Showing posts with label MSM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MSM. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

37 Reasons the Media is Lying to You About a "Recovery"

Guest post by Michael Snyder

"If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it." Sadly, that appears to be the approach that the Obama administration and the mainstream media are taking with the U.S. economy.

They seem to believe that if they just keep telling the American people over and over that things are getting better, eventually the American people will believe that it is actually true. On Friday, it was announced that the unemployment rate had fallen to "7 percent", and the mainstream media responded with a mix of euphoria and jubilation. For example, one USA Today article declared that "with today's jobs report, one really can say that our long national post-financial crisis nightmare is over." But is that actually the truth? As you will see below, if you assume that the labor force participation rate in the U.S. is at the long-term average, the unemployment rate in the United States would actually be 11.5 percent instead of 7 percent. There has been absolutely no employment recovery. The percentage of Americans that are actually working has stayed between 58 and 59 percent for 51 months in a row. But most Americans don't understand these things and they just take whatever the mainstream media tells them as the truth.

And of course the reality of the matter is that we should have seen some sort of an economic recovery by now. Those running our system have literally been mortgaging the future in a desperate attempt to try to pump up our economic numbers. The federal government has been on the greatest debt binge in U.S. history and the Federal Reserve has been printing money like crazed lunatics. All of that "stimulus" should have had some positive short-term effects on the economy.

Sadly, all of those "emergency measures" do not appear to have done much at all. The percentage of Americans that have a job has stayed remarkably flat since the end of 2009, median household income has fallen for five years in a row, and the rate of homeownership in the United States has fallen for eight years in a row. Anyone that claims that the U.S. economy is experiencing a "recovery" is simply not telling the truth. The following are 37 reasons why "the economic recovery of 2013" is a giant lie...

#1 The only reason that the official unemployment rate has been declining over the past couple of years is that the federal government has been pretending that millions upon millions of unemployed Americans no longer want a job and have "left the labor force". As Zero Hedge recently demonstrated, if the labor force participation rate returned to the long-term average of 65.8 percent, the official unemployment rate in the United States would actually be 11.5 percent instead of 7 percent.

#2 The percentage of Americans that are actually working is much lower than it used to be. In November 2000, 64.3 percent of all working age Americans had a job. When Barack Obama first entered the White House, 60.6 percent of all working age Americans had a job. Today, only 58.6 percent of all working age Americans have a job. In fact, as you can see from the chart posted below, there has been absolutely no "employment recovery" since the depths of the last recession...

#3 The employment-population ratio has now been under 59 percent for 51 months in a row.

#4 There are 1,148,000 fewer Americans working today than there was in November 2006. Meanwhile, our population has grown by more than 16 million people during that time frame.

Monday, December 09, 2013

Former Federal Prosecutor Makes Ironclad Case for Impeachment

Former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy was in rare form on Saturday and his NRO op-ed is worth reading in its entirety.

...The Constitution assumes that the different branches of government will protect their institutional turf. That is, the Framers calculated that, faced with a Democratic president who usurps legislative prerogatives, a Democratic congressman would see himself, first and foremost, as a congressman. Valuing the duties of his office over party loyalty, he would join with other legislators to rein in executive excess.

Today’s Democrats, however, are less members of a party than of the movement Left. Their objective, like Obama’s, is fundamental transformation of a society rooted in individual liberty and private property to one modeled on top-down, redistributionist statism. Since statism advances by concentrating governmental power, Democrats — regardless of what governmental branch they happen to inhabit — rally to whatever branch holds the greatest transformative potential. Right now, that is the presidency. Thus, congressional Democrats do not insist that the president must comply with congressional statutes. Laws, after all, must be consistent with the Constitution to be valid, and are thus apt to reflect the very constitutional values the Left is trying to supplant. Democrats want the president to use the enormous raw power vested in his office by Article II to achieve statist transformation. If he does so, they will support him. They’ll get back to obsessing over the “rule of law” if, by some misfortune, the Republicans someday win another presidential election.

...Impeachment is a political remedy, not a legal one. Thus the quasi-legal component — proving high crimes and misdemeanors — is the easy part. As a practical matter, fundamental transformation cannot occur without high crimes and misdemeanors being committed against the constitutional order that is being transformed. That’s the whole point.

So, as one would expect, President Obama is intentionally and sweepingly violating his oath of office. He is not faithfully executing federal law — he picks, chooses, “waives,” and generally makes up law as he goes along. He has willfully and materially misled the American people — his Obamacare and Benghazi lies being only the most notorious examples. He has been woefully derelict in his duty to protect and defend Americans overseas. His administration trumped up a shameful prosecution (under the guise of a “supervised release violation”) against a filmmaker in order to bolster the “Benghazi massacre was caused by an anti-Muslim video” charade...

...His administration has used the federal bureaucracy to usurp Congress’s legislative powers and to punish political enemies. Obama has presumed to make recess appointments when Congress was not in recess. His administration intentionally allowed firearms to be transferred to Mexican drug cartels, predictably resulting in numerous violent crimes, including the murder of a Border Patrol agent. His administration — and, in particular, the Justice Department — has routinely stonewalled lawmakers and frustrated their capacity to perform agency oversight, to the point that the attorney general has been held in contempt of Congress. The Obama Justice Department, moreover, has filed vexatious lawsuits against sovereign states over their attempts to vindicate their constitutional authorities (and, indeed, to enforce federal immigration laws), while the Justice Department itself adheres to racially discriminatory enforcement policies in violation of the Constitution and federal civil-rights laws.

This is not an exhaustive list of Obama abuses, but you get the idea. If the only issue were commission of high crimes and misdemeanors, the Constitution requires only one for impeachment — not the Obama pace, which is more like one per week.

But here is the important thing: High crimes and misdemeanors are a subordinate consideration. In an impeachment case, they are necessary but they are not close to being sufficient. Because impeachment is a political remedy, its most essential component is the popular political will to remove a president from power.

...As things now stand, the public is not convinced. There is no political will to remove the president...

...Absent the political will to remove the president, he will remain president no matter how many high crimes and misdemeanors he stacks up. And absent the removal of the president, the United States will be fundamentally transformed.

As the pro bloggers say, read the whole thing.

But if impeachment isn't today an option, are there other alternatives?

Writing at The Black Sphere, J. Andrew Peak suggests that there are.

In the age of reality television, what better than a trial of a president?

The People vs. Barack Obama should be held in two phases... The first phase could be a televised, one hour, grand jury indictment for each matter: Obamacare fraud during passage, its ongoing rewriting and the disparate application thereof; Benghazi; Fast and Furious; IRS scandal; NSA scandal; corruption, etc., etc., etc. If a true bill was returned by the grand jury so impaneled, that single matter would be referred to trial and docketed for a later date. If not, the case on those individual counts would be dismissed.

At trial both sides could be given a finite and equal time, wherein they could enter facts into evidence, give short openings and brief summations and provide oral arguments. Perhaps each affirmative count returned by the grand jury could itself be a two hour television special, broadcast on the weekend, with a brief discovery of public knowledge beforehand and a vetting of facts “in chambers” prior to trial.

Each “trial” could be conducted in a combination of both “mock” and “moot” fashion where an impartial panel of jurors was seated, facts heard, issues presented, the jury appropriately charged and a single poll of the jury taken. A simple majority carries the issue.

...Admittedly, these trials would have no force of law. Nor would they be legally binding. But they would serve two very important functions.

First they would act as an explanation to, and education of, the people. They would serve to inform the populace as to the issues in question and wherein the abusive dangers lie.

Second, any “true bills”, “findings” or “convictions”, made by those impaneled, when splashed across the headlines, would serve to pressure the administration and their agents in Congress to answer, explain, dismiss and rationalize such judgments made by the people.

This alone is the preeminent function of the press – to make those in power answer.

This is a great idea: a reality show.

I suggest Mark Levin and Andrew C. McCarthy for the prosecution; perhaps Alan Dershowitz and Simon Lazarus for the defense.

This, my friends, would be a true ratings bonanza.

And POTUS is such a narcissist, I'd wager anything he'd be glued to the TV watching.


Hat tip: BadBlue Real-Time News. Related: Constitutional Crisis Comix.

Half-Wit WaPo Propagandist Ezra Klein: Obama REALLY Meant to Say You Could Always Get a New Plan

Imagine you write for The Washington Post. And imagine you're a moron. But I repeat myself.

Ezra Klein -- semi-literate co-founder of "Journolist", the Democrat/vintage media mailing list -- routinely finds himself out-debated by the majority of his commenters. His most recent oozing secretion, yet another apologia for the unfolding catastrophe known as Obamacare (yes, I said it, Melissa Harris-Perry) is no exception.

Entitled "Obamacare’s real promise: if you lose your health-care plan, you can get a new one", it is a veritable canker sore of stupidity.

President Obama's critics are right: Obamacare doesn't guarantee that everyone who likes their health insurance can keep it. In some cases, Obamacare is the reason people will lose health insurance they liked.

What Obamacare comes pretty close to guaranteeing, though, is that everyone who needs health insurance, or who wants health insurance, can get it.

It guarantees that if you lose the plan you liked — perhaps because you were fired from your job, or because you left your job to start a new business, or because your income made you ineligible for Medicaid — you'll have a choice of new plans you can purchase, you'll know that no insurer can turn you away, and you'll be able to get financial help if you need it. In states that accept the Medicaid expansion, it guarantees that anyone who makes less than 133 percent of poverty can get fully subsidized insurance.

Equipped with only a prehensile brain, one has to feel sorry for Klein. Indeed, such are his skills that his commenters almost always out-debate him. OldSchoolSaint is one such truth-teller who fires off enough salvos to pound Klein into the next county.

Why stop so abruptly with the truth telling? Yes, you can get another plan but that plan will:

A. likely be more expensive
B. likely prohibit you from seeing your current doctors
C. contain services that are of no value to you
D. exist within a health care environment with a shortage of doctors and hegemony of the federal government over decisions currently made privately between doctors and patients.
E. contribute to exploding federal expenditures and be part of an additional federal program that, like others, is financially unsustainable and ruinous.

...I think Obama Care is a reckless and imbecilic way of accomplishing items A-C above.

Maybe WaPo could offer OldSchoolSaint a writing gig.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Sunday, December 01, 2013

Crispy Creme Comix

Biff Spackle continues his ongoing series honoring Republican Establishment "superstars":


Well, if the "Architect" said it, it must be true.


Old Soviet Jokes Become Our New Reality

Guest post by Red Square

I have seen the future and ran away.

At first the move to America from the former USSR made me feel as though I had made a jump in time, from the stagnant depraved past into a distant dynamic future.

There was an abundance of commonly available futuristic contraptions, machines, and appliances that made everyday existence easier and more enjoyable. Less obvious but just as exciting was the media's openness: I no longer needed to read between the lines to know what was happening.

Most importantly, there was honesty, dignity, and respect in relations among people.

Today I'm feeling like a time traveler again.

Only this time the productive, honest and self-reliant America is vanishing in the past, as we are quickly approaching the all too familiar future.

It is the future of equal poverty, one-party rule, media mooching, government looting, bureaucratic corruption, rigged elections, underground literature, half-whispered jokes, and the useful habit of looking over your shoulder.

It was nice living in America before it changed the course and followed Obama's direction "Forward," which, according to my compass, is pointing backward.

All of a sudden I find myself playing the role of a comrade from the future, helping my new compatriots to navigate the quagmire ahead of us.

Karl Rove Komix

Biff Spackle offers the following riposte to Karl Rove, who appears to live at Fox News.



Hat tip: Stilton Jarlsberg.

Saturday, November 30, 2013

THE DUPLICITOUS CHRIS CHRISTIE: Man Who Refused to Oppose Obamacare Now Says It Was ‘A Train Wreck Anybody Could’ve Seen Coming’

Anybody could have seen it was a train wreck except him, apparently.

New Jersey’s Republican Governor Chris Christie slammed Obamacare as a “train wreck” in comments made at a Jersey radio station on November 25.

...Christie was asked why he didn’t join in on the state side and create a state exchange for Obamacare in New Jersey.
“This is just an awful law that made no sense and that’s why I didn’t get into a state exchange. And no, I have absolutely no regrets. In fact, I’m really glad that the train wreck’s not mine, it’s his,” the Governor said of Obama’s signature healthcare law.

Christie went on to slam the President as an example of someone who has never run anything in his life.
“This is a disaster. And it’s a train wreck that anybody who’s managed anything, ever in their lives could have seen coming.”
Governor Christie also said that the whole Obamacare program is a “failure.”

Christie's comments are, at best, disingenuous.

This is a man who wouldn't lift a finger to fight Obamacare, as Mark Levin observed at the time.

It costs nothing for the taxpayers of NJ to join the other states challenging Obamacare. All he needs to do is add his name on behalf of NJ to the other states. He didn't take the lead and now he won't bring up the rear. And just because Corzine ducked doesn't mean he has to. For all the loud bravado, on this hugely important issue he's a wimp. While others are doing all they can to kill Obamacare, spending the time and effort in federal court trying to protect the citizens of their states, Christie does nothing...

...Keep in mind that Obamacare creates massive new expenses for states via Medicaid. It's fiscally irresponsible for Christie to sit on his butt and do nothin. Is this what they mean by frank talk? Maybe his supporters inside the beltway can help us better understand while they're touting him for president.

I can't wait for the 2016 election season to heat up.

Then we can hear the nation's biggest electoral loser of 2012 -- Karl "2% Victory Rate" Rove -- whine that Christie is "the only one who can win".

Which will be as accurate as his predictions about Mitt Romney in 2012 and John McCain in 2008.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Friday, November 29, 2013

The Hoover Myth

Excerpted from Jonah Goldberg's invaluable The Goldberg File

My friend and AEI colleague Nick Schulz has done something I don't have the intestinal fortitude to do: Read John Judis's New Republic cover story on the economy. Apparently Judis believes he's cornered Mitt Romney on the Achilles heel of Romney's -- and the GOP's -- economic agenda. Judis confronted Romney and asked
him:

I want to ask you something about history. You know, when Herbert Hoover had to face a financial crisis and then unemployment, his strategy was to balance the budget and cut spending, and that made things worse. When Roosevelt came in, unemployment was twenty-five and went to fourteen percent by 1937. With deficits. Aren't you repeating the Hoover mistake?

Ah, the "Hoover Mistake," capitalized for your eternal reifying pleasure.

If you ever doubt that liberal historians have imbibed the partisan talking points of the New Deal, you need look no further than the maligned figure of Herbert Hoover. Judis's characterization is simply what "everyone knows" to be true about Hoover's response to the Depression of 1929. I say "the Depression" and not "the Great Depression" because it took FDR, the Tony the Tiger of liberalism, to make it Grrrrrrrrrrreaaat!

The problem is that almost everything "everybody knows" about Hoover is wrong. This creates a real challenge for conservatives and libertarians because while Hoover the man was very impressive, Hoover the Progressive Republican was, well, a Progressive Republican. As anyone who's read Liberal Fascism should remember, Hoover was all-in on Wilson's war socialism, serving as national food administrator; he considered "supper . . . one of the worst pieces of extravagance that we have in this country." He promulgated the Little American's Promise, a pledge card every child was expected to sign:

At table I'll not leave a scrap 
Of food upon my plate. 
And I'll not eat between meals but
For supper time I'll wait.
I make that promise that I'll do
My honest, earnest part
In helping my America
With all my loyal heart.
For kids who couldn't read yet, he offered them a nursery rhyme:
Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn!
The cook's using wheat where she ought to use corn
And terrible famine our country will sweep,
If the cooks and the housewives remain fast asleep!
Go wake them! Go wake them! It's now up to you!
Be a loyal American, Little Boy Blue!

Hoover was such a card-carrying Progressive, guess who considered running on his ticket as vice president in 1920? Wilson's toady at the Navy Department, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

But none of that matters. Hoover was a crazy, heartless libertarian, don't you know anything?! I mean, just look at what a spendthrift he was during the Great Depression! Hoover mistake, Hoover mistake, Hoover mistake! I'm not listening to you!

Well, if you tell a certain breed of libertarian that Hoover was a budget-balancing fiscal tightwad, you'll get punched in the face, at least figuratively. Here's Tim Taylor:

Hoover's budget strategy over his term of office was not to balance the budget. The budget ran a small deficit of -.6% of GDP in 1931, followed by a much larger deficits of 4.0% of GDP in 1932 and 4.5% of GDP in fiscal year 1933 (which, as Judis points out at a different point in his discussion, started in June 1932 and was thus mostly completed before Roosevelt took office in 1933).

Let me say it clearly: Hoover didn't cut spending. In nominal terms, federal government spending went from $3.3 billion in 1930 to $4.6 billion in 1933. As Taylor notes, given the price deflation that came with the crash, the real federal outlays nearly tripled from 3.4 percent of GDP in 1930 to 8.0 percent of GDP in FY 1933.

In the spring of 1930, the New York Times said of Hoover's efforts, "No one in his place could have done more" and "very few of his predecessors could have done as much."

But, hey, maybe Hoover's reputation as a spendthrift of Jack Fowlerian proportions (Jack, as you should know, is the head suit here at NR; he'd object but he's busy searching for a 10 percent off at Arby's coupon I told him was in the corner of a round room) is derived from his effort to cast himself as a responsible steward of the public fisc. Er, no. Here's Hoover defending his record in his acceptance speech at the 1932 convention as he prepared to run for another
term:

Two courses were open to us. We might have done nothing. That would have been utter ruin. Instead, we met the situation with proposals to private business and to the Congress of the most gigantic program of economic defense and counterattack ever evolved in the history of the Republic. We put that program in action. Our measures have repelled these attacks of fear and panic . . . We have used the credit of the Government to aid and protect our institutions, both public and private. We have provided methods and assurances that none suffer from hunger or cold amongst our people. We have instituted measures to assist our farmers and our homeowners. We have created vast agencies for employment.

Perhaps because I am so cynical, I'm no longer shocked that liberal historians and Democratic politicians still cling to the Hoover myth, but what is amazing to me is how liberal economists who swear they are empiricists and fact-finders propagate it as well. Paul Krugman is constantly invoking the Hoover myth. So is Brad DeLong, who has driven many decent students of economic history to the point of sputtering rage with his insistence that Hoover was a "liquidationist."

The Hoover myth endures for a simple reason -- it has to. Because otherwise the FDR myth will tip over.


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Thursday, November 28, 2013

After Undermining Efforts to De-fund Obamacare, GOP Establishment Ready to Jam Amnesty Down Our Throats

Courtesy of Mark Levin, we find that the Republican establishment is urgently trying to find ways to pass an amnesty bill.

Is immigration reform dead?

"No, immigration reform is going to happen," Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the House Republican whip, told CBS's Bob Schieffer on "Face the Nation."


"But it's going to happen in a step-by-step method. And I will tell you, the president came out and supported that the other day." ...

...The current immigration system is "broken" and "needs to be fixed," McCarthy said on Sunday. "Forty-two percent of everyone that's here illegally came here legally," he said, a reference to people who overstayed their visas. "We need to fix this system."

President Obama has said "there's no reason why we can't get this done before the end of the year."

What's driving Amnesty? Here's a hint: it starts with the letter M and ends with the letter Y. And has cash in the middle.

After decades of political quietism during which Silicon Valley entrepreneurs expressed libertarian sentiments but mostly voted Democratic and funded Democratic candidates who shared their elite-class social and political views, Silicon Valley has finally mobilized—for immigration expansion. In April Mark Zuckerberg, with help from Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, and venture capitalist John Doerr, launched FWD.us, a $25 million-and-counting lobbying group aimed at lawmakers in both political parties. FWD.us, unlike other pro-immigration groups, isn’t much interested in amnesty for illegal immigrants or easier border-crossing for lettuce-pickers. Its chief interest is in expanding the H-1B work visa program for “highly skilled” workers that’s mostly used by tech employers to hire temporary guest-workers from foreign countries, usually from East and South Asia….

...The anti-H-1B faction has a response to that: statistics. One of them, from an April 24 briefing paper produced by the liberal Economic Policy Institute, is that only one out of every two U.S. college graduates with a degree in engineering or computer and information science is hired into those fields, despite a doubling of the number of homegrown computer-science graduates between 1998 and 2004. Others argue that employers mostly don’t use H-1B workers to fill “best and brightest” jobs, but, rather, relatively low-paying routine programming positions, and that the most avid users of the visas are India-based outsourcing companies that use the visas to provide a few months of U.S. training for their employees, who then return to India.

Most damning of all is that, despite persistent claims of tech-worker shortages, programmer salaries overall have inched only slightly higher from what they were 20 years ago: from $60,000 a year to about $75,000 a year in 2012 dollars, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Engineers fare somewhat better: The average annual starting salary at top valley employers such as Google is about $100,000, with the median for experienced engineers at about $150,000...

Put simply, the oligarchs in Silicon Valley are spending millions lobbying Congress to import cheaper technology talent. They don't want to pay American wages, they want to pay Indian (or Chinese, or wherever) wages here in the states.

As for McCarthy, Cantor, Boehner, Karl Rove and the rest of the GOP Old Guard? They want some o' that Silicon Valley Cash!

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) is, as usual, on top of the imminent debacle:

Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions wants wealthy CEOs to butt out of immigration policy.

“America is not an oligarchy… A Republic must answer to the people,” Sessions said today, in a direct response to President Barack Obama’s latest effort to get wealthy California CEOs to increase their support for his unpopular push for increased immigration... “Congressional leaders must forcefully reject the notion, evidently accepted by the president, that a small cadre of CEOs can tailor the nation’s entire immigration policy to suit their narrow interests..."

...Obama has been working with top CEOs since summer to push the Senate’s immigration expansion that would welcome 30 million immigrants, plus millions of temporary guest workers, over the next decade...

The push is being supported by numerous billionaires, including New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, Fox News’ Rupert Murdoch and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg... Since 2007, progressive and business groups have spent more than $1.5 billion on advocacy and lobbying to pass an immigration bill, despite massive unemployment, stalled salaries and negative polls. Other business groups have been pressured by the federal government and progressives to provide rhetorical support for the push.

So once again I ask Karl Rove:


I give thanks for many things in this great country, but the Republican crony capitalists ain't among them.

Saturday, November 23, 2013

"JUST LIKE TASS": White House Bans Photojournalists, Grants Access Only to Official Propaganda Photographer

When The New York Times compares the White House to a Soviet news service, you can be sure we're living in a very different America.

New York Times photographer Doug Mills strode into Jay Carney's office Oct. 29 with a pile of pictures taken exclusively by President Obama's official photographer at events the White House press corps was forbidden to cover. "This one," Mills said, sliding one picture after another off his stack and onto the press secretary's desk. "This one, too – and this one and this one and … ."

The red-faced photographer, joined by colleagues on the White House Correspondents' Association board, finished his 10-minute presentation with a flourish that made Carney, a former Moscow correspondent for Time, wince.

"You guys," Mills said, "are just like Tass."

...Media photographers were able to take photos of Obama visiting Nelson Mandela's former jail cell (see left). They were told his visit with Mandela's family in the cell would be "private." And yet photos of Obama and the family, taken by the government-funded White House photographer, were made public and went viral. This passes as "private" in the Obama White House.
...Official White House photographers are paid to document the president of the United States for posterity. So why do they take and distribute so many photos like this – ones with no sign of the president? Hint: The crowds are always big, happy and adoring of Obama. All on your dime.
...One of the most compelling and historic images of the Obama era, the nation's first African American president is picture here looking out of the window of the Rosa Parks bus. It's a great photograph but as a matter of public record, it's no better than beefcake photos of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Those are shot and distributed by Tass.

As National Journal's Ron Fournier observes, when George W. Bush visited the crypt believed to be the birthplace of Christ, independent photojournalists were able to freely take photos. Obama, however, "barred photographers during his visit to the exact same spot, and released [one] exclusive image... It was taken by photographer paid by taxpayers to make flattering photos of the president."

Put simply, Chief White House photographer Pete Souza is the modern-day equivalent of Leni Riefenstahl.


McClatchy's Anita Kumar reports that the press is growing quite upset with Obama's Soviet-style propaganda tactics.

The nation’s largest news organizations lodged a complaint Thursday against the White House for imposing unprecedented limitations on photojournalists covering President Barack Obama, which they say have harmed the public’s ability to monitor its own government.

The organizations accuse the White House of banning photojournalists from covering Obama at some events, and then later releasing its own photos and videos of the same events...

...Examples cited in the letter are Obama’s meetings with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus on July 10, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on July 29 and Pakistani human rights activist Malala Yousafzai on Oct. 11.

In each case, journalists weren’t allowed – and sometimes were unaware – of the event. The White House later released written summaries of the events, along with photos taken by a government photographer.

On Thursday, the presidents of the American Society of News Editors and the Associated Press Media Editors sent a letter to their members urging them to stop using handout photos and video from the White House.

The complaint was signed by 38 news organizations, including all major broadcast and cable networks, the major wire services as well as large newspapers, The New York Times and The Washington Post among them.

It's ironic: the same media that marketed Obama's cult of personality and increasing authoritarianism is now complaining that the cult of personality has become too authoritarian with the press.

Tell you what, guys: read "FOREVER SIX" and then report back for further education.


UPDATE: Oh My, Obama Enrages Media With A “Screw You” Pic


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

EZRA KLEIN, CNN AND TECHCRUNCH PUNK'D: White House Falsified Unemployment Rate Before 2012 Election

A month before the 2012 presidential election, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released new unemployment numbers. They turned out to be a stunning surprise: the official U-3 unemployment rate dropped from 8.1 percent in August to 7.8 percent in September.

At the time, former GE Chairman Jack Welch smelled a rat and said so publicly.

Welch’s tweet unleashed a firestorm of criticism with numerous accusations of him being a ‘conspiracy theorist.’ CNN attacked Welch’s hiring history claiming that Obama’s record on jobs trounced that of Welch. The site Tech Crunch deemed Welch a crazy, accusing him of inspiring a ‘web-wide Obama conspiracy’. In response to Welch’s statement, then Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said, “This is a methodology that’s been used for decades. And it is insulting when you hear people just cavalierly say that somehow we’re manipulating numbers.”


Barry Popik reminds us that the pencil-necked journoleftist named Ezra Klein was among the first to mock "jobbers" (i.e., "jobs birthers"):

The Daily Kos and Washington (DC) Post writer Ezra Klein came up with the term “jobber” on October 5, 2012—after an important BLS pre-election jobs report favored the current Democratic administration and Republicans questioned the numbers. “Jobber” follows similar names of “truther” (a 9-11-2001 conspiracy theorist), “birther” (a Barack Obama birth certificate conspiracy theorist) and “deather” (an Osama bin Laden death conspiracy theorist).

Of course, as we recently found out, the White House falsified the unemployment numbers in one of their various criminal enterprises designed to steal the 2012 election.

Now that Welch (and everyone of us with an ounce of common sense) have been vindicated, how long will it take the unemployment denialists like Gregory Ferenstein, Felix Salmon, the freakish Austan Goolsbee, and the loathsome Ezra Klein to apologize?


That's a rhetorical question, of course. Religious extremists like these leftists aren't bound by facts, logic, reason and history. That's why they're fanatics, irrational kooks who have an insatiable desire to control others.

In a word, they're Democrats.


Sunday, November 17, 2013

Sen. Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY): Yeah, "We All Knew" Obama Was Lying About Keeping Your Health Insurance

Guest post by TruthRevolt

New York Senator Kristen Gillibrand admitted Sunday to knowing the promises President Obama made about his signature health care plan were false. On ABC’s This Week, fill-in host Martha Raditz asked Gillibrand, considering the now nearly universally acceptance of the fact that the President said things about the law that weren’t true, whether she felt misled by the President:

He should’ve just been more specific. Because the point is, if you’re being offered a terrible health care plan, that the minute you get sick you’re going to have to go into bankruptcy, those plans should never be offered.

Following up on an obvious non-answer, Raditz asked again about being misled. This time, Gillibrand offered a startling revelation:

He should’ve just been specific. No we all knew. The whole point of the plan is to cover things people need, like preventive care, birth control, pregnancy. How many women, the minute they get pregnant, might risk their coverage. How many women paid more because of their gender, because they might get pregnant. Those are the reforms.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Saturday, November 16, 2013

OPRAH WINFREY: Millions Who Lost Health Insurance Are All Racists For Being Furious With Liar-In-Chief

Consider the hypocrisy of this self-made billionaire -- who leveraged the most wonderful, beneficent, tolerant society in the world to become incredibly wealthy -- trashing her own country. The overstuffed, over-made-up kook known as "Oprah Winfrey" -- if that is her real name -- is truly beneath contempt.

[BBC reporter Will] Gompertz asked Winfrey if she thought the problem of racism was solved.

“Of course, the problem is not solved,” the actress said. “As long as there are people who still, there’s a whole generation – I say this, you know, I said this, you know, for apartheid South Africa, I said this for my own, you know, community in the South – there are still generations of people, older people, who were born and bred and marinated in it, in that prejudice and racism, and they just have to die.”

If President Obama weren’t an African-American, Gompertz asked, would he be treated differently?

Winfrey mentioned the time when U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., called Obama a liar while the president was delivering a speech to Congress.

“Just the level of disrespect,” she said. “When the senator yelled out, ‘You’re a liar.’ Remember that? Yeah, I think that there is a level of disrespect for the office that occurs, and that occurs in some cases, and maybe even many cases, because he’s African-American.”

Level of disrespect?

I'll tell you a level of disrespect, you hateful shrew:

How about disrespecting the millions of Americans who just lost their health care after being promised dozens of times by the Liar-In-Chief that they could "keep their plans"?

How about disrespecting the families of those killed in Benghazi? A president who lied right to their faces about the cause of the attack and didn't lift a finger to save those killed during the nine-hour running gun battle.

How about disrespecting the families of the hundreds killed by Operation Fast and Furious? A president who gave or sold thousands of military-grade weapons to Mexican drug cartels as part of a truly evil plot to demonize gun-owners.

How about disrespecting all of those conservatives, Christian, and pro-Israel groups targeted by Obama? A president who used the IRS to win the 2012 election and then lied about it.

You're a hack, a clueless know-nothing, a Leftist kook who claims entirely legitimate criticism of the Liar-In-Chief's outrageous activities is based on "racism".

Go drink a nice, tall glass of shut-up juice and get the hell off of my television.


Thursday, November 14, 2013

PAUL KRUGMAN BEKLOWNS HIMSELF #6,336: Obamacare Edition

Economedian Paul Krugman has a unique, Nostradumbass-like talent for making the worst possible predictions at the worst possible times. Case in point (via American Digest's Ka-Ching Tumblr):


New York Times resident dumbass, Paul Krugman, from his article titled: Obamacare Is the Right’s Worst Nightmare in July, 2013. (via talkstraight and via stuff-that-irks-me)

As an aside, has anyone seen Krugman since Niall Fergusson pimp-slapped the troll-sized Times mascot into Westchester County?


Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Obama, Translated

Tyler Durden observes, "Sadly, only in our new normal world is this funny"



Hat tips: BB and @DCMFutures.

EXCLUSIVE: Introducing Obamacare Dental

Courtesy of Uncle Ben


By the way, along with other conservative blogs, Twitter is now censoring this blog's automated twitter feed and all of the BadBlue news channels (they've been marked as spam). All of the progressive, radical Left, Communist and Marxist blogs have been -- surprisingly -- unaffected by this outage. Coincidentally.



Got fascism?


Monday, November 11, 2013

WAPO: Administration So Desperate It's Now Reduced to Lying About How to Count Obamacare Enrollees

WonkBlog, of all places, spotlights yet another complete fabrication on the part of the geniuses behind Obamacare.

The fight over how to define the new health law’s success is coming down to one question: Who counts as an Obamacare enrollee?

Health insurance plans only count subscribers as enrolled in a health plan once they’ve submited a payment. That is when the carrier sends out a member card and begins paying doctor bills.


When the Obama administration releases health law enrollment figures later this week, though, it will use a more expansive definition. It will count people who have purchased a plan as well as those who have a plan sitting in their online shopping cart but have not yet paid.

“In the data that will be released this week, ‘enrollment’ will measure people who have filled out an application and selected a qualified health plan in the marketplace,” said an administration official, who requested anonymity to frankly describe the methodology.

The disparity in the numbers is likely to further inflame the political fight over the Affordable Care Act. Each side could choose a number to make the case that the health law is making progress or failing miserably.

On Monday, the Wall Street Journal, citing anonymous sources, said insurance companies have received about 50,000 private health plan enrollments through HealthCare.gov. Even combined with state tallies, the figure falls far short of the 500,000 sign-ups the administration initially predicted for both private sign-ups and those opting for the expansion of Medicaid.

This is simply more fraud.

If Amazon attempted to tell its shareholders that sales included items left un-purchased in visitors' shopping baskets, they'd probably be subject to criminal and civil penalties.

But big government seems to be above the law.


Lying Scum (Which Is the Term They Prefer, I Hear) at ThinkProgress Think Their Readers Are Idiots (and They're Right!)

Whatever George Soros is paying the kooks at ThinkProgress is money well-spent in my book.

After all, the money he sends these buffoons turns out to help the cause of Constitutional conservatism as often as not.

Today, ThinkProgress has a story on a protest in Dallas, Texas, at which a pro-Second Amendment group called Open Carry Texas rallied against an anti-Second Amendment group called Moms Demand Action... At the top of the ThinkProgress story is this rather alarming picture, in which the group appears to be hunting in a parking lot...


...the picture above is deeply misleading. As one Twitter user showed me, the group was, in fact, posing for a picture. (UPDATE: This Facebook page suggests that it was Moms Demand Action that took both pictures!)...


...What a difference 90 degrees makes.

As for [their] claim that open carry is illegal in Texas? No, not quite. Texas has laws that prohibit the open carrying of handguns, yes. But it does not have laws that prohibit the open carrying of long guns. The group had long guns.

As it is everywhere else, it is illegal in Texas for those carrying guns to disturb the peace, to intimidate, to brandish, or to threaten other citizens. But peaceful carrying is allowed in Texas, and there is no exception for demonstrations.

Writer Charles C. W. Cooke gives the crackpots at TP the benefit of the doubt, but when it comes to the totalitarians on the left, never chalk up to ignorance what can be ascribed to malevolence.

Their ends are pure evil, of that there is no doubt.


Hat tip: BadBlue 24x7 Conservative News.

Sunday, November 10, 2013

Shapiro: No Way to Fix Obamacare

Guest post by TruthRevolt

Appearing on The Real Story with Gretchen Carlson on Fox News, TruthRevolt Editor-in-Chief blasted Democrat-sponsored legislation that would purport to retroactively grandfather in insurance plans people like under Obamacare. “The fact is,” Shapiro said, “somebody has to pay for the people who have pre-existing conditions in order for Obamacare to work. And those people have to be young and have to be healthy, and they also have to be folks who have to be kicked off their regular insurance in order to be forced into the more expensive Obamacare exchanges.”

Shapiro continued, “There is no way to amend this….It’s absurd. There’ s no possible way you can remove the central plank of what Obamacare constitutes, and that is redistribution of the payment schedule.”


Hat tip: BadBlue News