Stupid Voters ... Alan Caruba

Stupid Voters

By Alan Caruba
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It’s a comment I hear all the time these days. “The voters are stupid.”

I am not sure that those saying it mean literally that the voters have a low level of intellect or academic achievement, but rather that they mean voters seem prone to making their choices based more on emotion than on a serious examination of the candidate’s qualifications and character.

The best example of this was the 2008 campaign in which a candidate was presented in much the same way companies seek to “brand” their product or service, repeating the same message (Obama’s was hope and change) until it becomes part of the consumers’ decision-making process. It’s why we buy a particular brand of cereal or car. We have come to associate values with it that go beyond the taste or the look.

Barack Obama had served barely two years in the U.S. Senate before he made an unprecedented leap from there to the White House. He was, for all intents and purposes, an unknown quantity with a legislative record—if anyone bothered to check—that was a straight Democratic Party line vote.

In his earlier incarnation as an Illinois legislator, he had voted “present” so many times it was clear he was avoiding taking any position he regarded as politically dangerous; a vote that would come back to haunt him and very few did. The media cooperated in this, avoiding calling attention to anything that might be deemed controversial.

By contrast, Hillary Clinton, whether you liked her or not, was a candidate with a full cart of baggage from her years as the former governor’s and president’s wife, and her years as a U.S. Senator who served, not from Arkansas where she first came to notice, but from New York where liberals thrive. The process of campaigning wore her out and, being the first women to seriously contend to be president, she had even more of a challenge to overcome. Her raw ambition tended to make people afraid of her.

What elected Obama had nothing to do with the slim qualifications he put forth. Few candidates had less to offer. He had never met a payroll. All information regarding his academic records was sealed from view. The press made no effort to ask what passport he had traveled on to Pakistan at one time and did not raise any question about his Social Security number, issued in Connecticut where he had never lived or worked. Famously, he released a “birth certificate” that anyone in Hawaii could attain for the asking, not the “long form” which is deemed credible.

The voters have paid a fearful price for electing Obama; increased unemployment, a huge national debt, a hollowed-out military, billions wasted on “Green” energy, unprotected borders, a Congress in near total gridlock, and a world beyond our shores that perceives an America made weaker by Obama’s three years in office.

I have worked as a public relations counselor for most of my life with earlier years spent as a journalist. I know something about how a product, a service, or an individual is “packaged” to present a positive “image.” What we have all learned since 2008 was that Obama was superbly “packaged” and that the image of an articulate, highly intelligent, well informed candidate was without substance. His inability to speak publicly without a TelePrompter swiftly became a joke.

So, to say that those who voted for him were “stupid” is to misread the new era of politics, one that has more to do with “American Idol” and “Dancing With the Stars” than with the serious selection of the leader of the nation and the free world.

As they say in advertising, voters bought the sizzle, not the steak.

We are seeing this process continue as the Republican candidates vie for votes. The Gingrich “surge” in South Carolina came after he had two successful debates. It is true that Gingrich is a good debater, but the real question is whether he would be a good president. Questions about his character remain.

Gingrich has been comfortable sharing a couch with Nancy Pelosi to advocate the bogus global warming “theory” or taking money from Freddie Mac.. Now he is trying to appear to be a “real” conservative as opposed to Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and the quixotic Ron Paul.

While his judgment on issues has been called into question, Romney’s character never has. There has never been a hint of scandal in his life. In terms of policy, he was the Governor of one of the most liberal states and he did support Romneycare there. Politics is rarely pretty and even New Jersey’s fire-breathing Governor, Chris Christie, has taken some extraordinarily liberal positions and made some questionable appointments.

There might have been a time when Gingrich was, indeed, a bona fide conservative, but his long years in Washington, D.C., have taught him that “to get along you have to go along” In the end, even his colleagues in the House, for reasons of policy and personality, could no longer support him as Speaker.

From the days of Bush41 until the 2010 elections the Republican Party looked so much like the Democratic Party, voters had an increasingly hard time telling them apart. The Tea Party movement changed that. They and the “independents” are going to decide the 2012 elections that are currently making history with endless debates.

The debates are proving to be a succession of sound bites and vitriol between the candidates. They increasingly demonstrate how the mainstream media, the debate sponsors, are visibly seeking to influence the outcome of the election and they demonstrate that many voters are easily swayed by matters that have little to do with actual policies and issues.

There has been less and less substance with each debate.

I fear that too many Republican voters are having too many mood swings, relying on a moment or two from the most recent debate than on a serious examination—I repeat myself—of the candidate’s qualifications and character. Romney is carefully scripted and a tad robotic, but Gingrich could become the GOP nominee simply because he is entertaining.

Without doubt, President Obama and the Democrats are enjoying the Republican free-for-all and, without doubt, they have concluded that the voters are stupid.

© Alan Caruba, 2012
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 Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. To visit his Facebook page, click here For information on his professional skills, Caruba.com is the place to visit.

War Clouds Continue to Gather

A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

First, allow me to explain that, yes, I know it is not popular, today, to point out the obvious.  Ok.  Maybe I should have phrased that this way:  “…to point out what SHOULD be obvious.”

Before I proceed, I’d like to encourage my readers to browse the websites of foreign news services.  If I have learned anything at all (since Al Gore invented the Internet) it is this:  The US mainstream media cannot be trusted.  They have an agenda and that agenda does not necessarily include dissemination of the truth.  As a card-carrying member of the press for many years, I have always been aware of the left-leaning bias of the US media.  That is not to say the same leftist bias does not exist in overseas media because it most certainly does.

Having said that – were you aware that right at the moment the Obama Administration is announcing plans to cut the US defense budget the US is preparing for another war in the Middle East?  Did you know that we have been quietly building an armada of naval assets in the Gulf of Oman just off the shores of Iran?  Did you know this naval armada consists of warships from the US, the UK, France, Israel, and others?  

Looking west a bit we see US, French, and British warships, standing off the Syrian coast, facing off with Russian warships including a Russian aircraft carrier task force.

My regional newspaper is printed in a military town, home to one of the largest military bases in the US, and yet, I see very little information in it’s pages concerning this build-up of military might in the waters of the Middle East.  Why?

I’ll make the answer as straight forward and simple as I possibly can.  There re two parts to the complete answer: 1) Obama is seeking reelection.  2) Obama is seeking to reduce the military budget to gain more money to spend on his leftist agenda for America.

At the risk of being called an “alarmist” allow be to make it plain:  I AM alarmed.

So when will this war begin.  Well, let me put it this way:  The Iranians should carefully watch Obama’s poll numbers.  If those numbers continue their slide downwards, the Iranians are going get the heck bombed out of them. 

Americans are extremely reluctant to change Presidents in the middle of a war.  Obama knows this and is expected to act accordingly. 

Some conservative writers and commentators expect that war in the Middle East is currently scheduled for October 2012. That would be the famed “October Surprise.”

On the other hand, those in my camp believe the Iranians, in all their hyped-up passion, will do something stupid like firing on a tanker or a US warship or aircraft, or even worse, make an attempt to close the Straits of Hormuz by sewing it with mines and other hazards to maritime traffic.  That would be the spark that would bring down the considerable wrath of that naval armada lying off their shores.

Then there are the Israelis.  They have had enough of Iran’s threats and Iran’s war on Israel by proxy.  Israel’s secret war of sabotage in Iran can only deliver limited success at delaying and derailing Iran’s race to build or acquire a nuclear bomb.  Israel could decide, at any moment, that enough is enough and launch their fighter-bombers and cruise missiles at Iran’s nuclear facilities.   Even if it only buys a few months or a couple of years of breathing space for Israel, it is becoming clear there is no other way to effectively deter Iran from building their coveted Islam Bomb.

The situation in the Middle East today is far, far, more dangerous than the US media is reporting.  A single spark will ignite a devastating war that will affect practically every nation on earth to some degree or other.

Those of us who continue to sound the warning bell of a huge war in the Middle East are being compared to the boy Peter in the story of “Peter and the Wolf.” An article at Haaretz.com noted that those who make such public comparisons seem always to leave out the end of Aesop’s famous tale of the boy who called wolf too much.  In the end, the wolf actually DID come -- and the sheep were slaughtered.  (SOURCE)

So, with that ending in mind, I have no concern about continually pointing to those dark, foreboding, clouds gathering in the east.  Since the mainstream media seems to be ignoring a certain war to protect Obama’s prospects in the coming election, someone must stand as a watchman on the ramparts and sound the alarm when clouds of dust from the approaching armies of the enemy is sighted and when the sound of distant war drums is heard.

Today those dust clouds are clearly seen over the horizon and the pounding of the drums can be heard in the distance -- and we are sounding the alarm.

J. D. Longstreet 

The Liberal Media is Deserting Obama ... Alan Caruba

 The Liberal Media is Deserting Obama

By Alan Caruba

The conservative media has been criticizing President Obama since before he was President and that hardly comes as a surprise, but there is a discernible trend occurring among the liberal media. They are beginning to abandon Obama and, if that continues, it will erode his base and the electoral turnout he needs to be reelected.

New York Times columnist, Maureen Dowd, is one of my barometers and she has been backing away from Obama for weeks. In an August 6 column, “Downgrade Blues”, she opined that “Barack Obama blazed like Luke Skywalker in 2008, but he never learned to channel the Force. And now the Tea Party has run off with his light saber.” It’s more like Obama has become Darth Vader, destroying the economy since the day he arrived in the Oval Office.

“When he had power,” said Dowd, “he didn’t use it.” No, Obama’s problem is that he did use it and most dramatically in his effort to impose Obamacare on an America that did not want it. Only a straight party vote in Congress passed it despite a massive 2009 march on Washington to protest it. That sparked the Tea Party movement and that transferred power in the House in the 2010 midterm elections.

The syndicated columnist, Eleanor Clift, a strident devotee and defender of Obama, wrote on August 9th that “Disappointed liberals are among Obama’s harshest critics. They feel he’s given away too much to conservatives and they don’t understand where his gifts of intellect and oratory are now that the country is looking to him for a bold plan forward that can take the economy out of the doldrums.”

Like so many liberals, reluctant to assign any blame to Obama, Clift ignores the trillions in additional debt that Obama added to an already tenuous situation when he became President. She ignores the failed stimulus program or his administration’s all out attack on the energy sector of the economy. It’s a long list of bad judgments.

As to his alleged intellect and oratory, Obama’s dependence on teleprompters became a running joke early in his first months in office. During his address on Monday, his “oratory” fell flat with both the media and the public. A string of clichés and worn-out ideas, plus a plea for bipartisanship he has never displayed resulted in a further plunge in the stock market.

A Spurned Prom Date

David Brooks, a columnist for The New York Times, on July 25 sharply criticized Obama after the debt ceiling negotiations, saying “the president lost his cool. Obama never should have gone in front of the cameras just minutes after the talks faltered Friday evening. His appearance was suffused with that ‘I’m the only mature person in Washington’ condescension that drives everybody crazy. Obama lectured the leaders of the House and Senate in the sort of patronizing tone that a junior high principal might use with immature delinquents. He talked about unreturned phone calls and being left at the alter, personalizing the issue like a spurned prom date.”

Assessing the Monday address following the Friday Standard & Poor’s credit rating downgrade, Dana Milbank of the Washington Post, wrote, “Yet Obama plods along, raising gobs of cash for his reelection bid—he was scheduled to speak at two DNC fundraisers Monday night—and varying little the words he reads from the teleprompter. He seemed detached even from those words Monday as he pivoted his head from side to side, proclaiming that ‘our problems is not confidence in our credit’ and turning his bipartisan fiscal commission into a ‘biparticle.’”

In October 2010 the Washington Times published a commentary of mine that asked if Obama was a moron. Turns out, he is.

In the August 9 edition of the conservative Wall Street Journal, columnist Bret Stephens’ column was titled “Is Obama Smart?” Concisely summing up the two views of the President, Stephens wrote “Liberals say he’s too cerebral for the Beltway rough-and-tumble; conservatives often seem to think his blunders, foreign and domestic, are part of a cunning scheme to turn the U.S. into a combination of Finland, Cuba and Saudi Arabia.”

“I don’t buy it,” wrote Stephens. “I just think the president isn’t very bright.” He concluded “Stupid is as stupid does, said the great philosopher Forrest Gump. The presidency of Barack Obama is a case study in stupid does.”

For me, there is more than a degree of schadenfreude, taking pleasure in other’s misfortunes, but the really bad news is that Obama’s misfortunes are America’s misfortunes and the mainstream media is beginning at last to take notice.

© Alan Caruba, 2011
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Alan Caruba's commentaries are posted daily at "Warning Signs" his popular blog and thereafter on dozens of other websites and blogs. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. To visit his Facebook page, click here For information on his professional skills, Caruba.com is the place to visit.

Shut The Government Down!

Shut The Government Down!
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

I am beginning to believe that we OUGHT to shut the government down for as long as it takes to determine who, exactly, are the government workers essential to running the government. Then, fire all non-essential workers. And don’t re-open until we cut the heck out of the expense of running the government, itself, AND get a handle on congressional and executive branch spending.

Ok. Let’s cut to some of the basics here. First do not buy into the notion that the government actually shuts down when there is a government shutdown. OH, no! That is exactly what the political left wants you to believe. (By the way. For those of you new to my scribblings – understand that when I say “the political left” – I include the mainstream media in that nomenclatura.)

Surely you do not think government bureaucrats and federal employees do not have their backsides covered in the event of the dreaded “government shut-down?” Oh, to be sure, they DO. Yes, assuredly, they DO!

All the scare tactics used by the political left to scare the living daylights out of Americans who, as a rule, have not an inkling as to how their government actually works, are very effective when disseminated by a state controlled press – otherwise known as the Mainstream Media.

NO. Planes will not be grounded, the border will continued to be patrolled, hospitals will continue to treat patients, the military will continue to fight, federal prisoners in federal pens would still be guarded, The tax people (IRS) will keep right on aggravating the dickens out of Americans and, well, just about all the important stuff will continue as if nothing is going on.

What does happen is -- the non-essential government workers will get to stay home and be paid retroactively AFTER the government starts back up again. Most Americans would not notice a government shut down were it not for the press screaming it from every headline, microphone, and TV set in the nation.

Seems to me, shutting down the government would be a good thing. Heck, lets shut it down, and get rid of the non-essential government worker as we recommended above. That, alone, ought to save a whopping amount of money for the treasury.

Certainly, you know that a government shut down does not include sending Congress home. Oh, how I wish it did! The only time I feel safe, anymore, is when Congress is in recess.

See – this whole government shut down thing is a last ditch democrat dirty trick hatched up just in case they DID lose control of the government last November. They continued to push back approving a budget until it fell into the lap of a republican House of Representatives … just as it was planned. Now, the dems believe, they can make hay from the “don’t care” stigma smeared on the Republican Party by themselves and the mainstream media, which, as you know by now, THEY control.

But wait! Something is wrong. Something is not working as it was supposed to work.

Oh, drats! Turns out the American people actually DO want the government’s reckless spending cut back… even if it entails a shutdown of the government itself! Why, that tosses a mean spanner into the cogs, what?

Oh, joy! It turns out those DUMB Tea Partiers are not as dumb as the Mainstream Media and the democrats thought. Those people actually DO know how the government works. They DO know their constitution; and they DO know how to thwart the machinations of the liberal-socialists in the government. As a result, blow back from the electorate has splashed all over the democrats and they are beginning to question the wisdom of forcing a government shutdown.

Now the ball is in Obama’s court. He is the one person in the US government all eyes will be gazing upon if there is a shutdown.

In my opinion, all American voters should be standing in their chairs, yelling at the top of their lungs, demanding a shutdown of the US government until we can get spending under control.

A government shutdown is a GOOD thing, a useful thing, and an essential tool to help us save this country.

So bring it on. Let’s learn whose jobs are essential and whose are not -- and get rid of the non-essential workers as the first order of business.

Now that I have had my fun, allow me to say that I don’t believe either side, dems or repubs have what it takes to get our national budget in order. I am convinced that the US economy WILL crash as a result of the lack of courage of the men and women who are running it into the ground.

When the economy goes so will the government. Only God, Himself, knows what kind of government we will have when the smoke clears. But I WILL venture an educated guess: a communist government. (Notice: I didn’t say “a socialist government!”)

The last two generations of Americans have been prepared in the public schools for this eventuality. They KNOW that socialism/communism is a far better form of government that a representative constitutional republic. They know that because they have been taught that.

It certainly seems that only the American people are interested in saving America. It is obvious America’s government is not.

J. D. Longstreet

Impatient Americans ... Alan Caruba

Impatient Americans
By Alan Caruba

Americans are an impatient people. There’s a reason why every manner of labor-saving device was invented here and why we are in love with every kind of device that lets us instantly communicate with one another.

In an earlier era, it might have taken longer for a majority of Americans to realize just how awful President Obama’s legislative and other policy initiatives were for the nation, but a plethora of punditry on countless Internet websites and blogs alerted them even while the mainstream media was trying to deceive them as they had with their support for candidate Obama.

As an aside, media prognosticators are predicting that daily newspapers are essentially all dinosaurs and many, if not most, will be gone in a decade or so. The general rule is that new technology, the Internet, drives out old technology, dead-tree newspapers.

The other factor is that most daily newspapers with their liberal outlook have simply been abandoned by subscribers who have tired of seeking real news amidst the propaganda. Prediction: none of the news weeklies will be around in five years or less. When even the National Enquirer and Star Magazine are filling for bankruptcy protection, you know the times they are changing. Survivors, however, may be the nation’s many weekly newspapers because, like politics, all news is local.

Impatience with a Congress that was so clearly out of touch with most constituents has resulted in a historic turnover of power to the Republican Party and it is a far more humble party than its heyday during George W. Bush’s two terms, the latter of which saw Americans return Democrats to power.

Americans had already grown weary of the war in Iraq that had begun in 2003 and had little enthusiasm for the nation’s military involvement in Afghanistan since 2001. Throughout history, great empires have fallen because they got over-extended in such conflicts.

Making matters worse for any administration is the growing perception that the Middle East is psychotic; a place where reason takes a backseat to a seventh century religion that dominates its politics and social life. Watching Muslims blow up mosques filled with other Muslims is sufficient to convince many Americans that no amount of military power or billions in foreign aid will change anything.

Only one nation in the Middle East poses any kind of military threat and that is Iran. The minute it actually acquires nuclear weapons will be the hour in which Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and various Gulf States sit down at the table with Israel to discuss and plan ridding itself of this threat. The Iranian leadership—not its people—are certifiably crazy.

Americans will be looking to a Republican controlled House to rid the nation of Obamacare and begin to address over-spending, joblessness, and other issues, but the next two years will be spent in triage, trying to stop the bleeding until the patient can make it to the operating room and that will require the election of a new president and a Republican Senate.

So Americans are going to have to strive to be patient while the many Republican governors redistrict their states to aid a victory in 2012. They will have to content themselves with legislative maneuvers to defund Obamacare or remove many of its more noxious mandates. Also on the To-Do list will be to put the Environmental Protection Agency in manacles before it utterly destroys the economy with crazed greenhouse gas emissions regulations.

There is little that can be done to turn around the decades-old disastrous energy policies that have stalled the construction of the many new coal-fired and nuclear plants needed to provide the electricity that is the very breath of life to the nation. The Obama administration will also continue to thwart any oil exploration and drilling, and how much of a priority this will be in the new Congress is unknown.

Meanwhile the White House has announced that, upon his return from India, President Obama will sit down with the Republican leadership of the House along with their Democrat counterparts including the noxious Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. It is likely to be little more than a photo-op because this president is deaf to partisanship or the reversal of his plans to destroy the nation.

This means that that a less frightening two years is ahead with the hope of real change in 2012. The economy is barely improving and is likely to remain stagnant, even with the extension of the Bush tax cuts. A Mount Everest of federal regulations will have to be eliminated to get the economy moving again.

And then there are the unknown and unpredictable “events” that will occur. 9/11 was one such event in 2001.

On September 18, 2008, there was a little reported electronic run on U.S. banks that withdrew $550 billion before the Federal Reserve stepped in to stop it. It blew away the charade of the nation’s housing market that involved Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Privatizing both should be a GOP priority. Americans have yet to have been told who withdrew those billions.

Other events over which there is no control such as hurricanes, earthquakes and volcanoes could play a role. We’ve seen how the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico undermined confidence in the Obama administration.Two years isn’t really that long a time, but a lot can happen and it will call for patience and perseverance.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Tea Party Terrifies The Mainstream Media

Tea Party Terrifies The Mainstream Media
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

In less than three weeks Americans go to the polls determined to change the federal government back to a responsive, responsible, government, which actually HAS the consent of the governed.

The Mainstream Media is flat-out “hacked-off” by this unparalleled behavior by the people they, too often in the past, have counted as sheep to be led by their left-wing propaganda which they have spoon fed the masses with their pabulum presses and mediocre “news” broadcasts.

The American public is NOT responding and NOT behaving as it is supposed to, and they are frightened.

See – this Tea Party “thing” was never supposed to happen. Nosiree! Just as they have for decades, the American public was supposed to act -- and re-act -- based upon the propaganda fed them by the Mainstream Media. Not THIS time.

It seems the MSM had not factored in an extremely important part of Americans lives today. The Internet.

No longer are Americans shackled to their TV sets at 6:30 PM, or their newspapers at the breakfast table. Now, with the Internet, Americans are plugged into news from around the world on a 24-hour basis. Often the news is “raw.” In other words, it has not been filtered through editors.

And then there are the “citizen journalists.” Oh, THAT is a term the newsies absolutely HATE! For years now members of the MSM have declared there is no such thing as a citizen journalist. All the while those citizens journalists were plying their trade 24 hours a day on the Internet, directly under the noses of the MSM. In other words, those news amateurs were doing the jobs of the MSM. While “raw” their reports were reaching hundreds of thousands of readers hours, and even days, before those same reports appeared in the print and broadcast media.

It did not take the public long to learn there was a constant source of news right at their fingertips anytime they wanted it. That was when the MSM learned they were in BIG TROUBLE!

Then something called a “Web Log” was born. The two words were soon contracted into the single word “Blog” and those who wrote in those “Blogs” became known as “Bloggers.”

The problem with the bloggers was, and remains, that they tend to tell their readers, right up front, where lies their bias. Bloggers do not tend to proclaim themselves non-biased. In fact, they oftimes go out of their way to make it clear to readers whether they are conservative, or liberal, right wing, or left wing. Turns out that was a smart move. It also turns out that readers are comfortable with that knowledge. They can go directly to their favorite conservative blog, or news source or their favorite liberal blog or news source and not have to wade through all the “blather” from the political philosophy they abhor.

Then there is the communications afforded by the Internet which is instantaneous, 24-hours a day 7-days a week. Americans could, for the first time, have a never-ending conversation with each other about anything they wanted.

As it turned out, many Americans wanted to swap political ideas. They began to form into online communities. That’s when the American electorate really found its power.

Soon after the election of 2006, Americans found their government had gone rogue. “Rogue” in the sense that it was no longer responsive to the wishes and desires of the electorate. As the months and years passed the Congress became less and less connected to its constituents. They simply forgot or chose to ignore the fact that they govern with the consent of the governed.

That was when the American electorate decided to use the power they had (with the Internet) to form a resistance movement which would confuse the legislators efforts and if not render them impotent, then certainly slow them down in their efforts to transform America into some sort of excremental socialist nightmare.

Today the landscape of the cyber sphere is littered with portals for all kinds and sorts of political philosophies and organizations. If not the most powerful, then certainly ONE of the most powerful turned out to be the Tea Party.

Demanding that the United States be returned to its status as a constitutional, representative, republic the Tea Party grew with the ferocity of a wind swept prairie fire until it became a juggernaut of like-minded Americans with one goal in mind: to rescue America from the clutches of a government drunk on power.

The power of the Tea Party has influenced primary elections across the country and are now set to rearrange the US House of Representatives and, quite possibly, the US Senate, as well, while plans for the drive to retire the US President loom dead ahead.

There is little to prevent the Tea Party from becoming a third powerful political party in America should the new Congress fail to live up to their expectations in the next few months. It is possible they could replace the Republican Party just as the Republican Party replaced the Whig Party a century and a half, or so, ago.

All of this can be traced back to the arrogance of BOTH political parties in America and to the elite Mainstream Media and their continued support of left wing politics.

The Tea Party reflects the unique American trait of revolution based on the ballot box rather than the cartridge box.

No matter what your feelings about the Tea Party happen to be, this is an important and historical moment in American history. It has shaken the world of the Mainstream Media to the core. They are confused and frightened. They still don’t get that this is America and when American feel their freedom is under attack, they will, as ever, fight back.

J. D. Longstreet

Obama’s Invisible Homeless and Hungry

Obama’s Invisible Homeless and Hungry
By Alan Caruba

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The most enduring images of the Great Depression from 1929 through to the beginning of World War II for America in 1941 were those of homeless people, hobo camps, and of soup kitchens to feed the hungry.

During the Reagan years, the media was filled with stories of the homeless as if to refute any improvement in the economy under a conservative president. These days, however, as America’s national debt and deficit continues to spiral out of control, the poor and the hungry remain largely unseen and, most significantly, largely unreported.

About the only thing one can find on the White House website with regard to homelessness are statements about the way “green jobs” will solve the problem. The first stimulus package, however, increased the amount of money that the nation’s food banks received in 2009 so someone involved understood America has a problem.

The New York Times reported “a $100 million windfall of extra food…” Also reported was that “requests for emergency food assistance were up by 30 percent in 2008 over the previous year”, but the financial crisis did not occur until late into the last year of the second Bush term.

As the recession took hold one food pantry organizer noted that “the next layer of people” were showing up; “a rapidly expanding group of child-care workers, nurse’s aides, real estate agents and secretaries who are facing a financial crisis for the first time.”

A recent study by Mathematica Policy Research revealed that in 2009 more than 37 million low-income people were receiving emergency food assistance through a network of pantries, kitchens, and shelters. Recipients represented “a broad cross-section of America, including 14 million children and three million elderly.”

“Approximately 40 percent white, 34 percent were Afro-American, and 20 percent were Hispanic.” Though 36 percent of recipient households had one working adult, ten percent were homeless.”

“Most of the organizations providing assistance in the network were faith-based” and I can recall the outcry when the Bush administration undertook to provide funding to these organizations.

While the media reporting seems limited to official government statistics, currently citing unemployment at 9.4 percent, most observers believe that it is far closer to 17 percent and that figure would actually exceed the Depression era.

There were no safety nets in the 1930s. Ironically, the programs put in place, Social Security, and later Medicare, are now all but bankrupt or soon will be. At the time they were instituted there were approximately sixteen workers paying into the system for every recipient, but now it is down to two workers per recipient and these programs represent both a high level of taxation and an increasing drain on the nation’s economy as demographic changes increase the numbers eligible for them.

Entitlement programs, along with defense, represent half of the nation’s annual budget. The proposed Obama budget is widely regarded as bizarre for the amount of spending it proposes.

In its first year, the Obama administration largely ignored joblessness in order to pursue a vastly expanded Medicare “reform” whose details, whenever they became known, generated a massive backlash from Americans who rightly saw the program as an effort to take over one sixth of the nation’s economy, putting it under federal control.

Political observers all say that the Obama administration will now “pivot” and concentrate on jobs as the major issue this year. The Democrat controlled Congress, however, is doing little to adopt the factors that contribute to job creation.

Virtually all economists recommend a reduction in the tax on U.S. corporations, currently among the highest in the world, rendering them less competitive and unable to expand their workforce.

Beyond that, the great economic engine of small businesses have seen minimum wage requirements increase and a host of other regulations that punish all businesses when they are forced to lay off or fire employees; both discourage hiring. Meanwhile, huge pension and other benefits for unionized government related jobs are bankrupting the states.

The “solutions” of the FDR years did nothing to relieve the Great Depression and are widely seen as having extended it. These same “solutions” are being pushed by the Obama administration, particularly in regard to increased taxation at the worst possible time.

For now the homeless and hungry will remain invisible to most Americans, but the media will be able to ignore it for only so long and then it will have to be addressed.

Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

Let the Great Global Warming Cover-Up Begin! ... by Alan Caruba

Let the Great Global Warming Cover-Up Begin!
By Alan Caruba
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Now that some enterprising and possibly conscience-stricken soul has served up the emails and other data of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, revealing the deliberate efforts to hide the corrupted research that justifies the “global warming” fraud, all the various journalists and alleged climate scientists who have been a party to it are trying desperately to cover up or minimize the scandal.

Others like the U.S. “Climate Czar” Carol Browner have announced their faith in the disputed data, but Browner, who served as EPA Director in the Clinton administration has never shown any interest in honest science and is not likely to have left a paper trail in her present position. No word yet from Obama’s loony “Science Czar”, John Holdren.

The truth is, those closely allied with the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have been suppressing the real science, substituting their own corrupted data, and trying to avoid the process of “peer review” by which other scientists, the real ones, can test the data for accuracy and validity.

Thousands of real scientists have signed petitions over the years demanding that global warming claims be submitted to rigorous examination.

The Heartland Institute, a non-profit, free market think tank, spent—-for them-—an enormous amount of money to put on international conferences that brought together top scientists who demonstrated how utterly false the IPCC, CRU and other data was, but the mainstream media simply mocked their effort.

Initially, the culprits at the CRU claimed that their computers had been “hacked”, but many others believe that the data and emails had already been culled by CRU insides for the purpose of removing it from any impending investigation.

In England, its Freedom of Information Act, similar to that in the U.S., had been used to demand the data supporting the global warming theory which, at one point, Phil Jones, the CRU director, claimed had been “lost.” Reportedly, Jones has attracted more than $22 million in grants to the CRU for climate research!

His colleague, Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, became famous for concocting a “hockey stick” graph that depicted a sudden rise in the Earth’s temperature that was later revealed to have been falsified, but these concoctions have been used for decades by the IPCC to claim that global warming is real and on-going.

The prevailing belief now is that the emails and data were already on a disk that a conscience-stricken CRU staffer decided to make available on the Internet for all to see and examine before it too became “lost.”

You can be sure, however, that the global warming journalists whose careers have been based on furthering the fraud will continue to emphasize the “hacking” theory to suggest this “stolen” data lacks merit and those using it, the so-called “skeptics” and “deniers” are still not to be trusted.

In the U.S. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) who has been the lone voice in the Senate debunking “global warming” has called for an investigation. Chris Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank, has already filed three Notices of Intent to File Suit against NASA and its Goddard Institute for Space Studies that, for three years, has refused to provide documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act.

In the United States, James E. Hansen, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute, got the “global warming” hysteria going in the 1980s when he testified before Congress that his research revealed an incipient catastrophe if the U.S. did not significantly reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions that he said were causing “global warming.” The result was that NASA has averaged more than $1 billion each year since 1995 for climate research.

Estimates of the amount of money the U.S. has spent on all manner of “research” and related programs peg the figure at $50 billion or more. That’s a lot of money for something that was NOT happening and in 1998 the Earth entered a natural cooling cycle; one in which we’re likely be for two decades more or longer.

All of this is exacerbated by the fact that the President of the United States will briefly attend the forthcoming December UN Conference of the Parties on Climate Change being held in Copenhagen. He has made it clear that he believes the false data put forth by the IPCC and wants the U.S. to sign a treaty that would yield U.S. sovereignty to the United Nations.

President Obama has repeatedly said the United States has to reduce its CO2 emissions, the mantra of the global warming liars. It would destroy what's left of our battered, debt-ridden economy.

So a major cover-up will be the objective of the U.S. news media that has pushed “global warming” for years with one scare story after another aimed at energy producers and users.

The battle now is to force the mainstream media to tell the truth about “global warming” and to find out just how many billions of taxpayers dollars have been squandered on junk climate science and policies detrimental to the nation.

As for President Obama, he should just pick up his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway, give another florid speech, get on Air Force One, and come home.

Alan Caruba

The Great Newspaper Bailout

“The Great Newspaper Bailout”
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Congress is looking into bailouts for the media.

There are some important aspects of the debate that you must consider.

For an important article on the possibility of a government bailout of the media CLICK HERE.

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Conservative+Newspapers+Media+Bailout

The Demise of the Fourth Estate?

The Demise of the Fourth Estate?
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
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If there was any doubt in your mind that the mainstream media in the United States is bias toward the political left the very fact that two of the major broadcast networks in America recently refused to air any ads that were not favorable to ObamaCare should erase even the slightest among those doubts.

Talk about a “Fairness Doctrine”! Fair is when you present both sides of an issue, isn’t it? Where are the howls of protest from the government about this obviously unfair position on the part of these networks? Do you hear the commissioners at the FCC complaining about the one-sided policy of these networks? No, and I dare say you will not!

Years ago, I found that to get anything approaching a balanced report of news in America one had to go to “off-shore” sources. Many Americans frequent news sites in Australia, Israel, and Western Europe, including the UK in order to get reliable reports on what is happening in America. How sad IS that?

“Media Bias Is Real, Finds UCLA Political Scientist” is the title of an article you’ll find HERE. I think you will agree, after reading the article, there was little of a surprising nature in it – especially if you happen to be a conservative.

Not too long ago, the press didn’t mind allowing their bias to show. They did not deny them. In fact, they claimed them. They would push the platform of the political party they liked and the candidate or politician they liked. The larger towns and cities would have more than one newspaper and those papers would compete. Now, here is one of the differences between then and now. Back then news and editorializing were kept separate. Back then they kept the news reporting as neutral as possible, and as factual as possible. On the other hand, their editorials expressed the opinions of the publisher of the paper. Often they’d have editorial cartoons, which would support the publisher’s opinion as well. These days, however, editorial comment is mixed right in amongst the news items, sometimes within the news stories themselves.

As a result of these changes in the way media presents the so-called “news” the credibility of the news media has plummeted. In a recent survey, Pew Research found that ”just 29 percent of Americans say that news organizations generally get the facts straight, while 63 percent say that news stories are often inaccurate.” You can learn more about this in an article by Geoff Metcalf titled “Credibility of Biased Media Sinking.” HERE.

In his article, Mr. Metcalf quotes David Limbaugh as having said: “the mainstream media have finally been reduced to sputtering incoherence, as they've observed the un-deification of their anointed messiah and experienced firsthand their own diminishing relevance.” However, media malfeasance is more than just the reality check of a begrudging epiphany. The wounds suffered by the mainstream media are all self-inflicted.

As we survey the newspaper industry in America today we find that a number of leading papers are in financial trouble. There is even talk of a government bailout for newspapers! Of all the bad ideas to come out of Washington, since the election of last year, this ranks among the worst! It seems to me that for newspapers to take money from the government would make them beholden to the government. If you take the government’s money, you play by the government’s rules. How then could they ever hold government accountable to the voters? Of course, many of us are asking why the press is not holding government accountable today. The answer is simple – left wing bias.

If the press were not biased in favor of the Obama Administration, the Obama birth certificate question would have been settled a very long time ago. Africa and Hawaii would have been virtually crawling with reporters from the wire services, the broadcast media, the print media, reporters from “news” shows, etc. If he, or she, had press credentials they would be on the story right to the bitter end. But it did not -- and has not -- happened. Somehow, the media seems to think the public did not notice. But we did. Their reluctance to say, or do, anything that might reflect badly on Obama, or his administration, has damaged what was left of their credibility immeasurably.

At the moment I cannot see how the media can regain any of it’s lost credibility. If, perhaps, they returned to the olden ways of presenting the news, as balanced news, with editorials reserved for a specific part of the newspaper, and broadcast media separating and clearly defining editorials within a “newscast, that would certainly be a start -- but ONLY a start. As so many other commentators have already said the wounds the news media is suffering are self inflicted. If there is to be healing, the healing must come from within the news industry. Unfortunately for the media, they have yet to acknowledge their own culpability in what may be the demise of the news industry, as we know it today. As an old “news hound,” I find that very sad, indeed.

J. D. Longstreet

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Conservative+Liberal+Press+Media+Bias

How Is Obama Doing So Far?

So… How’s Obama Doing??? HUH???
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet***********************************

Awful! Just awful! That’s how he is doing!

In a few short months, just over half a year in office, Obama has managed to wreck the economy, and lay an unspeakable tax burden on our children, our grandchildren, and quite possibly - our great-grandchildren, as well.

Obama, in league with Pelosi and Reid and their fellow socialists in the US Congress, have sure as heck brought change, all right! Boy, have they EVER!

As we look back over the past seven months, now, we can see the devastation left in the wake of the liberal/socialist/”progressive” battlestar as it smashed its way through an unsuspecting America looting the treasury as it went.

Why, just look at the money the Obama government has spent! Worse even than the squandered money is the power they have accrued unto themselves. As they repealed welfare reform and scared the American people half to death with their manic drive to chain America’s sick and elderly to a socialized form of healthcare we Americans don’t want and forcing worried American citizens to take to the streets of the capital city in a mass protest scheduled for September 12th.

Oh, but that is just a part of the sorry story of America’s worse president - ever! There is the Cap and Trade bill, which, if passed through the US Senate, will drive every American’s gas, fuel oil, and electricity costs through the roof. At the same time, industry will be dealt a lethal blow forcing many industries to close plants and lay off workers thus driving up unemployment and demoralizing some of the most productive workers on the planet.

And look what he has done for America overseas. He has managed to tick-off the UK and India and is doing a major “suck-up” job on our enemies such as Russia, Iran, Syria, and Venezuela to our south, just to name a few.

Over at the Federal Communications Commission, the stage is being set to institute a stealth Fairness Doctrine to clear the radio airwaves of conservative talk shows. Of course, they will deny it, but when you fan away enough of the smoke, you can see it quite clearly.

What we are seeing develop, dear reader, is a country far different from the America with a representative republican form of government the forefathers of this once great land envisioned when they founded it. What we are seeing is a socialist state aborning! Socialism is the incurable cancer of nations. It rots the soul, the spirit, and the heart out of all nations so hapless as to allow it to get a foothold within its government. You have heard it said that the very foundations of America are under attack. And it is true.
As we survey the wreckage of this beloved land we would suggest that those of you who believe in the power of prayer, should begin fervently to pray to God to intervene and save this last great hope of mankind on this planet. America has never, I repeat, never been in the peril she finds herself today, not even during the Great War for Southern Independence, nor the Second World War, nor the 40-year-long Cold War when soviet missiles were pointed down our throats from only ninety miles away.

It is becoming clearer as the days of the Obama Administration increase that the American electorate has made a monumental blunder - a historic mistake – and, as a result, we have an anomaly in the oval office. It is beginning to appear that the only recourse we have is to plead with the Republican senators to shut the US Senate down and allow no legislation to pass until after the next election in 2010. It can be done procedurally and as an American citizen concerned over what I see as a socialist takeover of this nation, I personally plead with the Republican minority leader in the Senate to do just that.

In the meantime I will resort to that age-old practice of calling on Providence, in His mercy, to intervene and save America from herself.

J. D. Longstreet.

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cap-and-trade+ Democrats+ healthcare reform+ mainstream media+ President Obama+ public relations" rel="tag">Conservative+cap-and-trade+ Democrats+ healthcare reform+ mainstream media+ President Obama+ public relations

The September 12th March on Washington

The September 12th March on Washington

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On Saturday, September 12th, 2009, thousands of grassroots patriotic Americans will march on Washington, D.C. for the largest "tea party" in history -- the 09.12.09 March on Washington.

What’s happening in America? Well, it looks to this scribe as if Americans are fed-up with the worse government we have had in the history of this nation and they’re going to Washington to tell them so!

The folks over at www.gather.com/ say the following: “The politicians in Washington, D.C. take our hard-earned money with taxes and inflation. Then they bail out their buddies in the banks with $700 Billion of our money. Then they bail out their buddies in the auto industry... before taking over the biggest ones. Then they pass a so-called "stimulus bill" that is nothing more than a HUGE piece of pork. Then they try to pass the largest tax increase in history with their fake-environmental "cap and tax" bill.

THEN... they try to take over the American healthcare system, and try to ram socialized medicine down our throats. We've had enough, and we're NOT taking it any more. The "sleeping giant" is waking up." Read the article HERE.

Let’s take a look at a press release from FreedomWorks:

FreedomWorks Taxpayer March on Washington Scheduled for September 12, 2009

“WASHINGTON - (Business Wire) Over the last six months the national debt skyrocketed by nearly $3 trillion. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, our national debt will more than double by 2019. Americans will have to pay for this stratospheric spending spree first by begging foreign nations to buy our bonds, and later through higher taxes and inflation.

Grassroots anger at the inability of Washington to live within a budget has been building for some time, and began to boil over in late 2007 as the Bush Administration and Treasury Secretary Paulson abandoned their claimed free market principles to bail out automakers and Wall Street banks through TARP.

When newly elected President Obama and his allies in Congress passed the $780 billion debt stimulus plan in February 2009, activists took to the streets.

On tax day, the tea party movement began in earnest. Until now the movement has remained at the local levels. No longer will that be the case. The movement is coming to Washington on September 12, 2009 for a march and rally at the US Capitol.

From autos to banking, the government is crowding out the private sector of our economy. Where Bush bailed out the private sector, Obama is making hostile government takeovers. Ignoring our multi trillion-dollar deficit, Washington is considering a massive new energy tax and a takeover of health care.

On Saturday, September 12th FreedomWorks will be joined by over ten thousands of liberty-loving activists to take a stand against politicians who are bankrupting our future. National co-sponsors include Tea Party Patriots, ResistNet, National Taxpayers Union, Americans For Tax Reform, Young Americans for Liberty, Ayn Rand Center, Campaign for Liberty, Free Republic, Young America’s Foundation, Smart Girl Politics, and The Club for Growth.

The event will kick-off on September 10th and 11th with various events throughout Washington including grassroots leadership training and Capitol Hill visits. The three-day event culminates on September 12th as taxpayers march on the Capitol building.

For more information, including media inquiries, registration, contacting event coordinators, and the schedule of events, please visit our event website at http://www.912dc.org/.” You can check this site out for yourself HERE.

Over at http://www.912dc.org/ the folks say this: “It’s time to take the tea party movement directly to Washington, D.C. Please join thousands of local organizers and grassroots Americans from across the country as we gather in our nation’s capital to deliver a message to the politicians: Enough!

We’ve had enough of the out of control spending, the bailouts, the growth of big government, and the soaring deficits. And we reject the future tax increases to pay for all of this spending and debt down the road. We are gathering on 9-12-2009 to deliver our message in person that we’ve had enough!”

Sounds as if these folks are determined to be heard - and to get their point across by taking their protest directly to the nation’s front yard. It is about time! When Moses won’t come to the mountain, then the mountain must go to Moses!

I have been on this earth a long time and I don’t recall ever experiencing a US government as disconnected from the people of the nation as is this government.

Now the fun begins! By the “fun” I mean watching the Mainstream Media trying their very best to ignore this building crescendo of citizen protest. Oh, make no mistake about it. The MsM will make every effort to ignore or “play down” this March on Washington. For if people turn up in vast numbers it will make the media look extremely bad!

It was a Tea Party in Boston that helped get this experiment we call America off and running. Now it is a Tea Party in the capitol of the nation the original tea party helped spawn that may, very well, play a part in saving that experiment!

I have only a couple, or three, questions: Whose got the tar? And whose got the feathers? And, oh yeah, the rails! Whose got the rails? Huh?

J. D. Longstreet

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Conservative+Democrats+Healthcare-reform+MsM+Obama

Watch For The Signs! ... Alan Caruba

Watch for the Signs
By:Alan Caruba

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There are some lessons one learns from a life spent first as a journalist and then for many decades as a public relations professional. You cannot succeed in PR if you cannot spot the early signs that the media herd is heading in one direction or the other.

It was obvious from the beginning that the mainstream media (MSM) fell in love with Barack Obama. Like Chris Matthews, it was a complete crush. Obama was the anti-Hillary, come to save America from her shrill voice and to redeem our sad history of racism.

At this point, however, it is just as obvious that he has managed to say and do any number of things that have aroused the distrust of the all but the 28% of those convinced he is a dandy President. The rest no longer feel that way.

The MSM is presently sticking its finger in the wind to find out which way it is blowing. They are checking Rasmussen and Gallup polls. Once they conclude that Obama is unpopular to a point beyond which they can no longer obscure or influence, they will do what all fearless MSM do; they will begin to gang up on him.

By the time Jimmy Carter left office, even the Peanut Farmer’s Gazette was glad to see him go.
Watch the signs. The week that either (or both) Time Magazine and Newsweek publish a cover story asking, “What Went Wrong?” or “Healthcare Reform is Very Sick” or anything similar that suggests—gasp!—Obama has suffered a major political setback, you can be confident that, in their editorial board offices amidst leather chairs and a huge polished mahogany table, someone will have intoned, “It’s not going well for Obama.”

The other beacon to watch is, of course, The New York Times. When Maureen Dowd can tear herself away from berating Sarah Palin to say an unkind word about Barack Obama, you know the beginning of the end will have arrived. When Paul Krugman thinks out loud that maybe a three trillion dollar debt is probably not a good idea, the banana peel will have been thrown into the Rose Garden.When the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson can no longer find an excuse for Barack Obama’s blunders and inability to sell a very bad healthcare reform and even worse Cap-and-Trade tax on energy, you might as well break out your GOP lapel pin and start to wear it in public.

There’s a reason for the rapid demise of the Obama Dream. It’s called reality.

Americans are not great fans of those who spend all of their time “apologizing” for the U.S.A. and blaming others for why the job they wanted has turned out to be a real stinker. It is now Obama’s foreign policy, Obama’s economy, and Obama’s gay rights agenda. Despite all the “green shoots” and other alleged signs that the economy is getting better, real people know it’s not.
Coming to a town near you or maybe your street, will be more mortgage foreclosures. Banks are being closed and their assets sold to other banks, but while that is a palliative measure to protect customers, it doesn’t change the fact that credit flow is still a trickle. A credit card meltdown is likely on the way. Job losses? Yes, that too.

Plainly speaking, the federal government is running out of monetary tricks to make the Recession go away. It will never dawn on them to actually cut spending. It is only now just dawning on them that the public hates the billion-dollar “bailouts” and “stimulus” bills.

The MSM is shedding jobs as if a plague has struck their newsrooms. And it has. First they shed their credibility as objective and reliable sources of news and now they are shedding consumers of news who prefer Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.

We are all just weeks from the first significant cracks in the MSM herd mentality regarding Barack Obama, his ever growing circle of “czars”, and those wacky Congress critters like Pelosi and Reid. By the end of the year, the MSM will desert him.

As a PR Counselor, I would advise Obama to say something critical about al Qaeda’s perpetrators of 9/11 and not blame the victims when that anniversary comes around. Otherwise, he’ll be able to watch the slow drift of the MSM turn into a stampede.

Alan Caruba

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Conservative+Democrats+Healthcare-reform+MsM+Obama