Daily Archives: August 9, 2011

08/9/11

Post Runs Hatchet Job on Bachmann From Palin-basher

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

If liberal New York Times columnist Joe Nocera can apologize for comparing Tea Party activists to terrorists, then The Washington Post can and should apologize for pretending that Nicolle Wallace is someone who should be taken seriously by Republicans. The Post ran a Wallace article on Sunday claiming that Michele Bachmann is too conservative to be president, in part because of her association with the Tea Party.

Wallace was headlined as the “former Bush aide” and adviser to the McCain-Palin campaign. The article was the lead in the popular Post Sunday “Outlook” section of opinion.

Bachman, wrote Wallace, “holds views that are outside the political mainstream and is unlikely to emerge as her party’s nominee—and even less likely to beat Obama.” This comes near the end of a column that pretends to be pro-Bachmann by noting that she is running a good campaign.

Coming just days before the Iowa straw poll and Republican presidential debate, this was the Post’s way of warning Republicans who embrace Bachmann that she will be an ultimate loser and should therefore be shunned.

But Wallace is a notorious Sarah Palin-basher who objects to conservative social and economic views. Wallace calls Palin “prickly” and “cynical” and someone to be “exposed.”

In fact, Wallace worked, as a campaign insider, to sabotage Palin during the 2008 campaign. The story was told in Palin’s book about the campaign, Going Rogue, where Wallace is depicted as someone determined to get her on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric so that she could be sandbagged by the left-wing anchorwoman. Wallace had worked for CBS.

Wallace surfaced last year as a sponsor of a fundraiser for a pro-homosexual group called American Foundation for Equal Rights.

Wallace uses her “Republican” credentials to bash conservative Republicans, especially if they are conservative women who hold traditional views of marriage and the family.

In regard to Bachmann’s economic positions, Wallace writes, apparently with alarm, that, “She formed the Tea Party Caucus, opposed the bailout and stimulus bills, and is leading the effort to repeal President Obama’s health-care reforms.”

What’s more, Wallace writes of Bachmann, “She was one of the first Republican presidential candidates to voice her opposition to raising the debt ceiling and was one of nine Republicans who voted against the House GOP’s ‘cut, cap and balance’ bill because it did not go far enough. She voted no on the final debt-ceiling compromise, and unlike some of her competitors for the nomination, she communicated her objections consistently and loudly throughout the debate.”

What Wallace is doing is making a principled conservative sound or look extreme, in order to make Republican voters in Iowa and elsewhere believe that she is unelectable. But the facts are not in the article to support the thesis.

The headline over the print version of the article was, “How Bachmann is outrunning Palin—and Hillary.” The on-line version carried the headline, “What Michele Bachmann learned from Sarah Palin—and Hillary Clinton.” Both headlines seemed complimentary of Bachmann. It is the hook that is supposed to draw readers to the article and conclude that while Bachmann has run a good campaign, she cannot win because she is too extreme.

The Palin book is important in setting the record straight about Wallace and other McCain advisers. As we noted in a previous column, Palin reveals in her book that during the 2008 campaign she discussed homosexual issues with the McCain advisers and made it clear that she opposed gay marriage. After McCain went down to defeat, McCain senior campaign adviser Steve Schmidt gave a speech to the Log Cabin Republicans, a homosexual group, endorsing gay marriage.

And this seems to be why Wallace, a gay rights supporter, is determined to undercut Bachmann’s successful campaign.

Getting to the nub of the matter, Wallace later writes that Bachmann’s husband’s counseling practice “was found to have offered treatment to gay individuals that included prayer to ‘cure’ homosexuality” and that “Bachmann’s poll numbers rose steadily amid the media scrutiny of Marcus Bachmann’s professional offerings and outrage from across the political spectrum.”

Except for the reference to Bachmann continuing to enjoy rising support despite the “media scrutiny,” this is complete nonsense. The attack on Marcus Bachmann originated with a gay rights group that used a major media reporter, ABC’s Brian Ross, to attack the documented record of firms such as Bachmann’s in counseling individuals to reject homosexuality within a religious context. This approach is used for homosexual-oriented individuals seeking to change. And many have done so, as the thousands of ex-homosexuals attest.

It is a variation of the same spiritual approach used to help people reject drugs or alcohol.

It is clear that Wallace’s idea of the “political spectrum” does not include traditional conservatives. That is why she finds Bachmann to be outside of the “political mainstream.”

Wallace’s bio says that she lives in New York City and Connecticut with her husband, Mark, a former Ambassador to the United Nations, and their dog. While she has appeared on some Fox News programs, she seems more at home on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show, where Maddow is always eager to bash conservatives and to divide the Republican ranks.

Indeed, one of Wallace’s appearances on the Maddow show is highlighted on Wallace’s home page. This tells us all that we need to know.

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism, and can be contacted at [email protected].

08/9/11

Republicans Boost Al-Jazeera

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Michael Calderone, the senior media reporter for The Huffington Post, has written an article which appears on the website of Arab American News that appears to “credit” Senator John McCain for helping get carriage for Al-Jazeera English (AJE) on Time Warner cable in New York.

He writes that “…U.S. political leaders have had far more praise for the network’s on-the-ground reporting around the globe. In March, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called AJE ‘real news’ for its coverage of the Arab Spring protests. Two months later, both House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) attended a dinner for the network and spoke glowingly about its impact on the revolutions sweeping the Middle East and North Africa.”

Meantime, an Al-Jazeera contributor, Republican David Ramadan, who supported McCain for president, is running for the newly created 87th House of Delegates seat in the Commonwealth of Virginia and seems poised to win. He has been interviewed by Al-Jazeera, which the Muslim Brotherhood describes as the “great Arab media organization,” and says that his mission includes “educating the Republican party on the Arab-American and Muslim community on what we need from candidates in order to support them.”

On August 10, former Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese is scheduled to appear on Ramadan’s behalf at a Loudoun County, Virginia, restaurant.

The Huffington Post has done its part on behalf of Al-Jazeera, as noted by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA): “Another facet of the Huffington Post’s brand of journalism is its symbiotic relationship with Qatar’s state-financed news organization Al Jazeera. In early 2011, the Huffington Post ran a series of pieces supporting Al Jazeera’s efforts to convince major American cable companies to carry its newscasts.

“From Jan. 30 to 31 alone, Huffington Post published four pieces promoting Al Jazeera, including one by Jeff Jarvis titled ‘We Want our Al Jazeera English Now’ which calls the decision not to carry Al Jazeera ‘un-American.’

“Another piece by Wadah Khanfar, the Director General of Al Jazeera, was a full page promotional piece for the network, citing its ‘Journalism of depth.’

“Khanfar has become something of a regular contributor to the Huffington Post, creating the unusual circumstance where the head of a foreign-based media source owned by an autocratic head of state serves as a guest columnist for a major American news organization.”

Calderone is nevertheless correct in his assessment of how significant McCain’s praise of the channel has been. As we noted at the time, McCain’s praise of the terror channel “was a shocker because the day before, on Sunday, The Washington Post had finally gotten around to publishing a semi-critical article on the channel, noting its double-standards and open bias on the matter of revolutions in the Middle East. The Post even acknowledged that WikiLeaks had released a U.S. cable describing the channel as a foreign policy instrument of Qatar, the Middle Eastern dictatorship which financially sponsors it and selects its personnel.”

Picking up a New York Times story by Brian Stelter about Al-Jazeera getting carriage in New York, Keach Hagey of Politico wrote, “It’s a major step forward for the awareness-raising campaign that AJE has been on since its coverage of the Arab Spring propelled it to newfound relevance this year. But so far there is no sign that the obstacles keeping the channel from achieving its true goal in the U.S.—national cable carriage—are cracking at all.”

Neither Stelter nor Hagey gave any space to critics of Al-Jazeera, an indication of how this “awareness-raising campaign” has captured the exclusive attention of these reporters, indicating that they do not want to be accused of putting obstacles in the way of its well-financed push for carriage in major U.S. media markets.

One of the big obstacles has been the channel’s anti-American and anti-Israel bias.

Interestingly, many of the concerns that we have expressed about Al-Jazeera are confirmed in a 94-page master’s thesis, “Al-Jazeera as a Political Tool within the Contradictions of Qatar,” by an Arabic-speaking Japanese graduate, Munehiro Anzawa, available on the American University in Cairo website. It is dated May 2011.

This student is able to document many of the facts that seem to have been ignored by the media cheerleaders for the channel. First—and most obvious—the channel is Arab government-funded, which obviously colors its reporting.

The student writes that “It is important to reveal how Al Jazeera’s financing by one of the most repressive governments regarding freedom of expression affects the channel’s coverage, bias, and editorial independence. It is also interesting to note that Al Jazeera’s news reporting virtually ignores the internal affairs of its financial sponsor, Qatar, or the ruling Al Thani family.”

“More significantly,” says the master’s thesis, “Al Jazeera does not seem eager to report on the internal issues of Qatar and the dirty laundry of the ruling family.”

Other important points on the subject of dirty laundry:

  • Qatar harbored Islamic radicals “such as a top commander of Al Qaeda, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of September 11, and many Arab extremists…”
  • “…according to the U.S. diplomatic cables unveiled by WikiLeaks, Qatar was the worst in counterterrorism measures in the region. Qatar’s security was ‘hesitant to act against known terrorists out of concern for appearing to be aligned with the U.S. and provoking reprisals.’”
  • “Al Jazeera frequently hosts anti-American guests and has aired propaganda against the United States both before and after September 11th.”

The academic study, however, neglects many other important points, including the fact that Al-Jazeera’s Afghan correspondent, Tayseer Alouni, went to prison in Spain for being an agent of al-Qaeda. This kind of relationship explains why Al-Jazeera has been so quick to air exclusive videos and messages from Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

The study notes that a turning point for Al-Jazeera in the U.S. came when U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised the channel for offering “real news.” The study failed to note that her husband, disgraced former president Bill Clinton, has a financial relationship with the government of Qatar and several entities in the country. The regime is a financial sponsor, listed at between $1 and $5 million, of the William J. Clinton Foundation.

In mid-May it was revealed by Hagey at Politico that McCain had praised Al-Jazeera, becoming a shill for the terror channel. It appears that McCain was using the channel, or perhaps the channel was using him, in order to affect regime change in Libya. As a result, Islamists are poised to take control of the country.

We pointed out at the time, “McCain’s praise of Al-Jazeera was also curious because the channel, during the 2008 presidential campaign, had savaged the McCain-Palin ticket by running a piece depicting Republican voters as country bumpkins and racists. Casey Kaufmann, the Al-Jazeera reporter who did the story, contributed $500 to the Obama-for-president campaign, a violation of basic standards of journalism ethics.”

Additional research has turned up the fact that David Ramadan, a member of the Virginia delegation and Arab-American delegate to the Republican National Convention in 2008, told Al-Jazeera about his support for McCain in an article that appeared under the direct headline, “Why I support John McCain.” He wrote, “McCain is a reformer, McCain is pro-immigration, McCain is a centrist. McCain supports the US finishing the trouble that George Bush got the US into in Iraq.”

Ramadan is running for the newly created 87th House of Delegates seat in the Commonwealth of Virginia and the Republican primary election takes place on August 23. His website boasts an endorsement from House Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor, a Jewish conservative, and other prominent Republicans. Appointed by Governor Robert McDonnell to serve on the Board of Visitors of George Mason University (GMU), he says he is an example of living the American dream. He has lived in Virginia since 1989.

However, Ramadan’s bio also says that he is a “frequent commentator” on networks such as Al-Jazeera.

Pamela Geller, author of the new book, Stop the Islamization of America, suggests Ramadan is a Muslim Brotherhood candidate. Writing at Big Peace, Kent Clizbe, a former CIA counter-terrorism ops officer, says that Ramadan has mysterious foreign connections that deserve serious scrutiny.

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism, and can be contacted at [email protected].

08/9/11

Strutting the SlutWalk

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

I must confess, I know next to nothing about the ‘SlutWalk’ fad. But then, I’m not a feminist. So, after dealing with politicians all week (the original sluts of old), I decided to look into this movement when Zombie sent me her latest pièce de résistance. And baby, there are just some things you wish you could un-see even if the photography is incredible. Sigh.

San Francisco held its maiden (sorry, can’t help myself) SlutWalk on Saturday, Aug. 6th. And no one does ‘slut’ the way city by the Bay does, trust me. SlutWalk gives feminists a forum to vent and look sexy (where sexy is in the eye of the beholder, shudder), while railing at the males of their declared species – filthy brutes who obviously want to ravage anything in a skirt. Frankly, I feel sorry for the men that are subjected to this.

Evidently this whole craze started in Canada when some feminist took offense to something a cop said somewhere to the effect of: “Women should avoid dressing like sluts.” And so they should. Voila! The SlutWalk movement was born. I’m against rape and the abuse of women as well. But when it becomes a clarion for the strange, I start wondering if someone doesn’t have too much time on their hands.

As you go through the photo montage, you’ll see humor. You’ll see anger. You’ll see perversion a la Frisco. Mix in hatred for cops and honey, you’ve got the collective Leftist strut. Right through Dolores Park.

I won’t show you some of the more ‘interesting’ shots. You’ll have to visit Pajamas Media for that sideshow. I’m still not really sure what the message is – are women sluts? Are they NOT sluts? What about men? Aliens? Politicians (oh, definitely). And there are plenty of real sluts in attendance – the oldest profession was out in force.

Everything went at this gathering: Maoists, Socialists, abortionists, anti-Christians, freaks, Leftists, progressives, collectivists, labor unions, prostitutes, children, victims, gays, male sluts and partiers.

Go to Pajamas Media and read and view the whole expose by Zombie. One things for certain. They love to watch her strut the SlutWalk.

08/9/11

The Debt Ceiling Compromise: A Closer Look

Gulag Bound
By: “Senator Bob” Smith
Accuracy In Media

The battles were epic in nature. It seemed at times as if the Capitol building itself rocked on its very foundation. It was President Ronald Reagan vs. Speaker Tip O’Neill. It was tax and spending cuts versus the big spenders.

I was proud in the mid-1980s to be “in the trenches” with Reagan in those fights to control taxes and spending. I joined Congressman Bob Walker of Pennsylvania, Bill Dannemeyer of California, and other conservatives, as we fought the taxers and spenders. The liberals spent with reckless abandon. Their left-wing media cohorts never even whimpered an objection. Those of us who tried to cut spending were called right-wing extremists. TV commercials by our opponents and editorials from the left labeled us as heartless and irresponsible people, who wanted to cut social security, throw the sick and needy out on the street and deny an education to every poor kid in America. We the people lost the fight again.

President George H.W. Bush took up the torch in the late 80s with his “Read my lips, no new taxes” pledge, which he promptly broke and we lost again. There was a brief respite under President Clinton with the so-called “peace dividend.” But spending and debt continued to rise steadily under the leadership of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama and big spenders in Congress of both political parties. The ways of Washington would not change. Spend, spend, spend was the law of the land. Leaders and parties did not matter and the debt continued to climb. Despite repeated warnings from the likes of Reagan, conservative commentators and responsible business leaders and economists, the storm clouds of economic Armageddon were ignored. The people lost again.

Then in 2010 something interesting and unique happened. A bunch of Tea Party candidates won House and Senate seats across the country. They refused to play the “Washington game” and were willing to put their re-elections on hold for the good of the country. Once seated, they challenged the establishment and insisted on real cuts in spending. They believed that a 14 trillion dollar (and climbing) debt was going to bankrupt our nation and challenged the big spending liberals and the leaders of the Republican Party to get serious in getting a handle on the deficit and the debt. They refused to allow the debt ceiling extension until they got “real cuts” in spending. They were called ignorant, amateurs and children. They were even reportedly called terrorists by the Vice-President of the United States. They were accused by the mainstream media of bringing the United States to the “brink of disaster” by holding up the debt extension.

It is interesting that in the shallow minds of the liberal media, liberals who stick to their positions are labeled principled leaders, but those in the Tea Party who “gave it their all” to change the mindset in Washington are “radical right-wingers.” President Obama constantly singled them out as irresponsible and unwilling to negotiate. The new members tried mightily. Their intentions were honorable and heroic, but they did not have the numbers to succeed. The Tea Party members made the debate interesting and lively, they kept the focus on the debt and deficit. They were not outclassed, but they were outgunned. In the end, the big spenders won again.

Down through the years of debt and spending increases, every single deal always cut next to nothing in the current fiscal year and cut a ton in the so called “out years.” Believe me, I know, because I was there to witness it all. The problem was that when we got to the “out years,” Congress changed the spending priorities again by pushing back the targets. If that “darn old can” had not just appeared in the road and those congressmen and senators had not lined up to kick it, we might have gotten a handle on the debt! Unfortunately, in the current fiscal crisis, once again Congress has “kicked the can down the road.” To suggest that we have “cut” spending with this deal is a joke.

Let’s take a closer look at those devilish details.

1. In the beginning of this debate President Obama wanted an increase in the debt ceiling and increased taxes on the “wealthiest taxpayers in America.” He did not even ask for spending cuts. After all the dust had settled, the President got an increase in the debt ceiling somewhere between 2.1 and 2.4 trillion dollars which carries him through the 2012 elections. He might even get his tax increases as well, depending on the results of the newly created committee’s conclusions and subsequent congressional votes. Contrary to what has been stated, tax increases are not off the table under the terms of the agreement.

2. Despite all of the rhetoric and hoopla, the only actual GUARANTEES of spending cuts in this bill are $7 billion this year and $10 billion over two years. To put this is in a very pathetic perspective, bear in mind that the U.S government is now spending $11 billion per day! But, wait a minute, doesn’t the agreement call for a reduction in spending of $920 billion in discretionary spending in the first tranche and another $1.5 trillion by either sequestration or the Joint Select Committee by the end of 2011?

The answer to that question is “yes, it does.” But in Washington the politicians have come up with something called “baseline budgeting.” You project an increase over current spending and then you reduce the amount of the increase and call it a cut. I fought my colleagues on this for 18 years to no avail. So, if Congress does make these reductions of $920 billion and $1.5 trillion respectively, it will mean a reduction off the baseline increase, but it is still an overall increase in government spending! Confused? That is exactly what the politicians and media want you to be. According to CBO (Congressional Budget Office) numbers, with this deal in place, the national debt will INCREASE to approximately $25 trillion by 2021. Since the current debt is nearly $15 trillion, does that sound like a decrease in spending to you?

3. As if all of the above was not bad enough, this “Debt Ceiling Compromise” creates a Joint Select Committee to do the work that Congress was elected to do. The leaders in Congress will appoint a 12 member committee, with 6 Democrats and 6 Republicans from House and Senate, to find the $1.5 billion in “cuts” (which are really the decreases in the increases under baseline budgeting). If the committee cannot agree, then 50 percent of the “cuts” will come from defense, while entitlements are left basically alone. In other words no entitlement reform again. After 50 years of presidents and Congresses not resolving the debt crisis, including the well touted, but utter failure of Gramm-Rudman, Congress stumbles up to the line and appoints a committee of its own members to deal with the crisis? Really? Politics wins and the people lose one more time.

4. None of this smoke and mirrors fooled Standard & Poor’s. For the first time in American history the bond rating of the U.S. government has been downgraded from AAA to AA+. In announcing their decision, Standard & Poor’s said that this agreement “falls short of what is needed to stabilize the nation’s long term finances.” Even worse, the United States is now rated with such nations as Taiwan and Slovenia, all because Congress was “sidetracked” by the debate over the debt ceiling and threat of default, instead of concentrating on true entitlement reform, spending cuts, tax cuts and other tax reforms and deregulation to create job growth.

5. There was a great amount of fanfare because part of the “deal” was to get a vote on a Balanced Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. I have long supported this amendment and wish that it could pass. The truth is that, with the current makeup of the House and Senate, it cannot pass. The vote and debate will be good for morale, but unfortunately, this will have to come to fruition when the American people finally decide that to get it, more supporters will have to be elected.

6. In conclusion it is very easy to “Monday morning quarterback” but what should we have done, you ask? Here are several suggestions from one who spent 18 years on the Hill fighting the growth of this debt, while being marginalized by the liberal media and many opponents and colleagues as “out of the mainstream” for advocating fiscal responsibility.

There is nothing wrong with advocating increased revenues to help us move toward a balanced budget and eventually pay down the debt. However, this should NOT be done by increasing taxes on anyone who currently pays them. We currently have a 9.1 % unemployment rate in this country. We need to put people back to work. When they work, they pay taxes. When they pay taxes, it helps the federal government move closer to a balanced budget, as long as the government does not spend more than it receives. Simply put; reducing unemployment, increases revenues. This means more workers in the pool paying taxes, but not more taxes on those who are paying now.

Contrary to the mindless theories of President Obama and the liberals in Congress and the media, the government cannot impose, nor is it responsible for, market conditions. Government has, however, established and assumed responsibility for an artificial set of rules, called taxes and regulations, under which the game is played. The more burdensome and unstable the rules, the more counterproductive they are to job growth. Granting a brief tax holiday or passing a law that may sunset in a year or two, depending upon congressional whim, merely causes uncertainty in the investor or job creator. Under these conditions, why should anyone be surprised that there is a lack of investment for job creation currently in America. This is one of the reasons for the decision to downgrade our bond ratings by Standard and Poor’s. To compound matters, President Obama made things worse with so called “stimulus” money which was falsely sold as something that would create jobs by taking more money from the current wage earners and increasing our debt and the interest on it.

In reality we all know that decades of bad fiscal policies on the part of the United States, which have created a $14 trillion debt, cannot be instantly reversed to create a balanced budget and a surplus. However, we missed a golden opportunity to turn the corner with this latest deal.

The President wanted the debt ceiling increase. We should have extracted real cuts and real reforms to give it to him. On the growth side, just for starters, we should have offered and passed a plan to eliminate capital gains, permanently eliminate inheritance taxes, eliminate taxes on interest and dividends, reduce corporate taxes and regulations on companies willing to manufacture products and to create jobs here in America and encourage companies that are sheltering hundreds of billions offshore, to bring it back under a tax amnesty on the condition that it be invested into new technologies and other ways to create jobs. We should also have put a plan in place to reduce restrictions on oil and gas drilling and exploration in America to reduce dependence on foreign countries for our fuel. At the rate and direction in which we’re headed, we could easily become a third-rate economic power before we know it, jeopardizing our standard of living.

On the spending side we should have immediately insisted on the following: Lay out a plan to balance the budget in five years or less by freezing all discretionary spending. Period. No exceptions. Keep the freeze on until the budget is balanced and longer if we can. There is ample waste in the federal government with excess and unconstitutional programs to easily do this, if we have the political will. Then direct the Budget and Finance Committees of the Congress to reform entitlements once and for all. Make them report back with specific recommendations by the end of the year. Plenty of research has already been done on this. It is time to exercise the political will to do it. Remember we cannot get to a balanced budget by just cutting discretionary spending, with nearly 80 percent of the budget in entitlement spending. Then we should pass the Balanced Budget Amendment as part of the deal. It will ensure that future congresses will not put us in this mess again.

The Tea Party has, at a minimum, changed the debate. They have been attacked and harassed by the media and the leftist politicians. They must stand firm. They are our last hope. The media and the left have cast their lot with those who would bankrupt our nation rather than face the problem now. The Tea Party must increase its numbers, renegotiate this deal and do it right. If they fail, I shudder to think of what is in store for my children and grandchildren.

Former Senator Bob Smith (R-NH), known as “Senator Bob,” is a Special Contributor to Accuracy in Media. His columns and commentaries on media and politics are available on the AIM website at www.aim.org. He can be contacted at [email protected].

08/9/11

Obama: Uncommon Sense

By: Kevin Jackson
The Black Sphere

When it comes to Obama’s budget, black is the new red. It’s difficult to predict what Obama will do next, though I’m betting on designer curtains in prison cells. Armed only with common sense, I knew that raising the debt ceiling would prove to be a dumb idea.

Obama is full of ideas that are supposed to save us, like TARP, the auto bailout and Cash for Clunkers. Apparently “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” wasn’t just for gays in the military, but “code” for Obama’s leadership style, which is rather gay.

As it turns out there was a $2T error in the budget deficit over the next 10 years—not exactly a rounding error, even in The Era of O. This error didn’t hurt Obama’s budget, but helped it, yet the S&P still lowered America’s credit. The S&P’s hypocrisy apparently does have limits.

Obama knows that America’s credit rating is not AA and is closer to a B-minus, the same rating he gave himself on his job performance. Real ratings for both: An F. Yet, the media appear shocked at the news that our credit rating was lowered, as this article indicates. $14.5T of debt with no ability to pay down the interest? The only shock is why it hadn’t happened sooner.

According to Obama, all we need is a balanced approach. Had he gotten a balanced approach when Congress passed the debt ceiling in the first place, then according to Obama, we could have avoided this nasty, mean-spirited, right-wing conspiratorial downgrade, by the Left-leaning S&P. Don’t let the fact that if everybody in America gave 100 percent of their income to the government, we still couldn’t pay our bills, influence your thoughts on this matter.

Perhaps the media actually believed Geithner when he said on Fox Business Network:

There is no chance that the U.S. will lose its top credit rating, Geithner said, forcefully disputing the notion that S&P or other ratings services might downgrade U.S. bonds from their current AAA rating… ”No risk of that, no risk.”

All this hoopla and this “downgrade” means nothing. Does any reasonable person believe that the S&P didn’t know this was coming? It’s not like we went from $2T to $15T overnight. This is like being 49 one day and 50 the next day. You are only one DAY older and were equally close to 49 as you were 50 for half the year. Laddy freakin’ da.

Anybody with common sense knows that you cut budgets when you are out of money and the U.S. is certainly out of money. So regardless of which way the debt ceiling vote went, the lowering of the credit rating should have been a foregone conclusion.

On the ‘Day of the Lord for the Left’ — Obama’s birthday, Aug 4, 2011 – the stock market responded to the insanity of raising the debt ceiling and not cutting the budget by dropping 512 points, or 4%. This was the second worst sell-off in history, the first coming on Dec 1, 2008, when the Dow dropped 679.95.

As Harry Reid has said, “It could have been worse.” He was right.

The stock market continued to “bugger” Obama, his economy and the rest of the lying, stealing, perennial parasites that make up the Left, by dropping 636 points and becoming the new second biggest stock market decline in history.

Along with being the man in charge on the three worst days in the history of the Dow (with more to come), Obama has presided over the longest Dow losing streak and the most precipitous devaluation of the dollar since the Civil War era. Further, Obama can take credit for having more people receiving welfare than any president in the history of America.

The media rather humorously asks the question: Return to recession?, in this article. Return? Seriously? If we left the recession, it is only because we entered The Greater Depression. But it’s not Obama’s fault.

As Obama explained, the volatility of the stock market was caused by the contentious debt ceiling negotiations and the world’s witnessing of the partisan bickering that led up to Obama getting his money. It appears the world doesn’t like it when Congress doesn’t just toss Obama the keys to the Porsche and a $2.4T marker in Vegas. If only they had not argued about it!

Obama believes that the ratings companies wanted a “balanced approach” to America tackling our debt problem. He wants more taxes (on the rich); he wants the American taxpayer pecked to death by chickens. But if Obama wants balance, I suggest spending cuts; deep spending cuts.

For decades the government has gone one way, with no balance. The government has taxed and spent us into oblivion, but the government rarely cuts. You can almost say, “The Fed never cuts,” but I never speak in absolutes. So if the government rarely cuts, it can only grow.

The government plans for growth. The Fed actually adds a small amount to the budget each year, in every department like clockwork. There is no analysis of whether or not they need a new hire, then simply plan on it. Think “cancer” and how it slowly takes over the cell next to it.

The Republican “win” that allowed Obama to print another $2.4T, not including the Chinese vig, will now need to be paid for by the thing that Republicans fought so hard to protect: The Bush tax cuts.

As Obama said in his press conference, “There is good news.” I wonder what the inmates will think of those new draperies?

That’s my rant!

08/9/11

REPOSTED FROM LAST YEAR: BOCKSCAR, LITTLE BOY, AND NAGASAKI + 66 YEARS

By: Dave Logan
ThirdWaveDave

NAGASAKI–before and after.

If not for a couple last minute changes, I would be writing about a B-29 Superfortress named The Great Artiste and the city of Kokura, Japan. Instead, it’s the B-29 Bockscar and the city of Nagasaki that we remember as the site of the second wartime nuclear detonation, effectively ending WWII.

Few remember or think about Bockscar and its crew. After all, it’s just the one mission that ended WWII. You will see scant postings about it on the internet. MSM and cable outlets, virtually zero mention. Of course any coverage in the MSM will depend on whether the White House issues a statement of apology.

This is a proud day in the history of the United States of America. Read about the events of this day. Post about it. But never apologize. (link has news report of ceremony held Monday in Nagasaki. No U.S. reps attended due to “schedule conflicts.”)