American Army to Revert to 1940 Size

I suppose it should not surprise me that our corrupt mass media would be so silent about the plan that President Obama and Secretary of Defense Hagel have hatched to reduce our armed forces to their lowest level since before World War II. I think this plan is reckless and greatly endangers our security at a time that the world is falling apart.  Is this the culmination of Obama's grand plan?  Will our soldiers also train with wooden, fake rifles as in 1940?

New York Times (excerpt)

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel plans to shrink the United States Army to its smallest force since before the World War II buildup and eliminate an entire class of Air Force attack jets in a new spending proposal that officials describe as the first Pentagon budget to aggressively push the military off the war footing adopted after the terror attacks of 2001.

The proposal, released on Monday, takes into account the fiscal reality of government austerity and the political reality of a president who pledged to end two costly and exhausting land wars. A result, the officials argue, will be a military capable of defeating any adversary, but too small for protracted foreign occupations.

Officials who saw an early draft of the announcement acknowledge that budget cuts will impose greater risk on the armed forces if they are again ordered to carry out two large-scale military actions at the same time: Success would take longer, they say, and there would be a larger number of casualties. Officials also say that a smaller military could invite adventurism by adversaries.

“You have to always keep your institution prepared, but you can’t carry a large land-war Defense Department when there is no large land war,” a senior Pentagon official said.

Outlines of some of the budget initiatives, which are subject to congressional approval, have surfaced, an indication that even in advance of its release the budget is certain to come under political attack.

For example, some members of Congress, given advance notice of plans to retire air wings, have vowed legislative action to block the move, and the National Guard Association, an advocacy group for those part-time military personnel, is circulating talking points urging Congress to reject anticipated cuts. State governors are certain to weigh in, as well. And defense-industry officials and members of Congress in those port communities can be expected to oppose any initiatives to slow Navy shipbuilding.

Even so, officials said that despite budget reductions, the military would have the money to remain the most capable in the world and that Mr. Hagel’s proposals have the endorsement of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Money saved by reducing the number of personnel, they said, would assure that those remaining in uniform would be well trained and supplied with the best weaponry.

The new American way of war will be underscored in Mr. Hagel’s budget, which protects money for Special Operations forces and cyberwarfare. And in an indication of the priority given to overseas military presence that does not require a land force, the proposal will — at least for one year — maintain the current number of aircraft carriers at 11.

Over all, Mr. Hagel’s proposal, the officials said, is designed to allow the American military to fulfill President Obama’s national security directives: to defend American territory and the nation’s interests overseas and to deter aggression — and to win decisively if again ordered to war.

“We’re still going to have a very significant-sized Army,” the official said. “But it’s going to be agile. It will be capable. It will be modern. It will be trained.”

Mr. Hagel’s plan would most significantly reshape America’s land forces — active-duty soldiers as well as those in the National Guard and Reserve.

The Army, which took on the brunt of the fighting and the casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq, already was scheduled to drop to 490,000 troops from a post-9/11 peak of 570,000. Under Mr. Hagel’s proposals, the Army would drop over the coming years to between 440,000 and 450,000.

That would be the smallest United States Army since 1940. For years, and especially during the Cold War, the Pentagon argued that it needed a military large enough to fight two wars simultaneously — say, in Europe and Asia. In more recent budget and strategy documents, the military has been ordered to be prepared to decisively win one conflict while holding off an adversary’s aspirations in a second until sufficient forces could be mobilized and redeployed to win there." New York Times

The Summer of 2006 (A Reprint)

Many media outlets, including the NY Times, Washington Post, AP, and Reuters, report the Gaza incursion by Israel as if it's new news, and as if the Israelis should just stand and take it.  There is both ancient history and modern history to consider.  Below is a reprint of an earlier blog entry of mine that refers to some recent events,  For some long-term history, please go to Palestine, Israel and its Peoples and Borders

Please also understand that if Israel does not shut down the ability of Hamas to engage in rocket attacks, the advancements in rocket science will surely overwhelm the defense systems of the Israelis in the near future, and new missiles supplied by Hezbollah (Iran) will start killing thousands of them.
Remembering the Summer of 2006

"On July 12th, 2006, Hezbollah guerillas killed three Israeli soldiers and kidnapped another two, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. All the while Hezbollah continued to launch rockets at civilian targets in Northern Israel. These acts against Israel’s sovereignty sparked Israel's defensive measures and the subsequent escalation of the conflict. In the end, as a direct consequence of Hezbollah’s belligerence, more than 1,000 Lebanese and Israeli civilians lay dead and the infrastructure of Lebanon lay in ruins." From Sea to Shining Sea 10/9/06

"At a time when history is hardly being taught anymore, and journalists lie, it must be hard for our young people to understand who the good guys are in the conflict between the Arabs and the Israelis in what was called Palestine. In a land where both Jews and Arabs have dwelt and fought one another for ages, it was Solomon-like for the United Nations to divide the land between them in 1947 – yes, 1947, more than 60 years ago. Neither the Arabs in surrounding countries nor the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians would accept that decision, and the Palestinians moved out, confident that they could soon move back and take over all the land; while Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Yemen attacked the Israelis.

Four times since 1948 the Arab countries have attacked Israel with the objective of exterminating every Jew who lived there. The result of these wars was defeat and humiliation for the Arabs and more-defensible borders for the Israelis.

Egypt signed a peace agreement with Israel (for which Anwar Sadat was assassinated by Islamic fundamentalists), and, over the years, many times other countries, mostly the U.S.A., have tried to broker a peace agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians. The last, significant negotiation, called the Oslo Accords, was brokered between President Clinton, the Palestinian leader, PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat, and the Israeli Premier,Yitzhak Rabin. Many Israelis objected to the terms of this agreement and replaced Rabin, while the Palestinians reacted by launching the “Intifada”, a never-ending state of terrorism against the Israelis, and the Oslo Accords came to naught.

Due to the rampant anti-Semitism that exists in much of the world, Israel has often been portrayed as the monster in the conflict. When Hezbollah attacked Israel in the summer of 2006, both the Associated Press and Reuters were caught doctoring photographs and filing false reports (remember Cana) that condemned Israel unfairly." From Sea to Shining Sea 7/19/2008

2009 Update

Nothing ever changes. No tears should be shed for Israeli women and children who live under the daily threat of constant bombardment from rockets launched from Gaza or from death by being blown up by Palestinian terrorists from a bomb set in a busy store or on a bus. Here is today’s attempt by the New York Times to raise anger against Israel and enlist sympathy for the murderers. Give me a break!

In Dense Gaza, Civilians Suffer

January 1, 2009 By TAGHREED EL-KHODARY New York Times (Excerpt)

"GAZA — A dentist stood at the bed of a doctor, his good friend Ehab Madhoun, 32, who had just died, his shrapnel-pitted body wrapped in a white shroud.

The day before, Dr. Madhoun, a general practitioner, was in an ambulance responding to an Israeli strike at the Jabalya refugee camp in northern Gaza. Another missile hit the ambulance. The driver, Muhammad Abu Hasira, died instantly. Dr. Madhoun lingered for a day, dying of his wounds on Wednesday in the intensive care unit of Shifa Hospital, where hundreds of people have been brought since Israel began its heaviest assault on Gaza in three decades.

The dentist cried.

“He was just doing his work,” said the dentist, who would not give his name. “He’s a doctor, and I can’t understand why Israel would hit an ambulance. They can tell from the cameras it’s an ambulance.”

It has always been this way, over years of conflict here, that civilians are killed in the densely populated Gaza Strip when Israel stages military operations it says are essential for its security. But five days of Israeli airstrikes have surpassed past operations in scale and intensity; the long-distance bombardment of the Hamas-controlled territory has, however well aimed at those suspected of being militants, splintered families and shattered homes in one of the most densely populated places on Earth." New York Times

The scandal is MSNBC

The scandal is MSNBC

By Jennifer Rubin, January 18 Washington Post

The bridge scandal started out as a test for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R). Now it has become a test for the media. MSNBC, which long ago stopped being a news outlet in the sense of going out to find facts and is largely indistinguishable from Democratic Party talking points, has been going 24/7 since the bridge story broke. No surprise. But then Saturday MSNBC decided to throw even the pretense of journalism overboard.

It ran with a claim from Mayor Dawn Zimmer of Hoboken claiming Christie withheld Sandy relief funds to gain approval for a business development. Christie’s office put out a quick denial of the allegations, as did the developers. MSNBC says the mayor has a personal diary that corroborates her claim — a diary that has yet to be released, reviewed or verified. Rather than, you know, investigate the story, MSNBC threw it out on the air hoping others would follow. The Hill had the good sense to note this mayor had changed  her story from earlier claims that the funds were denied for not backing him for governor.

Then Saturday afternoon Christie’s team had enough. It put out a written statement:

MSNBC is a partisan network that has been openly hostile to Governor Christie and almost gleeful in their efforts attacking him, even taking the unprecedented step of producing and airing a nearly three-minute attack ad against him this week. Governor Christie and his entire administration have been helping Hoboken get the help they need after Sandy, with the city already having been approved for nearly $70 million dollars in federal aid and is targeted to get even more when the Obama Administration approves the next rounds of funding. The Governor and Mayor Zimmer have had a productive relationship, with Mayor Zimmer even recently saying she’s ‘very glad’ he’s been our Governor. It’s very clear partisan politics are at play here as Democratic mayors with a political axe to grind come out of the woodwork and try to get their faces on television.

In short, the Hoboken mayor  has been all over the place, claiming different things have been for retribution. With no correspondence or other documented communication with the governor, we’re supposed to take a personal diary that could have been written at any point in time as reliable? A professional news operation must be more than simply a bulletin board for partisans.

The claim is on its face somewhat ridiculous since the modest-sized town had asked for more than $100 million (!) in funds and got $70 million, according to the statement released by Christie’s office. And to boot, Zimmer made statements last summer, produced by Christie’s office, praising the Sandy relief. She also tweeted this week that she had a meeting with N.J. Transit on related issues and expressed her appreciation. If this is “retribution” every city in New Jersey should be so lucky.

Christie’s team then put out a flood of data showing MSNBC’s obsessive coverage and a string of tweets from Zimmer on the New Jersey transit situation. It also set out examples of MSNBC’s cartoonish coverage, including a sort of Democratic ad (!) against Christie.

The test for the mainstream media and for medic “critics” (often merely on the prowl for Fox News bias) is whether they find the actual scandal: The MSNBC hit-squad that does not investigate, does not make any pretense of balance or fairness and is nevertheless given legitimacy by other media elites.

This is also a lesson for conservatives in dealing with liberal media bias. You don’t whine.  You present the facts, fully and fast. You present compelling evidence of bias. If the conservatives want politicians who show some backbone when under attack by phony news operations, they’d be wise to follow the Christie model.

In the meantime, Christie, in an odd way, may be lucky here. MSNBC has turned a legitimate news story (the bridge) into a vivid display of media bias. That in turn will give conservatives who might otherwise see fit to pile on pause. Do they want to be the couriers of MSNBC smears?

 

NY Times and Benghazi

Monday morning I attended a breakfast with a small group of men who meet every two weeks to discuss national affairs.  I’m proud to say that virtually all of them recognized that the NY Times piece on Benghazi was pure propaganda intended to help elect Hillary Clinton in 2016.  The Times has moved from significant bias to outright lies.  Fortunately lots of people now recognize this.

Betrayal That Whitewash Won’t Cover

By Wesley Pruden  December 30, 2013 The Washington Times (Excerpt)

“Transparency, the current vogue word for truth-telling, is usually a good thing, unless you're trying to fool all the people some of the time, like spending 7,000 words to resurrect a fairy tale in Benghazi, all to give a helping hand to a lady in distress.

The New York Times understands that Hillary Clinton is likely to be the only credible hope the Democrats have for 2016 and that she already needs lots of remedial help. The Times huffed and puffed to deliver an excuse for betrayal in Benghazi, meant to second Mrs. Clinton's famous alibi for her tortured misfeasance as secretary of state — "What difference, at this point, does it make?"

The right response might have made a lot of difference to an American ambassador who lay dead, slain at the hands of Islamic terrorists, and three other Americans who had to give up their lives because nobody at the White House could be bothered to ride to the rescue. President Obama and his frightened and timid acolytes, including Mrs. Clinton, insisted that this was not Islamic terror or the perfidy of al Qaeda, but merely the reaction of innocent Muslims offended by a video posted on YouTube mocking the religion of the Prophet Muhammad.

Even after the White House dispatched Susan Rice, who was then the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, to push the confection about the video as revealed truth, almost nobody believed it. The White House couldn't even find anybody else who would say he believed it.

David Kirkpatrick, the Cairo bureau chief of The New York Times, grunted, burped and produced a tiny mouse of special pleading, an account with nothing new of much importance, except a few colorful facts of the sort that were once the popcorn of newsmagazine journalism. He describes, for example, the vase in the living room of the mother of one of the suspects in the Benghazi attack. Vases are no doubt important, but mostly to interior decorators. This account, so transparent to anyone who reads it even with casual attention, seems hardly worth the effort of a good reporter who was willing to take certain risks to himself.

It's important to Hillary and her presidential campaign, now in its early planning, to repeat the con that al Qaeda was not in any way involved, because Mr. Obama was supposed to have killed al Qaeda graveyard dead when he dispatched Navy SEALs to terminate Osama bin Laden with extreme prejudice.” Washington Times

 

 

Here We Go Again

A headline in this morning’s Sun Herald infuriated me.

It screamed, “Israel strikes residential area”. For decades Arabs in surrounding countries (and Iran) have been trying to exterminate the Israelis, and only a short time ago the Palestinians were murdering Jews during their various Intifadas. Whenever the Israelis try to defend themselves, liberals and their corrupt press post article after article about the bloodthirsty Israelis.

During the last actual warfare, both Reuters and the Associated Press were caught red-handed fabricating stories and pictures that made Israelis look like monsters. I know that reporters fear for their lives when in Muslim countries, but they should quit their profession or change where they choose to work – rather than feed us this anti-Semitic nonsense.

Everyone with even a cursory knowledge of Gaza knows that they hide behind women and children when they locate their rocket launchers. They place them near homes, hospitals and mosques. What are Israelis to do when hundreds of rockets are raining down on them?

Not too long ago the Israelis twice made trades of “land for peace”. Returning the Sinai to Egypt brought a peace that resulted in the assassination of Anwar Sadat (a peace that is threatened now by the takeover in Egypt by the Muslim Brotherhood), while giving Gaza to the Palestinians has resulted in no peace, just periodic intervals of terror and bloodshed initiated by Arab terrorists who call themselves, Hamas. When they are not figuring out ways to kill more Jews, they are teaching their children that Jews are actually pigs that drink the blood of Arab children during their religious ceremonies.

Bias by the Numbers

Leo Rennert November 18, 2012 American Thinker

Pick up the Sunday, Nov. 18 edition of the Washington Post and you'll find a lengthy, front-page wrap-up about Israel's antiterrorist counteroffensive in Gaza -- with three perfect examples of pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel bias. all within eight paragraphs of each other ("GAZA CLASH WIDENS -- Israel expands air assault against Hamas, says Tel Aviv-bound rocket was intercepted" by Karin Brulliard and Abigail Hauslohner).

Here they are by the numbers:

1) Brulliard and Hauslohner devote half a dozen paragraphs to a heart-tugging, up-close and personal account of two Gaza teachers awakened by the family's windows shattering and their walls bursting open. The house next door, which belonged to a Hamas commander, sustained a direct hit. One of the teachers "frantically dug his five children out of the rubble." The other teacher "rushed from room to room, crying and gathering her children's clothing, school bags and dolls." The Post quotes her as saying again and again, "Where are we going to go? The Israelis are responsible. They are the enemy of God. What did we do? Did we carry any missiles? Did we launch any rockets?" All very poignant. But what about similar scenes in Israel, where Hamas rockets by the hundreds have been pounding civilian targets from Ashkelon, Ashdod, and Netivot to the proximity of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem? Do Brulliard and Hauslohner devote as much space to cameos of Israelis, especially children, suffering from shock and post-traumatic stress? Does their suffering also rate half a dozen paragraphs of sympathetic coverage? If not six paragraphs, how about three... or maybe just one paragraph? Or a single despairing quote? But in the entire Post article, there isn't a single sentence depicting Israelis frantically rushing to shelters as sirens blare at any time of day -- or the traumas left in their wake. Nothing, nada. As Shakespeare might have protested: "If you prick us, do we not bleed?"

2. Brulliard and Hauslohner, writing about Israeli air strikes that demolished a Hamas police building and the headquarters of Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh, conclude that "Israel appeared to be channeling new efforts toward Hamas civilian institutions." Hamas headquarters a "civilian institution"? It is nothing of the sort. The terrorist group has a unitary command-and-control apparatus and infrastructure. This is where all the terrorist plots are hatched under single command. But the Post, long known for its predilection to sanitize Hamas, presents them as "civilian" facilities that presumably should remain untouched. How touching -- for beleaguered Hamas, with Brulliard and Hauslohner to the rescue of this terrorist outfit.

3) And what about fatalities on either side? Here's the article's take: "The death toll in Gaza rose to 45 by Saturday evening, Health Ministry officials said. Three Israelis have been killed by rocket fire from Gaza." Forty-five dead "Palestinians" versus three dead "Israelis." The numerical comparison, however, is highly misleading. It's apples and oranges. On the Israel side, the three fatalities were civilians -- a reflection of Hamas aiming its massive rocket barrages at civilian populations. On the Gaza side, however, Israeli air strikes are carefully and deliberately aimed at terrorists, their arms caches, ammunition, and rocket launchers. Yes, there are collateral fatalities, but only because Hamas and other terror groups in Gaza hide amid civilians and use them as ''human shields.'' Estimates of combatant-versus-noncombatant fatalities in Gaza are beginning to trickle in. Early figures show most of them were combatants engaged in terrorist operations. To bundle civilian and terrorist fatalities into a single statistic leaves readers with a false impression that perhaps most or all of those killed Gazans were civilians -- the very opposite of what's really happening there. Bottom line: Washington Post readers beware. This isn't kosher journalism.

What If Crowley Succeeds?

I hope everyone remembers JournoList. "JournoList was an informal online discussion group involving several hundred left-leaning journalists. In excerpts released Tuesday, some of their discussions appeared to veer toward collusion, from how to protect Barack Obama to how to tar conservative critics."  This quote was taken from a Christian Science Monitor article about this corrupt attempt to provide the day's talking points for left-wing  journalists (so-called) and for the talking heads that daily spew their spin at us from our TV screens.

JounoList is no more; it was taken down after its discovery, but it is obvious to anyone who follows current events that it has merely gone underground.

What If Crowley and Her Accomplices Succeed?

By David Catron 10.19.12 American Spectator

Such an outcome would be worse than a scandal, it would be downright dangerous.

Shortly after Obamacare was passed and signed by the President, Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute noted a sudden plethora of articles that had begun to appear in a wide variety of MSM outlets about the probable ill-effects of "reform." This prompted him to ask, "Where were these reporters before the passage of the health care bill?" The answer to this question is now pretty obvious. They were colluding, via JournoList and other such forums that we don't know about, to make sure that no one screwed up and told the truth before that morass of taxes and regulations became the law of the land. To the nation's cost, their self-censorship succeeded.

Today, we face a similar but much more dangerous situation. The "reporters" of the establishment news media are engaged in a concerted campaign of misinformation to get Barack Obama re-elected. This has been evident for some time, but the breathtaking mendacity of this effort was writ large by Candy Crowley during last Tuesday's presidential debate. Everyone has by now seen the video clip: the President made the preposterous claim that he had identified the attack on our Benghazi consulate as an act of terrorism as early as September 12. Then, when Romney called him on this egregious whopper, Crowley repeated the lie.

This was no misbegotten attempt at instant "fact checking." It was a deliberately disingenuous attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of the debate's 65 million viewers. Crowley herself admitted that she had reviewed the transcript of Obama's September 12 Rose Garden remarks in advance of the debate, and she is not dumb enough to believe Obama's characterization of his boilerplate comment about "acts of terror" in general. This tag-team prevarication may well backfire. Jeffrey Lord suggests, in Thursday's American Spectator, that it may turn out to be the "tipping point that makes Mitt Romney the 45th President of the United States."

That would certainly constitute a splendid example of poetic justice. But what if Lord is wrong? What if Obama's MSM pimps succeed in getting him re-elected? As we saw with Obamacare, these people wield a great deal of power and they are obviously willing to abuse it. Moreover, despite the increasing distrust with which the public regards the effusions of the Fourth Estate, nearly half of the nation's adults still believe what they see and hear in the media. Gallup released a survey last month showing that 40 percent of the electorate still has some measure of confidence that the MSM reports the news "fairly, accurately and fully."

This percentage constitutes an all time low, and it also means that 60 percent of the public has a healthy distrust of the media. Another good sign is that the survey showed enormous skepticism among the all important independents, only 31 percent of whom trust the media. Nonetheless 40 percent amounts to tens of millions of Americans, and its implications for last Tuesday's face-off are scary to contemplate. It suggests the possibility that 20 to 25 million of the debate's viewers could well have accepted at face value Crowley's misleading statement about the President's immediate reaction to the Benghazi attack.

If the final debate contains similar misrepresentations of fact, and it probably will, that could well dampen Romney's momentum and even cause him to lose the election. And this is where the media become dangerous. Pat Caddell, a Democrat and former pollster for Jimmy Carter, recently outlined the peril: "The press's job is to stand in the ramparts and protect the liberty and freedom of all of us from a government and from organized governmental power. When they desert those ramparts and decide that they will now become active participants … they have, then, made themselves a fundamental threat to the democracy …"

It is no coincidence that Caddell's remarks, which were made on September 27, were largely focused on the Benghazi attack. He was clearly shocked and outraged by the failure of the media to do its job as it relates to that particular "act of terror" and the disgraceful conduct of Obama and his minions in its aftermath. "We've had nine days of lies over what happened because they can't dare say it's a terrorist attack, and the press won't push this. Yesterday there was not a single piece in The New York Times over the question of Libya. Twenty American embassies, yesterday, were under attack. None of that is on the national news."

He went on to say that, during his days in active politics, the media would have been all over any President who behaved as Obama has behaved in reaction to Benghazi: "If a President of either party -- I don't care whether it was Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton or George Bush or Ronald Reagan or George H. W. Bush -- had a terrorist incident, and got on an airplane after saying something, and flown off to a fundraiser in Las Vegas, they would have been crucified!" But this is not your father's press corps. They do, in fact, see themselves as "active participants" in political campaigns. And they always support the Democrats.

The JournoList scandal and several subsequent incidents of journalistic collusion have demonstrated that the media have collectively decided to take up the mantle of the Democrat party as well as its corrupt candidates. They have, as Caddell puts it, "made themselves the enemy of the American people." Thus, much more is riding on the outcome of November's election than who will live in the White House. The voters will be deciding if we still live in a democracy or a nation that has been "fundamentally transformed" into a place where self-appointed elites decide our destinies without regard to what we want or need.

Media Lap Dogs in New Low

The dishonesty of the mainstream press is nothing new to those who pay attention, but it is reaching new heights and will destroy an America whose democratic institutions depend on an educated citizenry.

The four-month old Romney tape that the mainstream media is hyperventilating about, after ridiculing for several days Romney’s truthful comments about the failure of Obama’s entire foreign policy – instead of focusing on the obvious collapse of that policy, we now learn that the tape in question was doctored – possibly by Mother Jones. For 40 years we have been witnessing the metamorphosis of almost the entire press corps, both television and print, into an arm of the Democratic Party. Also yesterday we learned that the Department of Justice, headed by Attorney General Holder, has been feeding stories to Media Matters.

The media lap dogs have been losing audience and readers, but they still have enormous power to deceive. Traditional Americans who value the truth have to do everything in their power to put these charlatans out of business. I am talking about NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, NY Times, LA Times, Washington Post, Newsweek and Time. Do not support them; do not give them an audience until they begin to show some balance in their reporting and analysis.

Media lap dogs in hot pursuit of the wrong story

By Charles Hurt September 18, 2012 The Washington Times

What we are in the midst of witnessing right now is a complete, Fukushima-style meltdown of the mainstream media.

Without these slobbering lap dogs, President Obama never would have been elected in the first place. And now they are his only hope for staying in office amid all the global violence, a morbidly paralyzed economy and a national crisis of confidence so profound that the American Dream has become nothing more than quaint fiction for millions.

Nearly four years after President Obama promised to ease Arab hatred of America, the Middle East burns hotter than ever. Polls show America has never been more deeply despised.

Respected newspapers around the world report that the Obama administration was explicitly warned days before the attack on the American Consulate in Libya in which our ambassador was brutally killed. But officials did nothing to stop the worst terrorist attack on the U.S. since 9/11.

Four years after promising to cut the deficit in half, President Obama has exploded the debt to a record $16 trillion. Welfare rolls have ballooned to levels once unimaginable in America and you are actually paying for campaigns to recruit more people onto welfare.

Then last week, the Obama administration finally acknowledged that the $50 billion in defense cuts it prefers over trimming back welfare programs and cutting wasteful government spending will be "deeply destructive to national security, domestic investments and core government functions."

Oh, and then our credit rating got downgraded. Again. Both humiliating firsts.

So, what flings our national newshounds into a full-blown choking frenzy? An apparent cover-up over the terrorist attack in Libya? The nationwide squalor under the Obama economy? Exposes into all the wasteful spending that should be cut before we junk our national defense?

Nope. Some stupid comment Mitt Romney made four months ago at a fundraiser lamenting that a record-low number of Americans are making enough money anymore to actually pay income taxes.

Is it really a news flash to these people that Mr. Romney can say incredibly idiotic things in the goofiest of ways? Even Mr. Romney himself would probably concede that he doesn't quite have the silver tongue of President Obama. But, hopefully, it is not forked, either.

How such a minor and long-ago statement could blot out coverage of a disastrous foreign policy, crushing debt and total economic malaise is more than most rational people can comprehend. Which is why most rational people do not become national political reporters.

Making the whole mess even more odious is that the secret, potentially illegal recording of Mr. Romney was unearthed by a relative of Obama mentor Jimmy Carter and quickly peddled to the press by openly avowedly liberal activists.

But there is hope. Earlier this week, a White House spokesman and an Obama campaign official answered questions from reporters during a flight on Air Force One. A reporter grilled the White House -- and I am not making this up -- about what the president thought of the impersonation of him on the previous "Saturday Night Live" episode.

Upon the conclusion of the reporters' questions, according to the pool report, the campaign official rewarded the drooling lap dogs by offering them "home-baked cookies."

But, standing tall, uncompromising and fearless, the press declined the campaign's sweets.

How's the Arab Spring Working Out, President Obama?

Lot’s of people, mostly liberals, credited President Obama’s Cairo speech on June 4, 2009 (the highlight of his apology tour) as the spark that set off the Arab Spring.

However, the Arab Spring that the Obama Administration supported so strongly is blowing up in all our faces, as many, including John Bolton, strongly warned would happen. We now have an Egyptian leader who wants to break the Camp David peace with Israel, strengthen ties with Iran, support violent jihad, and subject all Egyptian citizens to the barbaric Sharia law.

Meanwhile, after several years of peace, rocket attacks from Egypt into Israel have resumed, and natural gas shipments to Israel are being sabotaged. With Mubarak’s protection lost, Coptic Christians are being murdered, and other non-Muslims throughout Egypt are in grave danger.

How’s Your Support for the Arab Spring working out, President Obama?

By the way, other than Fox News, you will not hear of the rants against Israel and the call to Jihad by Egypt’s new president on any mainstream news outlet. Why is that?

Morsi To Re-Think Israel, Build Ties With Iran

From the Agence France-Presse

Egypt’s Morsi ‘to rethink Israel pact, build Iran ties’

June 24, 2012

Egypt’s Islamist president-elect, Mohamed Morsi, wants to "reconsider" the peace deal with Israel and build ties with Iran to "create a strategic balance" in the Middle East, according to an interview published by Iran’s Fars news agency on Monday.

The stated goals are certain to alarm Israel and its ally the United States as they adapt to the new direction Egypt will chart with Morsi at the helm.

These goals might alarm the people of the US, but maybe not its current administration.

They could also boost Iran’s influence in the Middle East at a time of heightened tensions between Tehran and the West.

"We will reconsider the Camp David Accord" that, in 1979, forged a peace between Egypt and Israel that has held for more than three decades, Morsi was quoted as telling a Fars reporter in Cairo on Sunday, just before his election triumph was announced.

He said the issue of Palestinian refugees returning to homes their families abandoned in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and the 1967 Six-Day War "is very important"…

Only professional journalists could be should be surprised at this.

Morsi also said he was ready to improve ties with Iran. The Islamic republic broke off diplomatic relations with Egypt in 1980, a year after Cairo signed the peace deal with the Jewish state.

"Part of my agenda is the development of ties between Iran and Egypt that will create a strategic balance in the region," Morsi was quoted as saying…

Iran’s foreign ministry on Sunday welcomed Morsi’s triumph. Its message made no mention, however, of Iran and Egypt resuming diplomatic ties.

That they are running articles about it in their news outlets should be enough.

Iran’s clerical leadership contends that the Arab Spring that toppled veteran Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak and other longtime US allies in the Arab world last year was inspired by its own 1979 Islamic revolution…

But you can be sure that Mr. Morsi’s statements are only the beginning.

He has much bigger plans for the people of Egypt, which were reported in an article from Russia Today, back in May 13, 2012:

Egypt presidential candidate seeks Constitution based on Sharia Law

May 13, 2012

Egypt’s Constitution should be based on the Koran and Sharia law, presidential candidate from the Muslim Brotherhood Islamist movement Mohamed Morsi said.

“The Koran is our constitution, the Prophet is our leader, jihad is our path and death in the name of Allah is our goal,” Morsi said in his election speech before Cairo University students on Saturday night.

Today Egypt is close as never before to the triumph of Islam at all the state levels, he said.

“Today we can establish Sharia law because our nation will acquire well-being only with Islam and Sharia. The Muslim Brothers and the Freedom and Justice Party will be the conductors of these goals,” he said…

So nobody can pretend that they weren’t told by the man himself what he wanted to do.

Ironically, lest we forget, it was to the students of Cairo University that Obama gave his world famous ‘Cairo Speech,’ back on June 4, 2009, which some claim inspired the Arab Spring.

Though, as the AFP article above notes, the Iranians say that their ‘revolution’ has been the real inspiration for ‘Arab Spring.’ And when you look at the results in Tunisia, and Libya and now Egypt it is hard not to agree with the Iranians.

Making Sense of the Birth Certificate

I’m one of those only slightly-touched people who has come to believe that Obama was born in Hawaii (therefore I’m not a Birther), but that he is hiding something, and the birth certificate he submitted to the American people is a fake. Here is an article that tries to make some sense out of all this, but shows that we have not yet gotten to the heart of the matter.  To see the evidence, follow the link to the original article, and then follow the links it contains:
      Piercing the Cone of Silence

By Nick Chase June 12, 2012 American Thinker

Barack Obama was undoubtedly born in Hawaii in 1961 - verified not just by his own word (for whatever that's worth), but by the automatic triggering of the registration of his birth in the public State of Hawaii birth index, and by the contemporaneous printing of his birth announcement in the local newspaper, and by eyewitnesses, and by his father's student-visa INS records.

But 13 months ago I found myself among the skeptics who felt that the president was hiding something because of the two years of stonewalling before he released to the public an image of what he claimed was his long-form birth certificate, under pressure because the issue was turning into a political liability for him.

Like most folks, when this document was released, showing a hospital birth with family and medical information, I assumed that the question was settled. I was satisfied.

And I wasn't the only person satisfied at the time. Most all of the public, and everybody in the mainstream media, accepted the image as genuine. There was a brief flurry of interest when Adobe Photoshop aficionados revealed that the PDF had "layers," but the White House said the computer scan of the "birth certificate" was with optical-character-recognition logic turned on, and that created the layers. Sloppy -- but believable (if you didn't pursue the issue further).

At that point, most everybody stopped looking. The mainstream media categorized anybody who thought the PDF might be fake as a "crazy birther." The internet sources that we rely on for facts, FactCheck.org and Snopes.com, also stopped looking.

Let's be honest -- given the charged political atmosphere, with Donald Trump revealing his long-form birth certificate for political advantage and with a biased press eager to torpedo Trump's pubescent presidential campaign, in the process instantly marginalizing anybody who might have agreed with Trump -- it would be very natural for everybody to stop looking at this point.

The only people who persisted were those who felt that the president is a fraud (on many levels, not just with the "birth certificate") and were determined to prove it. Now, while I felt that the issue had been settled, I always remain curious and receptive to new information -- and what I discovered was that while you might not like the messengers, the research they were performing was valid, because it was based on the document (the digital PDF forgery) itself, not on the biased opinions of people commenting on it without first examining the evidence contained within the document.

I must admit to having had a mental reluctance at that point to accept the possibility of a forged birth certificate. After all, the president was clearly born in Hawaii, so there would be no need to release a fake -- just release the real thing and let the speculation die down. Furthermore, I thought, the president wouldn't have the balls to release a document that could be proven fake. If he did, and the forgery was discovered, and that information became widely known, it would put his presidency at risk. He wouldn't take that chance.

So I began to study the PDF image myself, specifically looking for flaws that didn't require computer expertise or software to understand. By late July 2011 I had developed my "pitch test" which proves forgery (Figure F in "Oblivious to the Obvious," published by American Thinker on April 10, 2012, and the subsequently published Figure FD in "Birth Certificate Whac-A-Mole").

I thought other people might be interested in what I had uncovered. But I had a problem: there was nowhere to publish my findings. The cone of silence that had descended on this story was so enveloping -- so overpowering -- that the subject was taboo even in conservative circles. No publisher would be able to even mention the possibility of forgery, much less research it, for fear of irreparably tarnishing the publication's reputation.

This cone of silence began to crack this spring -- first on March 22, when Lord Christopher Monckton (a Britisher very knowledgeable about climate change and a former policy adviser for Margaret Thatcher's government) said on the Dennis Miller radio show, "And the birth certificate -- I do know that birth certificate isn't genuine -- It appears in layers on the screen in such a way you can remove quite separately each of the individual dates. You use Adobe Illustrator and each of the individual dates is in its own separate layer. This thing has been fabricated -- But the point is, is what he [Obama] has done on the White House website is he has put up a document which is plainly a forgery and I would regard that as a very serious matter." Lord Monckton has the advantage of being beyond the reach of an IRS audit, so he could say what he really thought.

Next, on March 23, was syndicated columnist Diana West's must-read "Silence of the Lapdogs," which took to task the mainstream media for ignoring Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio's "cold case posse" report on the forgery. Most of her syndicated outlets declined to publish this column; it appeared in a few smaller newspapers across the country.

Her comments, as well as Lord Moncton's, were echoed by Thomas Lifson, editor of American Thinker, on March 23, when he concluded: "One does not have to believe that Obama was born in Kenya to be disturbed by the evidence of a digitally-constructed birth certificate being passed off as authentic by a president. Those who are more worried about their public image and about being attacked by the media and political establishment than about getting at the truth will in the end be judged by their actions. Facts are facts, and Sheriff Joe's cold case posse has come up with facts that will not be silenced or controverted by social pressure. History will render its verdict on Obama, his critics, and his defenders."

Then, on March 24, respected author and writer Roger Kimball, in discussing Diana West's column, wrote: "The most effective form of censorship is also the quietest. It operates not by actively proscribing speech but by rendering certain topics hors de combat, literally undiscussable. It does this by propagating an atmosphere of revulsion and taboo. Ordinary censorship prohibits the dissemination of particular opinions or bits of information. The more subtle engine of silence I have in mind goes further. It stanches not only the flow of speech but also the flow of thought. Ordinary censorship occupies itself with the results of human curiosity. What I am talking about attacks human curiosity itself."

On March, 25 in his American Thinker article "Calling out self-censorship on the right," Lifson wrote: "An insidious form of self-censorship has gripped not only the mainstream media but most of the conservative media as well. All Americans who believe in the quest for the truth should be concerned that a rigid taboo is being enforced to prevent the discussion of serious evidence that the President of the United States has presented documents that were constructed on a computer as his genuine birth certificate." With this story, plus stories on presidential eligibility by Monte Kuligowski that were published in American Thinker, I felt that at last there was a conservative publisher (not tarnished with the "kooky birther" moniker) willing to pierce the cone of silence.

So I then wrote and submitted my first article, "Oblivious to the Obvious," which was published on April 10, and which has led me to author a series of articles on the Obama "birth certificate" forgery, of which this is the fifth.

Have we reached the point where the forgery can be discussed by conservative commentators, and where it can be researched, while the authors and researchers retain their respectability? I think so -- marginally. I would be happier if more of this information were syndicated and if it appeared in print, not just electronically on the internet -- but it's a beginning. Have we reached the point where the liberal media are willing to review the research rather than shut down discussion by labeling its proponents kooks and racists? No way.

If you have been reading my articles, along with the articles by Thomas Lifson and Monte Kuligowski and others, you know by now that the Obama long-form "birth certificate" is forged.

You also know that you put your own reputation for credibility at risk if you try to show others the evidence you've seen. The cone of silence suppressing the truth has been so powerful that you will automatically be guilty by association with the "lunatic fringe" should you even dare to bring up the topic. It is impossible to open the mind of somebody trapped by this cone of silence; that person's mind is made up -- facts and evidence are irrelevant, case closed. But you know the truth -- if others won't listen, that's their problem. Don't make it yours, and you will sleep well at night.

My wife says I've become obsessed with the topic. She's right. I am obsessed partly because there have been very, very few instances in my life where I know I'm right on a subject (because it's within my area of expertise) and most of the rest of the world is wrong -- but this is one of those times. My sense of self-worth compels me to prove it, even in the face of nasty appellations being hurled at me.

I am also obsessed because we have here a real-life mystery -- a bold scam, but also a scam that is tenuous because it relies on the silence of the media for its perpetuation (and the media can be fickle). What is it, exactly, on the genuine long-form birth certificate that is so politically inconvenient that the public is not allowed to see it? We do not yet know -- and because we don't know the motive for releasing the forgery, it's that much harder to convince others to take a look for themselves, even when the physical evidence overwhelmingly supports our view.

Nick Chase is a retired but still very active technical writer, technical editor, computer programmer, and stock market newsletter writer. During his career he has produced documentation on computers, typewriters, typesetters, headline-makers, and other pieces of equipment most people never heard of, and he has programmed typesetting equipment. You can read more of his work at contrariansview.org.

Have the Lies Now Become Obvious to All?

Ever since the Democratic Party was taken over by the hard left, the party of Harry Truman and John Kennedy has subsisted on a program of lies and deceit: Republicans hate women; Republicans are out to destroy Medicare and Social Security; you can choose your own doctor, and costs will be less under Obamacare; Obama will finance his campaign entirely on federal funds; drilling has been increased under Obama; etc., etc., etc.

Anything embarrassing to Democrats is suppressed by the mainstream media, and anything that can be spun and distorted to support their policies will be advanced, even if they have to resort to lies to accomplish this. The Martin-Zimmerman case has now broken whatever boundaries that may have existed on this duplicity. NBC doctored the 911 tape to try to show Zimmerman as a racist; CNN similarly distorted a tape, and ABC deliberately mischaracterized a video tape to belittle his injuries; the New York Times called it murder while the investigations are still ongoing. And it goes on and on. The mainstream media have become objects of ridicule for those who are paying attention.

Update: at least two leftist journalists have been fired for their roles in the sliming of George Zimmerman, one from NBC and one from Media Matters.

The Tipping Point for the National Media?

By Jay Ambrose April 6, 2012 RealClearPolitics

Almost every Friday morning, a friend and I get together for strong coffee and bracing political discussion, and sometimes he will say journalists lie. No, I respond -- they make mistakes and their biases pop through their reporting, but it's not lying. What am I to argue now that we've learned about NBC News and the doctored tape?

On broadcasts to millions, NBC played a recording of a police officer's conversation with George Zimmerman the night he shot and killed unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla. Zimmerman was patrolling his neighborhood as a citizen, called the cops, and, according to NBC's version of the conversation, said he had been following someone who "looks like he is up to no good. He looks black."

That's not how the conversation actually went. Zimmerman said there was someone walking around looking "like he's up to no good, or he's on drugs or something," and the officer on the other end asked, "Is he black, white or Hispanic?" Zimmerman responded that the man looked black.

The unchanged tape is a thousand miles distant from the mangled one, and NBC has said it is sorry for "an error made in the production process." But that is evasive mumbo jumbo. The editing was not a technical issue of production. It was a substantive issue of content, and the "error" happened to fit a thesis of racist homicide while making the network look like a watchdog hero. It seems to me to have been error with a purpose.

Sadly, very, very sadly, this NBC incident is one of many possible examples of an outlandish, rules-be-damned rush to judgment in which reporters and commentators are playing the roles of crazed prosecutor, judge and jury not about to wait for evidence.

According to a news report on findings by the PEW Research Center, news outlets have been paying more attention to this story than any other. For a stretch, the MSNBC cable network spent half its time on it, and one of MSNBC's hosts, longtime racial agitator Al Sharpton, has been leading protests. ABC embarrassed itself somewhat less than NBC when it claimed that a video of Zimmerman showed no signs he had been attacked by Martin. The issue matters because the reason police did not arrest Zimmerman was their believe he was defending himself. ABC was wrong about the video.

It checked with forensic experts and changed its story.

Some of the bad journalism has been slightly more subtle, such as the frequent juxtaposition of a photo of an unshaven Zimmerman in a jail uniform next to a photo of Martin as an angelic looking kid. But there has also been journalism of the kind that produced an eyewitness who says he saw 6-foot-2 Martin on top of Zimmerman and that revealed how Martin had been expelled from school three times and was once found in possession of jewelry that was not his. Zimmerman, we have learned, is himself a minority -- his mother is Hispanic -- and has white as well as black family members. Black friends have spoken up for him and he has mentored a black child, although he also has some rough spots in his past.

What happened is a terrible tragedy, and it is understandable that many would react emotionally. But many have also seen journalistic unfairness in all of this. Jack Pitney, a professor at Claremont McKenna College, recently told the Christian Science Monitor that the story "undermines public confidence in mainstream news media, which is already pretty low." He noted PEW already says 77 percent of Americans think the press is generally unfair.

News is in a stage of dramatic transition. Newspapers and broadcast networks are in decline as new media -- cable TV, blogs and more -- are making themselves felt in ways both scary and encouraging. No one knows where it will end. This much we can bet on: If mature media forsake reasonable standards, it will end badly.

The tipping point cometh.

NBC Changes Tape To Make Zimmerman A Racist

In what is perhaps the most egregious example of liberal media bias, NBC annouced today that it is looking into the editing of the 911 tape by their employees to make George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin's shooter, look like a racist. When Zimmerman pointed out that Martin was black, he was responding to a question from the 911 operator. NBC's transcript leaves that out.

NBC to Internally Investigate Misleading Segment on Zimmerman 911 Call

April 2, 2012 New York Magazine

NBC disclosed today that it will be launching an internal investigation into a segment about the Trayvon Martin case that appeared on the Today show, in which a call between George Zimmerman and a 911 dispatcher prior to Martin's death was edited in such a way that it portrays Zimmerman as a racial profiler. The editorial decision under review involves the removal of the dispatcher's inquiry about the race of the person Zimmerman was following — Martin. Absent that question, Zimmerman's comments get strung together as if he said, in sequence, "This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black."

The Washington Post provides the full transcript of that part of the call:

Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.

Dispatcher: OK, and this guy — is he black, white or Hispanic?

Zimmerman: He looks black.

Of course Zimmerman goes on to follow Martin against the advice of the dispatcher, but in this version of the call, it doesn't appear that he's awkwardly offering the information or in effect, profiling. Zimmerman still might have been, but the truncated call left much less doubt.

The Post's Erik Wemple writes that in a case where few facts are undisputed, it was particularly egregious to misrepresent one of them, the phone call. "To portray that exchange in a way that wrongs Zimmerman is high editorial malpractice well worthy of the investigation that NBC is now mounting."

Meanwhile New York Times media czar David Carr wrote a column today titled "A Shooting, And Instant Polarization," in which he similarly impugned some media coverage of this controversial case.

That the public is rendering its verdict immediately and firmly may be routine, but choosing sides takes on a deeper, more dangerous meaning when race is at the heart of the story. Race as an explosive issue is nothing new, but it’s been staggering to see it simmer and boil over in our hyperdivided media environment where nonstop coverage on the Web and cable television creates a rush to judgment every day.

Partisan politics and far-flung conflicts fit nicely into that world — who’s ahead, who’s behind, should we stay or go? — but racial conflict? Not so much.

That hasn’t stopped many in the media from displaying the same reflexive vigilantism that some are attributing to George Zimmerman, the man who shot Trayvon. All over the Internet and on cable TV, posses are forming, positions are hardening and misinformation is flourishing. Instead of debating how we as a culture are going to proceed, an increasingly partisan system of news and social media has factionalized and curdled.

Carr and Wemple are not the only two to call out partisan media and media at large for mishandling coverage of the Martin case, or misrepresenting specific aspects of it. Nor are NBC or Business Insider (chastised by Carr for mishandling dubious photos) the only two to have erred in their coverage.

We'll end with an exchange from Something's Gotta Give, starring Jack Nicholson (Harry) and Diane Keaton (Erica):

Harry: I have never lied to you. I have always told you some version of the truth.

Erica Barry: The truth doesn't have versions, okay?

Connect the Dots, Obama and Occupy Mobs

It's amazing that so few in the media have connected the dots between Obama and the "Occupy" thugs. Fact one: Obama led an Occupy Chicago group in 1988 which invaded a bank and broke into a meeting there. Fact two: the various "Occupy" movements started up immediately after Obama began his reckless "blame the rich" campaign. Fact three: the "Occupy" movements are an exact example of the methods taught by Saul Alinsky, a mentor of Obama. Fact four: Obama and leading Democrats like Pelosi and Reid have praised and supported the "Occupy" groups.

Even Chris Matthews, who once famously said he felt a thrill down his leg whever Obama spoke, has had enough of this demagogue.

Panicked AP Attempts to Memory-Hole Democrats’ #Occupy Endorsements

John Nolte Nov 18th 2011 Bigjournalism.com (Breitbart)

Occupy Wall Street’s imploding, Obama and the Democrats own the chaos, and now the AP is panicking.

But first a little context…

Something happened this month that the mainstream media and the Left (but I repeat myself) never expected. Two months ago, the White House, Democrats, and the MSM were all sure that the #OccupyWallStreet movement would save them in 2012. With thousands of astro-turfed morons in the streets raging against Wall Street, Obama’s allies hoped to use said morons to create a silver lining in the economic cloud he himself created.

Obama "We are on their side" Drudge report

The plan was a simple one. The path to Obama’s second term requires that enough voters forget that our current economic woes are the fault of a failed President who enjoyed two years of having every single item on his wish-list passed by Congress. And so the idea was to create Occupy in order to give the MSM the cover they desired to spend every single day up until the election talking about greed and income inequality in order to blame both for the stagnant economy.

The hope was that by repeating this message incessantly, enough voters could be convinced that Wall Street, and by extension, evil Republicans, were to blame for our chronic unemployment, record deficits, and stillborn economic growth. President Obama who?

Fortunately for America, this plan has not only failed miserably it has backfired completely. Thanks to the rise of New Media and our unwillingness to let the MSM’s lies, bias, and cover ups stand for even one more day, Occupy is in its death throes and might take the President and Democratic party down with it. First and foremost, we uncovered the lie that Occupy was grassroots and then we exposed every Occupy rape, poop, death, overdoese, old woman thrown down the stairs, attack on a police officer, and public act of masturbation. In the process, public opinion turned against the Occupiers and as a result these Leftists have started doing what the Left always does when they lose, have a tantrum.

But like I said, the Left and their media allies didn’t expect New Media to own this story and to use the truth to drive the narrative out of their control. And we know they didn’t expect to lose this one because almost every prominent Democrat in America very publicly jumped aboard the Occupy movement with the expectation that their allies in the MSM could control the outcome.

Well, now Democrats like Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi are way out on a limb and have been caught in bed encouraging, endorsing, and attempting to legitimize a wildly unpopular movement most voters now find repulsive.

So what’s a shameless left-wing media to do?

What they always do. Rewrite history.

And it looks as thought the Associated Press has decided to start the memory-holing with the following:

Democrats See Minefield in Occupy Protests

NEW YORK (AP) — The Republican Party and the tea party seemed to be a natural political pairing. But what may have seemed like another politically beneficial alliance — Democrats and Occupy Wall Street — hasn’t happened.

Insert record scratch here.

Sorry AP, but the only reason Democrats see a minefield is because they’re standing in it.

Democrats such as…

…House Democrats. And look, the story about House Democrats endorsing Occupy is an AP story!

…Top Democrats.

…Nancy Pelosi.

…A President named Obama, who said of Occupy, “We are on their side.”

…The SEIU.

Need I go on?

When the AP matter-of-factly (the most effective way to propagandize) states that this natural alliance “hasn’t happened” … they are lying. The alliance between Occupy and prominent Democrats occurred weeks ago and as one honest Democrat, Doug Schoen, put it just today:

Thursday’s coordinated Occupy Wall Street “National Day of Action” is bad news for the Democratic party, and bad news for President Obama.

But is it really bad news for Democrats when they have the corrupt MSM already out there shilling for them and pretending this solidarity never happened?

Well, maybe it is. If the slow motion implosion of Occupy has taught us anything it’s that the MSM doesn’t have the power it once had to control the narrative. New Media won this one and maybe New Media can can also win the battle of reminding voters of just who it was who ran out to endorse, encourage, and attempt to legitimize vandals, poopers, rapists, and public masturbators.

The Bastards Went Too Far This Time

Maybe I'm unusual. I don't think she has much of a chance to be President, but I love Sarah Palin. I'm such a fan that I turn off O'Reilly when he has on Alan Colmes, because of Colmes' smear of Palin that her son was actually her grandson. This was only one of all kinds of vicious smears that the left threw out - hoping that some of it would stick. We shouldn't have let Charlie Gibson and Kathy Couric define Palin. We should have fought back more. We should have fought back more when they did it to Judge Bork, and to Justice Thomas. and to Dick Cheney, and to Justices Alito and Roberts, and to countless others who only disagree with their nonsense.

'Lamestream media' defends Palin

By: Molly Ball September 16, 2011 Politico (Excerpt)

"They kicked her around, victimized her, tried to destroy her. But all of a sudden, the lamestream media is coming to Sarah Palin’s defense.

Faced with a barrage of negative portrayals — a much-hyped investigative book, a Levi Johnston memoir and a new movie — Palin is finding support in the unlikeliest of places.

Film reviewers have slammed the British documentary “Sarah Palin: You Betcha!”

Newspapers have refused to run comic-strip excerpts of Joe McGinniss’s rumor-mongering tome “The Rogue.” Johnston’s accusations have been consigned to the gossip pages. And none other than The New York Times has angrily taken Palin’s side in a brutal takedown of the McGinniss book.

Reviewer Janet Maslin called “The Rogue” a work of “caustic, unsubstantiated gossip,” accusing its author, who rented a house next door to the Palins for a time, of sloppiness, attention seeking and a lack of neighborliness.

“‘The Rogue’ is too busy being nasty to be lucid,” Maslin concludes, describing its many accusations as “indefensibly reckless.”

In a statement issued through a PR representative, Todd Palin trumpeted the Times review, pointing to it as proof that the book was so reprehensible that “even The New York Times” disdained it.

But it wasn’t the first time in recent weeks the Palins have found the Times — the print voice of East Coast intellectualism — in their corner. The Gray Lady also recently published an op-ed praising Palin as a person of ideas and calling for her to be taken seriously.

The column by Anand Giridharadas — impeccably credentialed as an Aspen Institute fellow and Cambridge, Mass., resident — accused the media of “ignoring the ideas [Palin] unfurled” in her recent speech at an Iowa tea party rally. “Ms. Palin may be hinting at a new political alignment that would pit a vigorous localism against a kind of national-global institutionalism,” he wrote.

It’s a lot of love for Palin from the news outlet she decried back in March in a Facebook post titled “NYT, There You Go Again,” wherein she speculated that the paper’s “false reporting” was the source of its “economic and reputation woes.”

And it’s not the sort of treatment Palin generally perceives from what she loves to call the “lamestream media” — because, as she explained in another Facebook post, “The ‘mainstream’ media isn’t mainstream anymore. That’s why I call it ‘lamestream,’ and the LSM is becoming quite irrelevant, as it is no longer the sole gatekeeper of information.”

“The Rogue” hasn’t yet been widely reviewed — the Times defied the publisher’s embargo to publish its take, and the Los Angeles Times followed suit with a less acerbic take that nonetheless called the book “tame” and said it lacked credibility.

But many of its accusations have been aired over the past several days in “Doonesbury,” which received McGinniss’s permission to weave excerpts from the text into the strip’s narrative.

Once again, though, media outlets haven’t played along with the anti-Palin gambit. The Chicago Tribune and other newspapers have declined to publish the “Doonesbury” strips, with the Trib explaining, “The subject matter does not meet our standards of fairness.”

And then there’s “You Betcha!” a cheerfully ruthless documentary about Palin from Nick Broomfield, whose past subjects have included Kurt Cobain, Margaret Thatcher, Heidi Fleiss and Tupac Shakur.

The film premiered last week at the Toronto International Film Festival, and it wasn’t exactly a critical darling.

Variety called it “a sarcastically toned, strategically timed character assassination” that “lacks sufficient humor and insight to make it a must-see for anyone outside the Brit muckraker’s fan base.” Other critics called it “obnoxious” and “unnecessary.”" Politico

Can We See Obama's Emails Too?

As most of you know, a left-wing website, supported by the New York Times and the Washington Post, using the Freedom of Information Act, gained access to the e-mails written by Sarah Palin while she was governor of Alaska. The Times and the Post also went so far as to ask their readers to help them examine the e-mails - looking for dirt. Have we ever seen the lengths to which these horrible people will go to try to destroy this woman?

Is it possible that we can gain access to Obama's e-mails? How about Bill Clintons? Never mind. It will never be tried. Even the most obnoxious right-wing group would not stoop so far down into the muck to do such a thing.

Sarah Palin email frenzy backfires on her media antagonists

By Toby Harnden June 11th, 2011 Telegraph (Excerpt)

"The trove of more than 13,000 emails detailing almost every aspect of Sarah Palin’s governorship of Alaska, released late on Friday, paints a picture of her as an idealistic, conscientious, humorous and humane woman slightly bemused by the world of politics.

One can only assume that the Left-leaning editors who dispatched teams of reporters to remote Juneau, the Alaskan capital, to pore over the emails in the hope of digging up a scandal are now viewing the result as a rather poor return on their considerable investment.

If anything, Mrs Palin seems likely to emerge from the scrutiny of the 24,000 pages, contained in six boxes and weighing 275 pounds, with her reputation considerably enhanced. As a blogger at Powerline noted , the whole saga might come to be viewed as “an embarrassment for legacy media”.

Mrs Palin, who suddenly resigned as Alaska governor in July 2009, is no longer a public official. She holds no position in the Republican party. Despite the media hubbub that surrounds her every move, she is unlikely to be a candidate for the White House in 2012.

She is, however, viewed with a kind of horrified fascination by many in the media, who faithfully records everything she says and does while at the same time decrying her as ignorant and even evil.

Whether or not she runs for the White House – and the solid consensus among Republican leaders is that she won’t – the scramble over the Palin emails confirms her status as a pivotal figure in the race to challenge President Barack Obama next year.

It comes at a moment when the battle for the Republican nomination appears set to be transformed by the late entry of Governor Rick Perry of Texas, a social conservative and Palin ally who could almost immediately leap to the front of a currently lacklustre field.

Sources close to Mr Perry have confirmed that he is “highly likely” to announce a presidential run in the coming days. Intriguingly, they have also hinted at a something they believe would increase immeasurably Mr Perry’s chances of winning the White House – an endorsement from Mrs Palin.

On policy, Mrs Palin and Mr Perry, who succeeded George W Bush in 2000 and has since become the longest-serving governor in Texas history, are in almost perfect alignment. In addition, they are both beloved of the Tea Party, highly suspicious of Washington and physically attractive (Mr Perry is often likened to the Marlboro Man), charismatic figures.

Mrs Palin has repeatedly said that she believes Mr Obama can be defeated and that she will do everything to achieve that. With her popularity among independent voters very low, despite the intensity of her core support, throwing her weight behind a stronger candidate would be a better way of preserving her political capital and earning power than being one of the losing candidates in the Republican primaries.
The notion of Mrs Palin as White House kingmaker would have seemed wildly improbable if anyone had raised it before August 2008.

It was then that she was catapulted to international fame by Senator John McCain’s surprise decision to make her his vice-presidential running mate. Her reaction? “Can you flippinbelieveit?!”

This was a world, as the emails reveal, in which the then Alaska governor fretted about things like there being alcohol in her official residence, that might be a temptation to the teenage friends of her children.

In May 2007, she sought help from her staff in keeping the alcohol in the governor’s mansion away from young people, stating that it should be boxed up and “removed from the People’s House” – both for practical reasons and as a statement about her administration.

“Here’s my thinking: with so many kids and teens coming and going in that house, esp during this season of celebrations for young people – proms, graduations, etc, I want to send the msg that we can be – and ‘the People’s House’ needs to be – alcohol-free. There’s a lot of booze there – its too accessible and may be too tempting to any number of all those teens coming and going.”

In a February 2007 exchange, one adviser recommended that when she was in Washington she meet Pete Rouse, a Senate official who had lived in Alaska. “He’s now chief-of-staff for a guy named Barack Obama,” the aide wrote, adding that Mr Rouse “wants to help Alaska however he can”. Far from shrinking at the idea of conferring with a Democrat, Mrs Palin replied: “I’m game to meet him.”

The emails will finally confirm – in all but the darkest recesses of the world of Left-wing conspiracy theories – that Mrs Palin is, in fact, the mother of her youngest son Trig, who has Down’s Syndrome.

After relentless promotion by Andrew Sullivan , the British blogger who now works for Daily Beast/Newsweek, of the proposition that the mother was in fact Mrs Palin’s daughter Bristol, a teenager at the time, the subject had become part of mainstream debate.

The emails show Mrs Palin’s determination to protect Bristol but also her desire for a degree of privacy. “I wish I could shame people into ceasing such gossip about a teen, but I can’t figure out how to do that,” she wrote.

Communications from her children and husband make her family appear close and loving.

An email from Bristol, referring to her younger sister, said: “Hello Mother, Um, I’m sitting in library and I really thing you need to get Piper a cell phone!! Wouldn’t that be so adorable! She could text me while she was in class!! It’s a done deal right?! Perfect! Ok, I will talk to you later and I need some cash flow! Love ya!”

To an extent, the emails remind Americans of the person they saw take the state at the Republican National Convention in Minnesota nearly three years ago – refreshing, plain-speaking, open and uncomplicated." Telegraph

I have a confession to make. Andrew Sullivan may have been the first to spread the blood libel about Sarah's son, Trig, but Alan Colmes put this up on his website. I like the Bill O'Reilly program, but I turn it off whenever Colmes appears. I don't allow him into my house, even on TV.

Benefits Bubble Has Burst in Wisconsin First

What we are seeing in Wisconsin has to happen in most states and in the federal government as well. How did we ever get in the predicament of allowing public employees to go on strike against the public? Even Franklin Roosevelt, a most liberal president, thought it was a terrible idea. It was always a ludicrous one, and now the chickens have come home to roost.

Benefits bubble has burst for Wisconsin unions

Dennis Byrne February 22, 2011 Chicago Tribune

The crowds mobbing the Wisconsin Capitol in Madison are right: Gov. Scott Walker's budget repair bill is indeed an attack on organized government workers.
And it's about time.

Labor compensation is the largest component of busted local, state and federal budgets, and those costs are the horrific results of government employees' "right" to bargain collectively and, in some cases, to strike. Government employees have had the upper hand for decades thanks to collective bargaining practices, rules and laws. For example, to resolve deadlocked talks, they can require binding arbitration, which takes the decision-making out of the hands of the taxpayers' representatives and gives it to an outside arbitrator who often "splits the difference."

Public employees who regard the taxpayers' munificence as an entitlement have reason to worry. Walker's bill would limit collective bargaining to wage issues alone, cap wage increases at rises in the cost of living (unless approved in a local referendum), limit contracts to one year and freeze any wage increases until a new contract is negotiated. Union members would have to vote every year whether to retain the union as its collective bargaining agent, state agencies would be barred from collecting union dues and individual employees could refuse to pay those dues.

The bill excludes from collective bargaining home health care workers in Medicaid programs, family child-care workers and University of Wisconsin faculty, academic staff, hospital and clinic employees. It empowers the governor to declare a state of emergency and fire workers who take unauthorized absences of three days to participate in "an organized action to stop or slow work."

The bill contains more, much of which should serve as a template for the even more financially crippled state of Illinois. If the bill is an overreaction, it should have been expected.

Ah, but the Wisconsin unions now say, they would graciously contribute more for their pensions and health care benefits. Big of them. Illogically, they insist that this concession, which is too little and too late, is reason enough to call off the dogs.

That government unions would consider this a concession in the face of the depth of our growing federal, state and local financial debacles testifies to their naivete or their contempt of the public. How astonishing that the thousands who abandoned their classrooms and the Democratic senators who have abandoned their sworn duties by exiling themselves to Illinois actually think they are helping their cause. As if this wholesale desertion of their duties would generate public sympathy. If this is a "movement" that labor leaders expect to sweep the country, then it was dwarfed by last November's national elections that revealed a much larger one demanding the restoration of rationality to government.

The throngs in Madison serve only to put on public display the crassness of their motives and torches whatever remains of the rhetoric that they're "doing it for the children." They are living in the antediluvian world of Saul Alinsky and "direct action," thinking that by making enough racket, they'll defeat a fed-up public.

Their tactics are as obsolete, self-serving and ineffective as an appearance by the Rev. Jesse Jackson — which, predictably, happened in Madison.

The benefits bubble has burst, folks. Even in Illinois, a state held captive by government labor unions, the absurdity of it all is coming home. House Speaker Michael Madigan, one of labor's staunchest allies, has committed the heresy of talking about cutting back pension benefits of current employees. Rahm Emanuel, the predicted winner of today's Chicago mayoral race, is making noises about restraining union demands. Gov. Pat Quinn is talking about a major consolidation of the state's 869 school districts — a move aimed at cutting duplicative labor costs. But that's only a start of what must happen here.

All the bellyaching by members of government unions about how tough they have it, about how hard they work for so little reward, is falling on the deaf ears of a public that works just as hard for not as much reward. Pouring more protesters crying "poor me" into Madison will only harden a disgusted public against them. As Bob Dylan, an icon of direct action, once sang, "the times, they are a changin'."