross Mackenzie:

If you're a locavore, you believe generally that buying local reduces the distance food travels -- and thereby helps save the planet. Texas State Professor James McWilliams, author of "Just Food," offers some food for contrary thought. "To choose a locally grown apple over an apple trucked in from across the country might seem easy," he says. "But the decision ignores economies of scale....A shipper sending a truck with 2,000 apples over 2,000 miles would consume the same amount of fuel per apple as a local farmer who takes a pickup 50 miles to sell 50 apples at his stall at the green market. The critical measure here is not food miles but apples per gallon."

I'm thinking there's more to it than that...plus, lots of times local food just plain tastes better. Still, you get his point.

Unless something really interesting comes up, I hope I can put the Van Jones debacle to rest with this wrap up from Robert Knight:

The official line they’ve all swallowed (or at least use) is that poor Mr. Obama must have been misinformed about Mr. Jones. On Sept. 7, the Washington Post ran this headline exculpating Obama: “In Adviser’s Resignation, Vetting Bites Obama.” Yeah, that’s the ticket. The article quotes an anonymous “White House official” who says that “Jones’s past was not studied as intensively as that of other advisers because of his relatively low rank.”

A far more likely explanation is that the Obama team knew full well what Jones was about and saw no problem. As a disciple of radical community organizer Saul Alinsky, why would Barack recoil from a guy who was using Alinsky’s methods to a T? Besides, it’s clear the White House was thrilled with Jones’ past. Fox’s Glenn Beck ran tape of White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett boasting that they had been watching Jones’ activities for years and finally “were so delighted to recruit him into the White House.”...

Even the drive-by media have finally reported the ugly facts about Jones’ involvement with the “truthers,” and as a founder of the now-disbanded Bay Area communist group Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM).

The Post delicately describes STORM as having “Marxist roots.” Yes, and trunk and branches and fruit. Reclaiming Revolution, a history of the organization published in 2004, relates that it was an outgrowth of the early ’90s group Roots Against War (RAW), which “laid the groundwork for the next decade of revolutionary politics among young people of color in the Bay Area.” (p. 5) A quick analysis is available on the website of Reformed evangelical conservative David Westerfield. After RAW disbanded in 1992, the activists reformed as STORM in 1994, with “a political commitment to the fundamental ideas of Marxism-Leninism” (p. 51). STORM disbanded in December 2002.

Contrast the utter lack of interest in this juicy story with the Washington Post’s multiple-article obsession, editorial and cartoons over a research paper advocating Christian views of public policy written by Virginia GOP gubernatorial candidate Robert McDonnell in 1989 – twenty years ago. The Post sure has a nose for scandal. Are Woodward and Bernstein embarrassed yet?

Jonah Goldberg's all over the place here, but touches on a number of important issues:

Scenario A: The supposedly inept president of the United States carefully planned and orchestrated the worst terrorist attack on American soil in our history. Though "only" 3,000 people died, the plan was to kill many more by simultaneously attacking the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and either the U.S. Capitol or the White House itself on Sept. 11, 2001.

Hundreds of people, including personnel from myriad agencies, participated. According to some versions of Scenario A, explosives were placed at the World Trade Center to ensure success. In other versions, all of "the Jews" working there were tipped off by some phone bank run by the Mossad. In every version, however, the U.S. government was in on it, and everyone involved kept the biggest secret in American history.

Then, there's Scenario B: An ambitious and extremely clever politician, who has at best been selectively forthcoming about large chunks of his youth, lied about his place of birth so he could be eligible for the presidency.

To further this scheme, he has arranged for the full and/or original version of his birth certificate to remain under lock and key. At most, a handful of supporters and lawyers are in on the whole thing.

Now, which one is more believable? For the record, I don't believe either. But it seems to me the "birther" hypothesis is vastly more plausible than the "truther" hypothesis. Politicians lie to advance their careers. You can look it up. Whole governments rarely orchestrate incredibly complex acts of physics, logistics and mass murder all the while pinning guilt on others (who boast that they acted alone)...

In July, the popular left-wing Web site FiredogLake couldn't let go of the birther bit. One post -- titled "The Republican Party is the Birther Party, and it's dragging them down" -- made much of the fact that 28 percent of Republicans, according to one poll, do not believe that Obama is a natural-born citizen. This week, the site's founder, Jane Hamsher, was disgusted that Jones was "thrown under the bus," even though he subscribed to trutherism, a view that "35 (percent) of Democrats believed as of 2007."

Got that? Belief in an implausible conspiracy is a cancer on the GOP. Even greater belief in an even more implausible conspiracy is proof that it's mainstream.

Apologies for Jones and trutherism appeared instantly on the sites of the left-wing flagship magazines The Nation, The New Republic and elsewhere. The New York Times and Newsweek deliberately distorted what the truthers believe in order to make Jones look more reasonable and his critics more unreasonable. The Financial Times actually reported that Jones resigned for criticizing how the GOP majority had run Congress.

But mostly, the mainstream press changed the subject to how the right is paranoid and vaguely unpatriotic for opposing Obama's speech to schools Tuesday, despite the fact that most conservatives and Republicans didn't protest the speech once the Department of Education's controversially politicized lesson plans were withdrawn.

No quote, but in a column David Limbaugh ask a very interesting question for the faithful - If Obama only plans on signing up 5% of the population for his health care plan - why has he agreed that it is his Waterloo?

David Limbaugh brings down the hammer:

Memo to the Democratic leadership threatening to censure Rep. Joe Wilson if he doesn't publicly apologize on the House floor for calling President Barack Obama a liar on that floor: You don't have the moral authority to be demanding apologies.

Not only has their own decorum in that very chamber been abysmal at times, such as when they booed President George W. Bush during his 2005 State of the Union address; they do much worse damage every week to this nation and its institutions than Joe Wilson conceivably could have done with his temporary breach of decorum...

Unlike Rep. Wilson, these offending Democrats have never apologized for their outrages. Did Rep. John Murtha apologize for prejudging and slandering our battlefield Marines who were later vindicated? Did Sen. Harry Reid ever apologize for calling President Bush a liar? Al Gore? John Kerry? Has suspected tax evader Rep. Charles Rangel apologized for his conduct while devising new ways to confiscate even higher taxes from honest, hardworking Americans who actually pay their taxes?

Did Sen. Dick Durbin retract the substance of his remarks in comparing Gitmo to the gulag? Did House leader Nancy Pelosi repent for defaming the CIA?...

On a related matter, Democrats, in order to bolster their credibility to attack President Bush on Iraq, pretended for years to be war hawks on Afghanistan. Iraq, they said, was an ill-conceived Bush-Cheney diversion from the war on terror. The real war, they said, was Afghanistan, where al-Qaida trained for its 9/11 attacks. But I could have sworn I just read this past week that Nancy Pelosi said, "I don't think there's a great deal of support for sending more troops to Afghanistan, in the country or in the Congress." I guess Dems were just kidding, then, when they bludgeoned President Bush for soft-pedaling "the good war," huh?

Then there's the little matter of Social Security, the subject that gave rise to Democrats' unceremoniously booing President Bush on the House floor. Though Democrats were so concerned about a looming Social Security crisis in 2000 that Bill Clinton and Al Gore demanded Social Security funds be placed in a "lockbox," they caught partisan amnesia when President Bush tried to reform it five years later.

The Chicago Tribune reported Feb. 3, 2005, that Democrats "plan to stand in the cold and excoriate the president, accusing him of dismantling a 70-year-old promise to senior citizens." The beloved Sen. Harry Reid went so far as to say: "Social Security is not in crisis. It's a crisis the president's created, period." Do you suppose an apology will be forthcoming from Reid, though, now that government-revised estimates project the insolvency of Social Security to occur even sooner than expected?

I can only hope that if the Dems do this a Republican will have the balls to introduce a bill censuring every member of the Democrat party that was in Congress when they booed Bush using identical bill language. Make the Democrats vote that one down as they vote to censure Wilson. MAKE them expose their hypocrisy.

John Hawkins has a link-filled column exposing the President's lies (how come no one on the left or in the press was ever able to present a single item, let alone write one link-filled column after another, proving that Bush lied? think about it), I didn't relink his links, click through for them yourselves - just because it's Saturday is no reason to be lazy :P :

After Wilson's outburst, liberals, in and out of the mainstream media, rushed to tell us that it was Wilson, not Obama who was wrong. Why, there was simply no way that illegals would be covered!

But then, a funny thing happened: the Senate started working to close the loophole that Wilson pointed out. You know, the one that allowed illegal aliens to get coverage. Soon thereafter, the White House quietly followed the Senate's lead and started backing that provision.

Meanwhile, the liberal netroots, which had almost unanimously said Joe Wilson was the liar, started yelling at the top of their lungs that the bill shouldn't be changed to fix a problem they claimed didn't exist 24 hours earlier...

1) The President is working with Republicans: Obama has refused to meet with Republican leaders on health care since April.

2) Republicans haven't suggested a plan for health care: Republicans have actually submitted 35 plans...

4) Medicare won't be cut to fund this health care bill: Actually, there are $500 billion in cuts to Medicare planned to help pay for this bill.

5) The health care plan won't add "one dime to our deficits either now or in the future." There is simply no bill that fits that description winding its way through Congress. According to the neutral Congressional Budget Office, the House bill adds $220 billion to the deficit over 10 years -- and even those numbers rely on very unlikely streams of revenue coming into the program. Moreover, the CBO only estimates numbers 10 years out. Over the long haul, all evidence points to costs skyrocketing into the stratosphere just as Social Security and Medicare have over time...

9) This bill won't lead to rationing of health care and people being denied life saving operations: Of course, it will. Barack Obama himself has even alluded to it with his famous, "Maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller" quip. In nations like Canada and Britain, long waits for surgeries and people being denied proven life saving operations for financial reasons is commonplace. How can anyone believe that we're going to copy their system and not have the same result?

Cal Thomas on hypocrisy:

The Senate confirmation last Thursday of Cass Sunstein as the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget means Sunstein will have the power to decide what Congress means by the laws it passes. Sunstein has written books and given lectures in which he says that animals deserve lawyers to argue for their "rights" and that the Second Amendment does not grant an absolute right to keep and bear arms. He also has said he wants to ban hunting. Sunstein's defenders say those statements were simply academic exercises and would not be implemented as policy in his new position. Tell that to Bob McDonnell, candidate for governor of Virginia, who has been smeared by Democrats for a thesis he wrote more than 20 years ago in which he took "academic" positions his detractors say were anti-women's rights.

Tom Tancredo explains why Joe Wilson was right:

Whether or not he breached House decorum, Joe’s actions were both true and effective. Obama admitted as much by proposing changes to the bill to limit illegal aliens’ access to Obamacare...

When Obama made his speech, there were a number of glaring and intentional loopholes to the Democrat’s pretend ban of illegal aliens in the House healthcare bill HR 3200.

Virtually every single means tested government program requires that applicants are screened by the “Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements” [SAVE] program to ensure that they are not illegal aliens.

But this provision is not included in HR 3200. This is not an oversight. Republicans twice introduced Amendments to require the SAVE program be implemented, and it was voted down by the same Democrats who hypocritically added the clause that ostensibly barred illegals.

Furthermore, the bill does not say anything about illegal aliens not being able to participate in the taxpayer subsidized “Health Insurance Exchange” program. The Congressional Research Service reported that it “does not contain any restrictions on non-citizens—whether legally or illegally present, or in the United States temporarily or permanently—participating in the Exchange”

Larry Elder with a 'd'uh' moment:

Mr. Carter, please ponder the following question. Why, in 1993, did "racist" conservatives oppose President Clinton's attempt at government seizure of health care? Clinton, remember, was -- and remains -- white.

I question Marvin Olasky's timing :) (I just started on Miracles by CS Lewis):

A convention of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) in August voted to ordain as clergy noncelibate homosexuals. No severe weather warnings were in place, and no tornado had come into downtown Minneapolis for a long time—at least 90 years, according to one archivist. Nevertheless, as delegates met, a tornado damaged the roof of the Minneapolis convention center where they were meeting and knocked the cross off the host church next door.