September 3, 2012
By L.E. Ikenga
American Thinker:
As opposed to the 2008 election, which had many frustrated and emotionally charged voters dreaming up a new America with a historic presidential candidate leading the charge, the 2010 midterms had people doing the exact opposite. In 2010, a majority of Americans stopped dreaming and started to face reality. America was accelerating toward an irreversible and all-encompassing decline. The path envisioned by the president and his supporters for a radically changed United States was starting to look like a dead end. America was breaking down.
The year 2010 was also when essayist Walter Russell Mead began to ascribe many aspects of this breakdown to the failures within what he called the Blue Social Model. His prognostications were based on what he saw as the disintegration of core American institutions and ideas, which developed and flourished under the post-Second World War industrial system. According to Mr. Mead, the model had reached its expiration date; and among other things, what has followed is a stagnant and deeply indebted economy, crumbling social institutions, and controlled yet massive citizen dissent. Our bona fides as an advanced industrial democracy were therefore being challenged both domestically and internationally. He might have been right.
If he was right, then Mr. Mead's argument should have immediately raised some major concerns. If for the past sixty years our core institutions and ideas have, as Mr. Mead had put it, "rested on the commanding heights of a few monopolistic and oligopolistic American firms and a government with runaway entitlement programs," then we should have been asking ourselves more essential questions about the nature of our history and society. One of those questions should have been: when did America stop being a serious democracy?
But if Mr. Mead's conclusion should not have warranted such a question, and though by increasingly unqualified means we can still call ourselves a serious democracy, then we obviously have another more fundamental problem on our hands.
Bootleg Blackberries, Fake iPads, and a Fabricated Democracy
The Blue Social Model theory was articulate and intelligent, but it did not identify the central problem facing American society. It did, however, do a good job of camouflaging it.
That problem has now become an epidemic, and it is this: a citizenry, both young and old, whose members have become increasingly ignorant and apathetic towards the basic pillars of history and civic culture upon which their democracy has been built. This is why Mr. Mead was able to draw attention to a false target, which marked the real crisis as the "accelerating collapse of blue government," and get away with it.
Essentially, the American masses -- now not unlike the masses in various parts of the democratic underdeveloped world -- have little to no understanding of how genuine democracies are supposed to work, and they don't care.
Instead, they identify their democracy not in terms of the revolutionary political ideas and events of Western civilization, but in terms of the following new norms: government-backed credit systems that motivate compulsive consumerism by encouraging people to live well beyond their means; unempirical race theories that promote thoughtless, face-value diversity and multicultural relativism within the body politic; and a mainstreamed, age-inclusive addiction towards insipid web 2.0 entertainments that some have said is pushing our society towards an era of digital serfdom.
In other words, democracy in America now means being able to purchase a million-dollar house when you cannot afford it and having the power to open a Facebook account when you are eight years old.
In that the roots of this kind of perverted democracy are not grounded in watershed documents such as the Twelve Tables of Roman Law or The English Bill of Rights of 1689, it should come as no surprise that today, a petty electronics trader hustling fake iPads and bootleg BlackBerries on a chaotic street steaming with fresh sewer in Port Harcourt, Nigeria should feel comfortable in equating his democracy with ours. Based on what the trader understands, his fifty-year-old, post-imperial democracy is supposed to be based on the promise of the Blue Social Model. But what he does not understand is that our two-hundred-plus-year-old anti-imperial democracy is not supposed to be.
And so, although it is our democracy that has produced an environment for all types of industry and real innovation to flourish, and although his democracy has produced the exact opposite -- one so corrupt and replete with ironies too incredible to believe (including the lack of internet for the fraudulent gadgets that he sells) -- both of our democracies are becoming the same.
Until Americans begin to set themselves apart, once again, as the gatekeepers for the democratic civic standards of Western civilization, our political outcomes will continue to be no more respectable than those of the third-world electronics trader. Just as he commands a market that is eager for his fake gadgets, our government now governs a citizenry that is eager for a fabricated democracy -- one that discourages genuine civic responsibility and comprehension.
Some people have balked and jeered when they have been shown images of the American president who bows to foreign dictators. They have said that the leader of the free world has no business bending over for autocrats who do not represent freedom and the rule of law. But it is not the president who is doing the bowing. We are doing the bowing. The American president is simply reflecting the will of a good portion of the people whom he governs.
Rousseau, Dewey, et al.: How the "Me, Myself, and I" Generation Became an Unintelligent Mob
It is America's decades-long experiment with progressive and postmodern progressive education that has produced almost two generations of low-information citizens who have become easier to dupe for the benefit of our increasingly intrusive and imperial government.
The progressive education model began to receive widespread attention during the first decades of the twentieth century. The ideas and scholarly works of American philosopher and education theorist John Dewey were used to develop teaching models, which began to captivate groups of exclusive and superbly credentialed left-leaning educators, who lauded the models and who sought to actualize Dewey's vision in their own schools. Dewey and his disciples decried the status-quo paradigms of the American school system -- especially those that they saw were intent on bringing up dutiful but uncritical citizens, or those that they felt motivated academic discrimination, particularly by means of standardized testing. Their progressive education models were therefore aimed at making American schools more reflective of genuine democracies.
For them, dreaming up a new America meant gleaning many ideas about education from prominent European social philosophers of the eighteenth century. One such philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, via and his tract on education, Emile, became invaluable for providing examples for the progressive education model.
Emile outlines the assumptions under which young boys, especially, should be educated. Rousseau's philosophy on education stressed the natural goodness of man and a condemnation of social conventions, most of which he believed were culpable for man's corruptive behavior. To rehabilitate mankind, Emile emphasizes the following for the various stages of a person's initial education:
1. The purpose of education is to develop a child's natural capacities. Natural education should be as far-removed from society as possible.
2. The aim of education should always be child-centered and individualized. Children learn by utilizing their senses; they are guided by natural curiosity.
3. A good teacher is unobtrusive; teachers are not there to enforce doctrine or rigid instruction.
4. Children must never be pushed to acquire information. If they are moved on their own to learn about something, they will.
5. Children will develop a sense of morality through their trials and errors. They do not acquire morals by being punished for bad behavior. Teachers are never to discipline children for perceived wrongdoing.
From such ideas, many American educators were able to promote and systematize a progressive agenda in education that placed a premium on child-centered (as opposed to knowledge-centered) instinctual "learning activities." As progressive teaching models came to have more influence, authoritative, well-informed teachers and traditional textbooks began to be viewed as antediluvian and unnecessary.
Once the progressive education models of the '60s and '70s turned into their present-day postmodern structures, administrators became especially devoted to using the following paradigms to motivate students to learn:
1. Defining a student's intellectual abilities through self-expression activities such as dance, unstructured writing, self-written poetry readings, and various forms of play.
2. A de-emphasizing of the core curriculum subjects of Western civilization in favor of subjects that underscore minority issues and excessive openness towards diversity.
3. Achieving academic equality through non-competitive groupthink projects.
4. Caricaturing and condemning traditional learning methods and devices such as rote memorization, drill, and recitation.
5. "Dumbing down" or avoiding subjects that can be mastered only through ongoing practice and hard work.
6. Grade inflation.
All of these ideas and practices have failed American students by the factory-load and are responsible for creating successive generations of "me, myself, and I" citizens who lack intellectual depth and who are prone, paradoxically, to unproductive mob behavior.
In a snarky but well-deserved memorandum to the many classes of 2012, Ben Stephens writes:
A few months ago, I interviewed a young man with an astonishingly high GPA from an Ivy-League university and aspirations to write about Middle East politics. We got on the subject of the Suez Canal Crisis of 1956. He was vaguely familiar with it. But he didn't know who was the president of the United States in 1956. And he didn't know who succeeded that president.
Pop quiz, Class of '12: Do you?
His summary:
In every generation there's a strong tendency for everyone to think like everyone else. But your generation has an especially bad case, because your mass conformism is masked by the appearance of mass nonconformism.
Disguised as a crotchety hit piece against a generation of know-nothings, Stephen's memo is actually a warning regarding our nation's clear and present danger. Here's one possible interpretation of it: at worst, progressive and postmodern education has produced ignorant masses composed of people incapable of acting as individuals. People who are incapable of acting as individuals have no need for constitutions that protect their individual rights. Thus the continued perversion and eventual death of a democracy.
Classical Education: Let the Revolution Begin
Meeting American middle school students who are required to write one-act plays on the shooting of Trayvon Martin, or who begin to count on their fingers when asked how many states are in our Union, is depressing. It is also eye-opening. The progressive education movement has imposed many misguided ideas on America. And in doing so, the movement's purveyors have willfully denied this unavoidable truth: children are born ignorant and require a great deal of academic guidance and instruction in order to acquire specific skill sets. It is the discipline that it takes to acquire such skill sets that will serve them as they grow to discover what truly distinguishes them as thoughtful individuals.
The state of our education crisis -- especially our urban education crisis -- has led many to embrace unrealistic ideas that are simply not working. For instance, Waiting for Superman to solve our nation's K-12 education problems is an option, but it is ultimately impractical and does not offer a permanent solution. Superheroes don't exist. As Walter Russell Mead's Blue Social Model theory had exposed, America's near-obsessive reliance on government to create and administer a wealthy and growing state was erroneous. Therefore, the idea of cheaper and better-managed state-supported education is preposterous because as Mr. Mead makes clear, "public schools are increasingly expensive to run, and yet they do not provide improved services to match those exploding costs."
The costs of public education are exploding because of progressive education gimmickry. Progressive education is gimmick-prone because its entire pedagogic framework is one that almost always shuns rigorous, systematic, and sequential learning that is based on a history-dependent approach. It favors, however, curricula that are non-cumulative, ahistorical, and theme-based, with subjects and languages often being studied in isolation from one another. And from such curricula, teachers create new and "innovative" ways to entertain their students. Entertainment industries tend to be expensive to run.
Most Department of Education bureaucrats are oblivious to the realities of how children learn. In New York City, for instance, Department of Education teachers employed at failing public schools continue to require students in primary grades to learn about (for state-wide exams) algebraic equations when they have yet to master basic arithmetic. It is also why many of those same students, when they get to high school, will be taught to cram into their heads, within a three- to four-month period, a bunch of meaningless events and facts for a state Regents exam on U.S. history and government, only to go back to their previous dimwitted understanding of how our government is supposed to work once the exam is over. Consequently, it is not shocking to meet seventh-graders who still struggle with addition and subtraction, or high school seniors who believe that the American Revolution was fought between France and Germany. If this does not expose the writing on the wall for the future of our democracy, then what else will? American education does not need reform. It needs a revolution.
Going back to the lost standards of a classical education is the only way forward for American students, and this needs to happen now. People are already expressing a hunger for something very different. The hunger is being expressed in the form of the relentless criticism towards what many schools are offering. But we need a credible alternative.
I am a classical educator in urban America. Most of my students, when first introduced to the stems and endings system of Latin grammar, become anxious and afraid. They are not used to the intellectual discipline that the study of Latin grammar demands. They have not been taught about the Roman republic or its relevance to our political system, and because of the rampant hyper-liberal proselytizing that goes on in many of their schools, they would probably believe that the Trojan War began under the administration of George W. Bush. This is because among other things, their parents, especially, once felt deeply obliged to school systems that were short-changing their children. Their children were not acquiring concrete and relevant information, nor were these children being instructed based on a credible system that allowed them to organize, analyze, and interpret such information properly. But a classical education, if made available to a greater number of students, can change all of this.
Rather than putting forth an extensive amount of information about why a classical education works, which it does, or what a classical education is, which many who are much more qualified than myself have already done, I would like to share my summary of what a classical education, at the very least, has done for my students:
1. Motivated intellectual curiosity in core subjects and languages.
2. Given them an excellent understanding of the origins of Western civilization and its intellectual traditions.
3. Through the study of classical languages (Latin in particular), they have acquired an in-depth knowledge of English grammar, a more extensive vocabulary, and basic logic skills.
4. Has enabled them to tackle more challenging subjects.
5. Given them (and their parents) the ability to recognize and to stay clear of gimmicks and trends in education.
6. Now have a concrete pattern for learning, which they can use to master any subject or acquire any skill.
7. Has instilled humility.
The need for a genuine revolution is obvious. But what is not obvious is how to arm more of our citizens in the making with the knowledge and wisdom that they will one day use to protect themselves from various forms of undemocratic government, one of which has begun to materialize right before our very eyes. Classical home-schools and traditional private classical schools are an excellent start, but they are not enough. We need to reach even more students with what these schools have to offer.
America is not only breaking down; it is breaking apart. Right now, we must find a clear and precise path back to our democratic roots. But this can happen only if our children are properly educated. So let the revolution begin.
Monday, September 3, 2012
VIDEO: Leave Chairman Obama Alone... LEAVE HIM ALONE!!!
Red Square
9/2/2012, 9:18 pm
Another powerful emotional outburst from our comrade Tommie Trudeau. Are you happy now, Clint Eastwood? See what you have done to Tommi! It's your fault and don't you deny it! You stripped Chairman of his manhood, leaving only an empty chair! Now if your heart doesn't break at the sight of Tommi crying, you're not human - if Republicans are humans to begin with!
Those who don't get the reference, watch LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE! first.
SOURCE: THE PEOPLE'S CUBE
9/2/2012, 9:18 pm
Another powerful emotional outburst from our comrade Tommie Trudeau. Are you happy now, Clint Eastwood? See what you have done to Tommi! It's your fault and don't you deny it! You stripped Chairman of his manhood, leaving only an empty chair! Now if your heart doesn't break at the sight of Tommi crying, you're not human - if Republicans are humans to begin with!
Those who don't get the reference, watch LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE! first.
SOURCE: THE PEOPLE'S CUBE
‘Fed Up’ Gingrich Calls Out Media Refusal to Discuss Extremism Among Democrats
By Brent Baker
September 02, 2012 19:09
NewsBusters.Org:
“I’m frankly, fed up, with the one-sided bias,” a frustrated Newt Gingrich asserted on Sunday’s Meet the Press, citing two blatant examples. First: “Where is the outrage over overt, deliberate racism” in Vice President Joe Biden telling a black audience “if the Republicans win you will be ‘in chains’”?
Second, President Obama “voted three times to protect the right of doctors to kill babies who came out of abortion still alive. That plank says tax-paid abortion at any moment, meaning partial birth abortion -- that’s a 20 percent issue,” a position which Democrats “couldn’t defend...for a day if it was made clear and as vivid as all the effort is made to paint Republicans.”
Gingrich charged: “If the news media spent as much time on the extremism of the Democrats as they spend trying to attack us, they would not be able to adopt that plank this week.”
Another guest panelist, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, declared “I’m a Planned Parenthood Democrat on the issue of choice,” but when Gingrich challenged him to defend the Democratic Party platform support for taxpayer funding of late-term and partial-birth abortion, Friedman called it “a defensible position,” then suddenly decided “I’m here as a journalist, I’ll let the Democratic Party defend it.”
Seconds earlier during the roundtable, NBC News eminence Tom Brokaw maintained Republican opposition to abortion is antithetical to full rights for women. “I think this is the century of women,” he asserted before fretting “there is even among some Republican women out there” the view that the “party doesn’t quite buy into that yet.” He contended “the social issues are very important to women. It’s their bodies, their lives, they feel that it’s not entirely embraced by the Republican Party. That’s my own judgment.”
From the September 2 Meet the Press:
TOM BROKAW: I happen to believe, and you know the kind of family in which I have been raised, I’m living with all women, and I have been witness to this both in my wife and my daughters and now my granddaughters, I think this is the century of women. I really do believe-
DORIS GOODWIN: Hooray.
BROKAW: -that there’s going to be more gains made by more women across every part of our lives – cultural, political and economic. And I think that there is even among some Republican women out there, that that party doesn’t quite buy into that yet. I mean, there are extraordinary achievements made by Nikki Haley and Condi Rice and everyone else. But the real issue on this campaign for women will be the social issues or economic issues, will one trump the other? Because the social issues are very important to women. It’s their bodies, their lives, they feel that it’s not entirely embraced by the Republican Party. That’s my own judgment.
DAVID GREGORY: Understanding, Mr. Speaker, the difference between Todd Akin talking about rape versus the abortion plank in the platform, I understand there is that distinction. Nevertheless, the question, social issues versus economic issues as being a big motivator for women, is a question.
GINGRICH: Let me just take a second to disagree with Carly, I think Todd Akin was the choice of the people in Missouri, and Todd Akin has publicly apologized. And I think that the last poll show he’s beating the Democratic Senator. I think that we ought to go on from that, Karl Rove said some terrible things on Friday for which he has apologized which should remind us, people make mistakes. Vice President of the United States-
GREGORY: He was joking about if he shows up and murdered someone.
GINGRICH: No. In the age of Gabby Giffords, it is not a joke to say that a Member of Congress ought to get murdered. And I’m frankly, fed up, with the one-sided bias, okay. Let me give you two examples. Vice President of the United States goes to a black audience and says if the Republicans win you will be in chains. Now, where is the -- how can Biden remain as Vice President? Where is the outrage over overt, deliberate racism? And we talk about people saying things they ought to get off tickets. How come Biden shouldn’t get off the ticket? Second example, the Democratic Party plank on abortion is the most extreme plank in the United States. The President of United States voted three times to protect the right of doctors to kill babies who came out of abortion still alive. That plank says tax-paid abortion at any moment, meaning partial birth abortion, that’s a 20 percent issue. The vast majority of women do not believe the taxpayers should pay to abort a child in the eighth or ninth month. Now why isn’t it shocking that the Democrats on the social issue of abortion have taken the most extreme position in this country and they couldn’t defend that position for a day if it was made clear and as vivid as all the effort is made to paint Republicans?
TOM FRIEDMAN: I’m a Planned Parenthood Democrat on the issue of choice. And I think that that is where the country should be. That is where many, many women in this country are. And I’m glad there are people running for the presidency who will defend that position. Period. Paragraph. End it.
GREGORY: Newt, I guess the question, too, is whether you’re seeking even in the Akin example of this kind of to seek an equivalency between that and say, Biden, who is using language that Republicans have used about, you know, the regulatory shackles, as opposed to making an overt racial-
GINGRICH: Biden was not talking to a black audience about regulatory shackles, okay. But I’m making, I’m making, let me go back to Tom’s point, because I’m, so you think it’s acceptable to have a party committed to tax-paid abortion in the eighth and ninth month? And you think that’s a sustainable position in the United States. If the news media spent as much time on the extremism of the Democrats as they spend trying to attack us, they would not be able to adopt that plank this week.
FRIEDMAN: Yeah, I do believe that’s a defensible position but I also believe I’m here as a journalist, I’ll let the Democratic Party defend it.
September 02, 2012 19:09
NewsBusters.Org:
“I’m frankly, fed up, with the one-sided bias,” a frustrated Newt Gingrich asserted on Sunday’s Meet the Press, citing two blatant examples. First: “Where is the outrage over overt, deliberate racism” in Vice President Joe Biden telling a black audience “if the Republicans win you will be ‘in chains’”?
Second, President Obama “voted three times to protect the right of doctors to kill babies who came out of abortion still alive. That plank says tax-paid abortion at any moment, meaning partial birth abortion -- that’s a 20 percent issue,” a position which Democrats “couldn’t defend...for a day if it was made clear and as vivid as all the effort is made to paint Republicans.”
Gingrich charged: “If the news media spent as much time on the extremism of the Democrats as they spend trying to attack us, they would not be able to adopt that plank this week.”
Another guest panelist, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, declared “I’m a Planned Parenthood Democrat on the issue of choice,” but when Gingrich challenged him to defend the Democratic Party platform support for taxpayer funding of late-term and partial-birth abortion, Friedman called it “a defensible position,” then suddenly decided “I’m here as a journalist, I’ll let the Democratic Party defend it.”
Seconds earlier during the roundtable, NBC News eminence Tom Brokaw maintained Republican opposition to abortion is antithetical to full rights for women. “I think this is the century of women,” he asserted before fretting “there is even among some Republican women out there” the view that the “party doesn’t quite buy into that yet.” He contended “the social issues are very important to women. It’s their bodies, their lives, they feel that it’s not entirely embraced by the Republican Party. That’s my own judgment.”
From the September 2 Meet the Press:
TOM BROKAW: I happen to believe, and you know the kind of family in which I have been raised, I’m living with all women, and I have been witness to this both in my wife and my daughters and now my granddaughters, I think this is the century of women. I really do believe-
DORIS GOODWIN: Hooray.
BROKAW: -that there’s going to be more gains made by more women across every part of our lives – cultural, political and economic. And I think that there is even among some Republican women out there, that that party doesn’t quite buy into that yet. I mean, there are extraordinary achievements made by Nikki Haley and Condi Rice and everyone else. But the real issue on this campaign for women will be the social issues or economic issues, will one trump the other? Because the social issues are very important to women. It’s their bodies, their lives, they feel that it’s not entirely embraced by the Republican Party. That’s my own judgment.
DAVID GREGORY: Understanding, Mr. Speaker, the difference between Todd Akin talking about rape versus the abortion plank in the platform, I understand there is that distinction. Nevertheless, the question, social issues versus economic issues as being a big motivator for women, is a question.
GINGRICH: Let me just take a second to disagree with Carly, I think Todd Akin was the choice of the people in Missouri, and Todd Akin has publicly apologized. And I think that the last poll show he’s beating the Democratic Senator. I think that we ought to go on from that, Karl Rove said some terrible things on Friday for which he has apologized which should remind us, people make mistakes. Vice President of the United States-
GREGORY: He was joking about if he shows up and murdered someone.
GINGRICH: No. In the age of Gabby Giffords, it is not a joke to say that a Member of Congress ought to get murdered. And I’m frankly, fed up, with the one-sided bias, okay. Let me give you two examples. Vice President of the United States goes to a black audience and says if the Republicans win you will be in chains. Now, where is the -- how can Biden remain as Vice President? Where is the outrage over overt, deliberate racism? And we talk about people saying things they ought to get off tickets. How come Biden shouldn’t get off the ticket? Second example, the Democratic Party plank on abortion is the most extreme plank in the United States. The President of United States voted three times to protect the right of doctors to kill babies who came out of abortion still alive. That plank says tax-paid abortion at any moment, meaning partial birth abortion, that’s a 20 percent issue. The vast majority of women do not believe the taxpayers should pay to abort a child in the eighth or ninth month. Now why isn’t it shocking that the Democrats on the social issue of abortion have taken the most extreme position in this country and they couldn’t defend that position for a day if it was made clear and as vivid as all the effort is made to paint Republicans?
TOM FRIEDMAN: I’m a Planned Parenthood Democrat on the issue of choice. And I think that that is where the country should be. That is where many, many women in this country are. And I’m glad there are people running for the presidency who will defend that position. Period. Paragraph. End it.
GREGORY: Newt, I guess the question, too, is whether you’re seeking even in the Akin example of this kind of to seek an equivalency between that and say, Biden, who is using language that Republicans have used about, you know, the regulatory shackles, as opposed to making an overt racial-
GINGRICH: Biden was not talking to a black audience about regulatory shackles, okay. But I’m making, I’m making, let me go back to Tom’s point, because I’m, so you think it’s acceptable to have a party committed to tax-paid abortion in the eighth and ninth month? And you think that’s a sustainable position in the United States. If the news media spent as much time on the extremism of the Democrats as they spend trying to attack us, they would not be able to adopt that plank this week.
FRIEDMAN: Yeah, I do believe that’s a defensible position but I also believe I’m here as a journalist, I’ll let the Democratic Party defend it.
In the Amazon election, it’s Romney by a landslide
Amazon has launched its own Election Heat Map 2012, a tool that shows whether Americans are buying more conservative books than liberal, and by how much. Paul Ryan fans, prepare to get excited.
If America voted the way that it bought books, then Willard Mitt Romney would be a very, very happy man indeed.
With everyone in America beginning to get Election Fever ahead of the race getting started in earnest with next week’s Republican National Convention – Well, that or Election Burnout; it really depends on how closely you’ve been paying attention to the race so far – it shouldn’t really be that much of a surprise to find out that everyone is trying to find some way to offer their own brand of unique political commentary to add to the breathless and heated discussions that will undoubtedly be going on across dinner tables, dimly-lit bars and any and every kind of social gathering point in the United States between now and November. Into this landscape of potential conversational landmines steps Amazon.com, with its “Amazon Election Heat Map 2012,” which lets you see whether states are ordering political screeds that lean left, or right, and what percentage of which.
“Our 2012 Election Heat Map colors each state according to the percentage of red and blue book purchases, based on shipping address, that have been made on Amazon.com during the past 30 days,” the site explains. “We take the top-selling political books on Amazon.com and categorize them as ‘red,’ ‘blue,’ or neutral. We classify books as red or blue if they have a political leaning made evident in book promotion material and/or customer classification, such as tags. We compute percentages, updated daily, for each state and the US by comparing the 250 best-selling blue books during the time period against the 250 best-selling red books during the same time period, including new book launches.” Different sales formats are counted in different calculations, although Amazon reports that “all orders during the period are given equal weighting in the calculation.”
Somewhat amazingly, only five states in the entire US have a more left-leaning bias overall than right, and even more amazingly, none of those states are traditionally-assumed liberal strongholds like California or Oregon. No, the five states that are buying more “blue” books than “red” are New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Washington DC, and DC is the only location where “blue” books have a significant edge (Currently, it’s 68 percent to 32 percent). Overall, at time of writing, the US is leaning towards “red” purchases, with 57 percent of purchases trending conservative. The reddest of red states, according to Amazon’s calculations, is Mississippi, with 73 percent of purchases being “red” books (Current top seller: The Kindle edition of Edward Klein’s Obama administration exposeThe Amateur).
Whether this map will offer any true value in the days and weeks ahead remains to be seen. After all, as Amazon itself points out, its customers “read widely and often buy books that don’t necessarily fit with their own views.” But still: It’s fun to see where the nation’s readers’ heads are at right now, isn’t it?
SOURCE: Digital Trends
The Obamas "Change" on their personal level, much more realistic than the change planned for us!
Who Is Funding the Purchase of the $35 million Beachfront Hawaiian Estate for Barack and Michelle Obama to Move into Come January 2013?
Posted on September 2, 2012
by Kevin DuJan
Best of Hillbuzz
Hillbuzz
[ President Barack Obama's living room with ocean view, beginning in January 2013 ]
Click HERE for Part 1 of this investigative report
I’ve done some more digging here in Chicago on the story we brought you on Friday about plans currently underway to purchase a $35 million beachfront estate on the island of Oahu in a part of Hawaii called “Kailua” for the Obama family to move into in January 2013 when they leave the White House.
It’s funny, but “kai” means “victorious” in Mandarin Chinese and you probably know that “lua” is close to the Hawaiian word “luau”, which is of course a large party. It’s more than ironic that a spot in paradise that conjures a mental image of “victory party” will be the place the Obama family moves to in just four months or so, after they’ve been booted from the White House. They surely won’t be in a festive mood after being downgraded from “First Family” to ordinary citizens again, but no doubt the rest of the world will be celebrating.
The woman who is organizing the funding of the Obama’s post-presidential estate is Penny Pritzker (pictured above, in between the worst President since Jimmy Carter and a woman who only dresses appropriately on Halloween or April Fool’s Day), who is also in charge of raising the donations for Obama’s presidential library and museum. The two are more or less the same project, with the priority being to get the $35 million together to fund the purchase of the Obamas’ new home. It appears that Pritzker herself may contribute up to half of the total purchase price, making up the difference from whatever the Obamas could not afford and the fundraising wouldn’t cover. Pritzker is a billionaire who in recent years resolved a long-standing family feud over her late father’s vast business empire that includes the Hyatt Hotel chain as well as assorted manufacturing operations. The wealthiest families in Chicago are being leaned on heavily to contribute with Penny aggressively guilting them with “appeals of you don’t want the President to be homeless in January, do you?”. That’s more or less an exact quote from Penny, if my source within her social group is not paraphrasing.
Fundraising has been lackluster, though, as there is not much interest in helping to fund either the presidential library or the Obama’s new home since Chicagoans are feeling stabbed in the back that the Obamas are abandoning Illinois for the warmer clime of Hawaii; the general consensus is that Chicagoans are waking up to the fact that the Obamas have gotten everything they could out of Chicago and are now moving on to bigger and greener pastures. Kailua offers them all the fancy restaurants, the shopping, the golf, and other amenities they like plus the sunny weather they love and it’s closer to the Pacific and Middle East where Obama believes he’ll command the highest speaking fees as an ex-US president who’ll happily denounce America for years to come for paying foreign crowds, in much the way that Jimmy Carter has earned his living since 1981.
You might not realize this, but this is actually not the first time someone in Chicago has helped the Obamas buy a house beyond their financial reach: convicted felon and Chicago machine political “fixer” Tony Rezko helped the Obamas assemble the funding for the home they currently own in Chicago’s murder and robbery-prone neighborhood known as Hyde Park. Penny Pritzker is making aggressive use of the recent headlines about gunshots being fired and people killed just two blocks or so away from the Obamas’ Hyde Park home, with Pritzker saying, “You don’t want them moving back where there’s gunfire, do you? DO YOU?”.
It’s actually quite common for very wealthy friends of a President to buy him a new home for after he leaves the White House, since most of the people who’ve been President so far were not very rich before they entered office (with Obama being an exception since he had several millions from his book sales before his election).
Here’s how post-presidential homes typically work: the President’s friends and wealthiest supporters chip in to ensure the family leaving the White House has someplace “suitable” to occupy once they are no longer living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Another part of Penny’s fundraising push is that “the Obamas can’t go back to Hyde Park, it just wouldn’t look right, that house is too small and is not suitable for their new stature”. The Obamas are never going to live in Chicago again. They never planned to. But this election has gone south in ways they did not expect before Obama’s infamous “You didn’t build that” comment last month. The plan was always to get them an estate in Hawaii, but it had been to buy them land and then construct a home especially for them. Now that there’s a rush to have something ready by January, the most opulent available home on Oahu must be secured for the Obamas “lest they be homeless” as Pritzker is arguing.
Before that “you didn’t build that, somebody else made that happen” revelation, there was still a (delusional) belief in Obama’s inner circle that Democrats could pull off a win in this election. They also expected Mitt Romney to select Rob Portman or Tim Pawlenty as his VP…and the most delusional of them believed if Paul Ryan was in fact chosen that the Mediscare attacks would sink him…and Romney’s campaign too. When it became quickly and resoundingly clear that Romney/Ryan was a winning combination, the emergency contingency protocols went into effect and Penny Pritzker started the aggressive fundraising push for the post-presidential purchase.
There is no hope of Obama winning the election, and though the corrupt media and Democrats will never admit it, behind the scenes those close to the Obamas have thrown in the towel and are helping plan the Hawaiian move four years earlier than they anticipated just a few months ago.
In the past, friends and large donors had more time to prepare for a President’s departure from the White House. Ronald Reagan’s California pals assembled a funding operation to buy Nancy and him their post-presidential ranch. The Clintons used Bill’s book advance to buy their new home and the Bushes had their friends help them secure the place they moved into in suburban Dallas. Presidential homes are purchased with private funds through false-front entities that hide the true owners to ensure their privacy. Penny Pritzker no doubt has many on her staff working out all these details as well as managing whatever checks come in to support the “Obama Relocation Project”.
Later today I’m interviewing a few people in Hawaii who have more on the ground information of what’s coming towards Kailua with the Obamas’ move there. I’ve made calls and sent emails to both the realtor handling the sale of this property and to Penny Pritzker’s office for a comment from her, but so far I’ve received no answer.
If you missed Part I of this investigative report, click here to catchup.
READ PART THREE of the investigative report HERE
© 2012, Kevin DuJan. All rights reserved.
Posted on September 2, 2012
by Kevin DuJan
Best of Hillbuzz
Hillbuzz
Click HERE for Part 1 of this investigative report
I’ve done some more digging here in Chicago on the story we brought you on Friday about plans currently underway to purchase a $35 million beachfront estate on the island of Oahu in a part of Hawaii called “Kailua” for the Obama family to move into in January 2013 when they leave the White House.
It’s funny, but “kai” means “victorious” in Mandarin Chinese and you probably know that “lua” is close to the Hawaiian word “luau”, which is of course a large party. It’s more than ironic that a spot in paradise that conjures a mental image of “victory party” will be the place the Obama family moves to in just four months or so, after they’ve been booted from the White House. They surely won’t be in a festive mood after being downgraded from “First Family” to ordinary citizens again, but no doubt the rest of the world will be celebrating.
The woman who is organizing the funding of the Obama’s post-presidential estate is Penny Pritzker (pictured above, in between the worst President since Jimmy Carter and a woman who only dresses appropriately on Halloween or April Fool’s Day), who is also in charge of raising the donations for Obama’s presidential library and museum. The two are more or less the same project, with the priority being to get the $35 million together to fund the purchase of the Obamas’ new home. It appears that Pritzker herself may contribute up to half of the total purchase price, making up the difference from whatever the Obamas could not afford and the fundraising wouldn’t cover. Pritzker is a billionaire who in recent years resolved a long-standing family feud over her late father’s vast business empire that includes the Hyatt Hotel chain as well as assorted manufacturing operations. The wealthiest families in Chicago are being leaned on heavily to contribute with Penny aggressively guilting them with “appeals of you don’t want the President to be homeless in January, do you?”. That’s more or less an exact quote from Penny, if my source within her social group is not paraphrasing.
Fundraising has been lackluster, though, as there is not much interest in helping to fund either the presidential library or the Obama’s new home since Chicagoans are feeling stabbed in the back that the Obamas are abandoning Illinois for the warmer clime of Hawaii; the general consensus is that Chicagoans are waking up to the fact that the Obamas have gotten everything they could out of Chicago and are now moving on to bigger and greener pastures. Kailua offers them all the fancy restaurants, the shopping, the golf, and other amenities they like plus the sunny weather they love and it’s closer to the Pacific and Middle East where Obama believes he’ll command the highest speaking fees as an ex-US president who’ll happily denounce America for years to come for paying foreign crowds, in much the way that Jimmy Carter has earned his living since 1981.
You might not realize this, but this is actually not the first time someone in Chicago has helped the Obamas buy a house beyond their financial reach: convicted felon and Chicago machine political “fixer” Tony Rezko helped the Obamas assemble the funding for the home they currently own in Chicago’s murder and robbery-prone neighborhood known as Hyde Park. Penny Pritzker is making aggressive use of the recent headlines about gunshots being fired and people killed just two blocks or so away from the Obamas’ Hyde Park home, with Pritzker saying, “You don’t want them moving back where there’s gunfire, do you? DO YOU?”.
It’s actually quite common for very wealthy friends of a President to buy him a new home for after he leaves the White House, since most of the people who’ve been President so far were not very rich before they entered office (with Obama being an exception since he had several millions from his book sales before his election).
Here’s how post-presidential homes typically work: the President’s friends and wealthiest supporters chip in to ensure the family leaving the White House has someplace “suitable” to occupy once they are no longer living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Another part of Penny’s fundraising push is that “the Obamas can’t go back to Hyde Park, it just wouldn’t look right, that house is too small and is not suitable for their new stature”. The Obamas are never going to live in Chicago again. They never planned to. But this election has gone south in ways they did not expect before Obama’s infamous “You didn’t build that” comment last month. The plan was always to get them an estate in Hawaii, but it had been to buy them land and then construct a home especially for them. Now that there’s a rush to have something ready by January, the most opulent available home on Oahu must be secured for the Obamas “lest they be homeless” as Pritzker is arguing.
Before that “you didn’t build that, somebody else made that happen” revelation, there was still a (delusional) belief in Obama’s inner circle that Democrats could pull off a win in this election. They also expected Mitt Romney to select Rob Portman or Tim Pawlenty as his VP…and the most delusional of them believed if Paul Ryan was in fact chosen that the Mediscare attacks would sink him…and Romney’s campaign too. When it became quickly and resoundingly clear that Romney/Ryan was a winning combination, the emergency contingency protocols went into effect and Penny Pritzker started the aggressive fundraising push for the post-presidential purchase.
There is no hope of Obama winning the election, and though the corrupt media and Democrats will never admit it, behind the scenes those close to the Obamas have thrown in the towel and are helping plan the Hawaiian move four years earlier than they anticipated just a few months ago.
In the past, friends and large donors had more time to prepare for a President’s departure from the White House. Ronald Reagan’s California pals assembled a funding operation to buy Nancy and him their post-presidential ranch. The Clintons used Bill’s book advance to buy their new home and the Bushes had their friends help them secure the place they moved into in suburban Dallas. Presidential homes are purchased with private funds through false-front entities that hide the true owners to ensure their privacy. Penny Pritzker no doubt has many on her staff working out all these details as well as managing whatever checks come in to support the “Obama Relocation Project”.
Later today I’m interviewing a few people in Hawaii who have more on the ground information of what’s coming towards Kailua with the Obamas’ move there. I’ve made calls and sent emails to both the realtor handling the sale of this property and to Penny Pritzker’s office for a comment from her, but so far I’ve received no answer.
If you missed Part I of this investigative report, click here to catchup.
READ PART THREE of the investigative report HERE
© 2012, Kevin DuJan. All rights reserved.
Big Bro Barack Speaks At Jay-Z's "Made In America" Concert
Sunday, September 2, 2012
Conservative Nation News - Comrade Obama makes a video appearance at Jay-Z's "Made In America" concert.
All good citizens must make the effort to vote for Comrade Obama as many times as possible.
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
Remember, Big Bro Barack is watching you!
Posted by FreeThinkerNY at 10:45 PM
Conservative Nation News - Comrade Obama makes a video appearance at Jay-Z's "Made In America" concert.
All good citizens must make the effort to vote for Comrade Obama as many times as possible.
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
Remember, Big Bro Barack is watching you!
Posted by FreeThinkerNY at 10:45 PM
The Low-Wage Jobs Explosion
Posted on: 5:28 pm, September 1, 2012,
by Staff Writer
Fox2Now.Com:
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Sure, the economy is adding jobs these days…but most of those positions pay pretty poorly.
Some 58% of the jobs created during the recovery have been low-wage positions, according to a new report by the National Employment Law Project. Only 22% have been mid-wage jobs and 20% higher-wage positions. These low-wage jobs pay $13.83 an hour or less.
“The recovery continues to be skewed toward low-wage jobs, reinforcing the rise in inequality and America’s deficit of good jobs,” said Annette Bernhardt, NELP’s policy co-director. “While there’s understandably a lot of focus on getting employment back to pre-recession levels, the quality of jobs is rapidly emerging as a second front in the struggling recovery.”
The explosion in low-wage job growth comes after the Great Recession hammered the mid-wage job sector. Some 60% of the jobs lost during the downturn were mid-wage, as opposed to 21% of low-wage and 19% of higher-wage positions.
The fastest growing low-wage jobs include retail salespeople, food prep workers, laborers and freight workers, waiters and waitresses, personal and home care aides, office clerks and customers representatives.
Employment in low-wage jobs has been expanding since the start of the century, rising 8.7% since the beginning of 2001. Mid-wage employment, meanwhile, dropped 7.3%. High-wage staffing rose by 6.6%.
“The economy has fewer good jobs now than it did at the start of the 21st century,” said Bernhardt.
NELP looked at employment trends in 366 occupations between 2008 and 2012. Low-wage jobs had median hourly wages between $7.69 to $13.83, while people in mid-wage positions earned between $13.84 and $21.13. High-wage jobs had a median hourly wage of $21.14 to $54.55.
The NELP study backs up a separate report from the Department of Labor that showed more than half of displaced workers who lost their jobs during the recovery and found new ones were working for lower wages.
Only 46% of these re-employed, full-time workers were earning as much as they did at the jobs they lost. About one-third reported taking a pay cut of 20% or more.
The Labor Department looked at workers who had lost their jobs from 2009 through 2011 because their plant or company moved or closed, there wasn’t enough work for them to do or their shift was abolished. They had to have been working at the job for at least three years.
By Tami Luhby
™ & © 2012 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.
by Staff Writer
Fox2Now.Com:
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Sure, the economy is adding jobs these days…but most of those positions pay pretty poorly.
Some 58% of the jobs created during the recovery have been low-wage positions, according to a new report by the National Employment Law Project. Only 22% have been mid-wage jobs and 20% higher-wage positions. These low-wage jobs pay $13.83 an hour or less.
“The recovery continues to be skewed toward low-wage jobs, reinforcing the rise in inequality and America’s deficit of good jobs,” said Annette Bernhardt, NELP’s policy co-director. “While there’s understandably a lot of focus on getting employment back to pre-recession levels, the quality of jobs is rapidly emerging as a second front in the struggling recovery.”
The explosion in low-wage job growth comes after the Great Recession hammered the mid-wage job sector. Some 60% of the jobs lost during the downturn were mid-wage, as opposed to 21% of low-wage and 19% of higher-wage positions.
The fastest growing low-wage jobs include retail salespeople, food prep workers, laborers and freight workers, waiters and waitresses, personal and home care aides, office clerks and customers representatives.
Employment in low-wage jobs has been expanding since the start of the century, rising 8.7% since the beginning of 2001. Mid-wage employment, meanwhile, dropped 7.3%. High-wage staffing rose by 6.6%.
“The economy has fewer good jobs now than it did at the start of the 21st century,” said Bernhardt.
NELP looked at employment trends in 366 occupations between 2008 and 2012. Low-wage jobs had median hourly wages between $7.69 to $13.83, while people in mid-wage positions earned between $13.84 and $21.13. High-wage jobs had a median hourly wage of $21.14 to $54.55.
The NELP study backs up a separate report from the Department of Labor that showed more than half of displaced workers who lost their jobs during the recovery and found new ones were working for lower wages.
Only 46% of these re-employed, full-time workers were earning as much as they did at the jobs they lost. About one-third reported taking a pay cut of 20% or more.
The Labor Department looked at workers who had lost their jobs from 2009 through 2011 because their plant or company moved or closed, there wasn’t enough work for them to do or their shift was abolished. They had to have been working at the job for at least three years.
By Tami Luhby
™ & © 2012 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.
How Many Millionaires Live in the "Impoverished" Gaza Strip?
by Khaled Abu Toameh
August 30, 2012 at 4:30 am
Gatestone Institute:
If the Egyptian army succeeds in demolishing the underground smuggling tunnels that keep Hamas running, it could mark the end of the Islamists' rule over the Gaza Strip. But if Egypt's new president, Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood tie the hands of the Egyptian army's generals and keep them from completing the mission, Hamas will become even stronger and wealthier.
The world often thinks of the Gaza Strip, home to 1.4 million Palestinians, as one of the poorest places on earth, where people live in misery and squalor.
But according to an investigative report published in the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, there are at least 600 millionaires living in the Gaza Strip. The newspaper report also refutes the claim that the Gaza Strip has been facing a humanitarian crisis because of an Israeli blockade.
Mohammed Dahlan, the former Palestinian Authority security commander of the Gaza Strip, further said last week that Hamas was the only party that was laying siege to the Gaza Strip; that it is Hamas, and not Israel or Egypt, that is strangling and punishing the people there.
The Palestinian millionaires, according to the report, have made their wealth thanks to the hundreds of underground tunnels along the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt.
Informed Palestinian sources revealed that every day, in addition to weapons, thousands of tons of fuel, medicine, various types of merchandise, vehicles, electrical appliances, drugs, medicine and cigarettes are smuggled into the Gaza Strip through more than 400 tunnels. A former Sudanese government official who visited the Gaza Strip lately was quoted as saying that he found basic goods that were not available in Sudan. Almost all the tunnels are controlled by the Hamas government, which has established a special commission to oversee the smuggling business, which makes the Hamas government the biggest benefactor of the smuggling industry.
Palestinians estimate that 25% of the Hamas government's budget comes from taxes imposed on the owners of the underground tunnels.
For example, Hamas has imposed a 25% tax and a $2000 fee on every car that is smuggled into the Gaza Strip. Hamas also charges $15 dollars for each ton of cement, eight cents for a pack of cigarettes and 50 cents for each liter of fuel smuggled through the tunnels.
For Hamas, the Palestinian sources said, the tunnels are a matter of life or death.
Now, however, Hamas is facing a huge crisis as the Egyptian authorities plan to regain control over Sinai in the aftermath of the recent killing of 16 Egyptian border guards by unidentified terrorists.
The Egyptian army appears to be determined to destroy the underground tunnels out of fear that they are being used to smuggle not only goods and fuel, but also Islamist terrorists who pose a threat to Egypt's national security.
At this stage, however, it is not clear whether Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood President, Mohamed Morsi, would allow his army to cut off one of Hamas's main sources of income. Morsi's policy thus far has been to embrace and strengthen Hamas at the expense of the Western-backed Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.
If the Egyptian army succeeds in its anti-terror security crackdown in Sinai, including the demolition of all the underground tunnels that keep Hamas running, it could mark the beginning of the end of the Islamist movement's rule over the Gaza Strip. But if Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood tie the hands of their generals and prevent them from completing the mission, Hamas will become even stronger and wealthier.
August 30, 2012 at 4:30 am
Gatestone Institute:
If the Egyptian army succeeds in demolishing the underground smuggling tunnels that keep Hamas running, it could mark the end of the Islamists' rule over the Gaza Strip. But if Egypt's new president, Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood tie the hands of the Egyptian army's generals and keep them from completing the mission, Hamas will become even stronger and wealthier.
The world often thinks of the Gaza Strip, home to 1.4 million Palestinians, as one of the poorest places on earth, where people live in misery and squalor.
But according to an investigative report published in the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, there are at least 600 millionaires living in the Gaza Strip. The newspaper report also refutes the claim that the Gaza Strip has been facing a humanitarian crisis because of an Israeli blockade.
Mohammed Dahlan, the former Palestinian Authority security commander of the Gaza Strip, further said last week that Hamas was the only party that was laying siege to the Gaza Strip; that it is Hamas, and not Israel or Egypt, that is strangling and punishing the people there.
The Palestinian millionaires, according to the report, have made their wealth thanks to the hundreds of underground tunnels along the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt.
Informed Palestinian sources revealed that every day, in addition to weapons, thousands of tons of fuel, medicine, various types of merchandise, vehicles, electrical appliances, drugs, medicine and cigarettes are smuggled into the Gaza Strip through more than 400 tunnels. A former Sudanese government official who visited the Gaza Strip lately was quoted as saying that he found basic goods that were not available in Sudan. Almost all the tunnels are controlled by the Hamas government, which has established a special commission to oversee the smuggling business, which makes the Hamas government the biggest benefactor of the smuggling industry.
Palestinians estimate that 25% of the Hamas government's budget comes from taxes imposed on the owners of the underground tunnels.
For example, Hamas has imposed a 25% tax and a $2000 fee on every car that is smuggled into the Gaza Strip. Hamas also charges $15 dollars for each ton of cement, eight cents for a pack of cigarettes and 50 cents for each liter of fuel smuggled through the tunnels.
For Hamas, the Palestinian sources said, the tunnels are a matter of life or death.
Now, however, Hamas is facing a huge crisis as the Egyptian authorities plan to regain control over Sinai in the aftermath of the recent killing of 16 Egyptian border guards by unidentified terrorists.
The Egyptian army appears to be determined to destroy the underground tunnels out of fear that they are being used to smuggle not only goods and fuel, but also Islamist terrorists who pose a threat to Egypt's national security.
At this stage, however, it is not clear whether Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood President, Mohamed Morsi, would allow his army to cut off one of Hamas's main sources of income. Morsi's policy thus far has been to embrace and strengthen Hamas at the expense of the Western-backed Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.
If the Egyptian army succeeds in its anti-terror security crackdown in Sinai, including the demolition of all the underground tunnels that keep Hamas running, it could mark the beginning of the end of the Islamist movement's rule over the Gaza Strip. But if Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood tie the hands of their generals and prevent them from completing the mission, Hamas will become even stronger and wealthier.
Bad News for Black Families
By Keith Riler
September 3, 2012
American Thinker - When we assess the President's post-election performance and the effects of his redistributive and regulatory policies, we find that, like a falling tide, he is sinking everyone. We also find that although Barack Obama has hurt all American families, he has hurt black families most of all.
The metaphor of the economy as a tide is particularly helpful. When the tide rises, our boats rise. When the tide falls, our boats fall. Just as water may not be subdivided to make some boats rise and others fall, our economy cannot be subdivided, either.
Similarly helpful is Democrat Daniel Moynihan's longstanding observation:
During times when jobs were reasonably plentiful ... the Negro family became stronger and more stable. As jobs became more and more difficult to find, the stability of the family became more and more difficult to maintain.
Black families are faring worse than at any time in the last 25 years, and worse than at this point with President Obama than with Presidents G.W. Bush, Clinton, H.W. Bush, Reagan, and even Carter. These presidential comparisons span a period of almost four decades.
Black Adults. Black unemployment has been persistently high for a long time. Likewise, median weeks unemployed are higher than under any other president. These facts are testaments to the ineffectiveness of the Obama presidency.
We are experiencing a 28-year high in black unemployment; but unlike January 1983, when black unemployment spiked but then soon improved, Barack Obama's black unemployment has hovered in the 14%-16% range for over three years (now 14.1%).
Not only has the job picture been dismal, but standards of living have deteriorated in other ways. Black poverty has increased, and the prices of gasoline, bread, ground meat, milk, and sugar are up dramatically. Bloomberg recently reported that "consumer credit climbed more than forecast in May, led by the biggest jump in credit-card debt in almost five years that may signal Americans are struggling to make ends meet."
Under President Obama, needy families have grown needier, and his ho-hum response has been to tout food stamps. As the Texas food stamp experience reveals, "Let them eat junk food" is the president's empathic parallel to Marie-Thérèse's now-famous "Let them eat cake." That state's food stamp beneficiaries are sustained by Pop-Tarts, cookies, honey buns, candy bars, corn dogs, taffy, and cheesecake. Yet another sad Obama achievement: 46.5 million Americans, more than the populations of Canada, Poland, Spain, or Australia, are now on food stamps.
Hope and change hasn't played out well for black adults.
Black Children. Like the adults, black children have suffered mightily under President Obama. Teen black unemployment is at a terrible 39.3%. The number of children living under the poverty line is as high as it has ever been.
Similarly, the number of children on food stamps has reached its highest level since 1980, black illegitimate births have peaked at 72.5% of all black births, and sexually transmitted diseases are up -- particularly for black kids, for whom chlamydia occurs 3.8 times more than for Hispanics and 7.5 times more than for whites. New York now aborts of 60% of its black babies, and LA high schools come equipped with Planned Parenthood clinics.
Like the adults, black children can't afford to move forward with Barack Obama.
Presidential Comparison. A three-and-one-half-decade comparison highlights the problem. Consider the following, shown at the end of the first term for each president:
The man is ill-suited for the job. He scores last (in yellow) in unemployment, weeks unemployed, food stamps, and black illegitimate births, and near the bottom or tied for last in black unemployment, months of 12%-plus black unemployment, and children below the poverty line.
Barack Obama has crushed the business and hiring climate. What's left are his race-based initiatives -- the Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans, the first African American policy conference, Operation Vote, the hiring of an NAACP operative to lead White House African-American outreach, and African Americans for Obama, which includes a program to engage barbershops as "opinion leaders."
These impotent, Obama-centric promotions highlight the small-mindedness and exhaustion of his presidency. Unless we count barbershop outreach and press releases, his is an all-fronts failure. The damage will continue if he is re-elected, and rational self interest dictates that all voters, but particularly black voters, choose anyone but Barack Obama.
However, it is important to note that identifying the failure of Barack Obama in no way compromises the achievement of his election. It is a great thing that we elected a black president. Most of us knew that our country had overcome its most serious racial divisions, but the evidence is nice. We are a great country, and our progress established a permanent possibility for black children -- that of becoming president of the United States.
Black Americans should not succumb to the temptations of despair or denial by joining themselves to the disappointing Obama presidency. Our weak economy, black joblessness, and the travails of our families are not their failures; they are Barack Obama's. This should come as a relief -- a yoke lifted -- because family plights can improve once Barack Obama is voted out of office, all the while leaving intact the historical achievement of having elected a black president.
As well, let's not conflate the man Obama with the historical achievement. Black Americans may not be robbed of the fact that we have elected a black president and at some point will do so again. Our achievement is irreversible, whether Barack Obama leaves the White House after one term or after two. It's just that all of us, and black Americans in particular, will be better off if he leaves after one.
September 3, 2012
American Thinker - When we assess the President's post-election performance and the effects of his redistributive and regulatory policies, we find that, like a falling tide, he is sinking everyone. We also find that although Barack Obama has hurt all American families, he has hurt black families most of all.
The metaphor of the economy as a tide is particularly helpful. When the tide rises, our boats rise. When the tide falls, our boats fall. Just as water may not be subdivided to make some boats rise and others fall, our economy cannot be subdivided, either.
Similarly helpful is Democrat Daniel Moynihan's longstanding observation:
During times when jobs were reasonably plentiful ... the Negro family became stronger and more stable. As jobs became more and more difficult to find, the stability of the family became more and more difficult to maintain.
Black families are faring worse than at any time in the last 25 years, and worse than at this point with President Obama than with Presidents G.W. Bush, Clinton, H.W. Bush, Reagan, and even Carter. These presidential comparisons span a period of almost four decades.
Black Adults. Black unemployment has been persistently high for a long time. Likewise, median weeks unemployed are higher than under any other president. These facts are testaments to the ineffectiveness of the Obama presidency.
We are experiencing a 28-year high in black unemployment; but unlike January 1983, when black unemployment spiked but then soon improved, Barack Obama's black unemployment has hovered in the 14%-16% range for over three years (now 14.1%).
Not only has the job picture been dismal, but standards of living have deteriorated in other ways. Black poverty has increased, and the prices of gasoline, bread, ground meat, milk, and sugar are up dramatically. Bloomberg recently reported that "consumer credit climbed more than forecast in May, led by the biggest jump in credit-card debt in almost five years that may signal Americans are struggling to make ends meet."
Under President Obama, needy families have grown needier, and his ho-hum response has been to tout food stamps. As the Texas food stamp experience reveals, "Let them eat junk food" is the president's empathic parallel to Marie-Thérèse's now-famous "Let them eat cake." That state's food stamp beneficiaries are sustained by Pop-Tarts, cookies, honey buns, candy bars, corn dogs, taffy, and cheesecake. Yet another sad Obama achievement: 46.5 million Americans, more than the populations of Canada, Poland, Spain, or Australia, are now on food stamps.
Hope and change hasn't played out well for black adults.
Black Children. Like the adults, black children have suffered mightily under President Obama. Teen black unemployment is at a terrible 39.3%. The number of children living under the poverty line is as high as it has ever been.
Similarly, the number of children on food stamps has reached its highest level since 1980, black illegitimate births have peaked at 72.5% of all black births, and sexually transmitted diseases are up -- particularly for black kids, for whom chlamydia occurs 3.8 times more than for Hispanics and 7.5 times more than for whites. New York now aborts of 60% of its black babies, and LA high schools come equipped with Planned Parenthood clinics.
Like the adults, black children can't afford to move forward with Barack Obama.
Presidential Comparison. A three-and-one-half-decade comparison highlights the problem. Consider the following, shown at the end of the first term for each president:
The man is ill-suited for the job. He scores last (in yellow) in unemployment, weeks unemployed, food stamps, and black illegitimate births, and near the bottom or tied for last in black unemployment, months of 12%-plus black unemployment, and children below the poverty line.
Barack Obama has crushed the business and hiring climate. What's left are his race-based initiatives -- the Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans, the first African American policy conference, Operation Vote, the hiring of an NAACP operative to lead White House African-American outreach, and African Americans for Obama, which includes a program to engage barbershops as "opinion leaders."
These impotent, Obama-centric promotions highlight the small-mindedness and exhaustion of his presidency. Unless we count barbershop outreach and press releases, his is an all-fronts failure. The damage will continue if he is re-elected, and rational self interest dictates that all voters, but particularly black voters, choose anyone but Barack Obama.
However, it is important to note that identifying the failure of Barack Obama in no way compromises the achievement of his election. It is a great thing that we elected a black president. Most of us knew that our country had overcome its most serious racial divisions, but the evidence is nice. We are a great country, and our progress established a permanent possibility for black children -- that of becoming president of the United States.
Black Americans should not succumb to the temptations of despair or denial by joining themselves to the disappointing Obama presidency. Our weak economy, black joblessness, and the travails of our families are not their failures; they are Barack Obama's. This should come as a relief -- a yoke lifted -- because family plights can improve once Barack Obama is voted out of office, all the while leaving intact the historical achievement of having elected a black president.
As well, let's not conflate the man Obama with the historical achievement. Black Americans may not be robbed of the fact that we have elected a black president and at some point will do so again. Our achievement is irreversible, whether Barack Obama leaves the White House after one term or after two. It's just that all of us, and black Americans in particular, will be better off if he leaves after one.
On Labor Day, Unions Have Nothing to Celebrate
Sept. 3rd, 2012
John Ransom
Townhall.Com:
For labor unions around the country, this Labor Day serves as a painful reminder that when they decided to go all-in for Obama in 2008, they alienated the rest of us non-government, non-union members- the 99 Percent- who have to go out and earn our keep every day. And that alienation is being expressed in political defeats by unions around the country.
I’m wondering if the unions are starting to regret their investment in Obama.
Unions dumped $450 million into the Obama effort in 2008, according to the New York Times, hoping that they’d buy political clout with Obama that they don’t actually own on Main Street. But besides the auto bailout, and a few years of government stimulus spending, the strategy has been pretty much a disaster.
“This is not about payback,” the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s director of government affairs told the New York Times. “We’re looking to work with the new administration on a shared set of priorities that focus on lifting workers and improving the economy.”
I think he meant “lifting workers’ wallets.”
Because on the other counts, I think you can call their strategy a failure: No payback for unions and no improving economy.
And just another fine job for liberals, who don’t seems to be able to accomplish even those things that they say they desire.
Instead, the mass of the country has turned on unions, union members, bloated union benefits and even- gasp!- public teachers- who used to be as iconic in America as baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and, um… Chevrolet?
The laundry list of failures for the union agenda is really staggering. They spent the most money ever. They elected the greatest president EVER.
But what did they really get? The union has faced the longest string of defeats since the losing streak that started at the First Battle of Bull Run.
Well, they wanted to be in politics. Congrats, Mr. Union. You are now in politics.
Next Page>>
John Ransom
Townhall.Com:
For labor unions around the country, this Labor Day serves as a painful reminder that when they decided to go all-in for Obama in 2008, they alienated the rest of us non-government, non-union members- the 99 Percent- who have to go out and earn our keep every day. And that alienation is being expressed in political defeats by unions around the country.
I’m wondering if the unions are starting to regret their investment in Obama.
Unions dumped $450 million into the Obama effort in 2008, according to the New York Times, hoping that they’d buy political clout with Obama that they don’t actually own on Main Street. But besides the auto bailout, and a few years of government stimulus spending, the strategy has been pretty much a disaster.
“This is not about payback,” the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s director of government affairs told the New York Times. “We’re looking to work with the new administration on a shared set of priorities that focus on lifting workers and improving the economy.”
I think he meant “lifting workers’ wallets.”
Because on the other counts, I think you can call their strategy a failure: No payback for unions and no improving economy.
And just another fine job for liberals, who don’t seems to be able to accomplish even those things that they say they desire.
Instead, the mass of the country has turned on unions, union members, bloated union benefits and even- gasp!- public teachers- who used to be as iconic in America as baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and, um… Chevrolet?
The laundry list of failures for the union agenda is really staggering. They spent the most money ever. They elected the greatest president EVER.
But what did they really get? The union has faced the longest string of defeats since the losing streak that started at the First Battle of Bull Run.
Well, they wanted to be in politics. Congrats, Mr. Union. You are now in politics.
Next Page>>
Obama's Accelerating Downward Spiral For America
Peter Ferrara
9/02/2012 @ 4:27PM
Op/Ed (Forbes) - New income data from the Census Bureau reveal what a great job Barack Obama has done for the middle class as President. During his entire tenure in the oval office, median household income has declined by 7.3%.
In January, 2009, the month he entered office, median household income was $54,983. By June, 2012, it had spiraled down to $50,964. That’s a loss of $4,019 per family, the equivalent of losing a little less than one month’s income a year, every year. And on our current course that is only going to get worse not better.
Obama never tires of telling us that the economy was in one of the worst recessions since the Great Depression when he entered office, as if he was the only President to have suffered a recession early in his term. But nobody expected that he would use the vast powers of the most powerful office in the world to make it worse. But that is what he has done.
Even if you start from when the recession ended in June, 2009, the decline since then has been greater than it was during the recession. Three years into the Obama recovery, median family income had declined nearly 5% by June, 2012 as compared to June, 2009. That is nearly twice the decline of 2.6% that occurred during the recession from December, 2007 until June, 2009. As the Wall Street Journal summarized in its August 25-26 weekend edition, “For household income, in other words, the Obama recovery has been worse than the Bush recession.”
The Journal elaborated, “The President portrays the financial decline of American families on his watch as part of a decades-long trend. He’s wrong. Real income for middle income households rose by roughly 30% from 1983 to 2005, according to the Congressional Budget Office.” And MSNBC hosts, listen up, you might learn something. The Journal further explains, “The political left likes to blame the ebbing of union power. But non-government unionization fell dramatically in the 1980s and 90s, and incomes rose.”
True, income growth lagged from where it should have been during the Bush years. But that only reflected the abandonment of half of Reagan’s economic program during those years. While Bush’s tax rate reductions did promote growth, Bush and the Republican Congress lost control of federal spending during the 2000s. Federal spending as a percent of GDP increased by one-seventh during the Bush years, almost exactly reversing the gains that had been won under Speaker Gingrich’s Republican Congress in the 1990s. (Clinton played a good rhetorical game appearing to fight the spending reductions, but deserves great credit for substantively giving into them in the end.)
But more important by far was that the Bush Fed abandoned the Reagan/Clinton strong dollar monetary policy for a cheap dollar, Keynesian style monetary policy, falling for the dopey Keynesian line that a cheap currency promotes exports. The Bush Treasury Secretaries cheered this debasement of the Fed’s monetary policy, reflecting the dark cloud of reemerging Keynesian influence on national economic policy.
What is overlooked is that a declining dollar may reduce the prices of American exports, but it makes the entire nation poorer in the process, reducing the international purchasing power of every dollar every American worker earns, and reducing the international value of every asset owned by every American investor, business entrepreneur, and property owner.
The problem is that Obama has only greatly accelerated everything Bush did wrong, and reversed everything Bush did right. So Obama’s spending has skyrocketed the federal budget by nearly one-fourth as a percent of GDP in just one term. Moreover, the Obama Fed has abandoned any semblance of control over monetary policy, buying most of the soaring federal debt issued to finance Obama’s record smashing federal deficits with newly printed money (actually created by computer record, a sort of cyberprinting). Of course, the whole point of Obama’s tax policy has been to more than reverse the Bush tax rate cuts, which is now already slated under current law to go into effect on January 1.
That is why it will all only get worse in a second Obama term, as the economy slides back into a double-dip recession in 2013 unless these Obama policies are swiftly reversed. I first began ringing alarm bells about that a year ago with the publication of my Encounter Books Broadside No. 25, Obama and the Crash of 2013. But now even the Washington establishment CBO is pealing the air raid siren as well.
Next Page »
9/02/2012 @ 4:27PM
In January, 2009, the month he entered office, median household income was $54,983. By June, 2012, it had spiraled down to $50,964. That’s a loss of $4,019 per family, the equivalent of losing a little less than one month’s income a year, every year. And on our current course that is only going to get worse not better.
Obama never tires of telling us that the economy was in one of the worst recessions since the Great Depression when he entered office, as if he was the only President to have suffered a recession early in his term. But nobody expected that he would use the vast powers of the most powerful office in the world to make it worse. But that is what he has done.
Even if you start from when the recession ended in June, 2009, the decline since then has been greater than it was during the recession. Three years into the Obama recovery, median family income had declined nearly 5% by June, 2012 as compared to June, 2009. That is nearly twice the decline of 2.6% that occurred during the recession from December, 2007 until June, 2009. As the Wall Street Journal summarized in its August 25-26 weekend edition, “For household income, in other words, the Obama recovery has been worse than the Bush recession.”
The Journal elaborated, “The President portrays the financial decline of American families on his watch as part of a decades-long trend. He’s wrong. Real income for middle income households rose by roughly 30% from 1983 to 2005, according to the Congressional Budget Office.” And MSNBC hosts, listen up, you might learn something. The Journal further explains, “The political left likes to blame the ebbing of union power. But non-government unionization fell dramatically in the 1980s and 90s, and incomes rose.”
True, income growth lagged from where it should have been during the Bush years. But that only reflected the abandonment of half of Reagan’s economic program during those years. While Bush’s tax rate reductions did promote growth, Bush and the Republican Congress lost control of federal spending during the 2000s. Federal spending as a percent of GDP increased by one-seventh during the Bush years, almost exactly reversing the gains that had been won under Speaker Gingrich’s Republican Congress in the 1990s. (Clinton played a good rhetorical game appearing to fight the spending reductions, but deserves great credit for substantively giving into them in the end.)
But more important by far was that the Bush Fed abandoned the Reagan/Clinton strong dollar monetary policy for a cheap dollar, Keynesian style monetary policy, falling for the dopey Keynesian line that a cheap currency promotes exports. The Bush Treasury Secretaries cheered this debasement of the Fed’s monetary policy, reflecting the dark cloud of reemerging Keynesian influence on national economic policy.
What is overlooked is that a declining dollar may reduce the prices of American exports, but it makes the entire nation poorer in the process, reducing the international purchasing power of every dollar every American worker earns, and reducing the international value of every asset owned by every American investor, business entrepreneur, and property owner.
The problem is that Obama has only greatly accelerated everything Bush did wrong, and reversed everything Bush did right. So Obama’s spending has skyrocketed the federal budget by nearly one-fourth as a percent of GDP in just one term. Moreover, the Obama Fed has abandoned any semblance of control over monetary policy, buying most of the soaring federal debt issued to finance Obama’s record smashing federal deficits with newly printed money (actually created by computer record, a sort of cyberprinting). Of course, the whole point of Obama’s tax policy has been to more than reverse the Bush tax rate cuts, which is now already slated under current law to go into effect on January 1.
That is why it will all only get worse in a second Obama term, as the economy slides back into a double-dip recession in 2013 unless these Obama policies are swiftly reversed. I first began ringing alarm bells about that a year ago with the publication of my Encounter Books Broadside No. 25, Obama and the Crash of 2013. But now even the Washington establishment CBO is pealing the air raid siren as well.
Next Page »
U.S. Comforting Words to Iran: We Won't Join Israeli Attack
Large Israeli newspaper: message is intended to prevent Iranian response against U.S. targets in Gulf.
By Gil Ronen
First Publish: 9/3/2012, 8:23 AM
(IsraelNationalNews) - Senior officials in the Obama Administration sent a message to Tehran in the past few days, according to which the U.S. does not intend to join Israel's side if it decides to attack the Iranian nuclear installations on its own, reports Israel's second-largest paper, Yediot Aharonot.
According to the report, the U.S. sent the message to Iran in order to avoid an Iranian response military response that would target U.S. installations in the Gulf region.
The message was reportedly conveyed to Iran through two European countries that serve as a conduit of communication between Iran and the U.S. in times of crisis.
Nationalist newspaper Makor Rishon has accused Yediot Aharonot of working with the Obama Administration against the Netanyahu government's planned strike on Iran.
According to the New York Times, senior U.S. officials have argued that Israel is "trying to corner" Obama into a military commitment that he does not yet need to make.
By Gil Ronen
First Publish: 9/3/2012, 8:23 AM
According to the report, the U.S. sent the message to Iran in order to avoid an Iranian response military response that would target U.S. installations in the Gulf region.
The message was reportedly conveyed to Iran through two European countries that serve as a conduit of communication between Iran and the U.S. in times of crisis.
Nationalist newspaper Makor Rishon has accused Yediot Aharonot of working with the Obama Administration against the Netanyahu government's planned strike on Iran.
According to the New York Times, senior U.S. officials have argued that Israel is "trying to corner" Obama into a military commitment that he does not yet need to make.
The Destruction of Change: MDA Edition
Exclusive: Without Jerry Lewis, MDA Couldn’t Collect 50% of Last Year’s Pledges
09/01/12 5:05pm
Roger Friedman
ShowBiz411.Com Exclusive: Jerry Lewis vs. the Muscular Dystrophy Association: after 50 plus years, MDA tossed Lewis out last year and replaced him as chairman of the charity and host of his famous Labor Day telethon. The 2011 telethon, shrunk to six hours from 21, was ghastly. When it was over MDA trumpeted that they’d made $61 million– up 4 percent from the prior year when Lewis was at the helm. MDA boasted it did better without Jerry.
http://www.masslive.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2011/09/jerry_lewis_gone_but_mda_telet.html
Alas, it wasn’t true. MDA has just posted its 2011 federal tax form 990 on its website and this tells a much different story. MDA was only able to collect $31 million of that much publicized amount. Without Jerry Lewis to cajole or persuade or inveigle, exactly half the amount came in that was promised by the public. Whether people simply reneged, or never actually pledged that amount at all, remains to be seen.
MDA will argue this happens every year: the tote board total is never what actually comes in. But in 2010, MDA crowed about $58 million at the end of the telethon with Jerry; $48 million came in. In 2009, the first telethon after the recession, the shortfall was about $15 million–$60 million announced, $45 million arrived.
For last year, MDA lists gross receipts from the first non Jerry Lewis telethon at $30,683,816. The charitable contribution portion was 18,059,876 . This left a gross income of $12,623,940.
A 50% shortfall is unprecedented. Because of it, the Form 990 shows a running $30 million loss or more in all categories stated on the MDA return from the beginning of 2011 to the end. Net assets and fund balances seem severely depleted.
And public support dropped overall, not just with the Telethon. In 2010, MDA claimed it received over $174 million in gifts and grants (including the telethon). In 2011, there was a big drop: the number was only $157 million.
Even more disturbing: revenue less expenses left MDA in the red for 2011 at $19 million.
MDA’s now deposed CEO, the man who got rid of Lewis, Gerald C. Weinberg, still pulled down his nearly $400K a year salary in 2011, which he’d been making fo years. The top staff at MDA all make decent six figure salaries as well. Weinberg and most of that staff are no longer working at MDA.
To be fair: MDA divides up the millions that do come in to dozens of worthy hospitals, universities, research programs, and facilities. The halved $61 million is still a sizeable chunk for these donation-starved groups. However: without the bad publicity and the controversy around Jerry Lewis, MDA might have been able to collect a higher percentage of pledges which would have benefited these groups even more.
Something happened at MDA in 2011 that’s never quite been explained. They committed a kind of hari-kari, taking an established brand and flushing it down the toilet. On Sunday night, the so-called remnants of the annual telethon are down to three hours. Almost everything is pre-taped except for local cut ins. The acts have no relationship to the history of the MDA.
Because it’s taped, there will be no drama to see if they can top last year. Of course, last year doesn’t really exist since the actually collected $31 million is far below the amounts from preceding years.
I doubt Jerry Lewis is amused or feeling vindicated. He worked like a dog for five decades for his “kids” and established an image for this charity among so many dozens of others soliticing funds for terrible diseases.
An email to the pr director of MDA has gone unanswered so far. If she writes back. I will gladly add the responses to our questions.
All the numbers for this article came directly from www.mda.org/aboutus
also http://mda.org/sites/default/files/TaxForm990_2011.pdf
http://www.thenonprofittimes.com/article/detail/mda-telethon-to-be-mostly-on-tape-4837
Roger Friedman
ShowBiz411.Com Exclusive: Jerry Lewis vs. the Muscular Dystrophy Association: after 50 plus years, MDA tossed Lewis out last year and replaced him as chairman of the charity and host of his famous Labor Day telethon. The 2011 telethon, shrunk to six hours from 21, was ghastly. When it was over MDA trumpeted that they’d made $61 million– up 4 percent from the prior year when Lewis was at the helm. MDA boasted it did better without Jerry.
http://www.masslive.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2011/09/jerry_lewis_gone_but_mda_telet.html
Alas, it wasn’t true. MDA has just posted its 2011 federal tax form 990 on its website and this tells a much different story. MDA was only able to collect $31 million of that much publicized amount. Without Jerry Lewis to cajole or persuade or inveigle, exactly half the amount came in that was promised by the public. Whether people simply reneged, or never actually pledged that amount at all, remains to be seen.
MDA will argue this happens every year: the tote board total is never what actually comes in. But in 2010, MDA crowed about $58 million at the end of the telethon with Jerry; $48 million came in. In 2009, the first telethon after the recession, the shortfall was about $15 million–$60 million announced, $45 million arrived.
For last year, MDA lists gross receipts from the first non Jerry Lewis telethon at $30,683,816. The charitable contribution portion was 18,059,876 . This left a gross income of $12,623,940.
A 50% shortfall is unprecedented. Because of it, the Form 990 shows a running $30 million loss or more in all categories stated on the MDA return from the beginning of 2011 to the end. Net assets and fund balances seem severely depleted.
And public support dropped overall, not just with the Telethon. In 2010, MDA claimed it received over $174 million in gifts and grants (including the telethon). In 2011, there was a big drop: the number was only $157 million.
Even more disturbing: revenue less expenses left MDA in the red for 2011 at $19 million.
MDA’s now deposed CEO, the man who got rid of Lewis, Gerald C. Weinberg, still pulled down his nearly $400K a year salary in 2011, which he’d been making fo years. The top staff at MDA all make decent six figure salaries as well. Weinberg and most of that staff are no longer working at MDA.
To be fair: MDA divides up the millions that do come in to dozens of worthy hospitals, universities, research programs, and facilities. The halved $61 million is still a sizeable chunk for these donation-starved groups. However: without the bad publicity and the controversy around Jerry Lewis, MDA might have been able to collect a higher percentage of pledges which would have benefited these groups even more.
Something happened at MDA in 2011 that’s never quite been explained. They committed a kind of hari-kari, taking an established brand and flushing it down the toilet. On Sunday night, the so-called remnants of the annual telethon are down to three hours. Almost everything is pre-taped except for local cut ins. The acts have no relationship to the history of the MDA.
Because it’s taped, there will be no drama to see if they can top last year. Of course, last year doesn’t really exist since the actually collected $31 million is far below the amounts from preceding years.
I doubt Jerry Lewis is amused or feeling vindicated. He worked like a dog for five decades for his “kids” and established an image for this charity among so many dozens of others soliticing funds for terrible diseases.
An email to the pr director of MDA has gone unanswered so far. If she writes back. I will gladly add the responses to our questions.
All the numbers for this article came directly from www.mda.org/aboutus
also http://mda.org/sites/default/files/TaxForm990_2011.pdf
http://www.thenonprofittimes.com/article/detail/mda-telethon-to-be-mostly-on-tape-4837
Was Alcohol involved in Secret Sevice blunder resulting in Biden's equipment truck stolen
Then again, there's always "Choice B".... Biden's is not protected 24/7...PICK!
U-Haul with equipment for Biden event stolen in Detroit
September 2nd, 2012
07:53 PM ET
Washington (CNN) – A U-Haul truck loaded with equipment for a Monday event featuring Vice President Joe Biden was stolen in Detroit Sunday, a spokesman for the U.S. Secret Service said.
"A U-Haul that we were utilizing was stolen at the Westin Hotel overnight," Ed Donovan told CNN.
Donovan would not specify what equipment was in the U-Haul at the time it was stolen, and added that the theft shouldn't affect the vice president's plans on Monday.
Biden is scheduled to speak at a Labor Day rally in downtown Detroit Monday and march in a parade organized by the Michigan AFL-CIO. Last year President Barack Obama spoke at the Motor City's Labor Day celebration.
CNN's Jonathan Helman contributed to this report.
U-Haul with equipment for Biden event stolen in Detroit
September 2nd, 2012
07:53 PM ET
Washington (CNN) – A U-Haul truck loaded with equipment for a Monday event featuring Vice President Joe Biden was stolen in Detroit Sunday, a spokesman for the U.S. Secret Service said.
"A U-Haul that we were utilizing was stolen at the Westin Hotel overnight," Ed Donovan told CNN.
Donovan would not specify what equipment was in the U-Haul at the time it was stolen, and added that the theft shouldn't affect the vice president's plans on Monday.
Biden is scheduled to speak at a Labor Day rally in downtown Detroit Monday and march in a parade organized by the Michigan AFL-CIO. Last year President Barack Obama spoke at the Motor City's Labor Day celebration.
CNN's Jonathan Helman contributed to this report.
Obama's Katrina: Most of New Orleans still without power; patience 'wearing thin'
By Paloma Esquivel
September 1, 2012, 1:32 p.m.
(Los Angeles Times) - Isaac lost most of its destructive steam by Saturday -- with the Gulf Coast still recovering from its battering earlier in the week -- but the storm managed to bring a small amount of needed rain to drought-stricken parts of the Midwest.
“This by no means will be a drought-buster,” said Chris Vaccaro, a National Weather Service spokesman. “But we’ll take whatever rain we can get.”
Up to 3 inches of rain was expected in the Mississippi and Ohio valleys -- though some parts of Illinois and Indiana could get more, Vaccaro said.
Residents of the Gulf Coast, meanwhile, were trying to cope with damage inflicted by the slow-moving storm. Then a hurricane, Isaac made landfall Tuesday, the day before the seventh anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. It then proceeded to pummel the region for several days, largely sparing New Orleans but devastating southern, low-lying parts of Mississippi and Louisiana with flooding.
In Mississippi, where two deaths have been attributed to Isaac, recovery efforts were underway Saturday even though some areas were still dealing with flooding and power outages.
“As we transition to the recovery phase of this disaster, our priority is to identify damages and begin the process of requesting federal assistance for local governments and residents who have been affected by this disaster,” said Robert Latham, executive director of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, in a statement.
In Louisiana, more than 3,000 evacuees remained in shelters across the state, though some had begun returning home.
In a Saturday news conference, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said that, although New Orleans had escaped the worst effects of the storm, the majority of the city still does not have power.
“Like everyone else, my patience is wearing thin,” he said. “This is more than an inconvenience; it continues to be dangerous for everybody.”
Recovery efforts in the city are underway and hundreds of workers have been sent out to clean up trees and debris, Landrieu said.
No more glass eggs, imported from the Orient. As Rev. Sun Myung Moon dies at 92
By Cheryl Wetzstein
Sunday, September 2, 2012
The Washington Times - The Rev. Dr. Sun Myung Moon, the leader of the Unification Church and founder of The Washington Times, died early Monday in South Korea. He was 92.
He passed away just before 2 a.m. local time (12:54 p.m. EDT Sunday) from complications of pneumonia at Cheongshim International Hospital outside Seoul, while surrounded by family, friends and followers, according to Unification Church leaders.
A comment was not immediately available from Unification Church International President Hyung Jin Moon, his youngest son and appointed successor of the religious movement. But Rev. Joshua Cotter, vice president of the Unification Church USA, said Sunday that “the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, revered by millions as the Messiah and True Parent, who was born in Korea but who lived more than 40 years in America … has ascended.”
In addition to leading the worldwide religious movement he founded in South Korea in 1954, Rev. Moon supported anti-communist causes during the Cold War, promoted international and interfaith peace activities, and strongly advocated a pro-marriage, pro-family culture.
“His vision of sacred marriage, of the formation of ideal families and a world of peace has been taken up by millions of people around the world and a second and third generation of Unificationists,” Mr. Cotter said.
Thomas P. McDevitt, president of The Washington Times, said Sunday that “words cannot convey my heart at this time.”
“Rev. Sun Myung Moon has long loved America, and he believed in the need for a powerful free press to convey accurate information and moral values to people in a free world. The Washington Times stands as a tangible expression of those two loves,” he said.
After a period of almost two weeks to allow tributes and prepare the body, a memorial service will be held at 10 a.m. Korean time on Sept. 15 (9 p.m. EDT on Sept. 14). The service will be at the Cheongshim Peace World Center in the church’s Cheongpyeong complex, about 40 miles northeast of Seoul in Gyeonggi Province.
During Rev. Moon’s illness, wife Hak Ja Han Moon urged members not to grieve but “continue on unwaveringly.”
“Please take heart that, for us, there is no stopping on the way,” she said, according to reports on the church’s Tongil Group website.
A visionary businessman and lifelong champion of the free press, Rev. Moon founded newspapers, magazines, electronic media outlets and digital publications in the U.S., Japan, South Korea and many Latin American, African and European countries.
“As controversial as Rev. Moon was in the United States, I got to know him as a man whose heart was focused on bringing together people of different faiths to bridge divides. His call on people of faith to serve others is an important legacy,” said Neil Bush, chairman of Points of Light and son of former President George H.W. Bush.
“He will always be remembered as the embodiment of loving and sharing without limits, sacrifice and suffering without limits, courage and service without limits — and all this not for family, race, community or nation, but for humankind as a whole,” said Ambassador K.V. Rajan, former secretary of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs.
The energetic evangelist traveled the world numerous times and went on speaking tours as recently as 2011. He started or inspired hundreds of organizations and met with countless world leaders, notably such communist leaders as former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and North Korea’s Kim Il-sung. On a trip in July 2008, he and his family survived a helicopter crash in Korea.
But throughout his life, Rev. Moon’s teachings and his church’s practices sparked criticism, suspicion and persecution. He was jailed six times, and survived numerous beatings and a North Korean labor camp.
Story Continues →
White House Propaganda Core: IMAGINE THAT! FEDS QUIETLY DROP ALL CHARGES AGAINST SHERIFF JOE. I WONDER WHY?
September 1st, 2012
Federal attorneys announce that they will be shutting down their probe into whether Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio abused the power of his office. KPNX's Kevin Kennedy reports.
NBC News staff and wire services
The federal government has closed a criminal probe of alleged financial misconduct by Arizona lawman Joe Arpaio, who styles himself as "America's toughest sheriff," and no charges will be filed, the U.S. Attorney's Office said on Friday.
A separate federal investigation relating to allegations of civil rights abuses by Arpaio's office is continuing.
The announcement on Friday marked the end of an investigation that began in November 2010 at the behest of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to examine alleged financial improprieties by the county sheriff and his deputies.
A federal criminal inquiry into several of those matters was concluded last summer with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Arizona declining to initiate criminal charges.
Maricopa County authorities were informed on Friday that federal prosecutors had likewise declined to bring charges in connection with allegations that the sheriff's office had misused county credit cards or misspent money from jail facilities excise taxes.
In addition, the U.S. Attorney's Office declined to prosecute two former officials of the county attorney's office who were accused of wrongfully prosecuting a local judge.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Ann Birmingham Scheel said in a statement that her office "is closing its investigation into allegations of criminal conduct by current and former members of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office and the Maricopa County Attorney's Office."
Arpaio, who returned from the Republican National Convention on Friday night, said he was "very happy" with decision.
"I send my appreciation to the federal government for their hard work in clearing my office," he said in a news briefing.
Arpaio, 80, who is seeking re-election to a sixth term as sheriff in November, has been under a separate federal inquiry since 2008 over allegations that he and his deputies engaged in an extensive pattern of civil rights abuses.
Arpaio denied any wrongdoing, and said he would cooperate with investigators.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Ann Birmingham Scheel, acting on behalf of the United States due to the recusal of U.S. Attorney John S. Leonardo, commended the joint investigative efforts of the prosecutors and the FBI special agents who conducted the investigation.
Scheel said her office advised Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery of the decision.
Arpaio, first voted into office in 1992, has been elected five times and is seeking a sixth term.
In July, Arpaio said that volunteer investigators working for him concluded that President Barack Obama’s birth certificate is not legitimate.
"At the very least," he said at a news conference, "I can tell you this, based on all of the evidence presented and investigated, I cannot in good faith report to you that these documents are authentic."
Also in July, Arpaio denied in testimony in a class-action lawsuit that his deputies targeted people because of the color of their skin.
He was testifying whether police can target illegal immigrants without racially profiling Hispanic citizens and legal residents.
"I am against anyone racial profiling ... today as in my 50 years in law enforcement," Arpaio told the court during cross-examination.
Arpaio is also known for outfitting county jail inmates in pink underwear, claiming the pink shorts are less likely to be smuggled out of jail and sold on the black market, and for housing inmates in a Tent City jail in Phoenix, even when Sonoran Desert summer temperatures soar to 115 degrees.
NBC's Jim Gold and Reuters contributed to this report.
Federal attorneys announce that they will be shutting down their probe into whether Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio abused the power of his office. KPNX's Kevin Kennedy reports.
NBC News staff and wire services
The federal government has closed a criminal probe of alleged financial misconduct by Arizona lawman Joe Arpaio, who styles himself as "America's toughest sheriff," and no charges will be filed, the U.S. Attorney's Office said on Friday.
A separate federal investigation relating to allegations of civil rights abuses by Arpaio's office is continuing.
The announcement on Friday marked the end of an investigation that began in November 2010 at the behest of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to examine alleged financial improprieties by the county sheriff and his deputies.
A federal criminal inquiry into several of those matters was concluded last summer with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Arizona declining to initiate criminal charges.
Maricopa County authorities were informed on Friday that federal prosecutors had likewise declined to bring charges in connection with allegations that the sheriff's office had misused county credit cards or misspent money from jail facilities excise taxes.
In addition, the U.S. Attorney's Office declined to prosecute two former officials of the county attorney's office who were accused of wrongfully prosecuting a local judge.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Ann Birmingham Scheel said in a statement that her office "is closing its investigation into allegations of criminal conduct by current and former members of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office and the Maricopa County Attorney's Office."
Arpaio, who returned from the Republican National Convention on Friday night, said he was "very happy" with decision.
"I send my appreciation to the federal government for their hard work in clearing my office," he said in a news briefing.
Arpaio, 80, who is seeking re-election to a sixth term as sheriff in November, has been under a separate federal inquiry since 2008 over allegations that he and his deputies engaged in an extensive pattern of civil rights abuses.
Arpaio denied any wrongdoing, and said he would cooperate with investigators.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Ann Birmingham Scheel, acting on behalf of the United States due to the recusal of U.S. Attorney John S. Leonardo, commended the joint investigative efforts of the prosecutors and the FBI special agents who conducted the investigation.
Scheel said her office advised Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery of the decision.
Arpaio, first voted into office in 1992, has been elected five times and is seeking a sixth term.
In July, Arpaio said that volunteer investigators working for him concluded that President Barack Obama’s birth certificate is not legitimate.
"At the very least," he said at a news conference, "I can tell you this, based on all of the evidence presented and investigated, I cannot in good faith report to you that these documents are authentic."
Also in July, Arpaio denied in testimony in a class-action lawsuit that his deputies targeted people because of the color of their skin.
He was testifying whether police can target illegal immigrants without racially profiling Hispanic citizens and legal residents.
"I am against anyone racial profiling ... today as in my 50 years in law enforcement," Arpaio told the court during cross-examination.
Arpaio is also known for outfitting county jail inmates in pink underwear, claiming the pink shorts are less likely to be smuggled out of jail and sold on the black market, and for housing inmates in a Tent City jail in Phoenix, even when Sonoran Desert summer temperatures soar to 115 degrees.
NBC's Jim Gold and Reuters contributed to this report.
Group Exposes Possible 30,000 dead North Carolinians Ripe for Voter Fraud
Group says it found 30,000 dead North Carolinians registered to vote.
Voter Integrity Project has no evidence of any ballots cast in their names.
By Kelly Poe
kpoe@newsobserver.com
Posted: Sunday, Sep. 02, 2012
(Charlotte Observer) RALEIGH A Raleigh-based group devoted to reducing the potential for voter fraud presented the N.C. Board of Elections on Friday with a list of nearly 30,000 names of dead people statewide who are still registered to vote.
The Voter Integrity Project compiled the list after obtaining death records from the state Department of Public Health from 2002 to March 31 and comparing them to the voter rolls.
“Mainly, what we’re concerned about is the potential [for fraud],” said project director Jay DeLancy. “Since there is no voter ID law in North Carolina, anybody can walk in and claim to be anyone else.”
DeLancy said his group has found evidence to suggest voter fraud in these numbers, but will not quantify how much until he is able to do more analysis. Most cases of what look like a dead person voting are likely just administrative errors, such as a son named Junior voting in his father’s name instead of his own.
The rolls of registered voters are updated every month when the state Department of Health and Human Services gives a list of all death certificates received that month to the state Board of Elections.
Problems arise when the names on the death certificates do not match the names on the voting records, which often happens after women get married, Board of Elections General Counsel Don Wright said Friday. Addresses are also often listed with slight differences, Wright said. An address on West Millbrook Road and Millbrook Road might be the same house, but computers won’t always catch it. “Unless there is an exact match, we do not remove people from the voter rolls,” Wright said.
DeLancy said his volunteers work to fix the discrepancies, by examining cases of similar names and addresses and confirming other pieces of data, such as whether the voter has the same date of birth.
Wright said the elections board will investigate the names provided by the Voter Integrity Project and take appropriate action. The state board can remove voters from the rolls for inactivity if they haven’t voted in two consecutive elections, which cleans up most problems over time, Wright said.
In 2009, 261 cases of voter fraud were sent to local district attorney’s offices in the state, the majority of which concluded investigations from the 2008 election, according to a report by the state Board of Elections. Of those cases, 229 involved convicted felons voting. The board did not investigate anyone for fraud in the May primaries, Wright said.
DeLancy says his group’s list of dead registered voters would have been larger had it included records from Virginia and South Carolina, which together account for 55 percent of all North Carolinians’ out-of-state deaths, he said. Although most states allow the release of death certificates for voter registration accuracy, Virginia and South Carolina do not, DeLancy said.
“We said, ‘Are you kidding? This is 2012.’ ” DeLancy said. “We want Virginia and South Carolina to fix that loophole in the law.”
The Voter Integrity Project describes itself as a nonpartisan group aimed at clean, fair elections. It supports requiring photo ID to vote, which Republicans typically support and Democrats typically oppose.
Earlier this summer, the organization sued to have 528 Wake County residents it claimed were not U.S. citizens removed from the voter registration. The county elections board investigated the complaint and found that all of the voters were citizens and eligible to vote.
Voter Integrity Project has no evidence of any ballots cast in their names.
By Kelly Poe
kpoe@newsobserver.com
Posted: Sunday, Sep. 02, 2012
(Charlotte Observer) RALEIGH A Raleigh-based group devoted to reducing the potential for voter fraud presented the N.C. Board of Elections on Friday with a list of nearly 30,000 names of dead people statewide who are still registered to vote.
The Voter Integrity Project compiled the list after obtaining death records from the state Department of Public Health from 2002 to March 31 and comparing them to the voter rolls.
“Mainly, what we’re concerned about is the potential [for fraud],” said project director Jay DeLancy. “Since there is no voter ID law in North Carolina, anybody can walk in and claim to be anyone else.”
DeLancy said his group has found evidence to suggest voter fraud in these numbers, but will not quantify how much until he is able to do more analysis. Most cases of what look like a dead person voting are likely just administrative errors, such as a son named Junior voting in his father’s name instead of his own.
The rolls of registered voters are updated every month when the state Department of Health and Human Services gives a list of all death certificates received that month to the state Board of Elections.
Problems arise when the names on the death certificates do not match the names on the voting records, which often happens after women get married, Board of Elections General Counsel Don Wright said Friday. Addresses are also often listed with slight differences, Wright said. An address on West Millbrook Road and Millbrook Road might be the same house, but computers won’t always catch it. “Unless there is an exact match, we do not remove people from the voter rolls,” Wright said.
DeLancy said his volunteers work to fix the discrepancies, by examining cases of similar names and addresses and confirming other pieces of data, such as whether the voter has the same date of birth.
Wright said the elections board will investigate the names provided by the Voter Integrity Project and take appropriate action. The state board can remove voters from the rolls for inactivity if they haven’t voted in two consecutive elections, which cleans up most problems over time, Wright said.
In 2009, 261 cases of voter fraud were sent to local district attorney’s offices in the state, the majority of which concluded investigations from the 2008 election, according to a report by the state Board of Elections. Of those cases, 229 involved convicted felons voting. The board did not investigate anyone for fraud in the May primaries, Wright said.
DeLancy says his group’s list of dead registered voters would have been larger had it included records from Virginia and South Carolina, which together account for 55 percent of all North Carolinians’ out-of-state deaths, he said. Although most states allow the release of death certificates for voter registration accuracy, Virginia and South Carolina do not, DeLancy said.
“We said, ‘Are you kidding? This is 2012.’ ” DeLancy said. “We want Virginia and South Carolina to fix that loophole in the law.”
The Voter Integrity Project describes itself as a nonpartisan group aimed at clean, fair elections. It supports requiring photo ID to vote, which Republicans typically support and Democrats typically oppose.
Earlier this summer, the organization sued to have 528 Wake County residents it claimed were not U.S. citizens removed from the voter registration. The county elections board investigated the complaint and found that all of the voters were citizens and eligible to vote.
Iowans’ Message to Obama: ‘We Did Build This’
SIOUX CITY, Iowa (ABC News) — President Obama received a less than warm welcome and a warning upon arrival at the airport here on the second stop of his Iowa visit, which was aimed at recapturing some of the magic the state gave his run to the White House in 2008.
Greeting Air Force One as it touched down under sunny skies and sultry heat was a hand-painted banner draped across the top of an airplane hangar that reads, “Obama Welcome to SUX – We Did Build This.” “SUX” is the airport code for Sioux City.
The message appeared to be a response President Obama’s “you didn’t build that” remark from a July campaign rally, when he was trying to explain that government — not businesses — constructed public infrastructure on which the economy relies. Republicans have used the four words to attack Obama as out of touch with the realities of owning and operating a small business.
The banner is a reminder that this part of the state remains hotly contested turf for both Obama and his Republican rival Mitt Romney, just as the campaign enters the home stretch.
Sioux City, which sits on the border with Nebraska in the northwest corner of the state, is territory Obama lost in 2008 to Sen. John McCain, even though he won the state overall. Obama won 49 percent of the vote here to McCain’s 50 percent, a difference of just 500 votes.
Obama also won the Iowa caucuses, an early confirmation that his message was resonating with Democrats.
This time around, the president’s campaign believes it can turn the Sioux City region blue by appealing to middle class values and highlighting the administration’s record of tax cuts for small businesses and families.
“We know the President has strong support in Sioux City so it was important to the him to spend time visiting with familiar faces and energizing people at this pivotal time leading up to election day,” said Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki.
Polls show Iowa, which Obama won handily four years ago carrying 54 percent of the vote, is up for grabs in November. Obama and Romney have been locked in a dead heat since early this year.
“Iowa, this is our first stop on the road to our convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. But there was a reason for me to begin the journey right here in Iowa, where it first began more than four years ago,” Obama told a crowd of 10,000 in Urbandale, Iowa, earlier in the day.
“Because it was you, Iowa, who kept us going when the pundits were writing us off,” he said. “And it will be you, Iowa, who choose the path we take from here.”
Psaki said the banner was not visible from the presidential motorcade.
There were no identifying markers on the hangar or the banner to suggest who made it, and a call to the Woodbury County GOP was not immediately returned.
“The people of Iowa are focused on who is going to be a fighter for them in the White House, not on out of context attacks,” Psaki said.
The president is on the first of a four-day tour through battleground states, leading up to his formal nomination for the presidency at the Democratic National Convention on Thursday. He spends Sunday rallying supporters in Boulder, Colo.
This post has been updated.
BOOK: Government Media Complex peddled Obama administration's storybook lies, and spin on Bin Laden takedown, Obama admin had planned to use for re-election purposes and self promoting movie. Now threaten to sue SEAL for telling truth in book
A SEAL’s Own Story, Bin Laden and All
‘No Easy Day’ by Mark Owen Tells of SEAL Raid on Bin Laden
By JANET MASLIN
Published: September 2, 2012
New York Times:
The Navy SEALs who killed Osama bin Laden on May 2, 2011, learned from ABC News that they had “gazelle legs, no waist, and a huge upper body configuration,” not to mention calloused hands and gigantic egos. They learned from other American news sources that they had taken part in a 45-minute firefight and that an armed bin Laden, once cornered, had tried to defend himself in his final moments, staring straight at the fighters who would shoot him. Their raid was being turned into a bad action movie.
These distortions seemed funny at first. But “Mark Owen” (the pseudonym of one gutsy, transgressive member of the SEALs, who served 13 consecutive combat deployments) began to want to set the record straight. He hoped to deliver firsthand a visceral and often surprising version of the bin Laden raid and other SEAL stories. The emphasis of his “No Easy Day,” written with Kevin Maurer, is not on spilling secrets. It is on explaining a SEAL’s rigorous mind-set and showing how that toughness is created.
The bin Laden story is the marquee event in “No Easy Day,” of course. But the formative steps in the author’s own story are just as gripping. In a prologue the author, who grew up in Alaska and earned his SEAL Trident in 1998, writes about reading a book about SEALs (“Men in Green Faces” by Gene Wentz) as a junior high school kid, realizing that this was his vocation and hoping that he too could one day write a book that would inspire others. Mission accomplished.
“No Easy Day” gets off to a worrisomely formulaic start: A pumped-up prologue on the flight to the bin Laden compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, then a potentially dull flashback to the author’s early SEAL training. (“If I failed the situps, I was done.”). But it quickly becomes an exciting, suspenseful account of how his fighting skills were honed.
In the first contentious days of this book’s arrival the author’s real identity has been outed: He is Matt Bissonnette, and the Defense Department has threatened to prosecute him for violating confidentiality agreements. But his book is careful to avoid all but the most basic information about his SEAL experiences, and its emphasis is on the close-up experience of a team member in action not on the big picture policy questions that determine how he has been deployed.
That basic material is hugely illuminating in its own right. Just by describing the model of a kill house in which he trained to raid buildings, he conveys the ferocious pragmatism of SEAL thinking. Years ago, in Mississippi, he repeatedly raided this modular structure, which could be reconfigured as conference rooms, bathrooms or even a ballroom.
“We rarely saw the same layout more than once,” he says. Meanwhile instructors overhead on catwalks watched the trainees perform, eliminating the group’s weaker members as if they were failed contestants on a reality show. Mr. Owen made one false move that might have gotten him booted out during such exercises. He learned never to make it again.
While deployed in Iraq (though most of his service was in Afghanistan) he was part of a team in Baghdad that mistakenly landed on the wrong roof. The raid’s target is discreetly identified as “a high-level weapons facilitator, just another link in the chain funding the insurgency.” The book describes how quickly the team adapted to turn the error to its advantage and speculates about how much worse the outcome would have been had it hit their original landing site.
What he gained from this experience was a healthy understanding of the importance of luck. For the tightly controlling Type-A personality that is apparently common to some members of the SEALs this was humbling indeed.
Although “No Easy Day” gives a strong sense of SEAL camaraderie and even the team members practical joking (who knew they could be punked with glitter?), the author’s fellow fighters are identified strangely at best. One is said to have a big head. Another has “hands as big as shovels.” A third resembles a taller version of the dwarf Gimli from “The Lord of the Rings,” and that’s about it for distinguishing characteristics. Before the bin Laden mission, the author says, he was present at the 2009 SEAL rescue of Richard Phillips, the captain of the cargo ship Maersk Alabama, from the hands of Somali pirates.
It is only after the George W. Bush presidency that the author begins complaining about the slow-moving “Washington machine” that members of the SEALs found frustrating. That irritation mounts in 2011, when the SEALs anxiously awaited their signal to raid Abbottabad, but this account is determined to steer clear of serious politics or leave itself open to election-season manipulation. The worst it has to say about President Obama is that none of the fighters who caught bin Laden wanted to help re-elect him, and that he never followed through on a promise to invite them to the White House for a beer.
Story Continues on Page 2>>
‘No Easy Day’ by Mark Owen Tells of SEAL Raid on Bin Laden
By JANET MASLIN
Published: September 2, 2012
New York Times:
The Navy SEALs who killed Osama bin Laden on May 2, 2011, learned from ABC News that they had “gazelle legs, no waist, and a huge upper body configuration,” not to mention calloused hands and gigantic egos. They learned from other American news sources that they had taken part in a 45-minute firefight and that an armed bin Laden, once cornered, had tried to defend himself in his final moments, staring straight at the fighters who would shoot him. Their raid was being turned into a bad action movie.
The bin Laden story is the marquee event in “No Easy Day,” of course. But the formative steps in the author’s own story are just as gripping. In a prologue the author, who grew up in Alaska and earned his SEAL Trident in 1998, writes about reading a book about SEALs (“Men in Green Faces” by Gene Wentz) as a junior high school kid, realizing that this was his vocation and hoping that he too could one day write a book that would inspire others. Mission accomplished.
“No Easy Day” gets off to a worrisomely formulaic start: A pumped-up prologue on the flight to the bin Laden compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, then a potentially dull flashback to the author’s early SEAL training. (“If I failed the situps, I was done.”). But it quickly becomes an exciting, suspenseful account of how his fighting skills were honed.
In the first contentious days of this book’s arrival the author’s real identity has been outed: He is Matt Bissonnette, and the Defense Department has threatened to prosecute him for violating confidentiality agreements. But his book is careful to avoid all but the most basic information about his SEAL experiences, and its emphasis is on the close-up experience of a team member in action not on the big picture policy questions that determine how he has been deployed.
That basic material is hugely illuminating in its own right. Just by describing the model of a kill house in which he trained to raid buildings, he conveys the ferocious pragmatism of SEAL thinking. Years ago, in Mississippi, he repeatedly raided this modular structure, which could be reconfigured as conference rooms, bathrooms or even a ballroom.
“We rarely saw the same layout more than once,” he says. Meanwhile instructors overhead on catwalks watched the trainees perform, eliminating the group’s weaker members as if they were failed contestants on a reality show. Mr. Owen made one false move that might have gotten him booted out during such exercises. He learned never to make it again.
While deployed in Iraq (though most of his service was in Afghanistan) he was part of a team in Baghdad that mistakenly landed on the wrong roof. The raid’s target is discreetly identified as “a high-level weapons facilitator, just another link in the chain funding the insurgency.” The book describes how quickly the team adapted to turn the error to its advantage and speculates about how much worse the outcome would have been had it hit their original landing site.
What he gained from this experience was a healthy understanding of the importance of luck. For the tightly controlling Type-A personality that is apparently common to some members of the SEALs this was humbling indeed.
Although “No Easy Day” gives a strong sense of SEAL camaraderie and even the team members practical joking (who knew they could be punked with glitter?), the author’s fellow fighters are identified strangely at best. One is said to have a big head. Another has “hands as big as shovels.” A third resembles a taller version of the dwarf Gimli from “The Lord of the Rings,” and that’s about it for distinguishing characteristics. Before the bin Laden mission, the author says, he was present at the 2009 SEAL rescue of Richard Phillips, the captain of the cargo ship Maersk Alabama, from the hands of Somali pirates.
It is only after the George W. Bush presidency that the author begins complaining about the slow-moving “Washington machine” that members of the SEALs found frustrating. That irritation mounts in 2011, when the SEALs anxiously awaited their signal to raid Abbottabad, but this account is determined to steer clear of serious politics or leave itself open to election-season manipulation. The worst it has to say about President Obama is that none of the fighters who caught bin Laden wanted to help re-elect him, and that he never followed through on a promise to invite them to the White House for a beer.
Story Continues on Page 2>>
Dem. Gov. O’Malley: We’re Not Better Off Now
By Jonathan Miller
Updated: September 2, 2012 2:58 p.m
Gov. Martin O'Malley, of Maryland. Photo: Chet Susslin
National Journal:
Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland, who is considered a possible contender for president in 2016, bucked other Obama surrogates on Sunday, saying that the country was not better off now than it was four years ago.
On CBS's Face the Nation, host Bob Schieffer asked: “Can you honestly say that people are better off today than they were four years ago?”
Responded O’Malley: “No, but that's not the question of this election. The question, without a doubt, we are not as well off as we were before George Bush brought us the Bush job losses, the Bush recession, the Bush deficits, the series of desert wars -- charged for the first time to credit cards, the national credit card.”
Quipped Schieffer: “George Bush is not on the ballots."
Updated: September 2, 2012 2:58 p.m
National Journal:
Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland, who is considered a possible contender for president in 2016, bucked other Obama surrogates on Sunday, saying that the country was not better off now than it was four years ago.
On CBS's Face the Nation, host Bob Schieffer asked: “Can you honestly say that people are better off today than they were four years ago?”
Responded O’Malley: “No, but that's not the question of this election. The question, without a doubt, we are not as well off as we were before George Bush brought us the Bush job losses, the Bush recession, the Bush deficits, the series of desert wars -- charged for the first time to credit cards, the national credit card.”
Quipped Schieffer: “George Bush is not on the ballots."
The president who peddled 'hope' ... destroyed it
As the election nears, where’s the hope?
Posted on Sunday, 09.02.12
By Steven Thomma
McClatchy Newspapers
(Miami Herald)CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- The hope is gone.
Four years into the age of Barack Obama, and a dozen years into a new century, America is struggling to find its way.
It’s been attacked. It’s rushed into two wars, grown disillusioned and turned homeward. It’s endured the worst financial collapse in 80 years.
At the political fringes, Americans have felt cast adrift by the powerful and taken to the streets in anger – the tea party from the right, the occupy movement from the left. In the vast middle, tens of millions still look for work, grapple with paychecks that don’t buy as much, or sleep in homes worth a fraction of what they once did.
As the two major political parties meet back to back in national conventions to chart their way to victory, this the unsettled landscape behind the speeches and posturing. The nation is engaging in not just an election but a deep debate over how it wants to dig out of these problems and chart a new course. The key question: Does it want the government to lead the way to a new era or should it simply get out of the way?
Like turning points of the past – the turmoil of the Industrial Revolution, the Great Depression, the economic and political stagnation of the 1970s – the result could produce a new order. Or, like the last decade, the country could refuse to rally to one side, swinging narrowly back and forth between the two major parties, the politics gridlocked and venomous.
“The temperament of the country is one of insecurity,” said Randall Miller, a historian at St. Joseph University in Philadelphia. “Insecurity about who we are, who we want to be, where we are going.”
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Obama four years ago campaigned for the presidency with a promise of hope and change that excited the nation.
“When he was running for office, we were inspired by what he was saying,” said Michael Fox of Hudson, N.C.
Fox still likes the president. But the economy wears on him after watching his auto shop business sink. “All the money’s dried up,” he said.
The numbers are stark.
Unemployment has been above 8 percent for 42 months, nearly all of Obama’s presidency. African-Americans have a jobless rate topping 14 percent.
For those with jobs, incomes have dropped even more since the end of the recession in 2009 than they did during it.
Families’ net worth has dropped, driven by a plunge in the values of their homes. In the Tampa Bay region near last week’s Republican National Convention, some homes worth $600,000 a few years ago are worth a third of that today. New home sales have picked up but still lag well below normal levels.
Stocks have rebounded since 2008, restoring retirement accounts. But it’s not enough. By a steady margin of 2-to-1, Americans think the country’s on the wrong track.
It’s not just the recession.
For good or ill, people are grappling with a world where the rules are changing.
A global economy and an information age are making some U.S. jobs obsolete. Illegal immigration has stopped, but the tide of legal and illegal migration over the past two decades has changed the country. Labor unions are shrinking, some under assault. The definition of marriage is changing.
"I get so fed up when I go to the store and pick something up and it’s made in China or Chile or God knows where," said Ted James, a retiree in Nampa, Idaho.
Gradually, the country’s turned inward, away from wars and the threat of terror that dominated politics from 2001 onward.
Troops are coming home. Unmanned drones are taking over the hunt for al Qaida terrorists abroad. Terror mastermind Osama bin Laden is dead. Few even noticed when Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney this summer called Iran the nation’s top security priority and did not mention the so-called global war on terror that once dominated American politics.
“We’ve turned the page,” said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute of Public Opinion and the McClatchy-Marist Poll. “We’re war weary and broke.”
If not broke, very much in debt.
A decade of wars that were not paid for. The decision to have Medicare cover prescription drugs in the biggest expansion of an entitlement since the 1960s. Costly bailouts of the U.S. auto industry. Spending to stimulate the economy out of recession. And a refusal to raise taxes.
After years of demanding and getting more government than they would pay for, Americans and their government have $16 trillion in debt.
The credit card bill colors the country’s politics and makes it all the more difficult to rally to any of the major party proposals to fix the underlying economy.
Democrats want to spend more to educate and train people for jobs in a changing economy. Republicans want to cut taxes to put more money in people’s pockets and get them to spend.
But there’s no money. And the politics is so toxic, it’s unclear the parties can bridge the divide anytime soon.
“There’s a much higher degree of skepticism, if not cynicism, about the political options,” said Bert Rockman, a historian and political scientist at Purdue University in Indiana. “Anyone who comes in with the expectation that they can bargain with the other side is foolish.”
Rick Anderson of Monterey County, Calif., is more optimistic – but not about the immediate future.
Laid off from an architectural firm in 2008, he’s one of the millions who’ve adapted. “I ended up going on craigslist and offered my services at lower rates. A couple of architects were interested and now I have done that for four years,” he said.
Now he thinks things are getting better, but that it will take more time. A lot more.
“I think the economy is on the right track and I think we will recover in the long run, but it will take a couple of presidencies to fully recover,” he said. “Realistically, the world is no longer flat.”
Hat tip: MichaelSavage.Com
Posted on Sunday, 09.02.12
By Steven Thomma
McClatchy Newspapers
(Miami Herald)CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- The hope is gone.
Four years into the age of Barack Obama, and a dozen years into a new century, America is struggling to find its way.
It’s been attacked. It’s rushed into two wars, grown disillusioned and turned homeward. It’s endured the worst financial collapse in 80 years.
At the political fringes, Americans have felt cast adrift by the powerful and taken to the streets in anger – the tea party from the right, the occupy movement from the left. In the vast middle, tens of millions still look for work, grapple with paychecks that don’t buy as much, or sleep in homes worth a fraction of what they once did.
As the two major political parties meet back to back in national conventions to chart their way to victory, this the unsettled landscape behind the speeches and posturing. The nation is engaging in not just an election but a deep debate over how it wants to dig out of these problems and chart a new course. The key question: Does it want the government to lead the way to a new era or should it simply get out of the way?
Like turning points of the past – the turmoil of the Industrial Revolution, the Great Depression, the economic and political stagnation of the 1970s – the result could produce a new order. Or, like the last decade, the country could refuse to rally to one side, swinging narrowly back and forth between the two major parties, the politics gridlocked and venomous.
“The temperament of the country is one of insecurity,” said Randall Miller, a historian at St. Joseph University in Philadelphia. “Insecurity about who we are, who we want to be, where we are going.”
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Obama four years ago campaigned for the presidency with a promise of hope and change that excited the nation.
“When he was running for office, we were inspired by what he was saying,” said Michael Fox of Hudson, N.C.
Fox still likes the president. But the economy wears on him after watching his auto shop business sink. “All the money’s dried up,” he said.
The numbers are stark.
Unemployment has been above 8 percent for 42 months, nearly all of Obama’s presidency. African-Americans have a jobless rate topping 14 percent.
For those with jobs, incomes have dropped even more since the end of the recession in 2009 than they did during it.
Families’ net worth has dropped, driven by a plunge in the values of their homes. In the Tampa Bay region near last week’s Republican National Convention, some homes worth $600,000 a few years ago are worth a third of that today. New home sales have picked up but still lag well below normal levels.
Stocks have rebounded since 2008, restoring retirement accounts. But it’s not enough. By a steady margin of 2-to-1, Americans think the country’s on the wrong track.
It’s not just the recession.
For good or ill, people are grappling with a world where the rules are changing.
A global economy and an information age are making some U.S. jobs obsolete. Illegal immigration has stopped, but the tide of legal and illegal migration over the past two decades has changed the country. Labor unions are shrinking, some under assault. The definition of marriage is changing.
"I get so fed up when I go to the store and pick something up and it’s made in China or Chile or God knows where," said Ted James, a retiree in Nampa, Idaho.
Gradually, the country’s turned inward, away from wars and the threat of terror that dominated politics from 2001 onward.
Troops are coming home. Unmanned drones are taking over the hunt for al Qaida terrorists abroad. Terror mastermind Osama bin Laden is dead. Few even noticed when Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney this summer called Iran the nation’s top security priority and did not mention the so-called global war on terror that once dominated American politics.
“We’ve turned the page,” said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute of Public Opinion and the McClatchy-Marist Poll. “We’re war weary and broke.”
If not broke, very much in debt.
A decade of wars that were not paid for. The decision to have Medicare cover prescription drugs in the biggest expansion of an entitlement since the 1960s. Costly bailouts of the U.S. auto industry. Spending to stimulate the economy out of recession. And a refusal to raise taxes.
After years of demanding and getting more government than they would pay for, Americans and their government have $16 trillion in debt.
The credit card bill colors the country’s politics and makes it all the more difficult to rally to any of the major party proposals to fix the underlying economy.
Democrats want to spend more to educate and train people for jobs in a changing economy. Republicans want to cut taxes to put more money in people’s pockets and get them to spend.
But there’s no money. And the politics is so toxic, it’s unclear the parties can bridge the divide anytime soon.
“There’s a much higher degree of skepticism, if not cynicism, about the political options,” said Bert Rockman, a historian and political scientist at Purdue University in Indiana. “Anyone who comes in with the expectation that they can bargain with the other side is foolish.”
Rick Anderson of Monterey County, Calif., is more optimistic – but not about the immediate future.
Laid off from an architectural firm in 2008, he’s one of the millions who’ve adapted. “I ended up going on craigslist and offered my services at lower rates. A couple of architects were interested and now I have done that for four years,” he said.
Now he thinks things are getting better, but that it will take more time. A lot more.
“I think the economy is on the right track and I think we will recover in the long run, but it will take a couple of presidencies to fully recover,” he said. “Realistically, the world is no longer flat.”
Hat tip: MichaelSavage.Com
Sunday, September 2, 2012
EDITORIAL: Another bummer Obama day
Labor Day is no holiday without a jobs.
August 31, 2012
Washington Times:
For 23 million Americans without jobs, the Labor Day holiday is not a day off but just another day without work. It’s a fitting hash mark for the presidential campaign kickoff, reminding Americans of President Obama’s tragic failure to deliver.
In 2009, Mr. Obama promised to lower unemployment to 5.5 percent by 2012. It’s stuck at 8.3 percent. In his first budget, hopefully titled “A New Era of Responsibility,” he projected current growth in the gross domestic product would be a red-hot 6.3 percent. Instead, the country creeps along at a miserable 1.5 percent. One measure of the Obama administration’s desperation is Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis applauding the latest youth unemployment figures, which dipped all the way to 17.1 percent. When numbers that high make officials “excited,” you know things are terrible.
From the White House perspective, this isn’t all bad news. The Obama administration thinks unemployment actually can be healthy for the economy. Obama press secretary Jay Carney said last year that jobless benefits somehow boost consumption and “every place that, that money is spent has added business and that creates growth and income for businesses that leads them to decisions about jobs, more hiring.” By that confused illogic, Mr. Obama should be cheering the worst sustained unemployment rate since the Great Depression. Congratulations, that’s a heckuva job, Barack. Apparently, the president’s re-election slogan, “Forward,” actually means “Reverse.”
Labor Day also draws attention to the role of organized labor in American public life. A new Gallup survey shows 52 percent of the public approves of unions while 42 percent disapproves. A lot has changed since the 1950s, when old Big Labor — the United Auto Workers, the United Mine Workers, the Teamsters — had a 75 percent approval rating. Back then, workers built things. The new Big Labor — the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the Service Employees International Union — represents the service sector and public employees. Their influence grows through securing sweetheart deals from governments populated with the politicians they helped elect. Eventually, the cost of these deals becomes too great for states and municipalities to sustain. Even with these jurisdictions on the brink of bankruptcy, the unions refuse to give on any aspect of their plush compensation packages. Their answer is always the same: Raise taxes and fees; do anything it takes to extract more money from the public to keep alive the government golden goose.
Wisconsin’s Republican Gov. Scott Walker was among the first elected officials to dare to reject this state of affairs. The reforms he pioneered limited the collective-bargaining power of public-sector unions and ended mandatory union dues payments. He faced incessant protests from union rent-a-mobs and denunciation from liberals who never give a second’s thought to producing a budget in balance. He not only saw his plan enacted, he survived a union-backed recall election — and now a state that was facing a $3.6 billion budget deficit is projected to have a $154 million surplus. Mr. Walker’s stand was the most heroic since President Reagan fired more than 11,000 members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization who illegally declared a strike in August 1981.
For Americans who are fortunate enough to have jobs, Labor Day is a time to relax with family and friends and enjoy the fruits of their hard work. For the millions still looking for employment or who have given up their search in frustration, it is just another bummer Obama day.
August 31, 2012
Washington Times:
For 23 million Americans without jobs, the Labor Day holiday is not a day off but just another day without work. It’s a fitting hash mark for the presidential campaign kickoff, reminding Americans of President Obama’s tragic failure to deliver.
In 2009, Mr. Obama promised to lower unemployment to 5.5 percent by 2012. It’s stuck at 8.3 percent. In his first budget, hopefully titled “A New Era of Responsibility,” he projected current growth in the gross domestic product would be a red-hot 6.3 percent. Instead, the country creeps along at a miserable 1.5 percent. One measure of the Obama administration’s desperation is Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis applauding the latest youth unemployment figures, which dipped all the way to 17.1 percent. When numbers that high make officials “excited,” you know things are terrible.
From the White House perspective, this isn’t all bad news. The Obama administration thinks unemployment actually can be healthy for the economy. Obama press secretary Jay Carney said last year that jobless benefits somehow boost consumption and “every place that, that money is spent has added business and that creates growth and income for businesses that leads them to decisions about jobs, more hiring.” By that confused illogic, Mr. Obama should be cheering the worst sustained unemployment rate since the Great Depression. Congratulations, that’s a heckuva job, Barack. Apparently, the president’s re-election slogan, “Forward,” actually means “Reverse.”
Labor Day also draws attention to the role of organized labor in American public life. A new Gallup survey shows 52 percent of the public approves of unions while 42 percent disapproves. A lot has changed since the 1950s, when old Big Labor — the United Auto Workers, the United Mine Workers, the Teamsters — had a 75 percent approval rating. Back then, workers built things. The new Big Labor — the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the Service Employees International Union — represents the service sector and public employees. Their influence grows through securing sweetheart deals from governments populated with the politicians they helped elect. Eventually, the cost of these deals becomes too great for states and municipalities to sustain. Even with these jurisdictions on the brink of bankruptcy, the unions refuse to give on any aspect of their plush compensation packages. Their answer is always the same: Raise taxes and fees; do anything it takes to extract more money from the public to keep alive the government golden goose.
Wisconsin’s Republican Gov. Scott Walker was among the first elected officials to dare to reject this state of affairs. The reforms he pioneered limited the collective-bargaining power of public-sector unions and ended mandatory union dues payments. He faced incessant protests from union rent-a-mobs and denunciation from liberals who never give a second’s thought to producing a budget in balance. He not only saw his plan enacted, he survived a union-backed recall election — and now a state that was facing a $3.6 billion budget deficit is projected to have a $154 million surplus. Mr. Walker’s stand was the most heroic since President Reagan fired more than 11,000 members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization who illegally declared a strike in August 1981.
For Americans who are fortunate enough to have jobs, Labor Day is a time to relax with family and friends and enjoy the fruits of their hard work. For the millions still looking for employment or who have given up their search in frustration, it is just another bummer Obama day.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)