Welcome to yet another episode if Chicago style machine politics brought to DC by the Daley Machine Obama Administration. Lately we have seen one “Solyndra” after another.
Gen. William Shelton, commander of the Air Force Space Command,
told House members in a classified briefing earlier this month that he was pressured to change prepared congressional testimony in a way that would favor a large company funded by Philip Falcone, a major Democratic donor, congressional sources told Fox News.
Republicans have raised questions about whether the project pursued by the company, LightSquared, is being unduly expedited by the Obama administration, which has pushed for national wireless network upgrades.
Solyndra II? At a classified briefing, head of the Air Force Space Command Gen. William Shelton informed House members that he had been pressured to change prepared congressional testimony in order to better compliment a Virginia-based satellite and communications company funded by major Democratic donor Philip Falcone. The GOP has been wondering for some time now whether work done by that company, LightSquared, has been “unduly expedited” by the Obama administration in its push for nation-wide wireless network upgrades.
As Shelton sees it, the company’s plans for its national 4G phone network would seriously compromise the effectiveness of high-precision GPS receiver systems used by the military, given that its spectrum would be about 5 billion times stronger than the military’s GPS system.
Appearing before the House Armed Services subcommittee yesterday, Shelton alleged that he’d repeatedly been pressured to say that “the interference problems could be mitigated” and that he’d been “asked to say things I didn’t agree with.”
Many cases of more of the same. Of course another aspect of this story is that it is the view of this editor that the military’s reliance on GPS is a mistake. GPS jamming technology is cheap and easy to make or buy. In fact. most anyone with a little electronics and ham radio training could make one with ease. It is almost a certainty that potential targets of US missiles and smart bombs such as Iran have installed these jamming devices around their country.
The elite media would have you believe that the TEA Party is a mob of violent racists in spite of the fact that not a single TEA Party activist has ever been arrested at an event.
Yet look at the pro anarchist/Marxists occupy protesters and ask yourself why the elite media doesn’t show you this. Also notice that these groups are very small, usually composing of a few dozen people to about two thousand (many of whom are paid by unions to be there – LINK). At a single Glenn Beck TEA Party event about 1.5 million people showed up and nothing was trashed, there was no mess, and no one was arrested.
There is a reason why the GOP is called “the stupid party”.
Local GOP machines are often circular firing squads rife with clique’s and personality wars. Many of the best GOP candidates try to have nothing to do with their local machine. I cannot say for a fact that this is the case in Florida but GOP operatives are very aware that this is a nationwide problem.
And, in Florida the Republican-drawn map, which has to adhere to a new fair redistricting law, makes a tough reelection fight for Rep. Allen West (R) even tougher. His seat goes from one Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) would have won 48 percent to one in which the 2008 GOP nominee would have won just 44 percent.
While it’s just a first draft, the Republicans’ decision to weaken West doesn’t bode well for his chances under the final GOP plan.
Freshmen are generally more vulnerable in redistricting, lacking the senority [sic – Look a spelling error in the WashPo – Editor] to fight for safer seats. Outspoken tea party [Tea Party is supposed to be capitalized or can also be spelled TEA Party as TEA is an acronym – Editor] conservatives are in even more danger, because even in GOP-controlled states, establishment politicians are usually the ones drawing the maps.
This would move Florida 22 from a D+1 district to a D +5 which is almost impossible to win.
Good lord? Really? Crowley Political Report does not shock easily but Florida Republican Congressman Allen West raised a stunning amount of campaign cash during the three months ending Sept. 30.
$1.9 million. Yup. $1.9 million.
Consider this – Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson raised nearly $2 million. Let’s call it a tie.
There are two Democrats hoping to win West’s District 22 seat – former West Palm Beach Mayor Lois Frankel and Broward County businessman Patrick Murphy.
Frankel says she raised $415,000. Murphy raised $313,000. That would be a combined $728,000 for the two Democrats compared to West’s $1.9 million.
Should Frankel and Murphy just go home?
Frankel has raised a total of $1.1 million since starting her campaign. Murphy has raised $1.2 million.
West has raised $3.9 million.
Fun with math – Two Democrats total – $2.3 million. West – $3.9 million.
Fun fact – Much of the money Frankel and Murphy raised will have to be spent in the Democratic primary. West does not have, and is not like to have, a serious primary opponent.
Nope, West is just going to keep raking in the dough. A few more million for West and the DCCC may take West off their target list.
No matter how much Democrats would like to get that seat back, Frankel and Murphy are going to need a whole lot more cash to pull it off.
Unless of course the Florida GOP does the work for the Democrats. Take this seriously folks, there are many “establishment” GOP types who would rather see a Democrat elected than principled conservative. We have seen it in NY special elections, we have seen it with David Brooks and David Frum, and as Rush Limbaugh and so many others have pointed out for years, there are some in the GOP who believe that we are better off as a minority party in the US House. One of the reasons for that is because there are many in the GOP who talk conservatism but whose bread is buttered by government largess.
Florida Republicans need to start demanding some new party leadership and/or start opening your wallets and start funding challengers (or at least threatening to). They will tell you that “the rules are making us gerrymander him out”. Don’t you buy that for a minute.
“I already said that if he wants to use a teleprompter, then it would be fine with me. It has to be fair. If you [were] to defend ObamaCare, wouldn’t you want a teleprompter?” Gingrich asked.
“Now, just for a second I’m going to go in the detour and I’ll try to explain why I’ve been and he’ll say yes. There are two reasons. The first, is ego. Can you imagine him looking in the mirror? Graduate from Columbia, Harvard Law, editor of the Law Review journal, the greatest articulator in a Democratic Party?”
“How is he going to say that he’s afraid to be on the same podium as a West Georgia College student?”
Cain, who last week stumbled over questions about what he would do in Libya, seemed to know little about Cuba. His campaign kept reporters at bay, and when asked about the Cuban Adjustment Act and the so-called wet-foot, dry-foot policy, Cain seemed stumped. The policy allows Cuban immigrants who have made it to US soil to stay.
“Wet foot, dry foot policy?” Cain asked. His press handlers interrupted as Cain diverted his course and ducked back into the building. Later, when he emerged, he was asked again by another reporter. Cain wouldn’t answer. …
Cain, though, wouldn’t talk to reporters there, either. A FOX reporter asked Cain what he thought of President Obama’s easing of travel restrictions to Cuba. Cain said that was a “gotcha question.”
I realize that I am a politics junkie as are most readers of Political Arena, so it is perfectly understandable that we know what Clinton’s Castro hugging “wet feet, dry feet” policy is. What is not understandable is how Cain’s staff let him go to South Florida without being up to speed on Cuban policy from the last 20 years? I can make this one pretty easy for our friends in Herman Cain’s staff. The policy stinks. The very notion that someone who risked their life to flee Marxist tyranny should be sent home because they were found by our Coast Guard is not just immoral on it’s face, but costs lives. People making that perilous journey in what ever boat they can make or find should not be but in further peril by trying to avoid the United States Coast Guard. Herman Cain talks about putting a solid team together when he gets to the White House. This does not inspire confidence.
This is a solid piece by Phyllis Schlafly, the matriarch of the conservative movement, where she makes what is perhaps the most important point in the campaign. The American people feel the nation’s decline and most people can feel the change in the national consciousness. Having recently finished a new degree I can tell you that even most students feel it. Talk radio has talked about how Obama is presiding over the nations decline and President Obama is telling is that American exceptionalism is no better than Greek exceptionalism. We are not getting this message with moral clarity and boldness from our candidates, or at least that is how it seems in the elite media.
For those of us who have been paying close attention though, Former Speaker Newt Gingrich has been saying these things. He is the only candidate who calls out President Obama, and many in his staff, as the Saul Alinsky radicals they certainly are. The media does not like reporting it, but it is there and will be unavoidable if Newt is the nominee. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, while not a candidate, has been calling out Obama and his friends as Saul Alinsky neo-Marxist radicals since 2008. Mayor Giuliani is very falimiar with the violent radical left and their front groups such as SEIU and ACORN.
Despite the inordinate quantity of press coverage about next year’s presidential election and attention to TV debates, plus the consuming desire of the media to predict who will win in 2012, the polls show that no candidate in either party is reaching 50 percent public support.
Meanwhile, the NBC News/WallStreetJournal poll, conducted jointly by Democrats and Republicans, reports that 74 percent of Americans think our government is taking us in the wrong direction, and only 17 percent think we are on the right track. Other polls are similar, with Gallup reporting 85 percent dissatisfied with the way our country is headed, and only 13 percent satisfied.
The locals are restless, the grassroots are demanding change, and the Tea Partiers are expecting results, but Congress is stalemated and President Obama spends his time fundraising and campaigning for his own reelection. Why hasn’t any candidate been able to ride citizen dissatisfaction into majority support?
I recommend that every presidential candidate read three books to understand why they don’t get it. First, they should read the best book about Barack Obama, Radical-in-Chief, which explains how he became a Socialist while attending Columbia University.
Nobody knew anything about what was called the “lost chapter” of Obama’s life until a real scholar, Stanley Kurtz, did the original research. The highlight was a 1985 Socialist Scholars Conference addressed by Frances Fox Piven, known for advocating the Cloward-Piven strategy of killing capitalism by loading more and more people on welfare.
The presidential candidates should then read two books that explain in depressing detail why grassroots Americans are convinced that our government is taking us in the wrong direction and over a cliff before our children and grandchildren will ever achieve the American dream. Those two new books are Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? by Patrick J. Buchanan and After America: Get Ready for Armageddon by Mark Steyn.
Those books will help the candidates understand, and maybe even develop some empathy for the Americans whose votes they seek and must have if they are to win.
Buchanan explains how the America most adults grew up in is fast disappearing. Americans resent the dictatorial, undemocratic way that elitists in the media, academia, the bureaucracy, and the courts have spit on the foundations of our culture.
Those elite opinion sources have carried on a war against our Judeo-Christian faith, traditional marriage, and our patriotic belief that America is exceptional and should be militarily superior. They have trashed and tried to abolish symbols we cherish such as the Pledge of Allegiance, the Ten Commandments, and a cross erected in a public place to honor our veterans.
Those same elitists, using the power of government, have destroyed the economic stability of the family by legalizing unilateral divorce, giving enormous taxpayer subsidies to single moms which discriminate against marriage, adopting so-called free-trade policies that shipped millions of good jobs overseas, importing millions of foreigners from Third World countries to take the remaining jobs away from Americans, and enforcing so-called affirmative action policies that discriminate against white men. They are replacing e pluribus unum with what Theodore Roosevelt warned against: unrestrained immigration that will make us “a ‘polyglot boarding house‘ for the world.”
Buchanan is eloquent in describing the coordinated attack on Christian America and its replacement with the new religion of diversity, using the language of political correctness. Equality, a French-Revolution word that does not appear in any of America’s founding documents, has been elevated to become our national goal instead of liberty.
Buchanan cherishes the hope that our political leaders will, in time, recognize that enough Americans still want to remain one nation under God and one people united by history, heritage and language. He gives specific suggestions for how we can avoid driving off the cliff into national suicide.
Mark Steyn’s book delivers the same message, but in his uniquely different and delightful style. As Ann Coulter said, “Only Mark Steyn can write about the decline of America and leave you laughing.”
Steyn is particularly critical of the failure of our educational system. In 1940, a majority of Americans were schooled only from grade one to grade eight, and they grew up to be the greatest generation.
Now the plan is to keep kids in school from pre-Kindergarten until their mid or late twenties, laden with debt and coached to accept dependence rather than liberty. And worse, it isn’t clear they have learned anything useful.
Steyn puts it to us bluntly: we can rediscover the animating principles of limited government, a self-reliant citizenry, and the freedom to exploit our talents, or we can join the rest of the world in terminal decline. His message is, “if you want a happy ending, it’s up to you. Your call, America.”
A very large proportion of recent university graduates have soured on President Barack Obama, and many will vote GOP or stay at home in the 2012 election, according to two new surveys of younger voters.
“These rock-solid Obama constituents are free-agents,” said Kellyanne Conway, president of The Polling Company, based in Washington, D.C. She recently completed a large survey of college grads, and “they’re shopping around, considering their options, [and] a fair number will stay at home and sit it out,” she said.
The scope of this disengagement from Obama is suggested by an informal survey of 500 post-grads by Joe Maddalone, founder of Maddalone Global Strategies. Of his sample, 93 percent are aged between 22 and 28, 67 percent are male and 83 percent voted for Obama in 2008. But only 27 percent are committed to voting for Obama again, and 80 percent said they would consider voting for a Republican, said New York-based Maddalone.
That’s a drop of almost 60 points in support for Obama among this influential class of younger post-grad voters, who Maddalone recruited at conferences held at New York University and Thomson-Reuters’ New York headquarters.
The bad news for Obama was underlined May 19 with a report by a job-firm Adecco that roughly 60 percent of recent college-grads have not been able to find a full-time job in their preferred area. One-in-five graduates have taken jobs far from their training, one-in-six are dependent on their parents, and one-in-four say they’re in debt, according to the firm’s data.
Overall, roughly one-third of young voters have some college education, and one-half have college degrees, said Conway. Many are underemployed or unemployed, they’re worried about their debts and economic trends, and they’re worried about the value of their educations, she said. In 2012, she said, “I suspect a fair number will return to Obama, but maybe not enough, and not in the [swing] states where he needs them,” she said.
Those states include Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Indiana, Virginia and Iowa, she said. All were won by Obama in 2008, and all were lost in state-wide elections to GOP candidates in 2010, she said.
The GOP is making some progress towards earning their votes, Maddalone said. For example, 38 percent of his respondents said the GOP is “doing a good job addressing and engaging with young professionals,” and 58 percent said they would consider voting for the GOP “if you felt that Republicans were doing a good job addressing and engaging with young professionals.”
LAS VEGAS, Nev. — For much of the presidential election of 2008, Barack Obama’s campaign was Emma Guerrero’s life. She was one of a dozen volunteers who showed up at an Obama campaign office here every night, taking time from her studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, to be part of what she still remembers as the most exciting period of her life.
It was largely because of Guerrero — and hundreds of other college students like her across the country — that Obama assembled a formidable machine that helped him roll to victory in 2008, a triumph that included putting Nevada into the Democratic column for the first time in 12 years.
“We did everything,” she said. “We went canvassing. Phone banking. Cleaning the offices. Taking out my bosses’ dry cleaning. Whatever they needed. It was such an amazing time because we all believed and wanted him to get elected.”
Guerrero said that she did not blame Obama for the 13.4 percent unemployment rate that has gripped this state, and that she was still likely to vote for him. But as she looks to graduation this June and her job hunt ahead, the emotion she feels is fear, and she cannot imagine having the time or spirit to work for Obama.
“I don’t think I could do it anymore,” she said. “That campaign was an amazing experience. But I don’t think I’m in the same mind-set anymore. He hasn’t really addressed the young people, and we helped him to get elected.”
Across this state — and in others where young voters were the fuel of the Obama organization, voting for him 2-to-1 over John McCain — the enthusiastic engine of the 2008 campaign has run up against the reality of a deadened job market for college students.
Interviews here and across the country suggest that most of his college supporters of 2008 are still inclined to vote for him. But the Obama ground army of 2008 is hardly ready to jump back into the trenches, potentially depriving Obama of what had been an important force in his victory.
Obama’s advisers, while acknowledging the shift, said they were confident that the loss of these workers would be negated by an influx of new students who have turned of voting age since 2008. Obama’s campaign manager, Jim Messina, said there had been 8 million voters ages 18 to 21 registered since the last election, most of whom were Democrats.
“Their brothers and sisters started it, and they are going to finish it,” Messina said Monday. “They are storming into our office. Our volunteer numbers are up from where we thought they would be.”
Yet even Obama’s supporters say it seems unlikely that the president — given the difficulties of these past three years and the mood of the electorate of all ages — will ever be able to replicate the youthful energy that became such a defining hallmark of his campaign.
In the last election, Sandra Allen hosted a group of fellow Brown University students at her home to call voters in North Carolina and Indiana on Election Day, a common practice in the Obama campaign. Obama won those states to the shock of Republicans.
Asked if she would be doing similar work for Obama this time, Allen responded: “Not now. And I will not be streaking across the main green of any campus with hundreds of thrilled people were he to be re-elected next year.”
Allen graduated last year and, after surveying the job market, decided to take refuge in graduate school to wait things out.
“I’m not optimistic,” she said.
Jason Tieg, 22, a student at Brigham Young University-Idaho, voted for Obama with great enthusiasm in 2008. But now, struggling to find a part-time job to help him through school, he is not even sure he would do that again.
“I got a job in July as a custodian on campus, but I lost it again when they needed to cut down,” he said. “I don’t know if I’ll support him next year.”
It is hard to find a state that more vividly illustrates the danger to Obama from declining enthusiasm among young voters than Nevada. Few parts of the country have been harder hit by this recession, with stubborn double-digit unemployment, an unending wave of mortgage foreclosures and huge numbers of homeless. And there are few states where young voters were so crucial to Obama’s victory.
Mark Triola, who was president of Young Democrats of Nevada in 2008, said at the time, the Democratic organization at UNLV was about three times as big as the Republican organization. By last year, he said, they were about equal, a trend that students there say has not changed this year.
(For his part, Triola graduated in the spring and found a job in the communications industry — “ideally probably not what I was looking for, but I don’t have any room to complain given what’s going on,” he said.)
Jolie Glaser, a gung-ho supporter of Obama in 2008 when she attended college here, has taken to doing volunteer work for a golf charity as she looks for a job in the nonprofit sector. Her enthusiasm for the president has dampened.
“It’s hard to be a passionate follower of him,” she said. “It’s easier to be a thoughtful supporter.”
By Gary Wolfram William Simon Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Hillsdale College
Whenever I watch media coverage of another Occupy Wall Street event I am reminded of an exchange between Jewish protesters in the 1979 Monte Python movie Life of Brian. One of the protesters asks another what the Romans have brought to the area and the conversation goes like this:
Question: All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us? Answer: Brought peace? Response: Oh, peace – shut up!
The point is that the Roman institutions brought a good deal to the area that was being overlooked by the protesters. The Wall Street protesters, in their hatred of capitalism, overlook things including the fact that over the last 100 years capitalism has reduced poverty more and increased life expectancy more than in the 100,000 years prior.
Every semester I ask my students: “What would you rather be? King of England in 1263 or you?” Turns out, students would rather be themselves. They enjoy using their iPhone, indoor plumbing, central heating, refrigerators and electric lighting. All of these things are available to the average person in America today and none of them were available to the aristocracy when the West operated under the feudal system.
How is it that for thousands of years mankind made very little progress in increasing the standard of living and yet today half of the goods and services you use in the next week did not exist when I was born? It wasn’t that there was some change in the DNA such that we got smarter. The Greeks knew how to make a steam engine 3,000 years ago and never made one. The difference is in how we organize our economic system. The advent of market capitalism in the mid 18th century made all of the difference.
We need not just rely on historical data. Look at cross-section evidence. I try another experiment with my students. I tell them they are about to be born and they can choose whatever country in the world they would like to be born in. The only caveat is they will be the poorest person in that country. Every student picks a country that is primarily organized in a market capitalist system. No one picks a centrally planned state. No one says, “I want to be the poorest person in North Korea, Cuba, or Zimbabwe,” countries which are at the bottom of the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom.
What does it mean to be poor in our capitalist society that the Occupy Wall Street crowd so hates? Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation has several studies of those classified as poor by the U.S. Census Bureau. He found that 80 percent of poor persons in the United States in 2010 had air conditioning, nearly three quarters of them had a car or truck, nearly two-thirds had satellite or cable television, half had a personal computer and more than two-thirds had at least two rooms per person.
Contrast this with what it means to be poor in Mumbai, India, a country that is moving rapidly towards market capitalism but was burdened for decades with a socialist system. A recent story in The Economist described Dharavi, a slum in Mumbai, where for many families half of the family members must sleep on their sides in order for the entire family to squeeze into its living space.
The Occupy Wall Street movement has shown a lack of understanding of how the market capitalist system works. They appear to think that the cell phones they use, food they eat, hotels they stay in, cars they drive, gasoline that powers the cars they drive and all the myriad goods and services they consume every day would be there under a different system, perhaps in more abundance.
But there is no evidence this could be or ever has been the case. The reason is that only market capitalism solves the two major problems that face any economy-how to provide an incentive to innovate and how to solve the problem of decentralized information. The reason there is so much innovation in a market system compared to socialism or other forms of central planning is that profit provides the incentive for innovators to take the risk needed to come up with new products.
My mother never once complained that we did not have access to the latest Soviet washing machine. We never desired a new Soviet car. The socialist system relies on what Adam Smith referred to as the benevolent butcher and while there will undoubtedly be benevolent butchers out there, clearly a system that provides monetary rewards for innovators is much more dynamic and successful. The profit that the Occupy Wall Street protesters decry is the reason the world has access to clean water and anti-viral drugs.
The other major problem that must be solved by any economic system is how to deal with the fact that information is so decentralized. There is no way for a central planner to know how many hot dogs 300 million Americans are going to want at every moment in time. A central planner cannot know the relative value of resources in the production of various goods and services. Market capitalism solves that problem through the price system. If there are too few hot dogs, the price of hot dogs will rise and more hot dogs will be produced. If too many hot dogs are produced, the price of hot dogs will fall and fewer will be produced.
Market capitalism is the key to the wealth of the masses. As Ludwig von Mises wrote in his 1920 book, Socialism, only market capitalism can make the poor wealthy. Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek in his famous 1945 paper, The Use of Knowledge in Society, showed that only the price system in capitalism can create the spontaneous order that ensures that goods will be allocated in a way that ensures consumers determine the use of resources. The Occupy Wall Street movement would make best use of its time and energy in protesting the encroachment of the centrally planned state that led to the disaster of the Soviet Union, fascist Germany, and dictatorial North Korea.
WASHINGTON — They drive cars, but seldom new ones. They earn paychecks, but not big ones. Many own homes. Most pay taxes. Half are married, and nearly half live in the suburbs. None are poor, but many describe themselves as barely scraping by.
Down but not quite out, these Americans form a diverse group sometimes called “near poor” and sometimes simply overlooked — and a new count suggests they are far more numerous than previously understood.
When the Census Bureau this month released a new measure of poverty, meant to better count disposable income, it began altering the portrait of national need. Perhaps the most startling differences between the old measure and the new involves data the government has not yet published, showing 51 million people with incomes less than 50 percent above the poverty line. That number of Americans is 76 percent higher than the official account, published in September. All told, that places 100 million people — one in three Americans — either in poverty or in the fretful zone just above it.
After a lost decade of flat wages [We have not had a lost decade of stagnant wages, the economy was doing reasonably well until the mortgage bubble popped. That editorial comment was designed rewrite economic history of the Bush Administration – Editor] and the worst downturn since the Great Depression, the findings can be thought of as putting numbers to the bleak national mood — quantifying the expressions of unease erupting in protests and political swings. They convey levels of economic stress sharply felt but until now hard to measure.
The Census Bureau, which published the poverty data two weeks ago, produced the analysis of those with somewhat higher income at the request of The New York Times. The size of the near-poor population took even the bureau’s number crunchers by surprise.
“These numbers are higher than we anticipated,” said Trudi J. Renwick, the bureau’s chief poverty statistician. “There are more people struggling than the official numbers show.”
Outside the bureau, skeptics of the new measure warned that the phrase “near poor” — a common term, but not one the government officially uses — may suggest more hardship than most families in this income level experience. A family of four can fall into this range, adjusted for regional living costs, with an income of up to $25,500 in rural North Dakota or $51,000 in Silicon Valley.
But most economists called the new measure better than the old, and many said the findings, while disturbing, comported with what was previously known about stagnant wages.
“It’s very consistent with everything we’ve been hearing in the last few years about families’ struggle, earnings not keeping up for the bottom half,” said Sheila Zedlewski, a researcher at the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan economic and social research group.
Patched together a half-century ago, the official poverty measure has long been seen as flawed. It ignores hundreds of billions the needy receive in food stamps, tax credits and other programs, and the similarly large sums paid in taxes, medical care and work expenses. The new method, called the Supplemental Poverty Measure, counts all those factors and adjusts for differences in the cost of living, which the official measure ignores.
These kind of polls are not altogether uncommon at thgis time in the election season. There are lots of voters called “cross pressured voters” who stray shortly before the general election campaign, but usually 70% plus of those voters return back to their party once they are reminded of why they vote for that party in the first place. Of course strong pocketbook or emergency issues can supersede that rule as happened in the 1980 and 1984 elections. However this does indicate a wedge between rank and file Democrats who mostly vote on envy issues vs. the more radical Saul Alinsky inspired elitists.
Washington (CNN) – Although President Barack Obama’s overall approval rating remains steady, his standing among Democrats, and in particular among blue-collar Democrats, appears to have dropped, according to a new national survey.
According to a CNN/ORC International Poll released Wednesday, 44% of Americans say they approve of the job the president’s doing in the White House, with 54% saying they disapprove of how Obama is handling his duties. The president’s approval rating has hovered in the same mid-40’s range since June in CNN surveys. Full results (pdf)
But the poll indicates that there has been some change when Democrats are asked whether they want to see their party renominate Obama, with 26% of Democrats saying that they would prefer the party to nominate another Democrat for president next year, up from 18% in October.
This video is remarkable to see for those who are not trained in how Washington works. The first millionaire in the video says that their group got rich because of the deficit spending done in Washington, so lets raise taxes [so that the government can do more spending and you same greedy bastards can get even wealthier by sucking at the government tit while donating some of that money back to Obama]. The people at Solyndra and these other green energy companies that donated heavily to Obama took our money, paid themselves, donated to Democrats and promptly went out of business.
Washington — Two dozen “patriotic millionaires” traveled to the Capitol on Wednesday to demand that Congress raise taxes on wealthy Americans.
The Daily Caller attended their press conference with an iPad, which displayed the Treasury Department’s donation page, to find out if any of the “patriotic millionaires” were willing to put their money where their mouth is.
Boehner goes nuclear when he finds out that language was illegally inserted into the bill giving the AIG execs big bonuses with our money. This goes all the way back to the language in the failed Stimulus Bill.
This is the speech that Leader Boehner was referencing in the beginning of the video above
ABC’s World News on Wednesday and Good Morning America on Thursday both reported on the revelation that Newt Gingrich received almost $2 million while consulting for Freddie Mac over an eight year span.
Yet, the network ignored the fact that the company (with a Democratic President) is still giving massive bonuses and will now be asking the federal government for an additional $6 billion.
On World News, Jon Karl highlighted only the Gingrich connection, highlighting attacks by Michele Bachmann.
Yet, while ABC focused on this, NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell explained, “So, here’s what set off the latest round of outrage. $13 million in bonuses for the two mortgage giants that had to be bailed out by taxpayers. Now these bonuses come after Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac actually lost $4 billion last quarter.”
So, while NBC’s Andrea Mitchell offered snarky comments, such as insisting that Gingrich is “trying to explain his gold platted, insider status,” at least NBC allowed that the company still had issues, separate from their relation to GOP presidential candidates.
On CBS’s Evening News, Wyatt Andrews noted the “bipartisan anger” from Republicans and Democrats over the latest news.
Speaking of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae CEOs, Andrews added, “Fannie’s Michael Williams and Freddie’s Charles Haldeman, earned $9.3 million and $7.8 million over two years, which gives them, Republican Darrell Issa said, the best taxpayer-financed jobs ever.”
On Thursday’s Early Show, Jan Crawford mentioned the congressional investigation during a Gingrich segment. GMA only focused on the Republican presidential candidate. NBC’s Today did the same.
A transcript of the Evening News segment can be found HERE
[Today we have featured some of the illuminating work by Dan Gainor from the Media Research Center. Be sure to scroll down and read the three part series showing how some in the elite media abuse their positions to behave as Democratic Party operatives. In today’s piece Gainor shows how the problem goes far beyond rank and file journalists. George Soros, who has stated that he wants a new centrally planned economic order, is the single largest contributor to far left political causes. – Editor]
George Soros
Part I: Why Don’t We Hear About Soros’ Ties to Over 30 Major News Organizations?
When liberal investor George Sorosgave $1.8 million to National Public Radio , it became part of the firestorm of controversy that jeopardized NPR’s federal funding. But that gift only hints at the widespread influence the controversial billionaire has on the mainstream media. Soros, who spent $27 million trying to defeat President Bush in 2004, has ties to more than 30 mainstream news outlets – including The New York Times, Washington Post, the Associated Press, NBC and ABC.
Prominent journalists like ABC’s Christiane Amanpour and former Washington Post editor and now Vice President Len Downie serve on boards of operations that take Soros cash. This despite the Society of Professional Journalists’ ethical code stating: “avoid all conflicts real or perceived.”
The investigative reporting start-up ProPublica is a prime example. ProPublica, which recently won its second Pulitzer Prize, initially was given millions of dollars from the Sandler Foundation to “strengthen the progressive infrastructure” – “progressive” being the code word for very liberal. In 2010, it also received a two-year contribution of $125,000 each year from the Open Society Foundations. In case you wonder where that money comes from, the OSF website is www.soros.org. It is a network of more than 30 international foundations, mostly funded by Soros, who has contributed more than $8 billion to those efforts.
The ProPublica stories are thoroughly researched by top-notch staffers who used to work at some of the biggest news outlets in the nation. But the topics are almost laughably left-wing. The site’s proud list of “Our Investigations” includes attacks on oil companies, gas companies, the health care industry, for-profit schools and more. More than 100 stories on the latest lefty cause: opposition to drilling for natural gas by hydraulic fracking. Another 100 on the evils of the foreclosure industry.
Throw in a couple investigations making the military look bad and another about prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and you have almost the perfect journalism fantasy – a huge budget, lots of major media partners and a liberal agenda unconstrained by advertising.
One more thing: a 14-person Journalism Advisory Board, stacked with CNN’s David Gergen and representatives from top newspapers, a former publisher of The Wall Street Journal and the editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster. Several are working journalists, including:
• Jill Abramson, a managing editor of The New York Times;
• Kerry Smith, the senior vice president for editorial quality of ABC News;
• Cynthia A. Tucker, the editor of the editorial page of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
ProPublica is far from the only Soros-funded organization that is stacked with members of the supposedly neutral press.
The Center for Public Integrity is another great example. Its board of directors is filled with working journalists like Amanpour from ABC, right along side blatant liberal media types like Arianna Huffington, of the Huffington Post and now AOL.
Like ProPublica, the CPI board is a veritable Who’s Who of journalism and top media organizations, including:
• Christiane Amanpour – Anchor of ABC’s Sunday morning political affairs program, “This Week with Christiane Amanpour.” A reliable lefty, she has called tax cuts “giveaways,” the Tea Party “extreme,” and Obama “very Reaganesque.”
• Paula Madison – Executive vice president and chief diversity officer for NBC Universal, who leads NBC Universal’s corporate diversity initiatives, spanning all broadcast television, cable, digital, and film properties.
• Matt Thompson – Editorial product manager at National Public Radio and an adjunct faculty member at the prominent Poynter Institute.
The group’s advisory board features:
• Ben Sherwood, ABC News president and former “Good Morning America” executive producer
Once again, like ProPublica, the Center for Public Integrity’s investigations are mostly liberal – attacks on the coal industry, payday loans and conservatives like Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour. The Center for Public Integrity is also more open about its politics, including a detailed investigation into conservative funders David and Charles Koch and their “web of influence.”According to the center’s own 990 tax forms, the Open Society Institute gave it $651,650 in 2009 alone.
The well-known Center for Investigative Reporting follows the same template – important journalists on the board and a liberal editorial agenda. Both the board of directors and the advisory board contain journalists from major news outlets. The board features:
• Phil Bronstein (President), San Francisco Chronicle;
• David Boardman, The Seattle Times;
• Len Downie, former Executive Editor of the Washington Post, now VP;
• George Osterkamp, CBS News producer.
Readers of the site are greeted with numerous stories on climate change, illegal immigration and the evils of big companies. It counts among its media partners The Washington Post, Salon, CNN and ABC News. CIR received close to $1 million from Open Society from 2003 to 2008.
Why does it all matter? Journalists, we are constantly told, are neutral in their reporting. In almost the same breath, many bemoan the influence of money in politics. It is a maxim of both the left and many in the media that conservatives are bought and paid for by business interests. Yet where are the concerns about where their money comes from?
Fred Brown, who recently revised the book “Journalism Ethics: A Casebook of Professional Conduct for News Media,” argues journalists need to be “transparent” about their connections and “be up front about your relationship” with those who fund you.
Unfortunately, that rarely happens. While the nonprofits list who sits on their boards, the news outlets they work for make little or no effort to connect those dots. Amanpour’s biography page, for instance, talks about her lengthy career, her time at CNN and her many awards. It makes no mention of her affiliation with the Center for Public Integrity.
If journalists were more up front, they would have to admit numerous uncomfortable connections with groups that push a liberal agenda, many of them funded by the stridently liberal George Soros. So don’t expect that transparency any time soon.
Part II: Why Is Soros Spending Over $48 Million Funding Media Organizations?
It’s a scene journalists dream about – a group of coworkers toasting a Pulitzer Prize. For the team at investigative start-up ProPublica, it was the second time their fellow professionals recognized their work for journalism’s top honor.
For George Soros and ProPublica’s other liberal backers, it was again proof that a strategy of funding journalism was a powerful way to influence the American public.
It’s a strategy that Soros has been deploying extensively in media both in the United States and abroad. Since 2003, Soros has spent more than $48 million funding media properties, including the infrastructure of news – journalism schools, investigative journalism and even industry organizations.
And that number is an understatement. It is gleaned from tax forms, news stories and reporting. But Soros funds foundations that fund other foundations in turn, like the Tides Foundation, which then make their own donations. A complete accounting is almost impossible because a media component is part of so many Soros-funded operations.
This information is part of an upcoming report by the Media Research Centers Business & Media Institute which has been looking into George Soros and his influence on the media.
It turns out that Soros’ influence doesn’t just include connections to top mainstream news organizations such as NBC, ABC, The New York Times and Washington Post. It’s bought him connections to the underpinnings of the news business. The Columbia Journalism Review, which bills itself as “a watchdog and a friend of the press in all its forms,” lists several investigative reporting projects funded by one of Soros foundations.
The “News Frontier Database” includes seven different investigative reporting projects funded by Soros’ Open Society Institute. Along with ProPublica, there are the Center for Public Integrity, the Center for Investigative Reporting and New Orleans’ The Lens. The Columbia School of Journalism, which operates CJR, has received at least $600,000 from Soros, as well.
Imagine if conservative media punching bags David and Charles Koch had this many connections to journalists. Even if the Kochs could find journalists willing to support conservative media (doubtful), they would be skewered by the left.
For Soros, it’s news, but it nothing new. According to “Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire,” he has been fascinated by media from when he was a boy where early career interests included “history or journalism or some form of writing.” He served as “editor-in-chief, publisher, and news vendor of” his own paper, “The Lupa News” and wrote a wall newspaper in his native Hungary before leaving, wrote author Michael T. Kaufman, a 40-year New York Times veteran. The Communist Party “encouraged” such papers.
Now as one of the world’s richest men (No. 46 on Forbes’ list), he gets to indulge his dreams. Since those dreams seem to involve controlling media from the ground up, Soros naturally started with Columbia University’s School of Journalism. Columbia is headed by President Lee Bollinger, who also sits on the Pulitzer Prize board and the board of directors of The Washington Post.
Conveniently, Len Downie, the lead author of that piece, is on both the Post’s board and the board of the Center for Investigative Reporting, also funded by Soros.
Soros funds more than just the most famous journalism school in the nation. There are journalism industry associations like:
• The National Federation of Community Broadcasters;
• The National Association of Hispanic Journalists;
• And the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Readers unhappy with Soros’ media influence might be tempted to voice concerns to the Organization of News Ombudsmen – a professional group devoted to “monitoring accuracy, fairness and balance.” Perhaps they might consider a direct complaint to one such as NPR’s Alicia Shepard or PBS’s Michael Getler, both directors of the organization. Unfortunately, that group is also funded by Soros. At the bottom of the Organization of News Ombudsmen’s website front page is the line: “Supported by the Open Society Institute,” a Soros foundation. It is the only organization so listed.
The group’s membership page lists 57 members from around globe and features:
• Deirdre Edgar, readers’ representative of The Los Angeles Times;
• Brent Jones, standards editor, USA Today;
• Kelly McBride, ombudsman, ESPN;
• Patrick Pexton, ombudsman, The Washington Post.
The site doesn’t address whether the OSI money creates a conflict of interest. But then, who could readers complain to anyway?
There’s more. The Open Society Institute is one of several foundations funding the Investigative News Network (INN), a collaboration of 32 non-profit news organizations producing what they claim is “non-partisan investigative news.” The James L. Knight Foundation also backs the network and is possibly the most-well-known journalism foundation. Knight President and CEO Alberto Ibargüen is on the board of directors for ProPublica.
INN includes the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, the liberal web start-up MinnPost, National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting, National Public Radio, and the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. The network had included the liberal Huffington Post investigative operation among its grants, but HuffPo investigations merged with the possibly even more left-wing Center for Public Integrity, on whose boardArianna Huffington sits.
Liberal academic programs, left-wing investigative journalism and even supposedly neutral news organizations all paid for by a man who spends tens of millions of dollars openly attacking the right. George Soros is teaching journalists that their industry has a future as long as he opens his wallet.
A textbook example of media bias. The subtext of the story “smart conservatives agree with Obama” and they push that bias by presenting a partisan view as “the expert’s view”
You might be thinking “Now wait a minute, it was fair because they had Jay Sekulow on”. That sounds good but look at the story again. NBC has Jay Sekulow on for the 29 states opposing ObamaCare, but then they have the Maryland politician who advocates the Obama point of view which is that the commerce clause gives the government unlimited power to control our lives, err I mean the economy [because you cannot control the economy with out controlling people /wink wink, nod nod].
So we have one advocate from each side, OK that is fair so far, but then the “expert” is brought in. We know this because NBC put the word “expert” right under Tom Goldstein’s name. Of course Tom Goldstein has experience covering the court, but he is no more of an expert than Jay Sekulow or Mark Levin. What they don’t tell you is that Tom Goldstein was a lawyer for Al Gore.
When NBC or an elite media outfit looks for a talking head they wish to present as “the experts”, they do not pick an expert at random and ask him “What do you think?”. They find a person they can present as an expert who will say exactly what they want said. This is a very common practice in news rooms all across the country.
Of course ObamaCare is unconstitutional. The Maryland politician says that everyone uses health care so the Commerce Clause covers it. Well everyone eats too, and everyone needs shelter, everyone needs clothes. So was it the intent of the Founding Fathers to have a government that is totally unlimited? ObamaCare is unconstitutional because it takes the entire idea of limited government and tosses it right out the window. James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, addressed the idea of reinterpreting a clause in the Constitution to give the federal Government total power.
If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, everything, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress…. Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America.
So where did this crazy idea of a nearly unlimited Commerce Clause come from? Shortly before WWII FDR was not able to advance parts of his socialist progressive plan because the Supreme Court kept striking down laws his party was passing. So FDR threatened to add members to the Supreme Court using Article II of the Constitution to add perhaps a dozen seats to the Supreme Court all filled with cronies. In fear of this the Supreme Court capitulated ” and expanded the Commerce Clause in a way that had never been intended to please FDR. This became known as FDR’s court packing threat.
Where is the outrage? Oh that’s right. I keep forgetting that Herman Cain is a Republican black man so in the eyes of the elite media that makes this double standard OK.
On a 1985 Washington, D.C., dinner with her date, the then single former Sen. Chris Dodd, and dining companion, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy:
“So, having recently graduated completely healed and normal from my first stint in a rehab, and appearing in an almost perfectly respectable piece of work, I found myself driving from Baltimore to Washington, D.C., to have dinner with Chris Dodd, this senator who I knew virtually nothing about. Nor did Senator Dodd — like most people, then, now and always — have any idea who I was in the wide, wide world beyond this cute little actress who’d played Princess Leia.”
“Suddenly, Senator Kennedy, seated directly across from me, looked at me with his alert, aristocratic eyes and asked me a most surprising question. ‘So,’ he said, clearly amused, ‘do you think you’ll be having sex with Chris at the end of your date?’ … To my left, Chris Dodd looked at me with an unusual grin hanging on his very flushed face.”
Her reply: “‘Funnily enough, I won’t be having sex with Chris tonight,’ I said, my face composed and calm. ‘No, that probably won’t happen.’ People blinked. ‘Thanks for asking, though.'”
His retort: “‘Would you have sex with Chris in a hot tub?’ Senator Kennedy asked me, perhaps as a way to say good night? ‘I’m no good in water,’ I told him.”
Karen Kraushaar currently serves as a communications director at the Inspector General’s Office of the Treasury Department, a position she has held since last year. She did not return phone messages left by The Daily.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A woman who settled a sexual harassment complaint against GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain in 1999 complained three years later at her next job about unfair treatment, saying she should be allowed to work from home after a serious car accident and accusing a manager of circulating a sexually charged email, The Associated Press has learned.
Karen Kraushaar, 55, filed the complaint while working as a spokeswoman at the Immigration and Naturalization Service in the Justice Department in late 2002 or early 2003, with the assistance of her lawyer, Joel Bennett, who also handled her earlier sexual harassment complaint against Cain in 1999. Three former supervisors familiar with Kraushaar’s complaint, which did not include a claim of sexual harassment, described it for the AP under condition of anonymity because the matter was handled internally by the agency and was not public.
To settle the complaint at the immigration service, Kraushaar initially demanded thousands of dollars in payment, a reinstatement of leave she used after the accident earlier in 2002, promotion on the federal pay scale and a one-year fellowship to Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, according to a former supervisor familiar with the complaint. The promotion itself would have increased her annual salary between $12,000 and $16,000, according to salary tables in 2002 from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.
UPDATE II – Television legend Bill Kurtis explains how Sharon Bialek worked with him at CBS. He said that she has [with emphasis] “a history” and that from his experience the roles in the car between Bialek and Cain were likely reversed.
More updates are being posted so be sure to scroll down to examine them.
Martha MacCallum, FOX News: “One of the things is that you lived at a 505 North Lake Shore Drive apartment, right? This is the same building, it happens to be the same building David Axelrod lives in. Do you know David Axelrod? Ever have any interaction with him at all?
Sharon Bialek, Cain accuser: “I saw him in the gym. I mean — everybody nods to each other. It is friendly building but I never had any interaction with him.”
[NOTE – David Axelrod is the President Obama’s Chief Political Advisor and former campaign manager]
‘She’s a complete gold digger’: Murky past of Herman Cain accuser starts to emerge.
Fiance of Sharon Bialek says he is supporting her but did not find out until Friday
Filed for bankruptcy twice
Accused former boyfriend of harassing her to pay a loan
Cain appears on Jimmy Kimmel saying he will fight the accusations
Father found out about allegations on Monday
A ‘gold digger’ embroiled in legal and financial difficulties who has always lived above her station and will do anything to never have to work again.
This is the portrait that has started to emerge of the fourth woman to accuse Herman Cain of sexual harassment – the first to come out publicly.
Though her lawyer Gloria Allred painted a respectable and prestigious education and employment history for Sharon Bialek, 50, just a day later it has been revealed that she has not held a job for more than two years and has filed for bankruptcy twice.
… In stark contrast to Mr. Cain’s four decades spent climbing the corporate ladder rising to the level of CEO at multiple successful business enterprises, Ms. Bialek has taken a far different path.
The fact is that Ms. Bialek has had a long and troubled history, from the courts to personal finances – which may help explain why she has come forward 14 years after an alleged incident with Mr. Cain, powered by celebrity attorney and long term Democrat donor Gloria Allred.
In the courts, Ms. Bialek has had a lengthy record in the Cook County Court system over various civil lawsuits. The following cases on file in Cook County are:
· 2000-M1-707461 Defendant against Broadcare Management
· 2000-M1-714398 Defendant in lawsuit against Broadcare Management
· 2000-M1-701522 Defendant in lawsuit against Broadcare Management
· 2005-M1-111072 Defendant in lawsuit against Mr. Mark Beatovic.
· 2007-M1-189176 Defendant in lawsuit against Midland Funding.
· 2009-M1-158826 Defendant in lawsuit against Illinois Lending.
Ms. Bialek was also sued in 1999 over a paternity matter according to ABC 7 Chicago (WLS-TV). Source: WLS-TV, November 7, 2011
In personal finances, PACER (Federal Court) records show that Ms. Bialek has filed for bankruptcy in the Northern District of Illinois bankruptcy court in 1991 and 2001. The respective case numbers according to the PACER system are 1:01-bk-22664 and 1:91-bk-23273.
Ms. Bialek has worked for nine employers over the last seventeen years. Source: WLS-TV, November 7, 2011
Curiously, if Ms. Bialek had intended to take legal action, the statute of limitations would have passed a decade ago.
Which brings up the question of why she would make such reprehensible statements now?
The questions should be – who is financing her legal team, have any media agreed to pay for her story, and has she been offered employment for taking these actions?
UPDATE I– Bialek will not rule out selling her story or trying to make money off of this.
[There are MANY updates. Please scroll down to examine them. Steven Tucker has found two people who saw Bialek approach Cain after his speech at TEAcon (not before as they said in the presser), but no one in the Chicago TEA Party seems to know who she is or seen her before and as you will see by the details, this story gets stranger by the moment.
The updates are getting more and more interesting Bialek faced multiple liens including an IRS lien in 2009. See update VI. Bialek is described by Gloria Allred and the elite media as a TEA Party Republican, yet her voter registration status is inactive. See Update VII.
We would like to point out that a $35,000 termination agreement 15 years ago with an anonymous accuser who, when allowed to break confidentiality by the National Restaurant Association decided to clam up, is a big deal to the elite media. But Bill Clinton paying $850,000 for real sexual assault and harassment against Paula Jones is no big deal and the dozen other women who came out and told a similar story were all “nuts & sluts”. Who was president 15 years ago?
Eye Witness to the Cain-Bialek encounter at TeaCon: They hugged, “flirtatious”! Bielek applied for a job at WIND Radio See Update IX
After Nine updates we are starting a new thread HERE – Editor]
Mark Levin takes apart Bialek’s written statement (hat tip Rightscoop). Levin shows just how strange this story is as some parts just do not make sense.
When Sharon Bialek said that he was with Herman Cain at the Chicago TEA Party event with Herman Cain I reached out to one of the key voices and leaders of the Chicago TEA Party C. Steven Tucker and he says “I did not recognize her Chuck and I was there all weekend.”
I have been reaching out to my other friends in the Chicago TEA Party and so far no one recognizes her. Gloria Allred portrayed Bialek as a TEA Party Republican. Having seen her picture Bialek is not someone who goes unnoticed easily.
Tucker comments further:
I have spoken at Tea Party events ALL OVER Chicagoland including TeaCon Midwest 2011 where Gloria Allred says her client “confronted” Herman Cain. I have never seen nor have I ever even heard of a Sharon Bialek.
Sharon Bialek Voter Registration Status
Bialek liens
Steven Tucker with Herman Cain
Steven Tucker with Michelle Bachman
Steven Tucker with Sarah Palin
Bailek has not been seen at any other TEA Party events. Even if she had gone to just one, why go to the one with Herman Cain and no others? It makes no sense.
Sharon Blailek said that this happened in 1996 so where was Blailek when Herman Cain was running for Senate in 2004?
We have been doing internet searches on Sharon Bialek. Her linkedin and all social networking/employer networking sites where her name appears seem to have been scrubbed. When you are telling the truth, why make the attempt to scrub your past? [Note: Her LinkedIn profile is back – Editor]
Speaking of not making sense, why would a supposed Republican TEA Party activist/sympathizer call a known leftist hatchet man like Gloria Allred, as any association with Allred would impune her credibility?
Why would being with Gloria Allred impune Bailek’s credibility?
Gloria Allred, in an attempt to smear California candidate for governor Meg Whitman, exposed her ‘client’ Nikki Diaz to felony charges of forging a Social Security document, tax fraud, identity theft because she had assumed another persons identity, exposed her to deportation, fines and prison, all for asking to be paid mileage for a couple of times when she had to drive to carry out her duties, even though she was paid $23.00 an hour; all for a political smear. And where is Nikki Diaz today?
In this video attorney and Fox News anchor Greta van Susteren takes Gloria Allred to task for misrepresenting the ‘evidence’ she claims to have and for exposing her client to great jeopardy without sufficient cause.
Famed attorney Mark Levin also goes after Allred on the same angle in this interview. This interview is very revealing as Allred does everything she can to keep changing the subject away from the pertinent legal facts.
This is what disbarment is for.
It gets better. Here is Gloria Allred defending the illegal groping by the TSA. Allred said that she enjoyed being groped by the TSA.
When Kathleen Willey and Juanita Broderick, both Democratic Party activists, were sexually assaulted by Bill Clinton they reached out to Gloria Allred and Allred was not interested in helping them.
Here is Gloria Allred demonstrating anal sex with a baseball bat in front of children.
The Media Research Center takes us back to how the elite media treated the 23 women who spoke out against sexual harassment, assault and even credible rape allegations against former President Bill Clinton – LINK.
UPDATE I: This is really indicative of the elite media reaction to this story. Just the stats as of 11-6-2011 via Law Prof. William Jacobson:
Days as of 8 p.m. Eastern today since Politico broke the story – 7
Politico news stories about or mentioning “Herman Cain“: 138
Politico news stories about or mentioning “sexual harassment“: 91
Politico news stories about or mentioning “sexual harassment” not involving Herman Cain: 0
Politico news stories showing what Herman Cain actually did: 0
Politico news stories showing specifically what Herman Cain was accused of: 0
Percentage drop in Herman Cain favorability rating as reported by Politico: 9
Politico news stories about or mentioning “Solyndra“: 9
Politico news stories about or mentioning “Fast and Furious“: 3
Politico news stories about or mentioning “unemployment“: 17
Politico news stories about or mentioning “recession“: 14
I would like to add –
Number of stories quoting an accuser by name: 0
Number of specific allegations made as far as conduct: 0
Former Marietta Mayor Bill Dunaway reports that he was called by reporters this week from the Associated Press and The Washington Post, both trying to dig up dirt on embattled presidential candidate Herman Cain of Georgia. The reporters had somehow heard that Dunaway is former owner of The 1848 House restaurant in Marietta and had been in the restaurant business while Cain was president of the National Restaurant Association.
“They each wanted to know what ‘bad’ things I had heard about him and what ‘bad’ things the NRA members thought of him. I disappointed them in that I neither knew nor heard any bad rumors about him,” Dunaway emailed AT’s Bill Kinney.
“The press is really working hard on Herman,” he concluded. No question about that.
UPDATE III – The Chicago TEA Party is investigating:
Tucker found someone who saw Blailek at TEAcon. Via Steven Tucker:
Chuck, please add this to your blog post. AM 560 WIND General Manager Jeff Reisman and AM 560 WIND morning Radio Personality John Howell witnessed the conversation between Bialek and Herman Cain AFTER Herman’s speech at TeaCon Midwest 2011. Bialek had the timing wrong, but she did indeed talk to him after the speech. John Howell was on the nationally syndicated Micheal Medved show this afternoon talking about it – they’re trying to get Bialek to come on WIND this afternoon to talk about it.
Says Tucker, I can personally guarantee that this woman is NOT a “Tea Party Person”.
UPDATE IV – Sharon Bialek starts a Facebook page today.
With all of my contacts in the Chicago Area at this time we have no mutual friends, that includes Chicago TEA Party leaders. This leaves next to no doubt, she is not a TEA Party person as she has been portrayed by implication.
Chicago TEA Party lead activist Steven Tucker, who has 5004 friends, has not one friend in common with Blailek.
Note: Fake Sharon Bialek profiles are now appearing on Facebook. Since one of the friends on the profile linked seems to be a Facebook.com editor it seems more likely than not that this is her new profile. The question of the day is what happened to the old one. She has LinkedIn so it is most unlikely that she had no previous profile before today.
UPDATE V – Bialek goes on a media tour. Here she is on CNN with Piers Morgan. I encourage everyone to watch the video. Bialek is grinning rather strangely while explaining how she was ‘abused’. They had hotel suites and yet she says that it happened in the car? Who tries to make it in the car when you have a hotel suite?
UPDATE VI – Bialek faced multiple liens including an IRS lien in 2009
UPDATE VIII – Herman Cain appeared on Jimmy Kimmel on Monday night. Would you say that Cain is showing the conviction of an innocent man? He looks pretty sincere.
UPDATE IX – Eye Witness WIND Radio Host Amy Jacobson: At TeaCon they hugged, “flirtatious”
Amy Jacobson witnessed the Cain/Bialek encounter a month ago while backstage at the AM 560 WIND sponsored TeaCon meeting in Schaumburg Sept. 30-Oct. 1 at the Renaissance Hotel and Convention Center.
◆Quoth Jacobson: “I had turned on TV to find out who was Cain’s accuser, and I almost fell over when I saw it was Sharon Bialek accusing Cain of groping her genitals.”
“I was waiting for Herman Cain’s ‘Accuser No. 4’ to surface — and up pops Sharon!”
“I couldn’t believe it. I was shocked.”
“I recall Sharon was hell bent on going backstage at the TeaCon convention — where she cornered him,” said Jacobson.
“I was surprised to hear she claims she did not know Cain was going to be there. Cain was expected and was late.”
Bialek told the media on Monday: “I went up to him and asked him if he remembered me. I wanted to see if he would be man enough to own up to what he had done 14 years ago.”
◆The encounter: “It looked sort of flirtatious,” said Jacobson. “I mean they were hugging. But she could have been giving him the kiss of death for all I know. I had no idea what they were talking about, but she was inches from his ear.”
◆The introduction: “It all began when I took a convention break and joined my pals at the hotel bar. Sharon was drinking Mimosas with them. She said she was a Republican, a Tea Party member, had once dated [White Sox sports announcer’ Steve Stone] and had worked at WGN radio.”
◆The rendezvous: Sharon also said she was anxious to meet Cain again and had once gone to an afterparty with him and her boyfriend years ago. But she never mentioned he had sexually harassed her.”
◆The upshot: Bialek has since applied for employment in sales at WIND radio and is scheduled for a second interview Thursday.
[Editor’s Note: Remember that Newsweek knew about Monica Lewinski and decided to try to kill the story so it was leaked to Matt Drudge. In the case of John Edwards many in the elite media knew about the affair, but all of them decided to cover it up until the National Inquirer broke the story.
Remember, the quality of the propaganda (read bullshit) is MUCH higher this election season. That is because it used to be aimed at Independents who started counting yard signs two weeks before an election. New attitude change propaganda is aimed at people sympathetic to the TEA Party which is most Independents. TEA/Independents are more politically informed so the new propaganda is smarter and designed to target conservative sensibilities as well as people’s cynicism about government, so the lies from the hired political communications guns are based on variations of truths you have heard before. It is very effective.]
The video below is a textbook example of how to do an interview and deal with a false accusation. Cain’s reaction over the weekend was to challenge the elite media to name names, who are these anonymous sources?
Notice the elite media’s reaction to an accusation by anonymous sources, buy a known bogus hit piece writer from Politico (Vogel), compared to how they reacted to multiple women who spoke out against Bill Clinton including credible claims of rape (Juanita Brodderick) and sexual harassment/assault (Paula Jones, Dolly Kyle Browning, Kathleen Willey, Elizabeth Ward Gracen and the list goes on) and not to mention multiple affairs (Gennifer Flowers, Monica Lewinski). In the case of Bill Clinton they circled the wagons and attacked the women. The Democrats and the elite media even very personally attacked Linda Tripp who was simply a witness who told the truth about the evidence she had.
After the Clarence Thomas attack there was a surge of bogus sexual harassment suits in the 90’s. Anyone who was a CEO would/could be a target of one. It is called a harassment suit.
Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, Glenn Beck, Rick Perry, Herman Cain. Notice that the attacks came out when each one of these people was at their peak.
Yesterday was Herman Cain’s best fundraising day ever.
UPDATE –
Now the Elite Media is crying “cover up”. The Cain Campiagn are staffed by political noobs whose messaging was muttered for the first daywhile they were trying to figure out from who and where this anonymous allegation came from.
The Cain Campaign has always done this when faced with a new issue or critique. It takes them a few days to get their footing just as it did on his Israel comments, abortion comments, answer to Homosexuality questions, the comments about not having Muslims in his administration etc. No one should be surprised that it was the same way with this curve ball.
The elite media doesn’t want to talk about the allegation because their story is a joke and from an anonymous source. So the elite media watching the story become about the Politico reporters who havce posted made up quotes in hit pieces before about SAarah Palin and others, have decided to move the goal post and interpret Cains messaging problems on a “cover up”.
According to witnesses in the incident Cain is aware of all he did was tell someone that they where about as tall as his wife and brought his hand to his chin, so she filed a harassment suit saying that Cain made a gesture that made her think of oral sex. Some official at the NRA paid her a small sum of money to go away. Harassment suits happen a lot. But here is the rub, since it is an anonymous source with few details Cain can not be sure if this is the incident or not.
Nice catch 22 isn’t it? If it is about this incident than there was no sexual behavior at all and this means nothing, if it is not this incident it is from an anonymous source with next to no details so it still means nothing, in both cases there is nothing to cover up. Like we said, this is just the elite media moving the goal post because if they talk about the allegation the story becomes about the liberal reporter who has a history.
Networks Hype Vague Cain Charges, Ignored Sexual Harassment Claims Against Clinton
The three networks have aggressively covered vague charges of sexual harassment against Herman Cain, but brushed aside far more serious and specific claims against Bill Clinton.
Since the Herman Cain sexual harassment story broke late Sunday night, the broadcast networks have covered it extensively: full stories on Monday’s morning news shows (ABC’s Good Morning America led off their broadcast); full stories on Monday’s evening news shows (the CBS Evening News made it their top item) and ABC’s Nightline; and the top story on all three Tuesday morning shows.
Good Morning America’s George Stephanopoulos on Monday hyped the story as a “bombshell blast” and on Tuesday he derided Cain’s “bizarre series of interviews” on the subject. On Tuesday’s Early Show, Jan Crawford highlighted how Cain has been “trying to shoot down these allegations.” NBC’s Matt Lauer gloated that the Republican was “finding out the hard way about the attention that goes along with being a front-runner.”
Cain’s accusers are still anonymous. Three women publicly accused Bill Clinton of far more serious instances of sexual harassment in the 1990s, but the networks all but ignored them. The coverage that did exist was often skeptical, insulting and hostile, an astonishing double standard.
– Paula Jones, who accused Bill Clinton of exposing himself to her in a hotel room when she was a state employee in Arkansas, held a public press conference in February 1994, CBS and NBC ignored those charges, while ABC devoted just 16 seconds to Jones’ press conference.
As a January 29, 1998 Media Reality Check pointed out, “The rest of the media waited three months, until Jones filed suit, and the networks then did just 21 stories in that month.”
Appearing on the late Tim Russert’s CNBC program, then-Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw dismissed, “It didn’t seem to most people, entirely relevant to what was going on at the time. These are the kind of charges raised about the President before.”
In the Jones case, the networks were openly disdainful of covering her accusations. “It’s a little tough to figure out who’s being harassed,” NBC Today host Bryant Gumbel smugly asserted (May 10, 1994).
After ABC’s Sam Donaldson interviewed Jones for Prime Time Live in June 1994, anchor Charles Gibson wanted to know: “Why does anyone care what this woman has to say?”
Gibson continued to pile on, adding, “Bottom line, Sam: Is she not trying to capitalize on this, in effect to profit from impugning the President?”
Newsweek editor Evan Thomas, who sometimes appears on the networks to offer analysis, derided Jones as “some sleazy woman with big hair.” (This was on the May 7, 1994 Inside Washington.)
– In the case of Kathleen Willey, who said Bill Clinton groped her in the Oval Office while President, the networks gave minimal coverage to that story when it was broke by Newsweek magazine in late July 1997.
On July 30, 1997, the CBS Evening News aired a story, but managed not to mention Willey by name. Reporter Bill Plante warned, “But unless and until this case is settled, this is only the beginning of attempts by attorneys on both sides to damage the reputations and credibility of everyone involved.”
– In the case of Juanita Broaddrick, who publicly came forward to say Bill Clinton raped her while he was the Arkansas Attorney General and a candidate for Governor, the networks offered weekend coverage in March 1998, when the charge surfaced in a court filing by Paula Jones’ attorneys. NBC interviewed Broaddrick for a Dateline special in January 1999, but the airing was delayed until February 24, 1999, after the end of Clinton’s impeachment trial.
The March 1999 Media Watchpointed out the disparity of coverage of Broaddrick versus Anita Hill:
In the first five days of Hill’s charges (October 6-10,1991), the network evening shows (on ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and PBS’s NewsHour) aired 67 stories. (If a count began with Jones’ February press conference, the networks supplied just a single 16-second anchor brief; if the count began with her sexual harassment lawsuit against Clinton in May, the number was 15.)
But in the first five days after Juanita Broaddrick has charged the President with rape in The Wall Street Journal (February 19-23), the number of evening news stories was two. That’s a ratio of 67 to 2.
Is it any coincidence that each conservative candidiate from the last several elections was attacked when they peaked in the polls? Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, and now Herman Cain (remember how Sarah Palin was attacked?).
When you look at the history of minorities who ran as Republicans such as Michael Steele, Allen West, etc the Democrats in every case use the worst personal smear tactics against them, including releasing their social security numbers and personal credit information.
Remember Miguel Estrada who was picked by President Bush to be on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals? Democrats said in their leaked Judiciary Committee memo’s that they must smear and defeat him “because he’s Latino“.
And surprise surprise, the attorney for said un-named source is Joel Bennet. Most people do not have any idea Joel Bennet is. He was the head of the DC bar, and a co-chair of the National bar Association. Bennet is a big time power lawyer in DC and was even featured in Super Lawyers magazine. So who do you suppose is bankrolling this guy? You can be sure that it is not a former staffer at the National Restaurant Association.
Since the left likes to demonize and invent all sorts of conspiracy theories against this man and his brother it seemed a good time to go back and actually examine his point of view.
Years of tremendous overspending by federal, state and local governments have brought us face-to-face with an economic crisis. Federal spending will total at least $3.8 trillion this year—double what it was 10 years ago. And unlike in 2001, when there was a small federal surplus, this year’s projected budget deficit is more than $1.6 trillion.
Several trillions more in debt have been accumulated by state and local governments. States are looking at a combined total of more than $130 billion in budget shortfalls this year. Next year, they will be in even worse shape as most so-called stimulus payments end.
For many years, I, my family and our company have contributed to a variety of intellectual and political causes working to solve these problems. Because of our activism, we’ve been vilified by various groups. Despite this criticism, we’re determined to keep contributing and standing up for those politicians, like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who are taking these challenges seriously.
Both Democrats and Republicans have done a poor job of managing our finances. They’ve raised debt ceilings, floated bond issues, and delayed tough decisions.
In spite of looming bankruptcy, President Obama and many in Congress have tiptoed around the issue of overspending by suggesting relatively minor cuts in mostly discretionary items. There have been few serious proposals for necessary cuts in military and entitlement programs, even though these account for about three-fourths of all federal spending.
Yes, some House leaders have suggested cutting spending to 2008 levels. But getting back to a balanced budget would mean a return to at least 2003 spending levels—and would still leave us with the problem of paying off our enormous debts.
Federal data indicate how urgently we need reform: The unfunded liabilities of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid already exceed $106 trillion. That’s well over $300,000 for every man, woman and child in America (and exceeds the combined value of every U.S. bank account, stock certificate, building and piece of personal or public property).
The Congressional Budget Office has warned that the interest on our federal debt is “poised to skyrocket.” Even Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is sounding alarms. Yet the White House insists that substantial spending cuts would hurt the economy and increase unemployment.
Plenty of compelling examples indicate just the opposite. When Canada recently reduced its federal spending to 11.3% of GDP from 17.5% eight years earlier, the economy rebounded and unemployment dropped. By comparison, our federal spending is 25% of GDP.
Government spending on business only aggravates the problem. Too many businesses have successfully lobbied for special favors and treatment by seeking mandates for their products, subsidies (in the form of cash payments from the government), and regulations or tariffs to keep more efficient competitors at bay.
Crony capitalism is much easier than competing in an open market. But it erodes our overall standard of living and stifles entrepreneurs by rewarding the politically favored rather than those who provide what consumers want.
The purpose of business is to efficiently convert resources into products and services that make people’s lives better. Businesses that fail to do so should be allowed to go bankrupt rather than be bailed out.
But what about jobs that are lost when businesses go under? It’s important to remember that not all jobs are the same. In business, real jobs profitably produce goods and services that people value more highly than their alternatives. Subsidizing inefficient jobs is costly, wastes resources, and weakens our economy.
Because every other company in a given industry is accepting market-distorting programs, Koch companies have had little option but to do so as well, simply to remain competitive and help sustain our 50,000 U.S.-based jobs. However, even when such policies benefit us, we only support the policies that enhance true economic freedom.
For example, because of government mandates, our refining business is essentially obligated to be in the ethanol business. We believe that ethanol—and every other product in the marketplace—should be required to compete on its own merits, without mandates, subsidies or protective tariffs. Such policies only increase the prices of those products, taxes and the cost of many other goods and services.
Our elected officials would do well to remember that the most prosperous countries are those that allow consumers—not governments—to direct the use of resources. Allowing the government to pick winners and losers hurts almost everyone, especially our poorest citizens.
Recent studies show that the poorest 10% of the population living in countries with the greatest economic freedom have 10 times the per capita income of the poorest citizens in countries with the least economic freedom. In other words, society as a whole benefits from greater economic freedom.
Even though it affects our business, as a matter of principle our company has been outspoken in defense of economic freedom. This country would be much better off if every company would do the same. Instead, we see far too many businesses that paint their tails white and run with the antelope.
I am confident that businesses like ours will hire more people and invest in more equipment when our country’s financial future looks more promising. Laying the groundwork for smaller, smarter government, especially at the federal level, is going to be tough. But it is essential for getting us back on the path to long-term prosperity.
Mr. Koch is chairman and CEO of Koch Industries, Inc. He’s the author of “The Science of Success: How Market-Based Management Built the World’s Largest Private Company” (Wiley, 2007).
This is a long interview with Herman Cain by Ed Morrissey from January. It provides some perspective as to who Herman cain is, his views, and how his thought process works.
[Those who are running on class warfare, eat the rich nonsense could be in for a rude awakening come 2012. It was just a few short months ago that the liberal Washington State had a referrendum and look at what they did. – Editor]
Even Microsoft opposed it. Gotta love the irony.
The mega rich guys who supported this are big time hypocrite. As 5% means nothing to them and since much of their income is not in the form of taxable wages they would have been exempted from most of it anyways. The producer class though would have gotten soaked.
The truth is we need wealth. Wealth goes where it is treated well and in case you haven’t noticed it is being treated well in China. We have lost 14,000 factories in the last 10 years. We want wealth to come to our communities, not drive them away.
The plan devised by the father of the Microsoft Corp co-founder to slap a 5 percent tax on earnings over $200,000 — Initiative Measure 1098 — was rejected by 65 percent of voters, with almost two-thirds of precincts reported.
The result is a boon for the anti-tax Tea Party movement and suggests Americans may be in the mood to extend tax cuts introduced by former President George W. Bush even for the wealthiest citizens. It also signals that Americans are unwilling to accept higher taxes as a way of balancing state budgets ravaged by the recession.
It is a stinging defeat for Bill Gates senior, who put $600,000 of his own money behind the campaign and also for his son, the world’s second richest person, who let it be known he would vote for the measure.
The vote is the fourth failure to introduce a state tax in Washington in the last 70 years and leaves the state as one of only seven without one.
Although the new tax would have affected fewer than 70,000 people out of the state’s 6.7 million residents, an opposition campaign run by an organization called Defeat 1098 persuaded voters that the tax on the wealthy would be extended to lower earners.
Major backers of Defeat 1098 include Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, who contributed $425,000 to the campaign, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.
Microsoft, Boeing and Alaska Airlines, all major employers in the state, also contributed to the opposition campaign, fearing that a tax on high-earners would hurt their ability to lure talented workers to the state.
Texas Governor Rick Perry recently seized on the issue to invite top businesses in Washington state to relocate to Texas, which does not have an income tax.
This is the kind of press coverage we can expect from the Washington Post and the rest of the crew of profoundly snarky pundits sometimes called the elite media or as some others have called it the “Democrat Media Complex”.
[Flashback November 2010]
You would think that if you are going to lie about someone or an event, perhaps it should be an event that wasn’t witnessed by 7 million people. This is exactly the same nonsense that Media Matters does on a regular basis.
Our pal JohnnyDollar, who has been on a roll lately with his vigilance, captured the video:
“If you are not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” – Malcolm X
, which explains how he became a Socialist while attending Columbia University.
by Patrick J. Buchanan and After America: Get Ready for Armageddon
by Mark Steyn.
Years of tremendous overspending by federal, state and local governments have brought us face-to-face with an economic crisis. Federal spending will total at least $3.8 trillion this year—double what it was 10 years ago. And unlike in 2001, when there was a small federal surplus, this year’s projected budget deficit is more than $1.6 trillion.
Political Arena 
