Posts Tagged ‘Associated Press’

This Is INSANE. Alaska Releases 24,199 Pages Of Sarah Palin’s Personal And State E-mails.

June 9, 2011

I want all of Barack Obama’s emails.  I want all of Michelle Obama’s emails.  In fact, I want all of every single Democrat’s emails.

We’ve never heard of crap like this happening to a FORMER politician who hasn’t even been accused of a crime and who previously defeated all kinds of bogus ethics charges that were constantly thrown at her by liberal fascists.

But it doesn’t matter, because liberals NEVER QUIT being fascists.  Conservatives like Palin are guilty until proven innocent – and even after they are proven innocent they are assumed to be guilty.

Years back, I was visiting my brother and my little nephew put his leg behind his head.  He said, “Uncle Mike!  Uncle Mike!  It hurts when I do this.  To which I responded, “Well then DON’T DO IT!”

That story has an application to this one: I wrote an article titled, “Do Unto Obama As Liberals Did Unto Bush.”  Allow me to extend that to “Do Unto Democrats As Liberals Do Unto Conservatives.”  We need to attack them as viciously as they attack us until THEY QUIT DOING IT.  Start pouring through THEIR mail looking for any trace of dirt and I bet they lose their appetite to do it to us rather quickly.

Here’s the bottom line: this is fascist.  It is a fascist leftwing media looking for dirt from an ideological opponent for their political masters.  It is a vile thing to do.  And if you DON’T regard yourself as a fascist you ought to be utterly and vocally opposed to this crap.

Alaska poised to release Palin emails
By BECKY BOHRER, Associated Press – 6/9/11

JUNEAU, Alaska – The state of Alaska on Friday will release thousands of Sarah Palin’s emails from her first two years as governor, a disclosure that has taken on national prominence as she flirts with a run for the presidency.

The emails were first requested during the 2008 White House race by citizens and news organizations, including The Associated Press, as they vetted a vice presidential nominee whose political experience included less than one term as governor of Alaska and a term as mayor of the small town of Wasilla. The nearly three-year delay has been attributed largely to the sheer volume of the release and the flood of requests.

Alaska is releasing the more than 24,000 pages of emails in paper form only and asking news organizations to pick up several boxes worth of documents in Alaska’s capital city, accessible by only air or water. Reporters from several news organizations have already begun arriving in Juneau and are making various plans to disseminate the emails to the public.

Palin told Fox News Sunday that “every rock” that could have been kicked over to uncover things in her family has been. But she also said “a lot of those emails obviously weren’t meant for public consumption” and that she expected people might seek to take some of the messages “out of context.”

But there may not be any surprises to Palin in the emails. Once the state reviewed the records, it gave Palin’s attorneys an opportunity to see if they had any privacy concerns with what was being released. No emails were withheld or redacted as a result of that, said Linda Perez, the administrative director for Gov. Sean Parnell who has been coordinating the release.

The voluminous nature of the release, the isolation of Juneau and the limited bandwidth in the city of 30,000 people has forced media outlets to come up with creative ways to transmit the information. The Washington Post is looking for “100 organized and diligent readers” to work with reporters to “analyze, contextualize, and research the e-mails.” The New York Times is employing a similar system.

Mother Jones, ProPublica and msnbc.com are working with Crivella West Inc., to create a searchable database of the emails. The Associated Press also plans to scan the paper copies to make searchable files available to its members and clients. The state said it was not practical to provide electronic versions of the emails.

It’s not clear yet whether the 24,199 pages being released will contain any major revelations, but they will provide a fresh look at the inner-workings of her office from the time she took office in December 2006 to her ascension to vice presidential nominee in September 2008. Requests have been made for emails from her final 10 months in office. The state hasn’t begun the process of reviewing those yet. Palin resigned partway through her term, in July 2009.

Prior records requests have shed light on the Palin administration’s efforts to advance a natural gas pipeline project and the role played by Palin’s husband in state business.

The email release adds another dimension to the vetting of Palin that began in 2008 and comes as she has become a prominent national political figure, attracting large crowds during a recent bus tour across the Northeast. Palin’s attorney referred questions about the emails to the treasurer of her political action committee, who did not immediately respond Thursday.

The emails were sent and received by Palin’s personal and state email accounts, and the ones being released were deemed to be related to state business.

She and top aides were known to communicate using private email accounts. Perez said Palin gave the state a CD with emails from her Yahoo account, and other employees were asked to review their private accounts for emails related to state business and to send those to their state accounts.

Another 2,275 pages are being withheld for reasons including attorney-client, work product or executive privilege; an additional 140 pages were deemed to be “non-records,” or unrelated to state business.

Some emails may have been previously reviewed in other, earlier public records requests, such as in the Troopergate investigation, in which Palin was accused of putting pressure on public safety officials to fire her brother-in-law, an Alaska State Trooper who was going through a bitter divorce from Palin’s sister.

Clive Thomas, a long-time Palin observer who’s writing a book on Alaska politics, said he’s not sure what the emails will contain — or whether their contents will affect people’s perceptions of Palin.

“I guess most people, I think, who don’t like Sarah Palin are hoping there’s something in there that will deliver the final sort of blow to her (politically),” he said. As for Palin’s supporters, he said he doesn’t think their opinion of her will be changed regardless of what comes out.

Think about it: the Associated Press is the “news” organization that just did a poll that got it’s result by assuming that there are 60% more Democrats than Republicans – which is pretty damn brazen after the Republicans’ historic asswhipping of Democrats only months ago.  These are biased, biased people who work for biased, biased organizations.

And consider the piling-on: the LA Times is going to create a database of Palin’s emails.  The New York Times is literally asking their readers to help them dig up dirt on the woman they actively despise.  The Washington Post is similarly looking for Palin haters to help them unleash their own hatred.

Why didn’t they go through Obama’s garbage?  They didn’t even have to take a long red-eye to get there.  And coming out of Chicago – a city legendary for its political corruption – Obama’s garbage would have stunk to high heaven if the media had ever just bothered to examine it.  But the same people who flew across a continent to dig through Palin’s trash never even considered going next door to search through Obama’s.

And these people just keep sinking lower and lower.

These people are fascists, relentlessly pursuing fascist tactics in order to achieve fascist big-government ends.

Update: An early CNN report is out.  You can see at least three reporters pouring over these 24,000-plus emails.  But all they can report so far is that she was a good, decent, hard-working governor.

Mainstream Media Show They’re The Propaganda Mouthpieces Of The Professional Left. Again.

May 6, 2011

This is a tale of two events, with said events being only three days apart.

Let us begin with Sunday’s coverage of Barack Obama’s address announcing Osama bin Laden had been killed:

How Photos from Obama’s Speech on Bin Laden’s Death Were Staged
By Ujala Sehgal on May 4, 2011 2:08 PM

There is a fascinating piece at Poynter that describes how since the Reagan era (and possibly before) it has been the standard operating procedure that during a live presidential address, like the one President Obama gave announcing the death of Osama bin Laden, still cameras are not allowed to photograph the actual event.

Photojournalists from Reuters and AP described how President Obama basically had to silently re-enact part of his speech for the still cameras after giving it.

Reuters White House photographer Jason Reed writes:

As President Obama continued his nine-minute address in front of just one main network camera, the photographers were held outside the room by staff and asked to remain completely silent. Once Obama was off the air, we were escorted in front of that teleprompter and the President then re-enacted the walk-out and first 30 seconds of the statement for us.

The reason still cameras are not allowed during live presidential addresses is because of the noise from the camera shutters and the placement of the teleprompter, not for any sinister conspiracy-type reasons like we were hoping. And it’s been going on a long time.

The problem, according to Poynter, is that while many newspapers disclose that the photo they use is a re-enactment, some do not. And publishing these photos goes against the National Press Photographers Association Code of Ethics, which includes this relevant passage: “Resist being manipulated by staged photo opportunities.”

We had no idea there was an ethics code for photojournalists, and we’re thrilled to find out there is one. How dare the White House force them to abandon it! We feel shocked and lied to! This practice of re-staging must come to an end.

So to whatever extent that there is an “ethics code” for journalists, they were only to happy to waive it for their liberal messiah-in-chief.

But let’s see how willing they were to waive the exact same “ethics code” only three days later, for Wednesday’s first Republican debate in South Carolina:

AP, Reuters to sit out South Carolina GOP debate
by Jim Romenesko
Published May 5, 2011 8:07 am
Updated May 5, 2011 8:11 am

Politico.com
The Associated Press cites “restrictions placed on media access.” Debate sponsors Fox News and the South Carolina Republican Party will only allow photos to be taken in the moments ahead of the debate tonight and not during the event itself, says the news service. “This is about whether visual journalists will be treated with the same respect that text journalists are treated,” says AP senior managing editor Michael Oreskes.

Keach Hagey writes:

Reuters confirmed that it would not be covering the event photographically, because it shared concerns about access. However, Reuters did not confirm whether it would be going as far as AP and not filing text either.

Nope.  The self-righteous high-horses were out and promenading across the dance floor when the mainstream media got a chance to denounce the same conditions that they gladly overlooked for their messianic hero Obama.

The same exact issue was at stake: Fox News, the host of the debate, said there would be no still camera photography allowed during the debates.  And the same people who rushed to overlook their “ethics” the one time determined to rigidly adhere to them only three days later.  And, I suppose, it was nothing more than a complete coincidence that they were so willing to overlook their “ethics” for a liberal president and so determined to rigidly adhere to them for Republicans who want said liberal president’s job just three days later.

Just remember that most of the people who “report” the news are hypocrites and liars who are far more interested in distorting the news than they are in reporting it.

Associated Press Aids Rabid Left In New Sarah Palin Scandal Hoax

December 15, 2010

There was that moment frozen in history when Joseph McCarthy went that “one giant leap” too far, and was asked, “Have you no sense of decency?”  And that question resonated with the nation, because this was a time when both political parties and the media actually had a sense of decency remaining.

Those days are long gone from the Democrat Party and the mainstream media.  Their souls swim in “having no sense of decency.”

Now all we have coming from them are demagogic lies and Goebbels-levels of propaganda:

Media Creates New Palin Scandal! Sarah Accused of Bringing Hairdresser on Haiti Trip
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Posted on 12/12/2010 5:57:01 PM PST by kristinn

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin traveled to Haiti this weekend as a guest of the Rev. Franklin Graham and Samaritan’s Purse to spotlight the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the earthquake and cholera-stricken Caribbean (half an) island nation. Instead she has found herself embroiled in a scandal, accused of bringing a hair stylist on the trip to make herself look good for the cameras and “photo-ops.”.

The Associated Press transmitted a photo from Haiti of Palin captioned, “Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, center, has her hair done during a visit to a cholera treatment center set up by the NGO Samaritan’s Purse in Cabaret, Haiti, Saturday Dec. 11, 2010. Palin arrived Saturday in Haiti as part of a brief humanitarian mission. Dieu Nalio Chery / AP”

That photo and caption set off rabid attacks on Palin from the Huffington Post, the U.K.’s Daily Mail and, of course, Palingates.

The photo does indeed show Sarah Palin standing with her husband Todd as a woman whose face is obscured uses two hands to fix the hair on the right side of Palin’s head.

However, one can observe that the woman is white, with her brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, wearing a white shirt with a bulky scarf and dark pants.

In other photos from Saturday, Todd and Sarah Palin’s white, brunette, eldest daughter Bristol, who accompanied her parents on the trip to Haiti, is wearing the exact same clothing and ponytail as the “hair stylist” in the AP photo.

That’s right, what the Palin-hating AP and others fail to report is that the “hair stylist” is Bristol Palin.

The AP photographer who sent the caption would have known that it was Bristol Palin, but by not mentioning her the AP was able to do a media hit on Palin but still be able to claim they told the “truth” with the caption.

The Palins and the Grahams in Haiti (“hair stylist” Bristol second from right):

Palin “has her hair done”:

Photos via Palingates

The Daily Mail titled their story based on the AP photo and caption, Ready for Her Close Up…Sarah Palin Lands in Haiti (where they don’t care what her hair looks like)

The Huffington Post titled their attack on Palin, Reading the Pictures: Palin Does Haiti Cholera: How’s My Hair (and did AP lend a curl?). The AP reference in the headline is based on speculation in the article about whether the AP ran “scathing photo op-defying pictures of “the Sarah show?””

The raving lunatics at Palingates titled their hit piece, BREAKING NEWS: Palin Looks Good in Haiti.

To reiterate, a daughter helps fix a loose strand of her mother’s hair, and it becomes an international scandal. Amazing.

I don’t think that Sarah Palin should run for president in 2012.  I think she’s great, with a rare degree of common sense and the courage to square off with both parties to get things done.  But I literally don’t think the country deserves her at this point.

The left, the Democrats, the mainstream media, have come so completely unglued, and told so many demonic lies about Sarah Palin, that I don’t think she could overcome the vomit that has counted as “coverage” of Sarah Palin.

And they won’t stop.  They are so full of hate that it just oozes out of them.  And it has to keep spewing out.

When large and once-respected media outlets like the Associated Press deliberately insight demagogic hatred of an undeserving major political figure, we are degenerating into a truly dangerous place.

Let me just ask the Associated Press: have you no sense of decency?

Left Continues Violence; Media Continues To Demagogue Tea Parties

April 19, 2010

This is just another factual refutation of the mainline media’s ideological propaganda.

Republicans have had bullets shot through their windows and bricks smashed through their windows.  In fact, several bricks have been smashed through several Republican windows.  And here we are now, with an article detailing the arrest of a man who made a death threat against a Republican “bitch” politician.

April 19, 2010
Arrest made in threat against Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite

A 66-year-old Hernando County man has been arrested in connection with a threatening voice mail message left at the district office of U.S. Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Brooksville. According to the FBI, agents arrested Erik Lawrence Pidrman at his home in Spring Hill without incident Sunday.

On March 25, Brown-Waite reported that someone left the following message: “Just wanna let you know I have 27 people that are going to make sure that this b**** does not live to see her next term. Good-bye.”

The call came amid reports that a number of Congressional Democrats have gotten threats or had bricks thrown through their office windows following a contentious vote on health care legislation Sunday. It was not known Monday afternoon what allegedly caused Pidrman to make the call.

The integrity of the media has long-since been blown for all to see.  The above story is about a Republican who was threatened with death.  But the liberal bird cage liner otherwise known as the St. Petersburg Times just couldn’t help but make the story about Democrats being the “real” victims.

The paper makes no attempt to mention the repeated acts of violence against Republicans, but instead deliberately makes it appear as though it is merely one rather insignificant isolated incident against a sea of acts of violence against Democrats.  If anything, it is the other way around.

There’s no mention of the crowd of leftist thugs hunting down and beating a Republican Bobby Jindal official and her boyfriend.  There’s no mention made about a lot of things.

Not that the left gives a damn about integrity.  They are postmodernists who don’t even believe in truth; so all that remains is rhetoric and demagoguery.

Bill Clinton just came out and directly compared the anger of the tea party movement to the climate that surrounded the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City.  The media was all over that story, piling on to demonize the tea party movement, but only a tiny, tiny few have bothered to demand where the hell Bill Clinton was during the unhinged leftwing hatred during the Bush years.

Meanwhile, when Timothy McVeigh was asked why he did what he did, his answer wasn’t “Rush Limbaugh,” but rather something extremist and awful that the Clinton administration did: basically, massacre women and children during Clinton-era attacks on Waco and again at Ruby Ridge.

From Wikipedia:

Motivated by his hatred of the federal government and angered by what he perceived as its mishandling of the Waco Siege (1993) and the Ruby Ridge incident (1992), McVeigh timed his attack to coincide with the second anniversary of the deaths at Waco.[9][10]

You mean he didn’t time his blowing up a building to honor Glenn Becks’s birthday?

Maybe you should have blamed YOURSELF for the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building bombing rather than a group that didn’t even exist yet, you “it-depends-on-what-the-meaning-of-the-word-is-is” weasel.  Maybe the mainstream media shouldn’t trust a slimebag who forfeited his law license because of proven dishonesty.  I’m just saying.

Basically, it all depends on what the meaning of “political demagogue” is, doesn’t it, Slick Willy?

But don’t worry, Democrats.  Because the mainstream media is always there to tell big government Democrats, “Hi, I’m from the mainstream media, and I’m here to help.”

The media constantly refers to the tea party movement as “anti-government.”  It’s the heart of the Democrats’ case that we’re dangerous and could resort to violence.  The fact that that isn’t even remotely true is simply dismissed as entirely irrelevant.

The New York Times and the Associated Press just today used the identical same phrase: “This anti-government feeling has driven the tea party movement, reflected in fierce protests this past week.”  Without ever once reflecting on how biased that extremist label is.  I have never ONCE seen an “anti-government” tea party protester.  None of us want to abolish all government.  “Anti-government” IS an accurate label to apply to extreme leftwing anarchist groups; but tea party protesters are PRO-limited government – and are most certainly NOTANTI government.”  But the incorrect and charged label that the media deliberately use creates an extremist and disturbing image.  Which is exactly what these professional propagandists want.

Now, do you really want to see “anti-government” hate?  Why don’t you go to a liberal Democrat rally in which the crowd repeatedly chanted “FUCK THE USA!!!.”  Democrat Maxine Waters helped stoke the hate to furnace-levels that day.

Or how about Nancy Pelosi telling anti-Bush protesters, “I’m a fan of disruptors!” in 2006.

I might also point out that Barack Obama got his start in politics by benefiting from a fundraiser in William Ayers‘ – former terrorist bomber of the Weather Underground – living room.  Obama then served on several boards of directors with said anti-government terrorist.  And there’s darned good reason to believe that that same anti-government terrorist helped him write his first book.

William Ayers – now an esteemed liberal professor and member of the liberal community in good standing – bombed several U.S. government buildings, and was responsible for the murders of innocent human beings.  How the left must have cheered when he said, “I don’t regret setting bombs,” and added: “I feel we didn’t do enough.”

And do you want to know when he said those hateful words?  On 9/11, the day that nearly 3,000 Americans were murdered by al Qaeda.

Mind you, that sentiment was basically shared by Obama’s handpicked “reverend” of more than twenty years, as Jeremiah Wright said of 9/11: “America’s chickens have come home to roost” following an anti-American diatribe.

If you really want to deal with anti-government hate, you maggot-souled liberal cockroaches, how about if you expose yourselves for once in your worthless lives?!?!?!

Pew just released a poll that demonstrates that 80% of Americans are anti-government rightwing extremists.  Because 80% of Americans agree with the Tea Party and DISTRUST the Obama administration.  And oh, isn’t that exactly what the tea party has been saying for more than a year, now?

And this result is basically the lowest result in a half century.  Which is to say, hey, lefties, the American people trusted George W. Bush MORE than they trust your damn big government socialist messiah.

And for damn good reason.

Obama Continues Rampant Dishonesty With Stimulus ‘Jobs ‘

November 11, 2009

Want to see how Obama “created or saved” all the jobs he’s claiming?  Here’s how:

In June, the federal government spent $1,047 in stimulus money to buy a rider mower from the Toro Company to cut the grass at the Fayetteville National Cemetery in Arkansas. Now, a report on the government’s stimulus Web site improbably claims that that single lawn mower sale helped save or create 50 jobs.

I bought a new watch the other day; that’s got to be good for at least ten jobs saved or created.

Do you seriously trust these people to run your healthcare?  Are you that idiotic?  I mean, dang.

A newspaper editorial just damns Obama’s dishonesty and deceit the way it deserves to be damned.

Note: I added the html links to the other newspaper articles.

Union-Tribune Editorial
Stimulus dishonesty
Job numbers keep proving to be exaggerated
Wednesday, November 11, 2009 at 12:43 a.m.

First it was The Associated Press refuting the Obama administration’s claims for jobs saved or created nationwide by February’s $787 billion economic stimulus measure. Then it was The Sacramento Bee refuting the claims that state agencies had made for California. Then it was the Chicago Tribune refuting the claims that state agencies had made for Illinois.

The errors were not of a minor or technical nature. They were egregious.

AP reported that “some jobs credited to the stimulus program were counted two, three, four or even more times.” The Bee reported that California State University said “the $268.5 million it received in stimulus funding through October allowed it to retain 26,156 employees” – more than half its statewide work force. The Tribune reported that Illinois education officials grossly inflated job-saved numbers, sometimes saying school districts had saved more jobs than their total number of employees.

This is a scandal and should be treated as such. It’s not government as usual. Instead, it appears to reflect a decision to distort government data collection to support explicitly political agendas.

With U.S. unemployment now topping 10 percent, the Obama administration is struggling more than ever to fashion credible counterarguments to the assertion made by this editorial page and many pundits and economists that the massive stimulus measure was a poorly thought-out pork fest that wouldn’t work. What’s the easiest way to defend the stimulus? Make up claims about its glorious results.

Politics also appears to be driving state agencies in their willingness to prop up this bogus narrative. It helps them make the case that they should get even more borrowed money from the federal government that they never will have to repay.

Such dishonesty should be completely unacceptable – especially at the federal level. We trust the Office of Management and Budget to provide honest figures on the size of the deficit and the national debt. We trust the Labor Department to provide honest statistics on unemployment and job gains and losses by sector. We trust the Commerce Department to provide honest numbers on monthly imports and exports and the gross domestic product. We trust the Environmental Protection Agency to provide an honest accounting of air and water pollution levels.

All of these statistics end up helping shape the public debate on the most crucial issues of the day. If these numbers can’t be trusted, we can’t have an honest debate. When it comes to the economic stimulus package, it sure looks like the Obama White House doesn’t want an honest debate. Instead, it is going to relentlessly push the very dubious claim that the stimulus was a huge success – no matter what.

We are struck yet again by the contrast between the hopeful and idealistic tone of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and the bare-knuckles Chicago-style politics of his White House. If this hardball approach goes beyond the usual arm-twisting to the routine twisting of government statistics for political purposes, that will be a grim day for America.

The first thing to do is congratulate the editorial board of the Union-Tribune for standing up for the truth.  That hasn’t happened a whole lot in the swooning, “thrill going up my leg” coverage of Obama.

Next, I’d like to begin by citing the complete paragraph that the Union-Tribune cites from AP:

The AP review found some counts were more than 10 times as high as the actual number of jobs; some jobs credited to the stimulus program were counted two and sometimes more than four times; and other jobs were credited to stimulus spending when none was produced.

Then I’ll provide the quote from the Sacramento Bee in its context, which makes it an even more damning indictment:

Up to one-fourth of the 110,000 jobs reported as saved by federal stimulus money in California probably never were in danger, a Bee review has found.

California State University officials reported late last week that they saved more jobs with stimulus money than the number of jobs saved in Texas – and in 44 other states.

In a required state report to the federal government, the university system said the $268.5 million it received in stimulus funding through October allowed it to retain 26,156 employees.

That total represents more than half of CSU’s statewide work force.  However, university officials confirmed Thursday that half their workers were not going to be laid off without the stimulus dollars.

“This is not really a real number of people,” CSU spokeswoman Clara Potes-Fellow said. “It’s like a budget number.”

And then I’ll provide the context for the Chicago Tribune findings:

Gov. Patrick Quinn on Wednesday dispatched officials from a new accountability office to investigate errors in a state database detailing stimulus-funded school jobs promoted by the Obama administration, a day after the Tribune raised questions about the job numbers’ accuracy.

The officials have asked the Illinois State Board of Education to verify the number of jobs created and retained in school districts detailed in the report, said Ashley Cross, a spokeswoman for Quinn’s office. Any necessary adjustments will be incorporated into the next quarterly report on the federal stimulus, she said.

Matt Vanover, a spokesman for board of education, said the flawed database actually had been washed of some glaring errors before being included in the official tabulation, which claimed 14,330 school jobs in Illinois had either been saved or created thanks to $1.25 billion in federal funds.

But the Tribune found that the database claimed far more jobs had been saved in some local school districts than actually existed on district payrolls.

Which is to say that, as egregious as the errors were that the Tribune reported for this story, the school board spokesman said they had actually been much, much more egregious before the Tribune was able to get its hands on the actual data.

When the Union-Tribune editors say:

This is a scandal and should be treated as such. It’s not government as usual. Instead, it appears to reflect a decision to distort government data collection to support explicitly political agendas.

You should recognize that we are talking about historic levels of dishonesty that match this administrations’ historic levels of spending and historic levels of debt.

And when they point out that:

Politics also appears to be driving state agencies in their willingness to prop up this bogus narrative. It helps them make the case that they should get even more borrowed money from the federal government that they never will have to repay.

Such dishonesty should be completely unacceptableespecially at the federal level.

You should realize that – counter to the Obama administration’s and Democrat Party’s demagogic attacks against businesses such as our health insurance companies (which make only modest profits, contrary to the frankly evil attacks repeatedly made by the left) – there is no greater or more powerful or more dishonest “special interest” than big government.

If you’re opposed to special interest, then whatever the HELL you do, don’t let the federal government take over health care.

And this garbage of deceit and lies about jobs and the fact that Obama has done NOTHING to create more of them is going on all over the country.

The Boston Globe says, “Stimulus job boost in state exaggerated, review finds.”  And it is simply damning.

While Massachusetts recipients of federal stimulus money collectively report 12,374 jobs saved or created, a Globe review shows that number is wildly exaggerated. Organizations that received stimulus money miscounted jobs, filed erroneous figures, or claimed jobs for work that has not yet started.

The Globe’s finding is based on the federal government’s just-released accounts of stimulus spending at the end of October. It lists the nearly $4 billion in stimulus awards made to an array of Massachusetts government agencies, universities, hospitals, private businesses, and nonprofit organizations, and notes how many jobs each created or saved.

But in interviews with recipients, the Globe found that several openly acknowledged creating far fewer jobs than they have been credited for.

One of the largest reported jobs figures comes from Bridgewater State College, which is listed as using $77,181 in stimulus money for 160 full-time work-study jobs for students. But Bridgewater State spokesman Bryan Baldwin said the college made a mistake and the actual number of new jobs was “almost nothing.’’ Bridgewater has submitted a correction, but it is not yet reflected in the report.

In other cases, federal money that recipients already receive annually – subsidies for affordable housing, for example – was reclassified this year as stimulus spending, and the existing jobs already supported by those programs were credited to stimulus spending. Some of these recipients said they did not even know the money they were getting was classified as stimulus funds until September, when federal officials told them they had to file reports.

“There were no jobs created. It was just shuffling around of the funds,’’ said Susan Kelly, director of property management for Boston Land Co., which reported retaining 26 jobs with $2.7 million in rental subsidies for its affordable housing developments in Waltham. “It’s hard to figure out if you did the paperwork right. We never asked for this.’’

The federal stimulus report for Massachusetts has so many errors, missing data, or estimates instead of actual job counts that it may be impossible to accurately tally how many people have been employed by the massive infusion of federal money. Massachusetts is expected to receive an estimated $1 billion more in stimulus contracts, grants, and loans.

When Obama was elected, unemployment was at 6.6%.  He promised that his stimulus would prevent unemployment from reaching 8%.  And now it’s 10.2%.
His plan completely failed.  His massive $3.27 trillion stimulus porkulus (according to what the CBO reported Obama’s stimulus would actually cost) did nothing more than create a bunch of pork projects and create a Democrat war chest of slush funds to buy the votes it needs.
Don’t believe me about the slush fund?

To get as far as the bill did so far, it appears the administration might have spread some money around. California Rep. Jim Costa was wavering but told a local newspaper last week that his vote could be contingent on getting some federal money for a new medical school in his district along with help for local hospitals.

When a constituent named Bob Smittcamp e-mailed him to complain about his vote for the House bill, the congressman explained he’d been offered the dollars he was looking for — $128 million in federal money.

“He responded to me by basically saying that he did not like many of the elements there were in the legislation. However, he was able to procure $128m for the University of California medical school in Merced,” Smittcamp told Fox News.

Democrats now have in excess of a trillion dollars in federal money to buy itself the votes it needs to impose the liberal agenda.Rather than actually fix the economy, all Obama has done is a) focus entirely on putting even more of the economy under government control through Obamacare rather than focus on creating jobs; b) make up a bunch of patent lies to make believe his policies are doing anything other than dismally failing; and c) keep blaming Bush for everything.It’s not working out, Obama.  YOU’RE not working out.

Pettiness and Visciousness Over Tony Snow’s Passing: The Left Should Be Ashamed

July 17, 2008

The Associated Press’ “eulogy” of Tony Snow contained the following comments:

With a quick-from-the-lip repartee, broadcaster’s good looks and a relentlessly bright outlook — if not always a command of the facts — he became a popular figure around the country to the delight of his White House bosses.

In that year and a half at the White House, Snow brought partisan zeal and the skills of a seasoned performer to the task of explaining and defending the president’s policies. During daily briefings, he challenged reporters, scolded them and questioned their motives as if he were starring in a TV show broadcast live from the West Wing.

Critics suggested that Snow was turning the traditionally informational daily briefing into a personality-driven media event short on facts and long on confrontation. He was the first press secretary, by his own accounting, to travel the country raising money for Republican candidates.

Bill O’Reilly clearly wasn’t touched by the Associate Press‘ treatment of Snow. He had this to say yesterday:

Over the weekend, we eulogized Tony Snow in a personal way. I hope you saw our broadcast because I believe we painted a very accurate picture of a great man. Tonight we’ll get into policy — the things that Tony believed in and the challenges he faced going public with those beliefs.

Hours after Tony died early Saturday morning, the Associated Press published an obituary of him. Written by Douglass Daniel, the obit listed Tony’s bio and some of his achievements, but it also injected a left-wing partisan viewpoint, which was insulting to the Snow family and completely inappropriate.

Just a few weeks ago, the AP ran a terrific obituary for Tim Russert, avoiding any cheap shots. But Daniel could not do that for Tony Snow as he wrote: “With a quick-from-the-lip repartee, broadcaster’s good looks and a relentlessly bright outlook — if not always a command of the facts — he became a popular figure around the country to the delight of his White House bosses. Critics suggested that Snow was turning the traditionally informational daily briefing into a personality-driven media event short on facts and long on confrontation.”

Now, if you want to criticize Tony’s White House career, do it after he’s buried, OK, Associated Press? Your opinion of his job performance doesn’t belong in an obituary. It was an insult to Tony’s family and demonstrates once and for all the AP is no longer a news service. It has become a liberal clearing house.

Now, I myself just wrote a eulogy remembering both Tim Russert and Tony Snow. Tim Russert came from the Democratic ranks; and more than occasionally I believed that he was grilling Republicans in a way that he did not grill Democrats on his program. But I was writing a eulogy, and so I focused on the very best of these two men.

That’s what you do when you eulogize, unless you are overly partisan. You look at the best of someone, and pointedly ignore the negative. The AP gave a magnificent, criticism-free sendoff to Tim Russert. It just couldn’t find the same graciousness for a conservative.

Shame on them for allowing their thinly veiled political ideology to intrude on good taste.

Rush Limbaugh, commenting on the AP‘s lack of journalistic balance, said this:

A month ago I went on a riff about the lone remaining monopoly in the Drive-By Media, that being the Associated Press and I pointed out how dangerous they are. They still have a monopoly in the sense that every newspaper in the country subscribes to their service and prints their BS. Yesterday, Politico.com ran a story about the new Washington — or the editor, bureau chief, whatever; Washington bureau chief; I forget what title he has, Ron Fournier, the former White House reporter. He has decided — and I don’t know how long ago they decided this, but it probably coincides pretty much with my noticing it, but they decided, he decided — from now on the AP is going to start putting opinion in the news, that people are just too stupid to figure out what the news is without an opinion being thrown in there. Honestly this is what they said. I had the story in the stack yesterday. I think I have it anywhere near here, but I’m summarizing it pretty closely.

Limbaugh was referring to a Politico.com story titled, “Is Fournier saving or destroying the AP?” in which Ron Fournier, the head of the Associated Press’ Washington bureau, is revealed to encourage first-person writing and the use of emotive language in news stories. Part of the Politico piece points out the clear pitfall of Fournier’s new approach to journalism:

Fournier and other critics of the conventional press model, especially those on the left, have said that being released from the tired conventions of news writing is exactly what journalism needs.

By these lights, the mentality that presumes both sides of an argument are entitled to equal weight is what prevented the media from challenging the Bush administration more aggressively on the Iraq war and other issues.

Others warn that what Fournier and other proponents see as truth-telling can easily bleed into opinionizing — exactly the opposite of the AP’s mission of “delivering fast, unbiased news.”

“The problem,” says James Taranto, the Wall Street Journal’s Best of the Web columnist and a frequent critic of what he sees as the AP’s liberal bias, “is that while you can do opinion journalism and incorporate reporting into it, you can’t say you’re doing straight reporting, and then add opinion to that.”

A dispatch Fournier filed in 2005 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina began: “The Iraqi insurgency is in its last throes. The economy is booming. Anybody who leaks a CIA agent’s identity will be fired. Add another piece of White House rhetoric that doesn’t match the public’s view of reality: Help is on the way, Gulf Coast.”

Fournier cited the article in an essay titled “Accountability Journalism: Liberating reporters and the truth” he wrote for the June 1 issue of the AP’s internal newsletter, The Essentials, as an example of how to be “provocative without being partisan … truth-tellers without being editorial writers.”

“I call ’em as I see ’em” has little validity if you are in the tank for one side. You probably wouldn’ t want a die-hard Lakers fan like me refereeing a Laker game in the playoffs if you are rooting for the other team – or even if you simply want an objectively-called game. It’s not that I would deliberately cheat; it’s just that my “pro-Laker” mentality and desire to see the Lakers win would alter my perception and affect my judgment.  Limbaugh used the media’s outrage over the NBA referee scandal as an example of their own innate hypocrisy. It’s too bad they refuse to apply the same standard and rationale about genuine objectivity for themselves that they reserve for everybody else.

Here is a collection of pieces I’ve writing discussing about the media’s ideological biases:

NBC’s Deceptive Editing Reveals Why Bush Right and Obama Wrong

How to Demagogue the Economy

Hillary’s Pennsylvania Win Has Media Snivelling

Media Frenzy over ABC Democratic Debate Reveals Leftist Bias

I chuckled over a July 14, 2008 Mallard Fillmore cartoon that read: “This just in!… The mainstream media now say they felt the need to cover the “Countrywide” loan scandal involving Democratic Senators Chris Dodd and Kent Conrad just as aggressively as they cover Republican scandals… then quickly sat down until the feeling went away.” It’s absolutely true. They covered the story, and then let it slide into obscurity. Had it been a pair of Republicans, there would have been a daily drumbeat of coverage until the two resigned.

When the media becomes ideologically biased – which they have – they undermine the role our founding fathers intended for them in the Bill of Rights, and leave us vulnerable to the ramifications of a people with a distorted view of the world.

When they even feel the need to editorialize and present their biases in a eulogy, it is beyond petty.

But the obvious bias of the left-tilted media – which is revealed even in coverage eulogizing political journalists who have just passed away – is only part of the story. We also must recognize that there is a rabid left wing in this country that are absolutely vicious.

That viciousness was revealed following the announcement of the death of Tony Snow.

The LA Times has a moderated blog which had the following remarks allowed about Tony Snow:

I hope the rest of these criminals die too. Good riddance to a person who contributed to making this world a worse place. – Posted by: Max | July 12, 2008 at 05:58 AM

Its unfortunate he won’t be able to see the damage he helped inflict on this country and the world. I wonder how he likes hell. – Posted by: tedson | July 12, 2008 at 06:27 AM

Was anyone more perfectly named for their job? Tony’s Snow-jobs about Bushian idiocy only helped sink the nation into the hole where we are now. – Posted by: Johnsy | July 12, 2008 at 06:58 AM

Good riddance , we still have a white house full of liars
and American soldiers being slaughtered. if Cheney strokes
then change will begin , as for Bush he is just to stupid
to die and when he dies bury him at home in IRAQ.
– Posted by: slimjim66 | July 12, 2008 at 07:30 AM

This outrage indicates why new legislation should be put in place to require a regular colonoscopy for Snow’s cohorts in propaganda. (Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck etc) Only a careful inspection of their alimentary tracts will prevent their insolent, hatefilled cancer from developing and spreading. – Posted by: Passing LostAnglos | July 12, 2008 at 07:38 AM

The question begs to be asked, is it possible to die when you don’t have a soul.
– Posted by: Chad | July 12, 2008 at 09:38 AM

Oh YES HE WAS A WONDERFUL MAN AND A …..
PUUULLLEEEASE
THIS PERSON HAD A MAJOR PART IN THE MOST EVIL ADMINISTRATION THIS COUNTRY HAS EVER SEEN.
DEATH AND TORTURE, ILLEGAL WARS, WAR CRIMINAL SOLDIERS, GOOD RIDDANCE
CANCER WAS TOO GOOD FOR HIM
HOPE IT WAS PAINFUL.
NOW FOR THE REST OF THIS SCUMMY ADMINISTRATION. COME ON CANCER, DO YOUR GOOD WORK…………
– Posted by: perry | July 12, 2008 at 02:26 PM

I have frequently heard liberals talk about how hateful the concept of “hell” is and that condemning biblically-forbidden behaviors and warning about the judgment of hell is hateful. But now I see that liberals don’t mind talking about hell at all; they merely wish to reserve it for conservatives and those who actually believe in the Bible.

The Daily Kos, by all accounts, was even worse.

The hatred of the left must be pointed out. People need to see these people as they actually are. The people who talk about “tolerance” routinely shout down conservative speakers and broadcast outright visceral hatred for those with whom they disagree.

One of the posters to the LA Times blog had this to say:

All you right wingers would be saying much worse things if the same had happened to Ted Kennedy or Obama – you are nothing but trash and liars just like Snow job was. good riddance to bad rubbish. – Posted by: Alan | July 12, 2008 at 04:52 PM

Nope. When Ted Kennedy was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor, I wrote a piece asking for prayer for the man. I don’t have the hatred for even Osama bin Laden that so many on the left publicly harbored for Tony Snow. I just don’t have that kind of hate and meanness in me.

Nor have I ever come across a “right wing hate site” that was even close to the outright viciousness that is routinely contained in major liberal blogs such as Media Matters and the Daily Kos (and now the LA Times!!!).

The liberal media is not only overtly ideologically biased, but is now actually providing a forum for the worst kind of hatred (one LA Times blog comment allowed by the moderator asked whether Tony Snow would be buried in his Nazi uniform), has sunk to levels that are downright despicable. It is no wonder that they are losing their readership and viewership in droves.

Liberals ought to be ashamed.