Category Archives: Dirty Tricks

Communications Theory, Dirty Tricks, Elite Media, Lies, Obama

How “Media Matters” targets reporters, coordinates with the White House, orchestrates smear campaigns, and gets its smears in the elite media often verbatim.

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This series by The Daily Caller is amazing and is a must read (excerpts):

Founded by Brock in 2004 as a liberal counterweight to “conservative misinformation” in the press, Media Matters has in less than a decade become a powerful player in Democratic politics. The group operates in regular coordination with the highest levels of the Obama White House, as well as with members of Congress and progressive groups around the country. Brock, who collected over $250,000 in salary from Media Matters in 2010, has himself become a major fundraiser on the left. According to an internal memo obtained by TheDC, Media Matters intends to spend nearly $20 million in 2012 to influence news coverage.

Donors have every reason to expect success, as the group’s effect on many news organizations has already been profound. “We were pretty much writing their prime time,” a former Media Matters employee said of the cable channel MSNBC. “But then virtually all the mainstream media was using our stuff.”

The group scored its first significant public coup in 2007 with the firing of host Don Imus from MSNBC. Just before Easter that year, a Media Matters employee recorded Imus’s now-famous attack on the Rutgers women’s basketball team, and immediately recognized its inflammatory potential. The organization swung into action, notifying organizations like the NAACP, the National Association of Black Journalists, and Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, all of which joined the fight.

Over the course of a week, Media Matters mobilized more than 50 people to work full-time adding fuel to the Imus story. Researchers searched the massive Media Matters database for controversial statements Imus had made over the years. The group issued press release after press release. Brock personally called the heads of various liberal activist groups to coordinate a message. By the end of the week, Imus was fired.

Rachel Maddow (NBC), Keith Olberman (Former NBC), David Brock (Media Matters CEO), Anita Dunn (White House Communications Director), Dan Pfieffer (White House Communications Director).
Rachel Maddow (NBC), Keith Olberman (Former NBC), David Brock (Media Matters CEO), Anita Dunn (Former Obama White House Communications Director), Dan Pfieffer (White House Communications Director).
More:

“As part of the Drop Dobbs campaign,” explains one internal memo prepared for fundraising, “Media Matters produced and was prepared to run an advertisement against Ford Motor Company on Spanish Language stations in Houston, San Antonio, and other cities targeting its top selling product, pick-up trucks, in its top truck buying markets.”

Ford pulled its advertising from Dobbs’s program before the television ad aired, but Media Matters kept up its efforts, working primarily with Alex Nogales of the National Hispanic Media Coalition, and with the League of United Latin American Citizens, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and other self-described civil rights groups.

In November of 2009, Dobbs left CNN. “We got him fired,” says one staffer flatly.

More:

“The HuffPo guys were good, Sam Stein and Nico [Pitney],” remembered one former staffer. “The people at Huffington Post were always eager to cooperate, which is no surprise given David’s long history with Arianna [Huffington].”

“Jim Rainey at the LA Times took a lot of our stuff,” the staffer continued. “So did Joe Garofoli at the San Francisco Chronicle. We’ve pushed stories to Eugene Robinson and E.J. Dionne [at the Washington Post]. Brian Stelter at the New York Times was helpful.”

“Ben Smith [formerly of Politico, now at BuzzFeed.com] will take stories and write what you want him to write,” explained the former employee, whose account was confirmed by other sources. Staffers at Media Matters “knew they could dump stuff to Ben Smith, they knew they could dump it at Plum Line [Greg Sargent’s Washington Post blog], so that’s where they sent it.”

More:

Reporters who weren’t cooperative might feel the sting of a Media Matters campaign against them. “If you hit a reporter, say a beat reporter at a regional newspaper,” a Media Matters source said, “all of a sudden they’d get a thousand hostile emails. Sometimes they’d melt down. It had a real effect on reporters who weren’t used to that kind of scrutiny.”

A group with the ability to shape news coverage is of incalculable value to the politicians it supports, so it’s no surprise that Media Matters has been in regular contact with political operatives in the Obama administration. According to visitor logs, on June 16, 2010, Brock and then-Media Matters president Eric Burns traveled to the White House for a meeting with Valerie Jarrett, arguably the president’s closest adviser. Recently departed Obama communications director Anita Dunn returned to the White House for the meeting as well.

It’s not clear what the four spoke about — no one in the meeting returned repeated calls for comment — but the apparent coordination continued. “Anita Dunn became a regular presence at the office,” says someone who worked there. Then-president of Media Matters, Eric Burns, “lunched with her, met with her and chatted with her frequently on any number of matters.”

Dirty Tricks, Elite Media, Israel, Jihad, True Talking Points

CNN Fires Entire Jewish Staff Of Israel Bureau….

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Reuters got caught using Palestinian stringers who were using the same children over and over in staged photo’s used to blame Jews for killing children. This is not uncommon. CNN is also the same network that made a deal with Saddam Hussien to tell his “good news” and propaganda. (Hat tip Pam Geller)

CNN Fires Entire Jewish Staff Of Israel Bureau – And Retains Only Arab Reporters (via Dreuz.info)

Moshe Cohen, editor, fired on January 30, 10 years with CNN.
Izi Landberg, Producer, about 25 years with CNN, fired on January 30.
Avi Kaner cameraman fired on January 30, 10 years with CNN.
Michal Zippori desk producer, situation still unclear.

The media scandal that you are about to read was revealed to us by a totally reliable source.

It is likely to provoke a wave of shock and indignation within the North American media industry, and it certainly will not calm down the controversy over the pro-palestinian CNN treatment of the conflict.

We learned today that the Israeli branch of CNN, located in Jerusalem, is downsizing to cope with reduced income from less advertising.

What goes beyond good management is that CNN has fired four Israeli Jewish journalists (out of a crew of 8), and has retained only Arab journalists. Where, until now, CNN always sent a Jewish and an Arab journalist to cover information, now there will be only an Arab journalist. The local chief editor of the News Chanel is now Arabic.

This is a conflict where information is central to public opinion, and it weighs a lot on diplomatic decisions. Furthermore, it is no secret that Arab journalists cannot freely publish what they want without risking for their own lives when traveling to Gaza, East Jerusalem, and Judea Samaria. Thus, CNN decision to fire all Jewish journalists from its Jerusalem office is of particular concern, because the general public is unaware that they will be receiving biased information from CNN.

2012 Primary, Dirty Tricks, Econ, Jobs, Obama, True Talking Points

1.2 million people driven out of the workforce in a single month! 1.5 million jobs vaporized …..

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Human Events:

It’s the headline that a President facing re-election with a dismal economic record didn’t want to see:

1.2 million people driven out of the workforce in a single month!

A frantic White House exploded into damage-control mode, as a deeply shaken President Obama retreated into his chambers.  Nervous spokesmen fanned across the airwaves to stammer apologies, search for silver linings among the storm clouds, offer campaign boilerplate about “hope and change,” and desperately search for some way to blame George Bush for an absolute unemployment disaster that occurred over three years after he left office…

What’s that, you say?  You didn’t see that headline?  Well, of course not, silly.  All you’re seeing in the headlines is good news, because the official, heavily-massaged U-3 unemployment rate fell to 8.3 percent.  Fewer people in the workforce means the percentage of unemployed people in the workforce drops.

ZeroHedge is incredulous:

A month ago, we joked when we said that for Obama to get the unemployment rate to negative by election time, all he has to do is to crush the labor force participation rate to about 55%. Looks like the good folks at the BLS heard us: it appears that the people not in the labor force exploded by an unprecedented record 1.2 million.

No, that’s not a typo: 1.2 million people dropped out of the labor force in one month! So as the labor force increased from 153.9 million to 154.4 million, the non institutional population increased by 242.3 million meaning, those not in the labor force surged from 86.7 million to 87.9 million. Which means that the civilian labor force tumbled to a fresh 30 year low of 63.7% as the BLS is seriously planning on eliminating nearly half of the available labor pool from the unemployment calculation.

As for the quality of jobs, as withholding taxes roll over Year over year, it can only mean that the US is replacing high paying FIRE jobs with low paying construction and manufacturing. So much for the improvement.

Now, I suspect that while a lot of people dropped out of the workforce last month, part of what we’re seeing here is some numerical mutation that caused an abnormally large chunk of the labor-force reduction from the past year to be piled into a single month.  There was some decent overall job creation in January, with about 243,000 jobs added to non-farm payrolls, and a nice 50,000 job bump in the manufacturing sector.  That total is good enough to modestly outpace current population growth.  With the usual backwards adjustment to previous months, it looks like the final quarter of 2011 pretty much kept pace with population growth.

However, the fact remains that even as we get back to the (dismal) 8.3 percent U-3 unemployment we last saw in February 2009, the work force is about half a million people smaller in absolute numbers, and that doesn’t include the increase in the working-age population over the past two years.  Throw them in, and you’re looking at roughly 1.5 million jobs completely vaporized, to the point where they don’t even count in the official, widely-reported unemployment statistics.

 

Famed economist Dr. John Lott comments:

A 1.2 million drop out of the labor force is the record for any one month. And 500,000 a month dropping out of the workforce because they are just giving up because there jobs just aren’t out there. This is something we have not seen before.  People just start giving up.

2012 Primary, Civility, Dirty Tricks, Elite Media, History, Obama

Study: Network Morning Shows Are Trashing Republicans and Trumpeting Barack Obama in Campaign 2012

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Via the Media Research Center:

Four years ago, the ABC, CBS and NBC morning shows celebrated the “rock star” Democrats running to replace George W. Bush, and no candidate set journalists’ pulses racing faster than Barack Obama. Now, after three years of high unemployment, trillion dollar deficits and an onerous new health care law, how are those newscasts covering Obama’s re-election campaign and the candidates vying to replace him?

To find out, Media Research Center analysts examined all 723 campaign segments which aired on the three broadcast network weekday morning programs from January 1 to October 31, 2011, using the same methodology we employed to study campaign coverage on those same programs for the same time period in 2007.

Four years ago, the network coverage promoted the Democratic candidates and cast their strong liberal views as mainstream. This year, our study finds the networks are disparaging the Republican candidates and casting them as ideological extremists:

Labeling:

– This year, network reporters have employed 49 “conservative” labels to describe the Republican candidates, compared with only one “liberal” label for President Obama.

– Four years ago, when Obama was a relatively unknown candidate, the morning shows also provided just a single “liberal” label to describe his ideology, and never once labeled Hillary Clinton, John Edwards or the other Democrats as “liberal.”

Agenda:

– By a 4-to-1 margin, ABC, CBS and NBC morning show hosts have employed an adversarial liberal agenda when questioning this year’s Republican candidates. But those same hosts’ questions for President Obama leaned in his direction, with mostly liberal-themed questions.

– Four years ago, questions for the Democratic candidates tilted by more than two-to-one to the left, a friendly agenda.

 

Tone:

– In 2007, Democratic candidates were regularly tossed softball questions. This year’s interviews with Republicans have been much more caustic, with few chances for the candidates to project a warm and fuzzy image.

– Despite the poor economy and low approval ratings, the morning shows continue to treat Barack Obama as more of a celebrity than a politician, airing positive feature stories about the President and his family — a gift not bestowed on the conservative Republican candidates.

During the 2008 campaign, the network morning shows acted as cheerleaders for the Democratic field. This time around, they are providing far more hostile coverage of the various Republicans who are running, while treating Obama’s re-election campaign to the same personality-driven coverage that was so helpful to the then-Illinois Senator four years ago.

If the real decisions in our democracy are to be in the hands of voters, then the news media owe viewers a fair and unbiased look at the candidates in both parties. That means asking the candidates questions that reflect the concerns of both sides — liberals and conservatives alike. And the syrupy coverage awarded year after year to the Democrats’ celebrity candidates in no way matches the pretense of journalists holding both sides equally accountable, without fear or favor.

 

Full Report Table of Contents

Introduction | Covering the Candidates: No Swooning Over Republicans | “Conservative” Republicans vs. Non-Ideological Obama? | Interviews: Helping Obama, Badgering the GOP

Formatted PDF Version (19 pages)

Dirty Tricks, Lies, School Indoctrination, True Talking Points, Unions

NEA tells members to contribute to the NEA Childrens Fund. The money goes to John Kerry and Obama.

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So your teachers union asks you to donate the the children’s charity associated with the union. They do everything to hide the fact that the money does not go to help children at all. It goes to billionaire John Kerry and multimillionaire Barack Obama.

Here’s a quote from House Oversight Committee testimony re unions:

“Later that day, while in the restroom, I over heard two ladies from California discussing the Children’s Fund. I asked them if they were required to give and the ladies told me no. They did not give to it because it is a political contribution. I cannot tell you the rush that came over me at that time. It was a mixture of anger and stupidity. I felt as though I had been totally duped. To add insult to injury, later that afternoon, then NEA President, Reg Weaver announced the NEA would be endorsing John Kerry for President. President Weaver went on to announce the NEA Children’s Fund had raised a large amount of money; and that, too would go to our friend in education, John Kerry. I felt a wave of illness come over me like none I have ever felt before. These who were supposed to be my people; duped me into donating to a candidate I was voting against.

Read the entire testimony here – http://oversight.house.gov/images/stories/Testimony/2-8-12_Full_Waites.pdf

2012 Primary, Budget, Corporatism, Dirty Tricks, Jobs, Obama, Pay to Play

Obama Administration Gave Electric Car Battery Maker $118 Million, Company Now Bankrupt

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Via Big Government:

The latest taxpayer-funded boondoggle to emerge from the Obama Administration’s infamous Energy Department grant and loan program has cost taxpayers $118.5 million, new bankruptcy filings by electric battery maker Ener1 reveal.

From Bloomberg News:

The company listed assets of $73.9 million and debt of $90.5 million as of Dec. 31 in Chapter 11 papers filed today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan. Ener1 has been affected by competing battery developers in China and South Korea, “which generally have a lower cost manufacturing base” and lower labor and raw material costs, interim Chief Executive Officer Alex Sorokin said in the petition.

Like Solyndra, Ener1 was a company touted by President Obama as being a shining example of his vision for taxpayer-subsidized clean energy.

The day following President Barack Obama’s 2011 State of the Union Address, Vice President Joe Biden toured Ener1’s lithium-ion battery system manufacturing facility in Greenfield, Indiana and said:

As you heard President Obama say last night, this Administration is forging a new path forward by making sure America doesn’t just lead in the 21st Century, but dominates in the 21st Century. We’re not just creating new jobs-but sparking whole new industries that will ensure our competitiveness for decades to come-industries like electric vehicle manufacturing.

Ener1’s EnerDel unit, which is based in Indianapolis, Indiana, likewise received a Solyndra-style shout out from Mr. Obama during a 2009 swing through Indiana. During his remarks, Mr. Obama said:

See, I’m committed to a strategy that ensures America leads in the design and the deployment of the next generation of clean-energy vehicles.  This is not just an investment to produce vehicles today; this is an investment in our capacity to develop new technologies tomorrow.  This is about creating the infrastructure of innovation.

Indiana is the second largest recipient of grant funding, and it’s a perfect example of what this will mean.  You’ve got Purdue University, Notre Dame, Indiana University, and Ivy Tech, and they’re all going to be receiving grant funding to develop degree and training programs for electric vehicles.  That’s number one.  We’ve got EnerDel, a small business in Indianapolis that will develop batteries for hybrid and electric vehicles.

Now, in the wake of the Dec. 31st bankruptcy filing, Mr. Obama used his 2012 State of the Union Address to make it clear he intends to double down, not reverse course, from his decision to use taxpayer dollars to prop up clean energy companies that are too weak to compete and thrive on their own:

Payoffs on these public investments don’t always come right away.  Some technologies don’t pan out; some companies fail.  But I will not walk away from the promise of clean energy.

As Newsweek and Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer have reported, Mr. Obama’s green energy loan and grant program have funneled 80% of the Energy Department’s $20.5 billion to companies owned by or associated with Mr. Obama’s top campaign fundraisers and bundlers.

Read on HERE!

2012 Primary, Dirty Tricks, Mitt Romney

Washington Times: Romney playing the class warfare game…

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Emily Miller
Emily Miller

Emily Miller in the Washington Times:

Even though Mr. Romney earns his current multimillion income from his investments, he favors keeping capital gains at its current rate. He would lower it to zero for families with a combined income below $200,000. While he might be advocating this policy to avoid accusations of favoring his fellow uber-rich, the former Massachusetts governor is playing Mr. Obama’s class-warfare game.

2012 Primary, Dirty Tricks, Mitt Romney, Mortgage Crisis, Newt, True Talking Points

Evidence that Romney Lied about Newt Lobbying Freddie Mac

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PROOF that Mitt Romney lied about Newt Gingrich and Freddie Mac (Hat Tip Steven Tucker)

1.) READ this NY Times article from 2008 where Newt was working the House to oppose Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae’s interests: http://nyti.ms/wWcrUy 

2.) WATCH this video from 2008:  http://youtu.be/-uCRKm28cWw 

3.) READ – http://bit.ly/zlQSlr

4.) READ this article in the Washington Post where former Congressman J.C. Watts, who was the head of the Freddie mac watch group in the House, said that Newt never tried to influence on Freddie Mac while Watts was in the House.

2012 Primary, Dirty Tricks, Elite Media, History, Newt, True Talking Points

Byron York: What really happened in the Gingrich ethics case?

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Washington Examiner Byron York:

Given all the attention to the ethics matter, it’s worth asking what actually happened back in 1995, 1996, and 1997.  The Gingrich case was extraordinarily complex, intensely partisan, and driven in no small way by a personal vendetta on the part of one of Gingrich’s former political opponents. It received saturation coverage in the press; a database search of major media outlets revealed more than 10,000 references to Gingrich’s ethics problems during the six months leading to his reprimand.  It ended with a special counsel hired by the House Ethics Committee holding Gingrich to an astonishingly strict standard of behavior, after which Gingrich in essence pled guilty to two minor offenses.  Afterwards, the case was referred to the Internal Revenue Service, which conducted an exhaustive investigation into the matter.  And then, after it was all over and Gingrich was out of office, the IRS concluded that Gingrich did nothing wrong.  After all the struggle, Gingrich was exonerated.

 

 

Dirty Tricks, Elite Media, Treason, True Talking Points

Former John Kerry Staffer Arrested For Outing CIA Operatives Who Interrogated Top Al-Qaeda Leaders…

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Valerie Plame call your office… ummm Washington Post? Hello?

Weasel Zippers:

The WaPo and AP fail to mention the John Kerry connection.

(Politico) — A former CIA officer was charged Monday with disclosing the identity of a covert CIA officer and with telling journalists the name an agency officer involved with the interrogation of alleged Al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah.

The Justice Department charged that John Kiriakou, 47, who worked as a CIA officer from 1990 to 2004, revealed the information to journalists and that one reporter passed some of the secrets onto attorneys representing prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

Kiriakou’s case is the sixth leak-related criminal prosecution brought since President Barack Obama took office, a figure that exceeds the number of such cases in all previous administrations combined.

“Safeguarding classified information, including the identities of CIA officers involved in sensitive operations, is critical to keeping our intelligence officers safe and protecting our national security,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement. “Today’s charges reinforce the Justice Department’s commitment to hold accountable anyone who would violate the solemn duty not to disclose such sensitive information.”

CIA Director David Petraeus said Monday that “CIA fully supported the investigation from the beginning and will continue to do so.”

Petraeus also reminded CIA personnel of their duty to keep secret matters secret.

Ultimately, “the investigative team concluded that no laws were broken by the defense team,” the complaint says. It adds that defense attorneys never told the terror suspects the names of those in the photos.

However, the investigation — assigned to U.S. Attorney in Chicago Patrick Fitzgerald to avoid conflicts with Justice Department lawyers working on prosecuting Guantanamo pirsoners — focused on government employees who might have leaked the identities of the officers.

Kiriakou worked for Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) as a Senate Foreign Relations Committee investigator from March 2009 to April 2011, according to Senate records.

Read more at Politico …

2012 Primary, Dirty Tricks, Elite Media, Newt

CNN Makes Debate History. ABC News Refuses To Interview Witnesses Defending Newt Gingrich from Allegations – UPDATED!

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Be sure to read our previous post:

Leftist Media Jumping At Newt’s Ex-Wife, Covered Up John Edwards and Juanita Broaddrick While Not Covering Obama’s “Failures”

Complete Newt Debate Highlights

UPDATE – NEWT’S CLOSING STATEMENT:

UPDATE – Sarah Palin:

2012 Primary, Culture War, Dirty Tricks, Editorial, Elite Media, History

Leftist Media Jumping At Newt’s Ex-Wife, Covered Up John Edwards and Juanita Broaddrick While Not Covering Obama’s “Failures”

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Hey elite media….what happened to “it’s just sex” and “sex doesn’t matter”?

ABC is accusing Newt of having wanted an open marriage…. just like Bill and Hillary Clinton. Everyone knows they have an open marriage so where was the firestorm? Where was it when Hillary ran in 2008? They didn’t even live together for how many years?

Of course this is coming from an elite media who knew all about how John Edwards was cheating on his cancer stricken wife and said nothing until the National Enquirer caught Edwards red-handed.

How many years ago did Newt and Marianne get divorced? If memory serves it is over 12 years. So why is this big news and Bill and Hillary are held up as virtuous by the elite media?

Well besides the fact that what Marianne said is likely not true, my point is the hypocrisy. The elite media and the left will lie or do anything to trash us with one standard, and yet proclaim that the same standard is a virtue if the person has a D by their name.

Paula Jones got some media play because her case went to the Supreme Court and Gennifer Flowers got some play when she posed nude. The elite media tried to cover up Monica Lewinsky but Matt Drudge found out. The Lewinsky affair would have come out anyway as Paula Jones’ lawyers had found out about her through the discovery process.

[Editor’s Note – we would rather make no reference to Miss Lewinsky, but in this case we had to. Good editorial judgment is important and the facts indicate that Miss Lewinsky was the victim of a very lopsided power relationship. She should be allowed to live this down and enjoy her life in peace. We wish her well.] 

There were also reported affairs with actresses Sharon Stone, Barbara Streisand, Gina Gershon. There are also numerous other affairs and sexual assaults, such as Kathleen Willey (who got one interview at CBS) and others that were just not mentioned such as Dolly Kyle Browning, Elizabeth Ward Gracen and the rape of Juanita Broaddrick (who got one interview with NBC’s Lisa Myers and that was it).

Where was the media frenzy and the planning to release the interview at a key electoral time?  What happened to “it’s just sex” and “sex doesn’t matter” elite media??

2012 Primary, Dirty Tricks, Elite Media, Newt

Newt’s Daughters Speak Out!

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Editor’s Note – Jackie is an acquaintance of mine. She has a heart of gold and a wonderful mind. Her family does not need what ABC is doing. ABC would never do this to a Democrat. This is very personal bottom of the barrel stuff. 

Related: 

FBI: Newt’s Ex Tried To Sell Influence at His Expense – LINK

CNN Makes Debate History. ABC News Refuses To Interview Witnesses Defending Newt Gingrich from Allegations – LINK

Elite Media Jumping At Newt’s Ex-Wife, Covered Up John Edwards and Juanita Broaddrick While Not Covering Obama’s “Failures” – LINK

ABC News Leadership

From: Kathy Gingrich Lubbers, Jackie Gingrich Cushman
Date: January 18, 2012

The failure of a marriage is a terrible and emotional experience for everyone involved. Anyone who has had that experience understands it is a personal tragedy filled with regrets, and sometimes differing memories of events.

We will not say anything negative about our father’s ex-wife. He has said before, privately and publicly, that he regrets any pain he may have caused in the past to people he loves.

ABC News or other campaigns may want to talk about the past, just days before an important primary election. But Newt is going to talk to the people of South Carolina about the future– about job creation, lower taxes, and about who can defeat Barack Obama by providing the sharpest contrast to his damaging, extreme liberalism. We are confident this is the conversation the people of South Carolina are interested in having.

Our father is running for President because of his grandchildren – so they can inherit the America he loves. To do that, President Obama must be defeated. And as the only candidate in the race, including Obama, who has actually helped balance the national budget, create jobs, reform welfare, and cut taxes and spending, Newt felt compelled to run – to serve his country and safeguard his grandchildren’s future.

###

Contact:
R.C. Hammond
Press Secretary
rch@newt.org

UPDATE – Pastor Jim Garlow Endorses Newt

2012 Primary, Dirty Tricks, Econ, Mitt Romney

K.L. South: Romney’s behavior at Bain is a question of character, not capitalism.

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K.L. South writes in the famed Furthermore Blog that the issue with Mitt Romney’s behavior at Bain is a question of character, not capitalism:

There is a huge difference between capitalism and ‘predatory capitalism’ or ‘corporate raiding’. The latter is more of a chop-shop mentality of ‘creative destruction.’ It is still a form of capitalism, sure, even if not held in high regard. That is not the issue. And, I agree most capitalism is moral… the problem is that people defend ALL OF IT equally. You cannot. But, the court of public opinion doesn’t do nuance very well.

No rational person would defend ALL matters of transportation equally; drunk driving, car hijackings, exploits of TSA agents in airports; are abusive or exploitative practices. As is a car salesman who knowingly sells you a lemon where the car will predictably break down 6 months later. Hereto, it is a free market transaction, right? It is capitalism, too.

More…

Mitt Romney has been a rank opportunist throughout his political career. Mitt Romney was a clever money-making opportunist throughout his business career. The leveraged buyout business, which does not have to be an evil business, is a business that is ripe for heartless exploitation of vulnerable companies and individuals.

More…

What about Romney benefiting from a $10 million federal bailout and pocketing $4 million dollars directly? It’s not difficult to understand why Romney is not against federal bailouts, having been the beneficiary of them. Perhaps Romney should explain to us how TARP and federal bailouts are free-market capitalism? Romney’s main accomplishment in his one term as governor was RomneyCare, which openly funded abortions for a $50 co-pay. Do Romney supporters call that capitalism too?

Bain defunded pension funds and kept the money – when companies went bankrupt, the pensions had to be paid out of ERISA – government insurance – paid for by those of us who pay taxes. A federal government insurance agency ponied up $44 million to bailout one of Bain Company’s underfunded pension plan. Nevertheless, Bain profited on the deal, receiving $12 million on its $8 million initial investment and at least $4.5 million in consulting fees.

While at Bain, and as Governor, Romney showed an example of the government stepping into the marketplace, picking winners and losers, providing profits to business owners and leaving taxpayers stuck with the bill. Romney’s Bain made avid use of public-private partnerships, something that many conservatives consider being “corporate welfare.” It is a commitment that carried over into his term as governor. Bain Capital has been a corporate welfare hog under Romney’s tenure and beyond. If one can make millions of dollars whether a company succeeds or fails then where is the risk-taking Romney speaks of so fondly?

Bain, at times, pursued a practice of socializing their losses to banks and pension insurers while privatizing their gains in the same kind of Wall Street practice that led to the mortgage crisis. They leveraged government assistance to boost profits. Is it anti-capitalist to ask if an average worker is an expendable line on a spreadsheet as that worker’s tax dollars were needed to bailout Bain and financiers? And let’s note; as a supporter of the TARP Wall Street bailout, Romney’s “creative destruction” applied only to Main Street, not Wall Street.

And this just scratches the surface folks. Read on at Furthermore…

2012 Primary, Dirty Tricks, Jobs, Mitt Romney

William Cohen: When Romney ran Bain Capital, his word was not his bond

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Fortune Magazine’s William Cohen is someone that this editor has always respected. He is all about the free market tempered with personal restraint and personal responsibility, which is one of the themes of this very web site.

Read this carefully….

William D. Cohan in the Washington Post:

Yet, there is another version of the Bain way that I experienced personally during my 17 years as a deal-adviser on Wall Street: Seemingly alone among private-equity firms, Romney’s Bain Capital was a master at bait-and-switching Wall Street bankers to get its hands on the companies that provided the raw material for its financial alchemy. Other private-equity firms I worked with extensively over the years — Forstmann Little, KKR, TPG and the Carlyle Group, among them — never dared attempt the audacious strategy that Bain partners employed with great alacrity and little shame. Call it the real Bain way.

Here’s how it worked. Private-equity firms are always eager to find companies to buy, allowing them to invest chunks of the billions of dollars entrusted to them and from which they earn hundreds of millions in fees. One ready source of these businesses is Wall Street bankers hired to sell companies through private auctions. The good news is that when a banker puts together a detailed selling memorandum about a company, chances are very high that company will be sold; the bad news is that these private auctions tend to be very competitive, and the winning bidder, by definition, is most often the one willing to pay the most. By paying the highest price, you win the company, but you also may reduce the returns you can generate for your investors.

By bidding high early, Bain would win a coveted spot in the later rounds of the auction, when greater information about the company for sale is shared and the number of competitors is reduced. (A banker and his client generally allow only the potential buyers with the highest bids into the later rounds; after all, you can’t have an endless procession of Savile Row-suited businessmen traipsing through a manufacturing plant if you want to keep a possible sale under wraps.)

For buyers, the goal in these auctions is to be one of the few selected to inspect the company’s facilities and books on-site, in order to make a final and supposedly binding bid. Generally, the prospective buyer with the highest bid after the on-site due-diligence visit is selected by the client — in consultation with his or her banker — to negotiate a final agreement to buy the company.

This is the moment when Bain Capital would become especially crafty. In my experience — which I heard echoed often by my colleagues around Wall Street — Bain would seek to be the highest bidder at the end of the formal process in order to be the firm selected to negotiate alone with the seller, putting itself in the exclusive, competition-free zone. Then, when all other competitors had been essentially vanquished and the purchase contract was under negotiation, Bain would suddenly begin finding all sorts of warts, bruises and faults with the company being sold. Soon enough, that near-final Bain bid — the one that got the firm into its exclusive negotiating position — would begin to fall, often significantly.

Of course, some haggling over price is typical in any sale, and not everything represented by sellers and their bankers is found to be accurate under close examination. But Bain Capital took the art of negotiation over price into the scientific realm. Once the competitive dynamics had shifted definitively in its favor, the firm’s genuine views about what it was willing to pay — often far lower than first indicated — would be revealed.

[This is what we call negotiating in bad faith. It is wrong and in other contexts (such as insurance for example) would be illegal – Editor]

At such a late date, of course, the seller is more than a little pregnant with the buyer. Attempting to pivot and find a new buyer — which knew it had not been selected in the first place, but was now being called back — would be devastating to the carefully constructed process designed to generate the highest price. Once Bain’s real thoughts about the price were revealed, the seller either had to suck it up and accept the lower price, or negotiate with a new buyer, but with far less leverage.

Needless to say, this does not make for a very happy client (or a happy banker). By the end of my days on Wall Street in 2004, I found the real Bain way so counterproductive that I no longer included Bain Capital on my buyer’s lists of private-equity firms for a company I was selling.

The real Bain way may be nothing more than a clever tactic to eliminate competition from a heated auction in order to buy a business at an attractive price. After all, Bain Capital is seeking the highest returns for its investors. But Bain’s behavior also reveals something about the values it brings to bear in a process that requires honor and character to work properly. If a firm’s word is not worth the paper it is printed on, then its reputation for bad behavior will impair its ability to function in an honorable and productive way.

2012 Primary, Budget, Corporatism, Dirty Tricks, Pay to Play, Soros, True Talking Points

Democrat’s Sugar-Daddy George Soros Helped Craft Stimulus Then Invested in Companies Benefiting

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George Soros
George Soros

Via Big Government:

Billionaire George Soros gave advice and direction on how President Obama should allocate so-called “stimulus” money in a series of regular private meetings and consultations with White House senior advisers even as Soros was making investments in areas affected by the stimulus program.

It’s just one more revelation featured in the blockbuster new book that continues to rock Washington,Throw Them All Out, authored by Breitbart News editor Peter Schweizer.

Mr. Soros met with Mr. Obama’s top economist on February 25, 2009 and twice more with senior officials in the Old Executive Office Building on March 24th and 25th as the stimulus plan was being crafted.  Later, Mr. Soros also participated in discussions on financial reform.

Then, in the first quarter of 2009, Mr. Soros went on a stock buying spree in companies that ultimately benefited from the federal stimulus.

  • Soros doubled his holdings in medical manufacturer Hologic, a company that benefited from stimulus spending on medical systems
  • Soros tripled his holdings in fiber channel and software maker Emulus, a company that wound up scoring a large amount of federal funds going to infrastructure spending
  • Soros bought 210,000 shares in Cisco Systems, which came up big in the stimulus lottery
  • Soros also bought Extreme Networks, which, months later, said it was expanding broadband to rural America “as part of President Obama’s broadband strategy”
  • Soros bought 1.5 million shares in American Electric Power, a company Mr. Obama gave $1 billion to in June 2009
  • Soros bought shares in utility company Ameren, which bagged a $540 million Department of Energy loan
  • Soros bought 250,000 shares of Public Service Enterprise Group, 500,000 shares of NRG Energy, and almost a million shares of Entergy—all companies that  came up winners in the Department of Energy taxpayer giveaway that produced the Solyndra debacle
  • Soros bought into BioFuel Energy, a company that benefitted when the EPA announced a regulation on ethanol
  • Soros bought Powerspan in April 2009.  Just weeks later, the clean-energy company landed $100 million from the Department of Energy
  • In the second quarter of 2009, Soros bought education technology giant Blackboard, which became a big recipient of education stimulus money
  • Soros also bought Burlington Northern Santa Fe and CSX, both beneficiaries of Mr. Obama’s plans for revitalizing the railroads
  • Soros bought Cognizant Technology Solutions, which scored stimulus funds in education and health care technology
  • Soros also bought 300,000 shares of Constellation Energy Group and 4.6 million shares of Covanta, both of which landed taxpayers’ money through the stimulus, the former of which bagged $200 million

In Throw Them All Out, Schweizer catalogs several more of Mr. Soros’s trades and says that, while “it is not necessarily the case that Soros had specific insider tips about any government grants,” nevertheless, Soros’s “investment decisions aligned remarkably closely with government grants and transfers.”

2012 Primary, Dirty Tricks, Stuck on Stupid

Video: The Dead Vote In New Hampshire

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James O’Keefe strikes again with another video exposing a great wrong in our democratic institutions. Some states have I.D. laws that require you to show ID to vote. New Hampshire has no such law. Democrats say that such laws are racist. Democrats say that black people are too dumb to get a drivers licence or state I.D.. So who is racist?

This video shows the real reason Democrats oppose voter I.D. laws:

2012 Primary, Dirty Tricks, Treason

Four Democrats Guilty of Vote Fraud in New York

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The Democrats, working together with ACORN, were filling out and sending in absentee ballots of people who do not vote, to make them look as if they had voted.

The link has a complete story and video which also references the vote fraud that happened in my home town of South Bend, Indiana.

http://foxnewsinsider.com/2011/12/21/dems-plead-guilty-to-felony-charges-in-voting-fraud-scandal-in-troy-new-york/

2012 Primary, Dirty Tricks, Mitt Romney, Obama, True Talking Points

Romney Says He Won’t Release Tax Returns

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This is a double edged sword. Romney cannot exactly ding President Obama for his incredible lack of transparency, especially after he promised repeatedly to be the mots transparent president in history, when Romney will not be transparent himself.

On the other hand, if Romney releases the tax returns every point in it will be spun and lied about, 1% nonsense etc.  It would give Obama something to run against.

NYT:

 Mitt Romney, who is one of the wealthiest men ever to seek the presidency, said on Wednesday that he had no intention of releasing his tax returns if he became the Republican presidential nominee, breaking with a long tradition in both parties.

Mr. Romney made the statement in an interview with MSNBC on Wednesday, but the network did not show that part of the interview. Mr. Romney, a multimillionaire who made his fortune running a private equity firm, was asked whether he planned to release his tax return.

“I doubt it,” Mr. Romney said, according to a transcript of the interview provided by NBC News. “I will provide all the financial info, which is an extraordinary pile of documents which show investments and so forth.”

“But you won’t do the tax returns?” asked Chuck Todd, host of “The Daily Rundown.”

“I don’t intend to release the tax returns. I don’t,” Mr. Romney responded.

A spokesman for President Obama‘s re-election campaign blasted Mr. Romney and questioned whether he had something to hide in his finances.

 

2012 Primary, Corporatism, Dirty Tricks, Health Law, Obama, Pay to Play, True Talking Points

20 Percent of ObamaCare Waivers in Nancy Pelosi’s District…

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And most of the rest went to labor unions…

Daily Caller:

Labor unions continued to receive the overwhelming majority of waivers from the president’s health care reform law since the Obama administration tightened application rules last summer.

Documents released in a classic Friday afternoon news dump show that labor unions representing 543,812 workers received waivers from President Barack Obama‘s signature legislation since June 17, 2011.

By contrast, private employers with a total of 69,813 employees, many of whom work for small businesses, were granted waivers.

The Department of Health and Human Services revised the rules governing applications for health reform waivers June 17, 2011, amid a steady stream of controversial news reports, including The Daily Caller’s story that nearly 20 percent of last May’s waivers went to businesses in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s district in California.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/01/06/labor-unions-primary-recipients-of-obamacare-waivers/#ixzz1ivgoOuEQ

 

2012 Primary, Corporatism, Dirty Tricks, Obama, True Talking Points

Hypocrite! Elizabeth Warren Takes Wall Street Cash!

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Related:

Top All-Time Donors, 1989-2012 – Hint: Most goes to Democrats – LINK.

Top 20 Industry Money Recipients This Election Cycle – Who is in the back pocket of Wall Street? – LINK.

Corruption You Can Believe In: Failed Sub Primes and Mortgage Fraud Lenders Funneled Money to Dodd & Obama the Most. Fannie & Freddie Gave $200 Million to Partisans-Most Went to Democrats! Dodd, Obama Among Top Recipients. Republicans Attempted to Pass Reforms-Blocked by Democrat Leadership! – LINK.

Boston Herald:

Alinsky Radical Elizabeth Warren
Alinsky Radical Elizabeth Warren

I thought Elizabeth Warren was all about transparency. We are all still waiting for her to file the required financial disclosure form.

The Oklahoma Professor has been criticizing Scott Brown for being “Wall Street’s favorite Senator.” She has also denounced “Wall Street cash in politics.”

But it turns out she may be indirectly accepting Wall Street money. The Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee, which is helping the Harvard Professor, has taken over $40 million from Wall Street during the last 7 years according to records from OpenSecrets.org. In fact, Wall Street is the biggest contributors to them. They beat lawyers and labor union[s]. Just during this election season the DSCC has already received $1.5 million from Wall Street.

If Lizzy Warden is truly opposed to Wall Street money, then shouldn’t she reject the DSCC’s money? Otherwise she is just using the DSCC to funnel in Wall Street money.

Via Human Events:

  • According to an analysis of Federal Election Commission records by the Center for Responsive Politics, the 2008 Obama campaign received $12.6 million from Wall Street “Securities and Investment” firms versus McCain’s $7.9 million
  • The top three corporate employers of donors to Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Rahm Emanuel were Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and JPMorgan
  • Employees of Lehman Brothers alone gave Obama $370,000, compared to about $117,000 to McCain. (No wonder Bush let them go under.)
  • Since 1998, the financial sector has given a total of $37.6 million to Obama, compared to $32.1 million to McCain. But Obama ran for his first national office only in 2004. So McCain got less from the financial industry in a decade that included two runs for president than Obama did in four years.
2012 Primary, Dirty Tricks, Obama, Stuck on Stupid, Treason, True Talking Points

Democrats: You need ID to buy toilet cleaner, but not to vote!

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CBS Chicago:

CHICAGO (CBS) – A new state law requires those who buy drain cleaners and other caustic substances to provide photo identification and sign a log.

The law, which took effect Sunday, requires those who seek to buy caustic or noxious substances, except for batteries, to provide government-issued photo identification that shows their name and date of birth. The cashier then must log the name and address, the date and time of the purchase, the type of product, the brand and even the net weight.

State Rep. Jack Franks (D-Woodstock) obtained passage of the new law following attacks in which drain cleaner was poured on two Chicago women, badly scarring them.

“So that’s who I have to call,” Schroeder said.

He said that when he called his local legislator, the legislator claimed not to know about the new law. Neither, he said, did other retailers in the area. He said he and other store personnel had to call to a number of stores before they could get details.

Non-compliance results in fines: $150 for the first offense, $500 for the second and up to $1,500 for the third and subsequent violations.

Schroeder estimated that there are “easily” 30 or more products in the store that must be reported when sold.

Jewel-Osco has removed the few items it carried from its shelves, but Schroeder said he does not have that option as a hardware store. He said he does not believe that the precautions written into the bill will prevent such crimes from occurring.

Hmmm Vote fraud is a crime……

2012 Primary, Dirty Tricks, Editorial, History, Mitt Romney, Stuck on Stupid

McCain Endorses Romney After Trashing Him…

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Does this mean that McCain wasn’t serious about his rediscovered Reagan Conservatism on the 2008 campaign? It would seem so by how Steve Schmidt and some other liberals hired by McCain to run his campaign treated Sarah Palin.  Or it could mean none of that and these ads meant nothing to John McCain at all other than a means to winning an election.

This schizophrenic messaging completely takes McCain’s endorsement credibility and tosses it right out the window. It also speaks volumes about how the GOP elites view messaging to GOP voters and is another example of why the GOP communications strategy and brand needs new blood.