Tom In Paine

Obama's State of the Union: From the 4th most accomplished president or single most accomplished liar?

2012-01-25T07:47:00.000-08:00

In the wake of President Obama's State of the Union speech the real question is, does anything Obama say matter? The only honest answer is no. Because Obama has proved, not just over the first 3 years of his presidency but throughout his entire political career, that he never means what he says, will say anything to anyone at anytime for his own political benefit, and has reneged on more promises and pledges and lied more brazenly about them than any president in history as the videos below will show.

When Barrack Obama used the word "audacity" for the title of his book in relation to his political ambitions it was probably the only time in his life he actually told the truth. Not because he had audacious ideas. He had no ideas that were his own. Not because he dreamt of audacious accomplishments -- he never accomplished a thing in 16 years of elected office going back to his days in the Illinois state senate where he spent 11 years doing nothing to such a degree his lack of accomplishment and initiative became a joke during the presidential primary campaign in 2008. But when it comes to audacity, he is without doubt the most dishonest and audacious liar to ever sit in the White House surpassing even Richard Nixon for that dubious honor. And so nothing he has to say, especially about his vision for the future, matters. It's nothing but in-the-moment politics to Obama.

Obama has always been a man of hollow political ambition, wanting elected office for the sake of having it not for sake of accomplishing anything and to that end, he lies consistently about almost anything of significance to appease whoever needs appeasement at the time, and has done so during his entire political career.

So while "progressive" groups are praising Obama's pledge to investigate and hold accountable the financial practices of the big banks that caused the economic crisis, one has to keep in mind that one of his most significant and damaging lies was about the single most important Democratic issue of the 2008 election and probably the last 40 years -- healthcare reform.

Obama lied more about health care reform than any president has lied about any one single issue since Nixon and Watergate as the videos below will show ( though George W Bush is not far behind in his self serving lies about why he couldn't prevent the 911 attacks when he had enough information to do so).

Obama's lying is so brazen that even his new campaign literature claims as one of his big accomplishments "getting health insurance for 32 million uninsured". It should be remembered that Obama's health care bill is the same one former DNC chairman Howard Dean said should be "junked". And the bill Tom Harkin,and other congressional Democrats could only say was "better than nothing".

The audacity of Obama's lie that he "got health insurance for 32 million uninsured", is nothing short of an insult to the intelligence of every voter in the country but its only one of many that Obama has gotten away with time and time again especially in the press who, from the beginning have decided to look the other way when confronted with outright lies coming from Obama because they didn't want anything to interfere with their narrative of electing the " first black president".

What Obama's healthcare bill actually does get is 32 million new customers for the insurance companies, the lobby he sold out to when he made a back room deal at the White House (as reported by the New York Times) with the for-profit health care industry to dump the public option. Though it is still an open question as to whether his mandate that the uninsured buy insurance will survive a Supreme Court challenge.

Not long ago, in a recent "60 Minute" interview, in a head shaking display of the audacity of lying, Obama essentially declared himself, based on what he called his "accomplishments" the 4th most accomplished president in history.

The right wing went ballistic as the right wing always does and with the usual lack of credibility because they would blast Obama if he said the sky was blue, but the real criticism should have come from Democrats, liberals, and so called "progressives", that political group that used to be called liberals but instead of standing up to Republican attacks on liberalism, changed their name.

With healthcare reform having been on the Democrats agenda for 60 years, and with Obama having the biggest congressional majority of any president in 60 years, and with having promised a public health insurance plan in his speeches and campaign literature since 2007, and with a public option being overwhelmingly supported in every poll by a huge majority of the American people, passing it should have been a snap. For any other president except Barrack Obama.

After making his backroom deal to dump the public option, Obama continued to publicly support it in speech after speech, including his 2010 State of the Union message, and in televised town hall meetings. Privately he instructed Harry Reid to dump it from the final bill even though 55 Democratic senators had publicly proclaimed they would vote for it in reconciliation.

After the bill passed, Obama claimed in an interview with Jim Lehrer on PBS that he had gotten "95% of everything" he wanted in the bill. When Lehrer pointed out the bill had no public option Obama replied, " I never campaigned for a public option".

That audacious lie set off a barrage of indignant responses from Democratic commentators. But not enough to matter because the same groups who attacked Obama for that audacious lie didn't have the guts to stop supporting him, hold him accountable and pressure the DNC to encourage Democratic challengers to Obama in the 2012 primaries. Instead the DNC has embraced Einstein's definition of insanity -- doing the same things over again and expecting different results.

Health care reform isnt the only one of Obama's outright lies. One could easily fill a book with them. He lied incessantly during the 2008 Democratic primaries about what he knew about Jeremiah Wright's anti-American diatribes until You Tube videos started to surface proving that he was lying. Having his political back to the wall is what motivated giving his "major speech on race," a vacuous,self-serving and empty speech only the most easily conned, which usually includes news media, didn't laugh at it. At the time, former Democratic New York city Mayor Ed Koch commented that Obama threw his own grandmother under the bus in the speech.

Obama has been caught lying almost from his first days in office. When the public was outraged to learn about the huge bonuses AIG executives were going to receive after taking billions in tax payer bailouts Obama publicly said " I share the public's outrage". What he didn't say was that he not only knew about the bonuses more than a week in advance, he actually approved them. Making his "outrage" as dishonest as his claimed ignorance.

And during the 2008 primaries in Ohio, he was caught in a lie so outrageous and manipulative it would have ended the political career much less presidential candidacy of any other candidate.

That happened in Ohio where Obama told the unemployed in a state that had lost 280,000 jobs before the economic crisis that NAFTA was at the heart of their problem ( something Politfact.org said itself was a lie) and he promised the unemployed in Ohio and those afraid that they might next, that he would get rid of NAFTA if he were elected. At the same time, he sent Austan Goolsbee his economic advisor to the Canadian embassy in Chicago to tell them to ignore everything they were hearing about Obama getting rid of NAFTA, he has no intention of getting rid of it, that what he was saying publicly was just politics.

It is now 2012 and Obama is up for re-election, and lying about his "accomplishments" and making statements and promises that mean nothing. There are very few Democratic and independent voters left who are gullible enough to believe anything he says and whether they will vote to reelect him will depend on who the Republican nominee is. Assuming that its Romney Obama has virtually no chance of re-election.

Even Democrats know that Obama has been a president who has conducted his presidency with less conviction and principle than probably any other president in history, as the videos below will show. Something more important to remember than anything Obama had to say in the dog and pony show known as the State of the Union message. And now, after the State of the Union, is as good a time as any to be reminded.

News media at it again with Joe Paterno.

2012-01-20T06:22:00.000-08:00

A new round of sanctimonious self righteous self serving nonsense is being generated again by those addled minds with press passes we know as journalists ever ,since Joe Paterno gave a January 15th interview to the Washington Post explaining his thoughts,feelings and reactions to what Mike McQueary had told him concerning Jerry Sandusky.

It didn't take the news media long to fabricate, twist, re-write and ponitificate about Paterno's words so as to fit their own continuing narrative and attempts at journalistic face saving.

A lot of the already old debunked criticisms have returned including the one labeled " Didn't Do Enough". What is meant by that none of the critics say with any specificity except to say he should have done what he actually did do. But if for some, what is meant is that Paterno didn't follow up with Curley the AD and Schultz the head of Penn State police services to see if they were doing their jobs, had they, none of the criticisms of Paterno would have even been uttered. So what it really comes down to is a bunch of people who having no real idea what they would have done in Paterno's shoes, living out their own self-deluded sanctimonious fantasies and blaming Paterno for what his superiors are alleged not to have done.

One thing we know for certain is that none of the journalists or people who "criticized" ( its in quotes because their criticisms and opinions have proved empty and worthless) Paterno would have done any of the things they delude themselves into thinking they would have done had they been in Paterno's shoes. In fact most would not have done as much as Paterno.

We know this because the initial reaction of most human beings when being told about those kind of allegations, as non-specific as they were, about someone they knew and worked with for 28 years, would be disbelief. Shock. And it doesn't take a student of human nature to know that at least 95% of every person in the same situation would have taken a lot longer than 24 hours to decide what their next steps should be.

We know this, not only because of what we know about human nature, but because when ESPN was not just in Paterno's shoes but had more direct information than Paterno had including tape recorded evidence from an alleged victim, they did absolutely nothing because they felt they needed more information. Paterno didn't need to know more. But ESPN, one of the loudest critics of Paterno for not "doing more", needed to know more. And so did nothing for ten years.

ESPN in fact keeps beating the same dead drum, this time from an ESPN blogger named Gene Wojciechowski who, in response to Paterno's recent interview in the Washington Post, said that Paterno not being sure of exactly what to do next after being told about Sandusky by McQeary, was "no excuse". No excuse for what he doesn't really say, since what Paterno did doesnt requires an excuse. What there is no excuse for is the incomptency of Wojciechowski's column.

In his column further criticizing Paterno's responses in his Washington Post interview the factually challenged
Wojciechowski writes: "He didn't report the allegations to police "

We know of course that he did but the pathetically ignorant Wojciechowski doesnt think Penn State campus police are "real" police, so reporting it to the head of police services is not in Wojciechowski's addled mind, "the police". What he seems completely ignorant about is that the mother of one of Sandusky's victims thought they were the real police and that is where this mother went. But dont hold your breath waiting for Wojciechowski to call the victim;s mother ignorant, gutless and write that she has no excuses for not going to the police.

Wojciechowski also wrote of Paterno's going to the AD, his immediate superior and Gary Schultz head of police services:

"Did he think a college athletic director (PSU's Tim Curley) and a career Penn State bureaucrat with no formal law enforcement training (Gary Schultz, who oversaw, among other departments, the university police force) would have any more insight?"

And did Wojciechowski think that an 85 year old college head football coach is supposed to have more insight? Who does he think Paterno is? Colombo? The head of Law and Order SVU? Given the extraordinary thing Paterno was told, within 24 hours he reported it to his superior and later arranged a meeting between himself, McQueary and head of Penn State police services. And McQueary himself considers going to Schultz "going to the police". So the answer to Wojciechowski's truly and stupefyingly idiotic rhetorical question, did Paterno think that Tim Curley the AD and Gary Schultz head of police services might have any more insight, the answer is to anyone with an IQ in 3 digits is yes.

People like Wojciechowski, sitting far away from the field of engagement usually have their own fanatasies of what they would have done in the same situation without really knowing and without the minimum capacity to think a real problem with a real set of givens, through.

Perhaps there are some who can understand Wojciechowski's thinking when he is critical of Paterno saying he didnt know exactly how to hande it. Being told that a colleague and co-worker of 28 years, someone you've known and worked with every day for 28 years was caught in the shower having some kind of inappropriate sexual contact with a ten year old boy is, as everyone knows, a common every day occurrence, something anyone would be familiar with and like Wojciechowski in his fantasies, would know instantly what action to take. Even in retrospect, the actions Paterno took, reporting what he was told to his superior and to Penn State police, were correct.

But not to Gene Wojciechowski who probably fantasizes himself like Ralphie in "A Christmas Story" all decked out in his sequined Red Ryder outfit and rushing out to -- where? The Penn State campus police? No can't go there. That's where Joe Paterno went. And the mother of one of Sandusky's victims. State College Police? No,can't go there either.  They have no jurisdiction and would just refer him back to Penn State Campus Police, the agency that does have jurisdication, the agency that people like Gene Wojciechowski think are toy police with toy guns and toy police cars and toy detectives and toy riot gear. So what's a Red Ryder to do?  Where does this Red Ryder go and what can he do so that no one can say he had no excuses and didn't do enough? Go to Dick Wolf creator of the Law and Order series and tell him? Wojciechowski never says exactly because the truth is he doesnt know.

Most of the Penn State trustees are no better. Mark Dambly, a Penn State trustee who voted to fire Paterno recently spoke for a news article by the Associated Press part of which is excerpted here:

"A day after the graduate assistant, Mike McQueary came to see him, Paterno relayed the accusations to his superiors, one of whom oversaw campus police. Board members didn't think that was enough. Dambly said, "It was our opinion that Joe Paterno did not meet his moral obligation and for that reason -- me personally for that reason -- I felt he could no longer lead the university". What Dambly doesnt say and what he is now morally obligated to say, is exactly and with specifity and detail, what he thinks Paterno should have done and what he, Dambly would have done. It is not enough to parrot the news media's narrative or clap your fins together like a trained seal and say "it wasnt enough". Dambly and other trustees now have a moral obligation to say specifically, not with vague generalities, what should have been done. If Dambly can't or if gives a preposterous answer, he has a moral obligation to resign as does every other member of the Board of Trustees who cannot adequately answer the question of what they think Paterno should have done. But to also show just how intellectually dishonest Dambly and the rest of the trustees are, their claim that Paterno "didnt do enough" was based on no first hand knowledge. They had a moral obligation to talk to Paterno first and get his side of what happened right from him. But it seems that for the trustees moral obligations are only a one way street, since they fired Paterno without even talking to him or asking him what happened. They just buckled to media pressure, which they admitted at the time was the primary reason for dismissing Paterno and now are trying to rewrite the record.

Dambly also mentioned that there was resentment by the Board who felt that Paterno was challenging the board's authority ( imagine that!) by speaking for himself without clearing what he was going to say with the board and taking it upon himself to say he would continue coaching till the end of the season. The trustees, according to Dambly were upset Paterno didnt talk to them first. But the same trustees had no problem dismissing Paterno without them talking to him. Which just happens to make this collection of university trustees guilty of not fullfilling their moral obligations.

Dambly is just one of many of Paterno's critics in and out of the media living in a fantasy world of their own making. Another is Bobby Bowden who recently gave a radio interview in which he said what he would have done differently if in Paterno's shoes.  Unbelievably,nothing he said was actually any different from anything Paterno did. Except Bowden did say he would have " gone to Sandusky, asked him if it were true and then I would have told him to get out and never come back". In Bowden's fantasy he doesn't say what he would have done if Sandusky had denied it which Sandusky most surely would have  thereby denying Bowden his exit line. Paterno skipped Bowden's "never darken my door again" histrionics, didn't waste time asking Sandusky anything and reported what McQueary told him to the AD within 24 hours who effectively did what Bowden said he would have done, ban Sandusky from Penn State (without bothering with the "and never come back"). Then Paterno met with the administrative head of Penn State campus police. Yet somehow Bowden's account was promoted by the news media as "what Bobby Bowden would have done differently". Maybe the Philadelphia Daily News should put Bobby Bowden's picture on the front page with the word "Shame". If they did, at least they would be consistant.

All of this nonsense is because the news media always has their own narrative designed to call attention to themselves as heros and crusaders and is always self-serving. And when the truth or facts explode their narrative, and makes them all look like idiots as the Paterno story does with everyone from Wojciechowski and ESPN to the Penn State trustees, the truth becomes, not just expendable, but distorting it, fabricating it or burying it becomes essential.

Another article within the last 24 hours on the ESPN web site, this one attributed to the Associated Press claimed that "even Pennyslvania's top cop criticized Paterno for not doing enough and not going to the police"

The article doesn't say who the top cop is or names the top cop because no cop, top or otherwise ever criticized Paterno for not doing enough, and no cop, top or otherwise would not consider Penn State campus police, "the police" and as the facts bear out Paterno did go to the head of Penn State police services, Gary Schultz. By the way, referring to Gary Schulz as "the head of Penn State police services" is the term used by one of the Penn State trustees in relation to Schultz and his job description. It should also be noted that ESPN pulled the article and a subsequent search couldn't find it. Maybe it's being rewritten. Or used to wrap fish.

Its not too much to expect that the news media simply get their facts straight because that's their job. And its not a hard job its an easy job. The job of journalist is to simply gather the facts, make sure they are accurate by checking them with more than one source, and then present them in a way that any idiot could understand. And the sorry thing is that 90% of them can't do it.

The official position and narrative of the news media and commentators (whose job description should be changed to "pontificators",) related to Paterno is that they are "protecting children" and standing up against child abuse. But as we have seen in other cases they only take a position on anything if they feel its safe to do or in their own best self- interest. If not, no matter what the truth is or what the facts show, they will ignore it bury it or run from it.

None of the pontificators for example,  has ever demanded that the current Pope immediately resign even though the current Pope, as a cardinal, had known about some of the most egregious and heart-sickening examples of child sexual abuse in human history, including the Wisconsin priest who had abused over 400 deaf children at a Catholic school for the deaf for decades, and about which the current Pope did nothing for 40 years because, as he said in a letter, the image of the church was what mattered most. But attacking the current Pope for "not doing enough", in fact for doing nothing for 40 years and letting it as well as other instances continue, and demanding his resignation and that of everyone in the church heirarchy who knew about this and did nothing, is not a safe position. It could cost them ratings, viewers, subscribers, it could even get them criticized and called anti-Catholic so better just downplay it.Paterno is a lot easier.

So for the editors of the Philadelphia Daily News, putting a picture of the Pope on the front page with the word " Shame" would be out of the question. And it would be out of the question for Wojciechowski to question anyone connected with ESPN and criticze those at the network who knew about the Bernie Fine allegations and did nothing for ten years. Instead, for the news media, whether its ESPN or the Philadelphia Daily News or anyone else, the prevailing journalistic standard is, do what you think is safe, if there is a journalistic mob, join it, don't get left out, find a high horse to sit on, weight the power of the subject to hit back, distort or fabricate to fit the narrative and dont do or say or report anything that might make them pay the biggest price of all -- losing  advertisers.

Gene Wojciechowski can be reached at: gene.wojciechowski@espn.com

ADDENDUM: By now most people know about Joe Paterno's passing on Sunday morning. And listening to the tributes come in from many of the people who knew him, people are starting to realize and it's becoming obvious, whose sins Paterno died for. And they werent his own.

What to do about a dishonest,incompetent news media.

2012-01-11T07:27:00.000-08:00

The recent barrage of lies, fabrications, dishonesty and non-existent journalistic standards that comprised the media accounts related to Joe Paterno,what he knew and what he did and did not do, is unfortunately, nothing new. Lies, distortions, omissions and shoddy journalism been standard operating procedure by the main stream news media in the areas of politics, public policy and issues as significant as war, impeachment and presidential elections for at least the last 15 years. It happens on big issues and small issues, on issues that do damage to individuals and issues that do damage to the country.

The Joe Paterno fiasco which included journalists like Sean Gregory at Time Magazine, Jason Whitlock at Foxsports.com, Jemele Hill at ESPN.com, the editors at the Philadelphia Daily News and a host of ESPN commentators, committing outright acts of libel in their reporting, making blatant factual misrepresentations, distortions and outright fabrications they knew they had no facts to substantiate, and the fact that in almost every instance the opposite of what was being reported was true, left not just a lot of people, but the majority of people who did know the facts, not just furious at the news media but disgusted and fed up and in the case of some Penn State students, inspired an anti-news media riot.

Joe Paterno has stated that he is looking forward to getting his story out which when it happens will more than likely further blacken the eyes of the news media, but the question remains, what can be done about the low or non-existent journalistic standards and outright journalistic and intellectual dishonesty of the news media? Most people feel that Sean Gregory at Time, Whitlock at FoxSports.com and Jemele Hill at ESPN.com still having their jobs while Joe Paterno lost his, is a gross injustice and the kind of journalistic incompetence, dishonesty and lack of standards that should cost them their jobs.

This isnt the first time the media has been guilty of this kind of egregious malpractice.They did it years ago with Richard Jewel calling him the Olympic Bomber without a shred of evidence. They did it during the Monica Lewinsky fiasco hoping to cash in on the scandal and aiding and abetting a senseless and time wasting impeachment. On the other side of the ledger, they hid under a rock and did and said nothing when the 911 Commission uncovered evidence that the Bush Administration had ample information to have prevented the 911 attacks which succeeded largely due to gross negligence. And then there were the famous front page stories by Judith Miller of the New York Times, reporting on the certainty of Sadaam's WMD which helped make the case for war when we later learned that not only was there no real evidence of WMD but the information Miller reported was splashed on the front pages of the New York Times were without any independent corroboration and, as it turned out, was spoon fed to Miller by Dick Cheney's office.

The news media also chose to put their heads in the sand during the 2008 Democratic primaries when Barrack Obama, riding an emotional wave and a news media agenda to be the "first black president" was caught blatantly lying more times about more subjects than possibly any presidential candidate in history, all of it largely ignored by the media so as not to derail their preconcieved agenda.

Almost every problem the country has faced and faces now can be traced back to a news media too cowardly, too incompetent or too inept to do the job the Founders envisioned when they wrote the first amendment. Which is to keep the electorate informed with accurate and unbiased information.

The media fails at that constantly and they do it willfully. So the question becomes, what to do about it?

It should come as no surprise that media ratings, and ad revenue continues to fall as more and more people get disgusted with the media and simply dont trust them to do their jobs honestly and that falling revenue makes news media standards fall even further as that becomes their main concern.

A Pew Research poll a few years asked whether people trusted the news media, especially cable news and the results were predictable. For CNN, 69% of those polled said they didn't trust them to accurately report the facts. For MSNBC the distrust was at 70% and for Fox News 71%. By the way to show just how dishonest the media can be, CNN used those results to run an ad campaign calling themselves " The Most Trusted Name in News" and cited the Pew poll though they didnt cite the actual numbers. So if a news organization cant tell the truth about itself how can anyone expect them to tell the truth about the news?

In terms of what can be done about it, the first step comes from the words of writer Paddy Chaefsky and his character Howard Beale, from the movie "Network" who ranted that people have to get mad, and when they do, they have to shout that they are "mad as hell and not going to take it anymore".

Once that stage is reached, and judging by reaction that stage was probably reached years ago, there is a lot that can be done.

During the height of the news media's Paterno fiasco, a reader here wrote that as a father of 3, and outraged by ESPN's dishonesty, incompetence, hypocrisy and in many cases outright falsehoods in their reporting on Paterno, and knowing that Disney was the parent company of ESPN, he was canceling his family trip to Disneyworld. I suggested in response that he write a letter to Disney CEO Robert Eiger informing him of his decision and why.

Another reader scoffed at this reply calling it "laughable" that Eiger would care or that it would make a difference.

Having started my professional career in the advertising business creating and selling ad campaigns to national advertisers as both an art director and writer while working for some of the top ad agencies in New York and LA, I have sat in rooms with VPs of marketing and can tell you first hand that they care about even one negative letter much less 100 or 1000. To those companies 1,000 complaints would be an earthquake. They care about their company's image, how people feel about their products, they care about how their company is perceived, they care about everything. Robert Eiger would not laugh at this father's letter. He would take it seriously. Which is why Eiger is where he is and the reader who called it "laughable" is where he is.

Letters, emails and phone calls, especially if they are organized to CEO's of parent companies or to the editors of news organizations like Time Magazine and their parent company Time-Warner, expressing one's anger and/or threats of advertiser boycotts are very effective. So are organized physical protests.

Republicans and conservatives are very good at organizing letter writing campaigns, angry phone calls and threatneing advertiser boycotts against media outlets. It wasn't too long ago they succeeded in getting Dan Rather fired from the CBS Evening News over the questionable authenticity of a document used in a story about the disdain George W. Bush's Air National Guard commander had for him and his belief that Bush had received special treatment because of his family name. The irony is that the commander's secretary confirmed as fact everything contained in the document but because there was some question about its authorship and authenticity, conservatives and Republicans sent a barrage of angry emails, phone calls, letters and protests to CBS News and Sumner Redstone the CEO of Viacom, the parent company of CBS. The result was Rather's firing.

In another instance, though not media related, a site called Bankrate.com reported that Bank of America decided to drop their plan to charge a $5 a month debit card fee largely because of the anger and outrage of a single person who organized hers, and the outrage of other Bank of American customers against the fee.

They reported:

"Andrew Plepler, who has the long double-barreled title of global corporate social responsibility executive and consumer policy executive at Bank of America, earlier this week called Molly Katchpole, a 22-year-old Bank of America customer, who started the petition on Change.org, a do-it-yourself petitions web site protesting the proposed $5 a month debit card fee."

One person not only stopped the fee from going through but her efforts earned her a phone call from a top executive at Bank of America. So much for what is "laughable" and what even one person can do.

Change.org is one good place to start in organizing and communicating a protest to corporate executives or editors at news outlets. It's not unlikely that a petition, direct letters or emails to editors or parent companies by those unhappy with the news media treatment of Paterno for example, even to the point of demanding the firing of those most responsible for the sloppy and inaccurate reporting, would go ignored. Especially if the petitions containted thousands or tens of thousands,or, as in the case of Bank of America, hundrds of thousands of signers.

When TV and radio networks originally started their news divisions it was done as a public service. CEO's like Bill Paley at CBS took the first amendment and the reason for its existence -- to have an informed electorate -- seriously. The news divisions were not only not expected to make money, they were expected to lose money.

That all changed in the 80's when news became more of a business and money, ratings, and advertising revenue and fear of losing all three, began to drive network and cable news. Because of that, any threat to any of these things coming from one person or a large group, gets their attention. Because those in the news business know the saying that those who live by the sword die by the sword.

Along with Change.org as a place to start to organize a protest and be heard along with personal letters, emails and phone calls, located here, on the right is a link to FAIR'S media list of names, street addresses, email addresses and phone numbers of media outlets around the country.

Have fun.

Bachmann gets buried, drops out and makes news media look even dumber.

2012-01-04T16:58:00.000-08:00

To the surprise of no one with a triple digit IQ or any judgement at all, Michele Bachman announced she is dropping out of the presidential race after finishing a dismal 6th in the Republican Iowa caucuses. What a surprise.

What everyone who does have a triple digit IQ knew from the beginning was that Bachman never had a chance to be the nominee in the first place, much less get elected president. But you'd never know it based on the coverage and attention she received at places like CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times and other news organizations.

She received more coverage than any other Republican candidate including Mitt Romney. She even made the cover of Newsweek, more for her freak show value and to sell magazines than for anything meaningful. Because the news media, as always. is much more interested in the freak show than in serious journalism or doing what thFounders intended with the first amendment -- inform the electorate. Which is probably the single biggest reason the large majority of the electorate has abandoned them and why their ratings and circulation continue to shrink. They live for the freak show.

Michelle Bachman has been that freak show, a bumbling, mind numbing self-proclaimed candidate who didn't know American history from Lithuania, who made some of the dumbest comments and speeches ever uttered by a so called presidential candidate and had ideas and a point of view so vacuous they made almost everyone laugh.

But you wouldn't know it by the press coverage. In another time and place Bachman would have gotten little or no coverage at all. Its hard to imagine Walter Cronkite or David Brinkley or the New York Times of 30 years ago taking Bachman seriously. the odds of her making the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite would have been about zero. But with this current crop of journalists and editors when Bachmann spoke, the news media sat up and made it front and center.

Now, in her first real test to see if anyone outside the media really took her seriously, the people she was trying to appeal to the most -- conservative Republican voters in Iowa --said no, we don't take you seriously.

Which leaves Newsweek, CNN and other political commentators who pretended to treat her like a serious candidate look like a bunch of scarecrows standing in an Iowa cornfield with crows on their heads and corn coming out of their ears.

And they wonder why their ratings and influence keep declining.

How many Republicans does it take to unscrew light bulb efficiency standards?

2011-12-29T12:24:00.000-08:00

In a move so trivial and inconsequential many members of congress are too embarrassed to talk about it, and a move which escaped scrutiny by the mass media since it had nothing to do with sex, Republicans in the House, as part of the budget extension deal that averted a government shut down, insisted on including language that eliminated the ban on incandescent light bulbs that was due to go into effect on January 1. The ban the Republicans scuttled was actually part of an energy efficient initiative signed into law by George W. Bush in 2007.

Supposedly this conservative uprising over the ban on incandescent light bulbs began on -- where else -- conservative talk radio who seemed to feel the bulb ban was a threat to personal freedom. And many Republicans in the House agreed..

So Republicans, sensing the threat to our freedoms that the phasing out of incandescent bulbs represented in favor of new energy efficient bulbs, banded together and drew a line in the sand, insisting on language that blocked the energy efficiency standards from going into effect January 1.

This, they claim, was necessary to keep government interference out of the living rooms and light sockets of America and to preserve the freedom of choice they believed was the right of all Americans when it came to light bulbs.

So Republicans and conservatives are fanatically pro choice. When it comes to light bulbs.

They insisted that the government had no business interfering with a person's right to choose an incandescent bulb no matter how inefficient they are. For them it was a matter of principle and how much control the government can and cannot have over a person's life. When it comes to a person's freedom of choice, light bulbs yes, pregnancy no.

The Republican's "keep your government hands off my light bulbs" initiative succeeded, and the energy efficiency standards set to go into effect January 1 have been rescinded. Rescinded even though the major manufacturers of light bulbs began phasing out the incandescent bulbs long ago in anticipation of the 2007 standards going into effect.

So while the country continues to struggle with unemployment, a stagnating economy and huge deficits, Rep. Greg Walden, a Republican from Oregon said about the light bulb issue:

"There are just some issues that grab the public attention. This is one of them. It's going to be dealt with in legislation once and for all".

That's what he said. Really. And this came from a Republican congressman from, of all places, Oregon, the same Oregon where Republicans and conservatives called environmentalists trying to save the forests in Oregon "tree hugger"s. Who knew they would turn out to be light bulb huggers?

Its also hard to know if Republicans were getting pressure from groups on the Christian Right who believe the words in the Bible "let there be light" mean incandescent or those interpreting it to mean a natural right to any light a person wants.

Democrats could have taken the light bulb issue and made Republicans look like idiots while scoring huge political points if they had Democratic political strategists, commentators and elected officials in congress who weren't so busy making themselves look like idiots when it comes to politics.

So the second joke becomes, how many Democrats does it take to cave in to Republican efforts to unscrew efficiency standards? The answer is always the same: three. The same three that are always caving in to something. Pelosi, Reid, and of course, the one man mining disaster himself, the sanctimonious impurist, Barrack Obama.

So now, thanks to the light bulb issue, we now have two new categories of jokes to add to the lexicon - "Republican Jokes", and "Democratic Jokes" . The problem is that most of the country don't think either are very funny. Because the energy standards which would have made light bulbs 30% more efficient, still provided for light bulb choices that were more than adequate.

It's our current choices for president and congress that are inefficient.

Dr. Jonathan Dranov puts final nail in media coffin regarding Joe Paterno.

2011-12-14T11:42:00.000-08:00

No one knows if Joe Paterno will sue Sean Gregory, Time Magazine, Jason Whitlock at Foxsports.com, Jemele Hill, the Philadelphia Daily News and almost every commentator covering college football at ESPN for libel and defamation. Money wouldn't be the motive. All the money could be donated to children's causes and scholarships to the Penn State School of Journalism for any journalism student signing a pledge to not become an incompetent, mob-brained idiot when they go out into the real world. But if Joe Paterno had an open and shut case before against the news media (and he did), that case is now sealed shut completely against the media.

The last nail in the news media's coffin was hammered in a few days ago by Dr. Jonathan Dranov, a family friend of Mike McQueary who also testified in front of the grand jury.

Most people following the events at Penn State already know that Dr. Dranov stated publicly and in his grand jury testimony, that Mike McQueary gave him a totally different account of what he saw in the showers at Penn State than what he testified to in his grand jury testimony.

According to Dr. Dranov, McQueary told him that as he approached the showers, he "heard the shower running" and saw a young boy poke his head out around the corner of the stall, then saw a male adult arm pull the boy back. He then says he saw Sandusky wrapped in a towel leave the shower with the boy.

Dr. Dranov testified to the grand jury that he asked McQueary three times if he had seen any sexual activity between the boy and Sandusky and all three times McQueary answered "no".

Based on McQueary's answers Dr. Dranov advised him not to go to the police but to report what he saw to Joe Paterno. For the record the Philadelphia Daily News has not run a picture of Dr. Dranov on the front page with the word "Shame". And Jay Bilas at ESPN has not demanded that Dr. Dranov lose his license for "failing to do enough". And I have not heard Stuart Scott on ESPN say of Dr. Dranov, "doesn't he get it"?

While Joe Paterno said from the beginning that he was never told any of the things by McQueary that McQueary told the grand jury, Paterno was not given the opportunity to say exactly what he was told. Penn State canceled Paterno's press conference where he was going to tell what he knew.

Without knowing what McQueary told him but knowing that Paterno had said he wasn't told details or specifics of what McQueary saw, the press simply invented and fabricated what Paterno knew, or just as bad, assumed it, then accused Paterno of not "reporting it" or "doing enough" based on their fabrications, and demanded he be dismissed because of it.

Now with Dr. Dranov's statement, it is a certainty that McQueary never told Paterno anything more in substance than he told Dr. Dranov. If Dr. Dranov advised him to go to Paterno and not the police based on what McQueary told him, it is not possible that in going to Paterno he would have given him a different and more specific account of what he saw.

Dr. Dranov's statement and grand jury testimony makes a few more things clear as well for those too factually and logically challenged to have not seen this from the beginning: Mike McQueary, as Joe Paterno said in his first statement never told him anything about any sexual contact involving Sandusky and a young boy and it's clear from what McQueary told Dr. Dranov, that he was much too uncomfortable to give anyone, Dr. Dranov or Joe Paterno, the whole story about what he had seen. Until he testified to the grand jury.

McQueary's grand jury account is undoubtedly the correct account. It is highly unlikely McQueary would have fabricated what he saw to a grand jury. But now, for those who foolishly swallowed the initial press accounts and believed what they read and heard and not Joe Paterno, there is corroborating evidence that McQueary did not relay exactly what he saw, or thought he saw, whether to Dr. Dranov or Joe Paterno.

What impact it will have on the legal proceedings involving Curley and Schultz remain to be seen. If they were told the same thing by McQueary that he told Paterno and Dranov, it will be hard to prosecute someone for not reporting a crime they were never told about in the first place.

But as it relates to Joe Paterno, and those who unthinkly swallowed the nonsense the media was peddlng there is a lot of soul searching that needs to be done, though its always hard for people to admit they were made fools of. And among those that need to do the soul searching are the Penn State trustees and two U.S. senators from Pennsylvania.

Paterno was the media cash cow in all this. His name and picture were seen more than twice as much as Jerry Sandusky's. He became the story and all as a result of of incompetence, dishonesty and greed and of course the phony facade of protecting children if you dont think it was phony try finding a media outlet demanding the resignation of the Pope over the institutional child abuse committed by priests with the knowledge of the Pope and other higher ups in the church heirarchy.)

As has been said here before, this is bigger than Joe Paterno. The country is poorer because of a news media with no journalistic standards, populated by incompetents on every level and motivated by nothing except profits and self interest. Which makes these journalists, the way they practice journalism, and those who believe what they sell a real threat to democracy and American values. In other countries in other times it was called propaganda. And it was very effective.

In Joe Paterno's case we saw journalists like Sean Gregory at Time magazine, Jason Whitlock, Jemele Hill and others report as fact things they knew for a fact they didn't know, and then pontificate about these things, for the sake of a big story as if they inhabited some delusional moral high ground. This time it was Joe Paterno who suffered the temporary consequences. But unless something is done about the media we will all suffer greater consequences. In fact a case can be made that just about all the problems the country has now and has had for the last 15 years can be traced to a news media too incompetent and too cowardly to do the job the Founders envisioned for the news media when they wrote the first amendment. Because the media will not hold politicans accountable for anything if they think it's not in their self interest.and when it comes to government accountablity, self interest for the media is money and access. And they wont endanger either one. For anything.

Committing immoral acts in the name of morality is nothing new. It's what mobs do whether its the Salem Witch Trials or the modern day news media. The media do it all the time. They did it to Richard Jewel in 1996 when without a shred of evidence, labeled him the Olympic Bomber and made his life hell for three months. Jewel ended up suing and settled out of court for tens of millions from NBC, Tom Brokaw, CNN, the Atlanta Constitution and others. But it didnt solve the bigger problem.

The bigger problem is the media's lack of standards which is on display every day whether its politics or policy or "scandals" that arent really scandals. They will inflate anything they think will bring in a bigger audience and generate more revenue even if they have to diminsh and set aside the things that really matter. They are afraid to report the truth about anything if they think it will cause a backlash that will hurt their bottom line. But they will lie and distort if they think it will make money and they can get away with it. And with the lies they told about Joe Paterno, they believed, in their uniquely sanctimonious way, they could get away with it

The out of control, dishonest media frenzy involving Joe Paterno was as much an abuse of the first amendment as Sandusky's alleged abuse of children. And just as vile. And unfortunately for the country a lot more frequent. But maybe this time, if enough people get angry, it will be time for some real accountablity for the news media and there will be demands that wrongs and injustices be made right.

A libel and defamation suit by Joe Paterno against certain news outlets would be absolutely patriotic. But that is solely for Joe Paterno and his family and his lawyers to decide. But there are other things people can do if they are outraged enough to demand accountability. And there will be more to say about what those things might be, in the future.

UPDATE 11:32 p.m. 12/15/2011. Finally there is some specificity to what Joe Paterno was told by Mike McQueary and what Paterno's reaction was and what he did. Paterno's previously sealed grand jury testimony was read along with testimony from the stand by Mike McQueary about what he had told Paterno. And in all cases it convicts the mainstream news media of the gross abuse, lying, incompetence, dishonesty and distortion they displayed from the beginning when they not only didnt know the facts of what Paterno knew and what he did, they knew they didnt know the facts and fabricated lies anyway.

According to the Sporting News account of what happened in the hearing for Curley and Schultz, "McQueary testified on Friday that he did not go into graphic detail with Paterno about what he had witnessed out of respect for Paterno". This jibes with Paterno's first and only public statement that he was never told any of the things McQueary told the grand jury about what he saw.

According to Paterno's grand jury testimony Paterno took what he thought was the appropriate action when he told Curley.

“I figured Tim would handle it appropriately,” Paterno told the grand jury. He added: “I didn’t push Mike…because he was very upset. I knew Mike was upset, and I knew some kind of inappropriate action was being taken by Jerry Sandusky with a youngster. Monday, I talked to my boss, Tim Curley, by phone, saying, 'Hey we got a problem' and I explained the problem to him,"

Eventually Paterno did meet with Schultz the overseer of the Penn State police with McQueary present.

So now we can substantiate the only facts that had been out there from the beginning, facts which the mass media ignored. McQueary made it clear that he did not go into graphic detail about what he had seen in the shower. Paterno made clear that he knew that McQueary felt "some kind of inappropriate action" had taken place with Sandusky and a boy.

Paterno called his boss, Tim Curley to tell him what he knew on Monday after he met with McQueary. In one of the most spectacular displays of hypocrisy ever seen, ESPN, one of the loudest voices in criticizing Paterno for "not doing enough", had an audiotape containing admisssions of child sexual abuse related to Bernie Fine and did nothing, called no one, reported it to no one, alerted no one, and never even revealed the existance of the tape for ten years.

Sean Gregory's lie in Time magazine in early November that "Joe Paterno knew a ten year old boy was anally raped in a shower and didnt report it" when he had not a shred of evidence or testimony to support it, speaks for itself.

McQueary's statements on the witness stand involving his own activity, badly damage his credibility as I point out in a response in the comments section since he contradicts himself repeatedly.

What the testimony of Paterno and McQueary will mean to Curley and Schultz at trial remains to be seen. But it convicts the mainstream media on all counts of lying, distorting, and sanctimonious self-serving incompetence What remains to be seen is exactly what the sentence against the media will be. For those who still want to swallow whole the nonsense they push, it will probably be intellectual diabetes.

UPDATED: 12/21/2011: WHAT BOBBY BOWDEN SAYS HE WOULD HAVE DONE

Former Florida State head coach Bobby Bowden decided, for reasons known only to him, to once again weigh in on Joe Paterno and the results are both headshakingly funny and mind numblingly dumb by both Bowden and the media. Both Bowden and the media characterized Bowden's remarks as "how Bowden would have handled the Sandusky matter differently".

Here is what Bowden said:

“I’ve tried to think what I would do,” Bowden said, “if one of my coaches had come to me and told me what happened. I would have gone to that guy (Sandusky), asked him if it was true and I would have told him to get away from here and don’t EVER come back. And then I would have gone to the police. I think that’s what I would have done.”

Wait a second. Aside from the utter waste of time of going to Sandusky "to ask if it were true" isnt this exactly what Joe Paterno did? How is this Bowden "handling it differently"? Instead of wasting his time going to Sandusky Paterno went to Tim Curley the Penn State AD and the upshot was Curley made sure Sandusky was no longer allowed on Penn State grounds. And then Paterno went to Gary Schultz administrative head of Penn State campus police, the law enforcement agency with jurisdication.

Aside from Bowden's useless histronicis of telling Sandusky to never darken his door again, Paterno did pretty much what Bowden said he'd do only, just like on the football field, Paterno did it a little better.

Unfortunately the radio hosts were too busy fawning over Bowden to pretend they were actual journalists so they never asked Bowden what he would have done in his fantasy if , when he asked Sandusky if it were true, Sandusky had denied it. Which is why its always a good idea for people to keep their noses out of other people's business and not pass judgement when they arent standing in the same shoes. Bowden calling what he would do "handling it differently" is not just laughable but embarrassing epecially since his fantasy is predicated on Sandusky doubling over in contrition and confessing all so that Bowden can deliver his exit line. Bowden sounded like he was having the kind of fantasy people have of telling off their bosses.

Only a news media both morally and journalistically bankrupt, and so dumb its painful, could have characterized what Bowden said as "doing it differently". And given Bowden's statement of what he would have done compared to what Paterno actually did, and the media's subsequent treatment of Paterno, one can only wait and see if the Philadephia Daily News will put Bowden's picture on the front page with the word "Shame". Not likely but the list of people who deserve it is growing.

New facts continue to make a mockery of media attacks on Joe Paterno.

2011-12-06T10:16:00.000-08:00

Ted Koppel, the respected television newsman and former host of the ABC News show Nightline, said almost 20 years ago, " the amount of credibility the news media has with any individual is in inverse proportion to the amount of knowledge that individual has about the subject being reported". That is the long way around of saying, the more you know, the more facts you have, the more personal knowledge you possess, the more you know that journalists and the editors who over see them are incompetent.

Sometimes it's about life's most serious issues, like the erroneous front page stories by Judith Miller of the New York Times about Saddam and his horde of WMD which not only didn't exist but for which Miller was never even shown proof and for which neither she nor her editors required any corroboration. That helped sell a war, land Miller in jail, get her "source" a perjury conviction in the Valerie Plame episode and eroded the credibility of the New York Times.

The news media both in and out of the sports world, sold a story to the country about Joe Paterno, for their own self-serving reasons, and also without any facts or proof to back up a single word and ignoring all the existing facts that ran contrary to the story they wanted to push.

The facts were there if they cared at all to report them. But that wasn't be in their self interest, which was going after a big name to make the story bigger for financial reasons and to help make a lot of very small people feel, momentarily, bigger than they are.

And because the issues swirled around child abuse, they felt safe to commit to their own form of abuse, which was abusing the First Amendment, and abusing every known standard of journalism and instead substituting fabrication. They felt safe because they could hide behind the pretense that was writing in defense of children when it was really for their own self aggrandizement and profit.

In Paterno's case the news media had confidence that the world would be on their side, that they were reporting in defense of children and they believed, to use a football metaphor, which they had a free play so to speak, to say and do anything they wanted with no fear of penalty or repercussion. So Time magazine prints Sean Gregory's outrageously dishonest report that "Paterno knew that a 10 year old child was being raped, in the showers and didn't report it to authorities", to the somewhat obscure Jemele Hill's sloppy, casually and factually dishonest, report on ESPN.com about Paterno's " knowledge of alleged sexual abuse of children".

Hill casually, sloppily, and in providing as pointed an example as possible of the egregious dishonesty that permeates journalism and the people in it, she simply tosses out of the word "children" as in plural, as in multiple, as in many, in essence accusing Paterno of knowing about multiple cases of sexual abuse of children and doing nothing, when she knows there is not even an accusation that Paterno had knowledge of multiple abuses of children.

There is another phenomenon at work here which proves with virtually every sentence and word written or spoken about Paterno in connection with the crimes Sandusky is accused of, that for the media this has been all about selling a story, getting web hits, selling newspapers and advertising, getting ratings being a mob without a brain and enjoying for a brief time, a phony and fabricated and dishonest feeling of superiority.

And that is Jerry Sandusky's name is almost never mentioned. It is Joe Paterno that is talked about. It is Joe Paterno's picture that was all over the media. It was Joe Paterno's picture on the front page of the Philadelphia Daily News, (a newspaper and it's advertisers that should be boycotted until the editor is fired). In Jemele Hill's sentence she mentions "Joe Paterno's knowledge of alleged sexual abuse of children" but not even "Joe Paterno's knowledge of Sandiusky's alleged sexual abuse of children".

Because for journalists this isn't really about the sexual abuse of children. In Hill's sentence the actual abuser isn't even named. Because to Hill and other journalists that isn't what the story is really all about. That isn't where the money is. Or the momentary false sense of superiority. Or that warm fuzzy feeling you get from joining a mob. After all, who in their right mind could get a warm glow feeling superior to Jerry Sandusky?

Well okay, there might be some in the media who could, but for most of them it was about Joe Paterno. Because that's what sold. And that's what could make them feel superior to someone whose accomplishments would forever outstrip anything they will ever do. And that is the kind of journalistic trash the Penn State trustees succumbed to. When what was needed was a standing up to the media if for no other reason than a defense of the values they preach and teach at the university.

Paterno was the big name and the media knew it. Karl Ravetch unintentionally confessed to it on ESPN within 48 hours of Sandusky's arrest when he said that Sandusky would have his day in court but "until then the only way to move the story forward is to focus on Joe Paterno". And that's what was important—pushing the story.

Over the weekend a relatively new and unreported fact came to light to add to the mountain of evidence against the news media in their dishonest attacks on Paterno.

CNN reported that in 1998, the mother of one of Sandusky's victims, (they didn't say if it was the mother of Victim One or a mother of a different victim,) was told by her son that Sandusky had taken a shower with him and "hugged him in the shower", an act which clearly made the boy uncomfortable enough to tell his mother.

The mother, immediately reported what her son had told her to guess who -- the Penn State campus police.

The same Penn State campus police that the news media en masse claimed was tantamount to "not going to the authorities" or "not doing enough".

According to the CNN report, the mother and Penn State campus police arranged for the mother to have a confrontational conversation with Sandusky on which two Penn State campus police detectives would eavesdrop. Just to repeat, that's two Penn State campus police detectives, not Penn State campus crossing guards. Not TV cops from Law and Order. Detectives from Penn State campus police.

In that conversation, the mother confronted Sandusky with what her son had told her about the shower incident and Sandusky reportedly said, " I know, I was wrong. I wish I were dead."

There was reportedly a second conversation between Sandusky and the mother, also with detectives from the Penn State Campus police eavesdropping.

Why that 1998 investigation went nowhere is for others to determine. But as it pertains to Joe Paterno, it was his reporting what McQueary told him to Gary Schultz, the administrative head of that same Penn State campus police, which was deemed and damned as "not reporting it to authorities" by the ignorant media who called for his dismissal.

So now that we know that the mother of one of Sandusky's victims, in taking action against what she believed happened to her own son, took her allegations to the same police agency to which Paterno reported what he had been told by McQueary. It was the Penn State campus police that the mother cooperated with, and it was detectives from the Penn State campus police, who were trying to gather evidence against Sandusky.So with the mother of one of the victims feeling that reporting what she knew to the Penn State campus police was"doing enough", will the Philadelphia Daily News now put the mother's picture on the front page with the word "Shame"? Or will they put a picture of themselves?

Will Jay Bilas, Stuart Scott, Sean Gregory, Jason Whitlock, Jemele Hill and the rest of the ESPN college sports crowd accuse the mother of " not going to the authorities" or "not doing enough"? Will Stuart Scott say of the mother “doesn’t she get it?" Will Sean Gregory in Time Magazine call her unfit for "not going to authorities" ? Will all of them demand that she lose her son?

No accountability of the media and their hypocrisy can be presented without once again revisiting ESPN and the audiotape they had nine years ago, given to them as evidence by a victim of molestation by assistant Syracuse basketball coach Bernie Fine.

After hearing his allegations and listening to a tape he secretly recorded with Fine's wife telling her of his molestation by Fine and her virtually admitting her husband's abuse, ESPN did nothing. They told Fine's victim that he didn't have enough evidence for them to report it, and that they needed more corroboration by way of another victim.

The blatant hypocrisy by ESPN is twofold. First, if it was journalistic standards and corroboration they needed before they would report accusations against Fine, they applied no such standards to Joe Paterno ( one makes the cash register ring, the other doesn't). And secondly, no one pontificated more about "moral responsibility" than the commentators at ESPN, moralizing that Paterno should have "done more" than simply report it to the very authorities they ignorantly didn't understand were the authorities Paterno was supposed to report it to in the first place.

So while spewing about morality and what actions others should have taken, the moral actions taken by ESPN when given even more specific allegations and proof of child abuse than Joe Paterno ever had was to take no action at all.

It's one thing to say there wasn't enough evidence to meet certain journalistic standards (standards they seem to apply selectively based on self-interest) but more to the point, morally they did nothing.

They didn't call the police to say what they had. They didn't refer Fine's victim to anyone at any law enforcement agency for a police investigation. They didn't call a child protective agency. They didn't even call the AD at Syracuse University to say what they had. They did nothing. If they couldn't report it as a story, if it wasn't for their own benefit they weren't interested. So they did nothing. For 9 years.

So what can be done about the news media? Commentators at ESPN, Sean Gregory at Time Magazine, Jason Whitlock at Foxsports.com, Jemele Hill at ESPN. com, the Philadelphia Daily News and really just about everyone reporting on this in and out of the mainstream media have abused the First Amendment to the same degree that Jerry Sandusky abused children, and as viciously, thinking only of themselves, their own desires, being exploitive and not even thinking about, much less caring about the rights of others.

The legal system will deal with Sandusky. But what to do about the news media? More on that soon.

Upon further review Joe Paterno rose to the occasion while everyone else sunk.

2011-11-29T07:21:00.000-08:00

Two major events have occurred since the firing of Joe Paterno which prove that the news media are not only incompetent and dishonest but also hypocritical beyond anything anyone would have thought possible.

And both revelations are about as damning as could be imagined both against ESPN, whose commentators condemnation of Paterno and demands for his firing were some of the loudest, and the school officials at Central Mountain high school, where Sandusky's Victim One went to school.

The first revelation concerns the molestation charges against Syracuse assistant coach Bernie Fine. One of Fine's accusers secretly tape-recorded a phone conversation he had with Fine's wife in 2002 in which the sexual contact with Fine was discussed and where Fine's wife admitted she knew everything her husband had been doing. Fine's accuser says he took the tape to the Syracuse Post Standard in 2002 along with his allegations against Fine and played the audiotape for them. The newspaper declined to report the allegations saying that, even with the tape they wanted more corroborating evidence before they would report it. In other words the Syracuse Post Standard gave more of the benefit of the doubt to an accused child molester than the news media in general gave to Joe Paterno, a man with a polished solid gold reputation for 60 years. And there has been no outcry by any of the sanctimonious self-serving members of the media who railed against Joe Paterno focused on the Post Standard for "having knowledge of" sexual abuse and not reporting it.

It gets a lot worse. It has also been revealed that the victim took the same audiotape to ESPN more than ten years ago with his allegations against Fine and played the tape for them, No one at ESPN did a thing. For ten years. They didn't talk to their own lawyers.They didn't refer it to any child protective agency. They didn't refer it to any law enforcement agency. They did nothing. And now try and hide behind the excuse that they didn't have enough corroborating evidence to do any more.

This is the same ESPN whose commentators called for Joe Paterno's firing immediately for, in their factually challenged hypocritical world, "not going to the authorities" or "not doing enough", The same ESPN whose commentators said Joe Paterno going to the administrative head of campus police the next day with McQueary's non-specific report wasn't enough. The same ESPN who accused Joe Paterno without a shred of proof, of being aware of child sexual abuse and "not doing enough". The same ESPN that had an audio tape confirming from the mouth of the abuser's own wife, the sexual abuse of a ball boy at Syracuse university. And did nothing.

And are the same sanctimonious self-righteous group of journalists insisting that anyone at ESPN who had been aware of those tapes for the last ten years and who is still with ESPN be fired? No, of course not.

We now know that the same media types both on television and in print who smeared Joe Paterno on their front pages with the word "Shame", without a shred of proof, did absolutely nothing when put in Paterno's shoes.

Unfortunately the second set of revelations makes it even worse for the media

New revelations were made by the mother of Sandsusky's Victim One that will forever shame even further everyone in the news media who attacked Paterno as well as the trustees of Penn State who buckled under the pressure exerted by the media mob and threw Paterno over the side to quiet them down.

Keep in mind that the fictional narrative by the press in their attack on Paterno, their reason for demanding he be fired was that he had knowledge of sexual abuse and didn't do enough when it came to reporting it, ( something that has already been proved to be completely false).

According to the mother, in a piece that can be read here, the principal of the high school her son attended, Karen Probst, was present in 2009 when her son openly accused Sandusky of molesting him and not only did the school principal do nothing, according to the mother the principal actually tried to talk her and her son out of reporting it.

Additionally, according to the mother, Steve Turchetta, the boy's high school coach repeatedly allowed Sandusky to come to the school and take the boy out of school not only without parental consent but without even any parental notification. And Turchetta continued to allow Sandusky to take the boy out of school even after the mother found out and protested.

The mother states that eventually there was a meeting at the school after the boy had told all to a school counselor and had gotten so emotional they finally believed him. At that meeting the mother states that when she insisted they go to the police, the school officials tried to talk her out of it. They told her to think about it and think about what the accusations could do to her family.

All of this information was available at any time any real journalist wanted to take the time to actually investigate and learn the facts. But all of them, like Sean Gregory at Time Magazine, Andy Staples at Sports Illustrated and just about everyone at ESPN except Lou Holtz, were too busy smearing Paterno to bother. It was Paterno they went after. Because it was Joe Paterno's picture that sold newspapers and got web hits, not Karen Probst's.It was going after Paterno that made the very small and sanctimonious feel very big.

The irony is, that in the end, Joe Paterno did more and with less knowledge, and did it faster than anyone connected to either the Sandusky allegations or the Bernie Fine allegations, all of whom had more knowledge that he did.

And isn't it ironic ( or perhaps par for the course) that ESPN, whose commentators like Jay Bilas and others were some of the most vocal for saying Paterno didn't do enough, had an audio tape that contained an admission of the sexual abuse of a Syracuse ball boy for ten years and did nothing.

So what will ESPN do now? Will they accuse themselves of "not doing enough"? Will they accuse themselves of allowing a sexual predator to remain free? Will there be any media condemnation by others of ESPN?Anyone hear any media condemnation? Anyone demanding people at ESPN be fired? Or will they all hide under their sheets?

So now class lets review the facts: Joe Paterno the day after getting a non-specific non detailed sanitized version of events from McQueary went to the administrative head of the Penn State campus police with Mc Queary's allegations against a man he knew and worked with closely for 26 years, without hesitating or calling Sandusky to get his side of the story. Karen Probst, Victim One's high school principal, Steve Turchetta his high school coach, the school's assistant principal, the school guidance counselor, Ray Gricar, the DA at the time who declined to prosecute, the Syracuse Post-Standard, and ESPN all had specific allegations and in the case of the Fine, a tape recorded admission of child sexual abuse and did absolutely nothing for years. These are some of the people who yelled the loudest about Joe Paterno and moral responsibility. These are some of the people who demanded Joe Paterno be fired for not doing more.

People are angry about what happened to Paterno. They should be even angrier now and should demand not only the restoration of Paterno's reputation, they should demand retribution.

Journalists who falsely accused Paterno should be fired and so should anyone who had knowledge of the events surrounding Sandusky and Bernie Fine. That includes journalists and school officials.

There should be demands that Sean Gregory at Time Magazine who wrote that Joe Paterno "knew a ten year old boy was being raped in a shower and didn't report it to authorities" with no evidence to substantiate it be fired. So should his editor for allowing Gregory's dishonest report to be printed. So should an ESPN columnist named Jemele Hill who wrote her own dishonest column about Paterno simply parroting the false reporting of other journalists and making the same false claims. Anyone at ESPN with knowledge of the Bernie Fine tape should be suspended or fired. The two senators in Pennsylvania, Democrat Bob Casey and Republican Pat Toomey should be eviscerated, their offices deluged with phone calls for withdrawing their sponsorship of Paterno for the Medal of Freedom without any facts, just acting like spineless politicians reacting to the mob . And last but not least every trustee at Penn State who voted to fire Joe Paterno, which is all of them, should resign. They are the people who disgraced Penn State, not Joe Paterno.

The Penn State trustees made a mockery of every value that a university tries to instill in its students and proved, ironically that the trustees can't be trusted. They should all in good conscience, resign. If not their resignations should be demanded since it was they, not Joe Paterno who betrayed the values of Penn State,denying Paterno any form of due process and capitulating to a dishonest incompetent, out of control mob of journalists.

The day after Paterno was fired, students at Penn State demonstrated and demonstrated angrily. They knew, as college students tend to know, that a gross injustice had been done to Joe Paterno and they were motivated by something that the Penn State trustees and those in the news media either lost a long time ago or never had in the first place -- ideals.

The students at Penn State saw that the ideals preached at Penn State were trampled on by a mob of out of control self-serving journalists and a spineless collection of trustees. And they were justifiably angry. They knew a gross injustice had been done. The factually challenged Stuart Scott, reporting on the demonstrations for ESPN said of the demonstrators, "Don't they get it"? Here is a flash to Stuart Scott and the rest of the news media. They got it. You didn't.

When Paterno was given the sanitized version of the event in the shower by McQueary he went straight to the administrative head of campus police, the police agency that had the jurisdiction over any crime committed on the campus of Penn State. Joe Paterno went to the proper authority, he went immediately and he went as high as he could go. The news media, the Penn State trustees, the politicians, ESPN and everyone else who attacked Joe Paterno, given the opportunity, went as low as they could go. They will be remembered for it. And they should all lose their jobs. But before they go, they owe Joe Paterno one big apology.

Why Joe Paterno should sue for libel and journalists should lose their jobs.

2011-11-17T07:59:00.000-08:00

For Paterno it all started with the big lie.

The media repeated the lie over and over again and still are either knowing full well they didn't have any evidence to back it up but did it for their own self-serving reasons or are simply too stupid to know there is no evidence to back it up.

The lie, as everyone knows, is that Joe Paterno knew a 10 year old boy was raped by Jerry Sandsusky in the showers at Penn State and didn't report it to the proper authorities.

That lie was repeated over and over again by a torch carrying mob of ignorant journalists until the trustees finally fired Paterno under pressure by the mob in the press who continue to this day, to repeat the lie as if it were fact. And no doubt feel smug about it,

But the more information that comes out, the more we see just how ignorant and malicious the press was while at the same time, the press ignores the information that exposes them for what they have been.

No one in the news media knows exactly what Paterno was told and knew except that Paterno himself and McQueary both stated that Paterno was told a watered down sanitized non specific non detailed version of what happened in that shower. But everyone in the news media collectively ignored that since "not knowing" doesn't make a good story, and doesn't, as Karl Ravech at ESPN said, "advance the story". There was even something as preposterous as Jay Bilas, an ESPN basketball analyst saying, " a 60 year old man was in a shower with a ten year old boy. That's all you have to know". Really? Grandfathers and fathers who have had children late in life, beware if Jay Bilas comes to your town.

The witch hunting has gotten so out of control that Franco Harris, one of the few to stand up and defend Paterno was himself fired as a spokesman for the Meadows race track and casino, specifically because of his defense of Paterno. This what happens with fascists when someone dares to speak out about something in opposition to the party line.

But another fact has emerged which makes the journalistic mob look even worse than before, a fact that has been conveniently glossed over by the news media for the obvious self-serving reasons.

In response to news reports of McQueary's claim that he did go to the police, the local police chief pointed out that while they have no record of McQuery filing a report with them, McQueary wouldn't have gone to them in the first place for the simple reason that, as the police chief pointed out in his statement, the local police have no jurisdiction over a crime that occurs on the Penn State campus. That,as the police chief pointed out, is the sole jurisdiction of the Penn State Campus Police.

The significance of this is crucial because if the only police agency with jurisdiction over what McQueary witnessed was the Penn State Campus police then Paterno did in fact do everything the moralizers said he didn't do. Gary Shultz was one of the Penn State administrators Paterno went to with whatever McQueary told him. Gary Shultz was the supervisor and overseer of the Penn State Campus Police.When it comes to reporting anything to the Penn State Campus Police, you couldn't get any higher than Shultz.He was, in effect, the chief of Penn State campus police.

Based on this fact and this reality, Paterno did exactly what all the self serving moralizers said he should have done and in fact, there was NO police agency other than the Penn State campus police who had jurisdiction and no other police agency Paterno should have gone to.

This is what happens when ignorant people convinced of all their own self-righteous beliefs but ignorant of facts band together in a mindless mob and go on a rampage.This is what the news media were and continue to be regarding Joe Paterno.

Members of the media like Sean Gregory of Time Magazine and Andy Staples of Sports Illustrated and any number of commentators at ESPN, the Daily News, and other media outlets, all wrote or commented that Paterno knew a 10 year old boy was raped in the showers and only reported it to Curley and Shultz and so shirked his responsibilities when we now know that reporting it to the campus police was fulfilling ALL of Paterno's legal and moral responsibilities. Maybe these ignorant journalists don't think the Penn State campus police are real police. Maybe they'd like to say that to the faces of the Penn State campus police who were in full riot gear the night of the protests, and had tear gas and firearms at their disposal if needed. Penn State has 80,000 students stretched over campuses state wide with the biggest population at the Happy Valley campus. It is a small city. The Penn State campus police are as real and have as much authority as any police anywhere in any jurisdiction. So now the lie that Paterno didnt do enough by only going to the head of campus police can be put to rest.

But as everyone knows, the biggest lie that Sean Gregory and others tell is that Paterno knew a 10 year old boy was being raped in spite of the fact that Paterno himself said he was never told that by McQueary.

Based on all the known facts, Joe Paterno could sue for libel for that reporting. And he should. The case is so open and shut it would never get to court. The media outlets Paterno could sue wouldn't let it. Instead there would be out of court settlements for millions with the stipulation that Paterno never talk about it. Why? Because the news media wants to preserve their -uh - reputations.

Of course there are those in the media, and small minority outside the media that believe that Paterno just had to know the specifics of what on. They have no proof but they say it anyway. So what did McQueary actually tell Paterno? We don't know.And neither does one single journalist anywhere. But here is something we do know.

Just a few days ago, the Citadel, a military college in South Carolina revealed they had something of a child abuse scandal of their own. In reporting the story a CNN reporter wrote:

"In 2007, the college received an allegation that five years earlier, ReVille invited two campers at The Citadel Summer Camp into his room to watch pornography. They did not touch each other, but engaged in sexual activity."

Kind of missing in specifics isn't it. The reporter doesn't say what sexual activity or how they engaged in sexual activity without touching each other. Was it an out of body experience? Acrobatics? Mind over matter?

Most people are smart enough to figure out for themselves that what this journalist so awkwardly and cryptically is trying to say is, in all probability they engaged in some kind of group masturbation. The reporter could have said so in so many words. He could have been specific. They didn't.

So an experienced reporter writing for CNN could not make a simple declarative statement about the specifics of a sexual event that took place, even with time to reflect and to get the words right and even with the help from an alleged editor,and over an event with which they had no personal involvement. Yet we are supposed to believe McQuery gave 84 year old football coach Joe Paterno specifics when an experienced reporter with all the time in the world to reflect, couldn't.The irony is, that even if McQueary did tell Paterno all the specifics ( something Paterno and McQueary deny) Paterno did everything he could have and should have done in reporting it. There is no other police agency Paterno could have or should have gone other than the head of Penn State campus police, Gary Shultz. And he and McQueary did. What Shultz did or did not do at that point is none of Paterno's responsibility. Period.

It is not in Joe Paterno's DNA to sue. He has always avoided the limelight and personal publicity and he doesn't need the money. But there are many reasons of principle Paterno should sue certain journalists and media outlets for libel and defamation, not the least of which is that its a law suit Paterno could not lose and would mete out well deserved justice to the news media. After all isn't justice what the news media has been clamoring about?

The legal definition of libel, which in many cases is hard to prove especially in cases involving celebrities or public figures, fits what happened to Paterno like a glove.

Two important elements must be proved. One, that the person making the libelous statements knew the statements were not true ,and two, that the person making the libelous statements knew they would injure and harm the person they were making the statements about. Two elements that in Paterno's case could be proved so easily the media outlets being sued would settle almost immediately. And as part of the settlement Paterno could demand a public apology.

One target would be Sean Gregory and Time Magazine. Gregory in print and in so many words stated that "Paterno knew a 10 year old boy was raped in the showers at Penn State and didn't report it to the authorities". No number of lawyers at Time could defend the double fabrication by Sean Gregory.

Similar statements about Paterno knowing about a boy being sexually molested were made by Andy Staples at Sports Illustrated, numerous commentators at ESPN including Stuart Scott, Jay Bilas, and others. All statements made at a time when they nor anyone else had one shred of proof that Paterno knew what they say he knew. And if true justice were to prevail, Gregory,his editor and many other so called journalists would lose their jobs for their fabricated, dishonest, and factually challenged reporting.

It is a virtual certainty media outlets like ESPN, Time Magazine and others whose journalists who defamed and libeled Paterno would settle out of court rather than risk having a jury speak and probably award many millions more than what they could settle for. And Paterno, once they agreed to settle, could donate all the money to worthy children's charities. The purpose of the libel suits would be principle and a principle worth suing over, but the money Paterno would get would also do a lot of good for a lot of charities and help a lot of children and in the end that would be justice too since it was in defense of children that the media justified its smearing and libeling of Joe Paterno.

In all probability Paterno wont sue. Certainly if Paterno was actually guilty of what those in the mob said he was guilty of, Paterno's firing and everything that happened subsequently would be appropriate. But Paterno from the first day said otherwise, said he didn't know the details or ANY, specifics of what McQuery saw and reported what McQueary told him, as he was supposed to, legally and morally to his superior, the AD and in effect, the chief of Penn State campus police, the police agency with sole jurisdiction.

Paterno should sue for libel. Not only to defend his name but to mete out justice and punishment to those who trample the civil rights of others so effortlessly for their own self aggrandizement because they think they can and get away with it and in the process do tremendous damage, as all mobs do, solely because of their stupidity and ignorance.

Paterno won't sue. But he should.

UPDATE: We can now add a writer named Jemele Hill to the list of the sanctimonious and factually challenged and dishonest sportswriters, who, if standards of fact meant anything in journalism would lose her job as well. Writing for ESPN on Nov. 22, Hill wrote a peice about all the negative email she has received because of the story she wrote attacking Paterno. Hill wrote in her Nov 22 peice, " I anticipated that since the story is centered on his (Paterno's) knowledge of and reaction to the alleged sexual abuse of children".

Notice how she treats Paterno's "knowledge of sexual abuse of children" as fact when we know that Hill hasnt got a shred of evidence to back that up. But even more bizarre is that Hill calls the actual sexual abuse "alleged". In her mind Paterno's knowledge of the abuse is fact but the abuse itself is only "alleged". This is either ESPN's legal guidelines telling her to use the word "alleged" to protect them from being sued by Sandusky if he ever got an acquital, or Hill's own twisted point of view. But in attacking Paterno the sexual abuse is "alleged" but Paterno's knowledge of the abuse is fact.

Also somehow in Hill's journalistic fantasy world. the boy that McQueary witnessed with Sandusky in the shower has now become many and many instances.. In Jemele Hill's world Paterno not only knew of child sexual abuse with Sandusky at Penn State( that maybe didnt really happen) and did nothing about it, but Paterno's known about other cases of sexual abuse with other children and did nothing about that either.
Without a single fact or a shred of evidence to back it up. Or even the suggestion of any evidence.

Penn State institutional cowardice,stupidity, phony media morality and witch hunting forced Paterno out.

2011-11-11T09:48:00.000-08:00

The mob mentality is always the mentality that keeps justice from being done. And it's always based on ignorance. What always motivates the mob is their own perverted and sanctimonious ideas of justice and what is true which excludes the facts and due process and substitutes their own beliefs and in many instances outright lies to justify their mob behavior.

The storyline concocted by the journalistic mob, the lie they repeat over and over again to themselves and those watching or reading to justify their mob mentality is that Joe Paterno knew a 10 year old boy was being raped in the shower and did no more than report it to the AD. This of course is an out and out lie, but a lie that allows the mob to carry their torches, feel holier than thou and delude themselves into thinking they are acting nobly.

This lie was repeated so often by so many people in the media they have accepted it as fact. And the mob is so convinced they are on the side of right that they did not once stop and think that they had no proof. Thinking is not an attribute of a mob. Which is why they are always wrong. It should be noted that Linda Kelly the Pennyslvania Attorney General has singled out Tim Curley the AD to whom Paterno reported McQueary's allegations, and Gary Schultz, Penn State's senior vice president for finance as the culprits, the ones who didnt do their jobs and who shirked their responsibilities in notifying the police. Both have been indicted. But not Paterno. No mention of Paterno by the Attorney General who does have the facts, when discussing who she holds accountable.

The trustees, displaying none of the values Penn State is supposed to stand for, nevertheless caved in to the mindless mob of psuedo-moralistic journalistsbecause they couldnt stand the pressure. They threw Joe Paterno to the mob.

What happened to Joe Paterno was not justice. It was mob justice. When it comes to any mob it is always justice, they say, that motivates them. And the news media mob is no different. But like all phony moralists and mobs everywhere their actions are inevitably immoral. They use morality as the excuse for their immorality. And so their ideas of justice produce injustice. Which is what happens with a mob of people too cowardly to stand alone but get brave in a mob.

On ESPN Lou Holtz became the only one who told the truth. He said over and over again in answer to questions, " I don't have all the facts...". Does anyone in the news media have facts that Lou Holtz didn't? Any of the sanctimonious ESPN journalists or those at other media outlets calling for Paterno's head? The answer is no. But when you're a member of the mob you dont need facts.

And while not having the facts kept Holtz from joining the mob, it didn't stop anyone else at ESPN, or Sports Illustrated or Time Magazine for that matter from carrying their burning torches demanding Paterno's head in the name of morality.

I have a friend who is not into sports and knows nothing about college football. But with all the media coverage over the last few days, the television reports, the front pages stories, the stories at online media sites, catching glimpses of headlines and pictures but without actually reading the articles, based on what she was exposed to she thought Joe Paterno was the one who had molested the young boy.

I explained that what she was seeing was actually Joe Paterno being molested by the media.

As of this writing still no one knows for sure what Paterno was told and exactly what he knew, but the sanctimonious moralists pretend they did and Paterno is gone.

Paterno wanted to clear the air and will tell exactly what he was told. But the university muzzled him, then threw him overboard to satisfy the media mob of phony moralists without anyone knowing for certain what he knew.

What is even more amazing, is that, now that the goal of the mob has been reached, after all the damage has been done, an ESPN anchor led into the a segment entitled, "Was firing Joe Paterno the wrong thing to do"? I didn't bother to watch. The segment was repeated on "Outside the Lines".

As a matter of justice there is an easy way to look at the actions of the mindless mob of journalists and judge it by asking this question: If Tim Curley, the AD Paterno went to with the information he gave him had called the police and Sandusky was arrested in 2002 would Paterno have been fired? Would any of this even be a story? Would people be saying he didnt do enough? The obvious answer is no. So Paterno was fired, not for what he didn't do, but for what Tim Curley didn't do. And its worth noting it was Tim Curley and Gary Shultz who was indicted. But it was Paterno that the press chose to attack. Because, as a friend said, Paterno had a reputation worth destroying and Tim Curley didnt.

To make the point even clearer, a reader pointed out that the boy's mother did in fact go to the DA, a man by the name of Ray Gricar, in 1998 with Sandusky's admission that he had molested her son. And what did Gricar do? He did nothing. Ray Gricar, the DA ignored the evidence of Sandusky's molestion in 1998 and yet he isn't even mentioned by the torch carriers at ESPN, Sports Illustrated and Time.Instead its the fiction that it was Paterno's inaction that allowed a predator to go free all these years. How many journalists who called for Paterno to be fired even knows the name Ray Gricar?

And even if they did, the name Ray Gricar does not sell newspapers, get ratings or web site hits. The name Joe Paterno does. So while the mob was busy attacking Paterno for his so called moral failures for which they had no proof, they've made no mention of a DA who was told of the molestation in 1998 by the boy's mother and did nothing. And what about the boy's own mother? She went to the DA and he did nothing and so she dropped it for 13 years? If it was me I wouldnt stop until justice was done. And what could the mother have done? How about going to the, uh, you know, the news media. What do you think a reporter on the Daily News, the paper that splashed Paterno's picture all over the front page with the word "Shame" would have done with a mother of a young boy telling him Jerry Sandusky, defensive coordinator for Penn State for 26 years admitted to her he had molested her son and the DA has done nothing? How many people do you think he would have run over jumping over his desk running to tell his editor?

The mother could have gone to any print or TV reporter and that story would have exploded in 1998 and tremendous pressure would have been put on the DA to DO something. She could have gotten a lawyer herself to handle it. But its Joe Paterno who had a sanitized, watered down version of what McQuery saw and reported it to his superrio who didnt do enough.

The news media went after Paterno and didnt lay a glove on the mother for only one reason -- cowardice. They were afraid of a backlash if they attacked the mother for not doing enough even though she didnt, and there may have been some sense of sympathy but if she had done the things she should have done, this would never have happened. So much for moral responsibility. And moral failures. And courageous journalism.

The refrain that Paterno knew what was going in the shower and shirked his responsibilites, is so utterly stupid and has become so pervasive that even when presented with a different set of facts that might call that into question, anchors at ESPN sing the old refrain. An ESPN reporter Thursday morning told the anchor that Joe Paterno intends to speak and clear the air about exactly what he knew and what he was told. The anchor in wrapping up the segment said, " we are all looking forward to hearing Joe Paterno give us an explanation as to what he did not do and why".

Another member of the mob, Sean Gregory, wrote in Time Magazine:

" By failing to alert authorities that Sandusky, his long time assistant allegedly raped a 10 year old boy in the Penn State football showers Paterno simplified the board's decision indeed".

Where to start with this journalistically corrupt and factually dishonest piece of nonsense except to say any smear merchant or fascist government propaganda machine would say "well done".

First we know that Gregory himself, an alleged journalist, had no facts to support what he wrote and that all the known facts available at present contradict everything he wrote. There is no evidence that Paterno knew a 10 year old boy was being raped. None. But that didn't stop a hack journalist from saying so anyway.

The grand jury, prosecutor and attorney general, the only people presently in possession of all the known evidence essentially say Sean Gregory is a liar and that Paterno never had any such knowledge. If he had he would have been indicted and in fact Paterno himself says he was not told of the specific nature of what McQuery saw.

The second piece of Sean Gregory nonsense is that Paterno didn't report what he knew to "authorities". Everyone knows he did report it. Gregory just doesn't like the authority Paterno reported to which was the AD who, by the way, had direct access to the head of campus police.It was Tim Curry who didnt act, but its Joe Paterno in the mind of Sean Gregory, who is supposed to be everyone's daddy.

Penn State's board of trustees simply buckled in the face of a news media with the values of a Sean Gregory and took the cowards way out by throwing Joe Paterno to the mob because, as they essentially admitted, they couldn't take the pressure anymore.

One last point. If there is any question, any doubt as to the cowardice of the Penn State trustees in dismissing Paterno and that it was done soley because they buckled under pressure and that their decision had nothing to do with culpability, if there is,any question about the true injustice and immorality surrounding the decision to fire Joe Paterno it's answered by this: Mike McQuery, the assistant coach who was the eyewitness to Sandusky's child assault, the person who saw it but didn't intervene or try and stop it, the person who didn't go to the police but instead went to Paterno the next day with a sanitized and watered down version of what he saw, this person had his job until he was placed on leave when people started questioning why the trustees hadnt fired him.

If you want culpability what about the parents? This has been going on for 13 years. Thirteen years. I know one of the mothers went to the DA and the DA did nothing but if it was my kid I wouldnt stop until something was done. Id go to the newspapers if I had to. Id take Sandusky on publicly. But I wouldnt stop till something was done. You could make a good case that the parents didnt do enough. And what about the DA who did nothing? Not only didnt he do enough, he did nothing. Then there is Tim Curley the AD and Gary Shultz two administrators at Penn State who did nothing.

Joe Paterno was a football coach. He is not their daddy. He is not CSI. He is not the DA. He is not the president of the university and he is not the Athletic Director or an administrator and he is not a cop. He was a football coach. By going to the Athletic Director with the sanitized waterdown version of events given to him by Mike McQueary which did NOT include knowing a 10 year old boy was anally raped no matter how much the media and the likes of a Sean Gregory want to lie and say he did, Paterno did all he was supposed to, legally AND morally.There was no reason for him to believe Tim Curley would do nothing and it was not his job , especially based on what he knew, to look over Curley's shoulder.

When it comes to morality and integrity just about everyone knows that Paterno has more of it in his pinky than all the commentators and phony moralists in the media have in their whole bodies combined. Because when it comes to the immoralistic mob, what matters most, what makes them feel the biggest, is when they get the chance to think they are morally superior. And the bigger the person they can bring down the better. Which always comes out making them look small.

UPDATE: ESPN is reporting (Friday) that a trustee has told them Joe Paterno was fired solely because of media pressure and scrutiny which they felt was bad for the university. They voted to fire Paterno to end it. So, as postulated here, Paterno is gone because of everyone's sins but his own.

The sanctimonious railroading of Joe Paterno

2011-11-09T06:28:00.000-08:00

If there is one thing we have come to expect from the press its that when it comes to almost any big story they will miss what's important and what matters in place of those who will seize the opportunity for their own self-serving, sanctimonious, self-righteous reasons to try and make a name for themselves.

That is exactly what is going on now with the phony moralistic and imbecilic calls by factually challenged sportswriters and other journalists, not exactly known for their ability to think in the first place, for Joe Paterno the coach of Penn State football, to resign or be fired over a child abuse scandal involving a former defensive coach at Penn State.

The fact that, based on all the facts presently known, Paterno did nothing wrong, not in any imaginable way, doesn't stop the sanctimonious, self-righteous pseudo-moralistic members of the press from piling on over an issue for which they feel safe in piling on.

Here is what we and self-serving sports writers like Andy Staples for Sports Illustrated, Bob Ford, and others know. We and they know we don't have all the facts but that the prosecutors and grand jury do. We and they know that the grand jury, the body who does have all the facts, handed down indictments, one involving the abuser and two involving two Penn State officials who were charged with perjury for covering up one of the incidents and were indicted for failure to report sexual abuse. After hearing all the evidence including testimony by Joe Paterno, the grand jury did not indict Joe Paterno for anything.

Based on all the facts at the grand jury's disposal Paterno did nothing wrong. And the Pennsylvania State Attorney General said as much as well.

But if you want to pretend youre a moral hero, if you are self-serving and sanctimonious and looking to beat your chest about something, that isnt good enough. That also wont sell newspapers, get TV ratings, or get website hits the way going after a figure like Joe Paterno would. And the justification by these factually challenged journalists who are trying to do something journalists have proved they are incapable of doing in the first place -- think -- is that while Paterno did nothing criminally wrong he was morally wrong in not reporting what he heard to the police.

The problem with that is the need to answer the question, "heard what"?

Perhaps these journalists are not aware that it is in fact a crime -- a felony -- to know about child abuse and not report it. We have seen that repeatedly with the serial and institutional child sexual abuse in the Catholic church. We know that those in the hierarchy of the church who knew about the abuse by priests and did nothing are being held accountable.

The grand jury, the only body in possession of all the facts ( and the indictment is NOT all the facts - only evidence and testimony given to the grand jury contains all the facts and that is secret) decided that Paterno is blameless and committed no crime. At the same time the grand jury indicted two Penn State officials for not doing what the sanctimonious is saying Joe Paterno also didnt do but should have -- report abuse. So with no facts to support it a group of self appointed self-rightous journalists posing as moralists are calling for Paterno to be fired.

According to them Paterno should be fired for not doing what the grand jury held Paterno blameless for not doing -- going to the police with nothing.

The incident in question was witnessed by an assistant coach who actually saw the abuse take place. This coach - an eyewitness -- did NOT go to the police with what he saw but the press is giving him a pass anyway. Why? Because he is not a big fish. Because he is not going to embellish anyone's reputation. Because pointing the finger at him is not going allow sanctimonious journalists to stick out their chests the way the morally sanctimonious always do. Going after the person who actually the saw the abuse and did nothing but who is a lowly assistant coach wouldn't put a feather in the cap of those like Andy Staples, Bob Ford, or the editorial writers of the Philadelphia Daily News. Going after the witness who did nothing doesnt allow them to strut their "moral superiority" but going after Paterno gives them the opportunity to say, "look ma, I'm a hero".

So they go after Paterno, who according to his testimony and public statement had no details or specifics of what this coach saw because the coach never told him. This is an excerpt from Paterno's statement:
" He ( McCreary, the eyewitness) at no time related to me the very specific actions contained in the grand jury report:".

The grand jury investigation which included calling McCreary as a witness as well as Paterno and the two Penn State officials eventually indicted, concluded Paterno's statement was the truth and that Paterno fullfilled all his obligations in reporting what he knew to the Penn State Athletic Director and not the police.

But that still isn't enough for the railroading press. According to them Paterno should have gone to the police anyway. But they never say with what. An incident he didn't see and for which he had no details or specifics? What exactly was he supposed to say to the police? The sanctimonious in the press calling for Paterno's dismissal never say.

The mother of the boy who was sexually abused by Sandusky issued a public statement yesterday. In it she said that Sandusky in 1998 "admitted to my face - he admitted it", that he had sexually abused her son. She said in the same statement that Sandusky admitted the abuse to her again in 2002. What did the mother do? Nothing. Did she go to the police with this specific admission? No. But Paterno was supposed to with none of the facts the mother had.

So we have an assistant coach who actually witnessed the incident but didn't report it to the police and the mother of the victim who was told twice over a 4 year span by the abuser himself that he had abused her son and neither went to the police. But Paterno, who didn't have a fraction of the information those two had, and didnt have a fraction of the moral responsibility of the boy's own mother,was supposed to do more than the boy's own mother did. And should be fired for not doing so.

McCreary and the boy's mother are clearly the ones who should have gone to the police but they are given a pass by the press because there is no money or moral superiority to be had by going after them. But going after Paterno who didn't know a thing about any specific act of abuse, well, that's a gold mine.

The justification being used for attacking Paterno is that while he may have done nothing wrong criminally he was morally wrong in not reporting it to the police. Again, these factually challenged journalists are oblivious to the fact that what they say is morally wrong -- not reporting it to the police -- is also criminally wrong. To restate the facts, not reporting child abuse is a felony. The fact that the grand jury didnt indict Paterno for not reporting abuse to police while indicting two Penn State officials for that very thing, is proof that those in possession of all the facts decided that there was nothing Paterno should have done that he didnt do.

With the press when it comes to controversy its always about cowardice and what they think they can get away with to sell newspapers, get ratings or website hits as long as they feel safe against retribution. They had nothing to say about irrefutable evidence that Bush lied the country into war but they got real tough with Anthony Weiner over a picture of his underwear. They put Joe Paterno's picture on the front page of the Philadephia Daily News with the word "Shame" in huge type but never a picture of the present Pope with the same word after we learned that the present Pope had known about the Wisconsin priest who sexually abused over 400 deaf children over 20 years and did nothing.

Sandusky no doubt will get what's coming to him if he is guilty. Its too bad the same cant be said about journalists like Andy Staples, Bob Ford and the rest of the press especially those at ESPN who threw due process, common sense, facts and journalistic integrity out the window for their own self-serving reasons. But one can always hope.

NOTE: This morning on ESPN, Karl Ravich an ESPN anchor made an inadvertent but stunning admisson that bears out the premise of this peice. Ravich pointed out that all of the media attention is being focused on Joe Paterno, and almost forgotten is Jerry Sandusky, the person actually indicted for engaging in the sexual abuse. Ravich made the point that while Sandusky will eventually have his day in court, for now they can't advance the story using Sandusky so all the attention is being focused on Joe Paterno. Obviously to, as Ravich said, advance the story.And milk it. At Joe Paterno's expense. And their own self-aggrandizement.

Why Caine's surge in the polls could be big trouble for Obama with Democrats

2011-11-02T13:53:00.000-07:00

This isn't about politics. It's about race. Because when it comes to Barrack Obama it is always about race.

It was the agenda of many in the upper echelons of the Democratic party and certainly the news media to support Obama because of race, even to the point of rigging the 2008 primary process because what became most important was romanticizing the symbolism of a candidate with African ancestry being elected president.

The fact that the candidate with black ancestry had proved repeatedly that he was the most underhanded, dishonest duplicitous unqualified and untrustworthy candidate the Democrats ever had was, unfortunately for the country and subsequently, for the Democratic party, besides the point at the time for those who supported him. And in many instances still seems to be besides the point to those who don't want to admit the huge mistake it was in supporting Obama as the nominee.

A perfect example is a recent email mailing by MoveOn. org. dated Nov.2.

"some members of the Obama administration—including members of his Cabinet—are pushing for a terrible deal to let the big banks off the hook for selling bad mortgages and then illegally foreclosing on homeowners—destroying the American Dream for millions of families.1

The president's top campaign advisors have said that he's going to run for re-election on his record of holding Wall Street accountable2—but that'll be impossible if his administration pushes for another giveaway for the Wall Street banks who crashed our economy. And that could happen any day now.3

Can you sign our petition to President Obama right now telling him that we need a full investigation into the banks' wrongdoing, not another "deal" that lets them off the hook? "

Notice how its everyone's fault BUT Obama's. Its "some members in his administration" as if "some members" have the authority to make policy and poor Obama cant do a thing about it. Not to mention that the "some members" who are pushing for a bad deal are there because Obama chose them. Its almost as if MoveOn feels Obama has nothing to say about it and is a victim of those around him ( a subliminally racist idea if there ever was one). And notice their repeated use of the word "another". "Another giveaway to the banks". "another deal that lets them off the hook". Well, where do they think these other bad deals came from? Outer space? Who do they think is responsible for them? Newt Gingrich?

Along with MoveOn's deep denial about their own responsibility in Obama being where he is, and their denial that Obama has anything to do with all the bad decisions that sold out the Democrats agenda, they want one more useless petition telling Obama not to sell liberals and Democrats down the river. As if Obama hadn't already did just that so many times you'd think those in MoveOn has to have been in a coma the last three years not to know it.

Their blindness to who Obama is, their ignoring his being caught in lie after lie from the time he started running for president, to all his selling out of Democrats and the liberal agenda since he has been in office, is the reason Clinton supporters referred to Obama supporters as "drinking the Kool-Aid". These supporters were willing to be, or small minded enough to be, and seemingly still are, bamboozled by an empty and duplicitous garden variety politician with no ideas, no moral outrage, and who has demonstrated for years he has no principles or convictions. The reason for their denial and refusal to hold Obama accountable for all the damage he's done to Democrats and their agenda is of course, race.

As Geraldine Ferraro said during the 2008 primaries, if Obama had been white he'd be considered a joke as a presidential candidate. For telling the truth Ferraro was labeled a racist by the media and Obama supporters. But no one is laughing at the joke now. Maybe because they stilll dont get it.

But with Herman Caine's surge in the polls putting him in a tie with Mitt Romney for the lead for the Republican presidential nomination, Obama supporting Democrats might wake up and realize they can no longer use race as their rationale for supporting Obama. They cant feel any moral superiority for supporting a candidate with black ancestry. They can't go home and pat themselves on the back anymore and somehow feel morally superior in supporting a president with more character flaws than Richard Nixon, simply because of his African ancestry.

Herman Caine, for those who care about race, is twice as black as Obama and he is getting more support for president than any other Republican candidate and he is getting it from the avowed enemy -- white Republican conservatives.

And that could mean a problem for Obama. Democrats who support Obama can no longer claim ownership of the race issue as a reason to continue to support him.

Like it or not, with race peeled away and a non-factor, Obama Democrats may be be forced for the first time to judge Obama, as Martin Luther King admonished 50 years ago, by the content of his character and not the color of his skin. And if they do they won't like what they see.

Because with Caine's emergence, support for Obama can no longer be propped up or justified by race or what Obama's supporters think it says about them for supporting him. With Caine's surge in the polls to virtual front runner status among Republicans that is completely gone. And with it, finally, and thankfully, the idea of race as a reason to judge or support anyone. And that could be big trouble for Obama among Democrats, many of whom are already fed up with his presidency.

NOTE: The recent sexual harrassment stories about settlements reached with 3 women in the 1990's have so far had no effect on Cain's poll numbers. No one knows what the substance of the allegations are and unless they are released and prove to be serious they probably won't mean anything in the long run. In any event they still do not undermine the basic premise that Democrats can no longer claim moral superiorty in their support of Obama because of race even if bad behavior in Cain's past does him in. That is gone forever.

Florida Republicans move up primary. Will Democrats and the press say it doesn't count?

2011-10-17T10:16:00.000-07:00

The Florida Republican party recently announced that over the objections of the Republican National Committee, they are going to move the date of its presidential primary up to January.

This decision and the difference between the reactions of the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee recalls one of the most disgraceful, dishonest, corrupt episodes in the history of the Democratic party when, during the 2008 primaries the hierarchy of the Democratic National Committee headed by Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, Donna Brazille and others, conspired to do everything possible to tilt the playing field in favor of Barrack Obama. And did it by depriving 2.200,000 Democratic voters in Florida and Michigan their voting rights and their rightful voice in the process to select the Democratic nominee for president.

I use the word "conspire" because that is exactly what it was. What the Democratic National Committee did in Florida and Michigan was as sinister and corrupt as any act committed by Boss Tweed, the corrupt Democratic party official in New York City in the 1850's who literally threw away votes for candidates he did not support.

The decision to move the Florida and Michigan primaries up over the objections of the DNC were made by two party chairpersons in each state with the support of state party officials. Both Florida and Michigan did it because they were afraid their primaries would be irrelevant after Super Tuesday and they wanted to call attention to their unemployment and economic problems. The DNC said no, and the two states said they would defy the national party and move them up anyway.

What the DNC could have done as punishment for defying national party orders was sanction the party officials who made the decision. They could have stripped them of their credentials. They could have levied heavy fines on the respective state parties. They could have banned the party officials from the Democratic national convention.

Instead the DNC used it as an excuse to help Obama by disenfranchising 1,600,000 Democrats in Florida and another 600,000 Michigan - 2,200,000 voters who the DNC punished and whose crime was to show up and vote on the dates their state Democratic party and their state's attorney general told them to. The DNC decided they were the ones to be punished by announcing that their votes wouldn't count and the delegates elected to cast their votes for a presidential nominee wouldn't be seated.

To show just how corrupt the process was, Michael Moore, whose good works have been invaluable to the cause of common sense, threw 600,000 of his friends and neighbors in his beloved Michigan under the bus by supporting the DNC's decision to disenfranchise them because he, like most journalists and Obama supporters, had an agenda of seeing a president with black ancestry get elected

Never mind that this candidate had proved over 11 years that he was the most dishonest, duplicitous candidate since Richard Nixon. Never mind that over 11 years he had proved he was a do nothing politician who did nothing but talk a lot. Never mind that he had been caught in more lies in two months than most dishonest politicians in a career, whether it was seven consecutive days lying about Jeremiah Wright or his lies and duplicity that was exposed over NAFTA during the Ohio primaries. There was an agenda and that agenda was going to be seen through even if people like Michael Moore, Arianna Huffington, Keith Olbermann, Gail Collins and just about everyone in the press along with the DNC had to shred every iota of their integrity to make it happen. And that meant disenfranchising 2,200,000 voters in Florida and Michigan.At the same time that American soldiers were dying in Iraq to secure free and fair elections there.

While Obama was making speeches in 2008 saying things like " voices must be heard, every vote must count" he was also deeply involved, conspiring with officials at the DNC to do everything possible to keep the votes from Florida and Michigan from counting because of what those voices were saying, voices that said in landslide numbers that they wanted Hillary Clinton, not Barrack Obama to be the Democratic nominee for president.

The press dutifully went along acting like errand boys and accomplices for DNC officials, refusing to count the Florida and Michigan votes and the delegate counts that went along with it. This went a long way in creating the expectation that Obama would be the nominee despite facts at the time to the contrary which was the whole point.

Jonathan Alter, in Obama's pocket from day one, actually wrote an article saying that Hillary Clinton should drop out of the race because she had no chance of winning. This even though Clinton had landslided Obama in 13 of 15 of the biggest states in the country. " Do the math" Alter wrote. In the end the math said that Clinton had won the popular vote over Obama and neither candidate had the 2/3 delegate majority to seal the nomination after the primaries ( which is what led to the rigged roll call vote for Obama at the convention).

The Florida Republican party's decision to move their primary up over the objections of the national party but with no threat made by the RNC that their votes wouldn't count recalls the whole ugly mess in 2008, a mess caused by the of leadership the DNC and the political corruption of Democratic congressional leaders and the press that brought about Obama's nomination.

You would think that politicians would have learned a long time ago that nothing good will ever come from trying dishonest or corrupt means to achieve a desired result. Nixon learned it in Watergate. Politicians who went to jail like Tom DeLay and Duke Cunningham learned that. And now, after Obama sold out the Democratic agenda,after he has caved in and capitulated to Republicans on the most important aspects of the Democratic agenda, after his duplicitious and gutless first two years in office cost the Democrats the House and their biggest opportunity in 60 years to accomplish their goals, the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic leadership know it too.

And unless they find another nominee for president in 2012, the price for their manipulation will get steeper.

Republican congressman unconsciously compares Occupy Wall Street to American Revolution.

2011-10-10T07:38:00.000-07:00

Peter King, a right wing New York Republican congressman joined the growing list of Republicans condemning the Occupy Wall Street protests that continues to spread far beyond Wall Street with smaller protests cropping up in cities from coast to coast, and spreading around the world, but King's condemnation was especially amusing since, without realizing it, he compared the protestors to the American colonists who revolted against British rule.

In an interview with right wing radio host Laura Ingrahm, King referred to the Occupy Wall Street protestors as "anarchists" and a "rag tag mob", precisely the same language the British used in referring to American colonists who revolted against King George. He's now the second king to refer to American protestors as "anarchists" and a "rag tag mob".

King was also concerned that the Occupy Wall Street protestors were getting too much attention from the media, something he has no problem with when the Tea Party organizes protests.

Referring to the protestors as a "mob", King said:

"We have to be careful not to allow this ( the protests) to get any legitimacy," he warned. "I'm taking this seriously in that I'm old enough to remember what happened in the 1960's when the left-wing took to the streets and somehow the media glorified them and it ended up shaping policy," he said. "We can't allow that to happen."

The policies that King referred to that were shaped by the protests of the 1960's that he objects to were civil rights, equal rights for African Americans, the Voting Rights Act that gave African Americans the right to vote, integration, equality for women, insistence that 18 year olds who were old enough to get drafted and be sent to war were old enough to vote for or against those who send them there, respect for the global environment with protests against polluting the air and water, sexual freedom, freedom of speech, an end to social double standards, and an end to an ongoing war that killed 50,000 American soldiers needlessly because of egregious miscalculations by two presidents and the super ego of one, Richard Nixon.

In two sentences about the Occupy Wall Street protests, King summed up everything that is at the root of all liberal vs. conservative animosity and conflict. Not only have conservatives still not gotten over losing the Civil War, they haven't gotten over the 60's either when so many of the conformist, unequal, unconstitutional and narrow minded values they cherished were exposed as frauds and demolished.

Mayor Bloomberg might have a point when he says that the Occupy Wall Street protestors miss the point that it's the taxes these banks and Wall Street firms pay that help pay for the services in the city that benefits everyone. But Mayor Bloomberg misses a different point -- that it was the taxes paid by average working people that went to prop up these banks that were on the verge of collapse because of the sheer greed, ineptitude and incompetence of those who controlled them. Average working people saw their tax money spent on cleaning up the egregious and dishonest mistakes of bank presidents and investment houses and benefit the people with the multi-million dollar salaries, the people who caused all the problems in the first place but, thanks to government bail outs didn't lose their jobs ( a case can be made that many of them should have gone to jail much less lose their jobs), while not enough of their tax payer money went to saving their own jobs and the economies of their own communities.

The biggest point the protestors are missing is that the inequality and injustice they now feel is not the fault of the banks or Wall Street who are only doing what the law allows. That fault can be laid directly at the feet of Barrack Obama who, despite a huge congressional Democratic majority watered down Financial Reform and took out its most important provisions." Too big to fail" the concept that was at the heart of the tax payer bailout has not been fixed because Obama caved in to Wall Street and bank pressure, a pattern which followed his caving in to pressure from health insurance companies by dropping the public option.

It is not the banks or Wall Street that has to go. It's Obama. And the Republican majority in the House.

Will Obama supporters ever admit he's a fraud?

2011-09-29T05:28:00.000-07:00

Every day I get emails from a variety of "progressive" groups and the theme is always the same. "Republicans want to destroy this", or " Republicans want to kill that". They want money for their organizations or political campaigns and they want it based on telling you how bad Republicans are. Well, okay, they are bad. But they aren't the problem. And never were. The real problem is that Democrats and these groups not only don't want to face what the real problem is, they are afraid of trying to do anything about it.And that is that Barrack Obama is and always has been a political and policy fraud.

Obviously things arent exactly what everyone who supported Obama believed they would be. No real health care reform, no public option, no reducing the deficit by eliminating the $800 billion in Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 5%. No real financial reform. all of which could have easily been accomplished by someone who knew what they were doing and had the backbone and conviction and integrity to do it. There was also no standing up to Republicans nor pointing out that of the $1.7 trillion budget deficit almost all of it is completely the result of Republican economic policies and putting two unpaid for wars (which accounted for more than $ 1 trillion of the deficit) and an unpaid for drug prescription program on a government credit card to paid for later so that they could enact the Bush tax cuts. All by the way, without a word from the hypocrites in the Tea Party.

So what are organizations like MoveOn and the PCCC really so upset about? That Republicans are acting like Republicans? The Republicans are only doing what the people who vote for them want them to do as repulsive as it may be. Is it the Republicans fault that Obama and congressional Democrats never did what those who elected them wanted them to do? Is it the Republicans fault that none of the Democratic initiatives, things that most people believed were best for the country, never got through? What is it that these groups want Republicans to do? Act like Democrats?

Here is a flash for Move On, the PCCC, Credo and Democratic candidates for congress and their donors and supporters -- that is what elections are all about. And in 2008 the country threw the Republicans out of control of all 3 branches of government after 8 years of disastrous Republican governance, elected a Democratic president and gave him the biggest congressional majority any president had in 60 years. And what did the Democratic president do with the biggest congressional majority any president has had in 60 years? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. He said he wanted to work with Republicans and incorporate Republican ideas ignoring the fact that if the country had wanted Republican ideas they wouldn't have thrown them out of office in the first place. Which is why Democratic voters stayed home in 2010 giving the Democrats the worst defeat of any political party in 80 years.

Obama's first three years in office has left the Democrats with the worst of all possible worlds. Its not as if their agenda passed and it didn't work. Obama compromised the agenda away and replaced it with half baked ineffectual policies with nothing behind it. It's his compromises that didn't work. But its Democrats who stand to take the brunt of the country's frustration with Obama just as they did in 2010 if nothing changes.

Here is what Democrats and so called "progressives" need to get through their heads. Accomplishing nothing is exactly what Obama did in his previous 11 years of elected office. And being intellectually and politically dishonest and duplicious is also exactly what Obama had been in his previous 11 years of elected office and what he was during the entire 2008 Democratic primary season. .Its there for anyone to see. It's who and what he is. And isnt. And what he is always going to be.

But to listen to MoveOn and congressional Democrats trying to raise money, it's the Republicans that are the problem.

It's not as if these same people didn't know about Obama. His 11 year record of total non-accomplishment was not only common knowledge, it was for a time a source of amusement. Geraldine Ferraro pointed out that with his record of non-accomplishment, with his 11 years of doing absolutely nothing in elected office, if he had been white he'd be a joke as a presidential candidate She was right though the press and Obama supporters labeled her a racist for saying so. It's now three years later and many Democrats and progressive groups don't seem to get the joke. Maybe because it's on them and they still don't want to admit it.

Here is something else to face: Obama not only accomplished nothing in 11 years in the Illinois and United States senate, he actually voted " present" more than 100 times to avoid having to vote for or against anything. During the 2008 presidential primaries either his supporters ignored all this, denied it, or pretended it didn't matter. Which is why Hillary Clinton supporters referred to Obama supporters as " drinking the Kool-Aid."

So is anyone still drinking? Is it still Happy Hour in the Democratic Party or over at MoveOn? Are they going to keep passing the pretzels and collection plates or are they going to wake up and realize that what's needed is a credible challenger to Obama for the Democratic nomination and a new Democratic president?

In one speech after another, whether it was his gaffe about wanting an "intercontinental railroad" when he meant transcontinental, or his sudden affected parade of "y'all's" when giving a speech to a black audience, this is a man so used to simply blathering nonsense and saying things he has no intention of standing by and getting away with it, that he simply lets his mouth run knowing that the current collection of liberals and progressives both in and out of the press might look at each other with a "did he say that"? look but will say nothing.

These are people who got so caught up in romanticizing the idea of electing a president who had some black ancestry that to them whether or not he was actually qualified for the job in any way or had the character to be president was actually besides the point.

Time is running out for the Democrats. They can't just hope Republicans self destruct because even if they do, another four years of Barrack Obama will be four more years of doing nothing, selling out, talking nonsense, accomplishing nothing worthwhile and in the end could set the Democratic party back for the next 20 years

Pelosi,Reid and Obama get payback for dumping Weiner

2011-09-14T08:28:00.000-07:00

One can say the handwriting is on the wall but in this case its more like a neon sign. The Democrats lost Anthony Weiner's seat to a Republican, a seat the Democrats have held since 1923. Even Ed Koch, the former Democratic mayor of New York endorsed the Republican.

Its justifiable payback for the continued spineless approach to politics practiced by Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and as the new chairperson of the DNC, you can add Debby Wasserman -Schultz to the growing list.

Too add to not only Democratic gutlessness, but to their arrogance, Weiner's constituents had made it clear they didnt want him to resign. Obama, Pelosi,Reid and Wasserman -Schutlz decided what his constituents wanted didnt matter and forced Weiner out. His constituents let them know what they thought of that.
And what was it really all about? Morality? Hardly. It was what passes for Democratic leadership whining that they couldnt get their message across because of all the press attention being paid to Weiner. The Democrats cant get their message across? This is new? This is Weiner's fault? The Democrats do not and have not had a single strategist worth 2 cents nor anyone associated with the Democratic party who knows how to even formulate a message much less get it across. If the Democrats succeed at anything politically its always because Republicans find a way to lose, are incompetent, or overplay their hand, not a result of Democratic strategy or knowing how to get a message across. Which is made even worse because Democrats are usually right on policy but short on the backbone to see it through.

Weiner was more valuable to the Democrats than Pelosi, Reid and Obama combined because he was honest, stood for the right things, was a fighter, and took nothing from the Republicans. Or from Obama and what has been passing for Democratic leadership the last 3 years either for that matter. He stood up where Obama, Reid and Pelosi sat down.

They threw a valuable member of their caucus under the bus over a harmless mistake involving Weiner accidentally making public a racy photo of himself intended only for the eyes of one person he had known for some time and Republican strategists knowing the press would whoop it up and Democrats would cower in a corner. Yes Weiner was married so yes there were issues but those issues should have remained between Weiner and his wife. Instead showing the kind of political cowardice that has marked the 3 years of Obama's administration and the caving in by Pelosi and Reid, they were quick to throw Weiner over the side instead of chastising the media for making an issue of something so trivial.

They could have said the issue is between Weiner and his wife and we wish them well in resolving it but that it doesn't at all relate to Weiner's duties in congress. This wasn't Republican Duke Cunningham taking bribes. It also wasn't the Republican party official in Orange County California who sent out the email showing Obama's face pasted on the body of a baby monkey with two adult monkeys behind him with the words "Now you know why no birth certificate".

That seemingly wasn't offense enough for Obama and Democratic leadership to demand her resignation but Anthony Weiner in his underwear? He had to go.

He had to go because once again Democratic non-leadership couldn't and wouldn't stand up to Republican and journalistic triviality. Once again, Obama, Pelosi and Reid buckled.

And once again they and the Democratic party has paid a big, but justifiable price for the non-leadership of Obama,Pelosi and Reid.

And dont overlook the fact that according to polls at the time, more than 60% of Weiner's constituents wanted him to remain in office. He was forced out by Pelosi, Reid, Wasserman-Schultz and Obama. So there is also the possibility of some angry Democrats in Weiner's district voting for the Republican as payback for forcing Weiner out adding to their anger at Obama.

While Israel and disillusionment with Obama's polices towards Israel played a large role in the Democrats defeat, it has to be clear by now that very few Democrats running for office anywhere in the country will have even Democratic voter support if they are seen as supporters and defenders of Obama and his policies on anything. Not because he went too far but because he didnt go far enough and sold out the entire Democratic agenda even though for his first two years in office he had a 60 vote majority in the senate and the biggesst congressional majority of any president in 60 years. Somehow George W. Bush, as catastrophic as his polices were, still managed to get all his priorities passed with only a 52 vote majority in the senate. It should be noted that it was reported that at Bob Turner headquarters while celebrating his victory,when Obama's name was mentioned, the crowd began to chant "sell out! sell out!". Its unlikely it was rank and file Republicans who felt that Obama had sold out.

Adding Jews to the long list of those disgusted, fed up, dissatisfied and disillusioned by Obama and his handling of the presidency is not a good sign in New York. Democrats cant win the White House without New York and they know it. And they will get drubbed again next November unless the Democrats finally get the kind of real change they need. And that change can be only one thing -- someone other than Obama as the Democratic nominee.

The Democrats must hold an open primary and ignore Pelosi's fears of disunity which is what forced Obama down the throats of more than half the Democratic party who voted against him in the primaries in the first place, and encourage credible Democrats to challenge Obama for the Democratic nomination. If that happens, there is no doubt Democratic voters will choose someone other than Obama as the Democratic nominee. And then the Democrats can not only retain the White House (though with a different inhabitant), they have a chance to reclaim congress as well as long as the new candidate and congressional Democrats repudiate Obama's first term and his failure to deliver what was promised.. If they don't, and Obama is the nominee they can expect more of what they saw in New York all over the country. And probably worse.

September 11: Bush's 5 fatal steps that allowed it to happen.

2011-09-10T05:56:00.000-07:00

Sept 11,2001 is often referred to as the "911 tragedy". But perhaps the biggest tragedy of Sept.11,2001 is that not only could it have been prevented, it should have been.

The incontrovertible evidence presented in front of the 911 Commission, largely ignored and papered over by the kind of fear and cowardice we have come to expect from the press, was that the Bush administration from top to bottom dismissed terrorism as a threat from the day they took office. This mind set led Bush and his administration on a path that allowed a collection of bumbling Al-Qaeda operatives, making mistake after mistake in plain sight, to succeed in the worst attack on American soil by a foreign enemy with the worst lost of life in American history. And it never had to happen.

The most important misstep by Bush and his entire administration was in dismissing Al-Qaeda as a major threat from the very beginning. They decided they knew better than those warning them of the severe threat Al-Qaeda posed, believing that Clinton and his administration exaggerated the threat. They believed the biggest national security threat to the United States was China, and getting out of the ABM treaty with Russia and restarting Star Wars was their number one national security priority, not terrorism. That is the attitude that directly led to all the decisions and non decisions which in turn allowed the September 11,2001 attacks to be carried out.

WHAT BUSH WAS TOLD.

During the presidential transition in January of 2001 Bush was given the national security briefings given to all presidents-elect at Blair House prior to his inauguaration. The briefings were given by George Tenant of CIA, Bob Mueller director of the FBI and their respective staffs. At those briefings, given separately, George W. Bush was told by the CIA and the FBI that Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda were the single biggest threats to US national security in the world.

Also during the transition, Bush met face to face with Bill Clinton who also told him that Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda were the biggest threats to US national security in the world.

And again during the transition, Bush and Rice met with outgoing national security advisor Sandy Berger who told them that Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda were the single biggest threats to U.S, national security in the world and to emphasize the point, Berger told Bush that he predicted that the Bush Administration would spend more time dealing with Al-Qaeda than any other issue throughout his entire term as president. Bush, Cheney and Rice ignored all of them, and dismissed terrorism as a real threat to the United States.

Below are the 5 major decisions and non-decisions made by Bush that allowed the 911 attacks to succeed and, had he treated terrorism seriously and took only the most basic and common sense actions in the face of the information he was given, could have and would have prevented the 911 attacks.

1. THE DEMOTION OF RICHARD CLARKE.

The first thing Bush did with regards to terrorism after taking office was demote Richard Clarke, head of anti-terrorism for the 3 previous U.S. presidents, demoting him and his office of anti-terrorism from the cabinet level position Clarke held during the Clinton Administration to a sub-cabinet position, removing his direct access to the president.

2. THE DISSOLUTION OF THE PRINCIPALS MEETING.

Bush dissolved the Principles Meeting on Terrorism. This was a daily meeting that took place during the Clinton Administration and chaired by Richard Clarke, where the cabinet heads of every agency related to counter terrorism, CIA, FBI, theAttorney General, ATF, Immigration and others would sit in a conference room and share all the information related to terrorism collected by their respective agencies in the previous 24 hours and discuss its significance and what if anything to do about it. Terrorism was the top priority at these agencies with a standing directive that all intelligence related to terrorism be sent immediately to headquarters in Washington.That ended under Bush. It resulted in the report by the Phoenix office of the FBI reporting the suspicious activity of two middle eastern men taking lessons on how to fly jumbo jets but not wanting to learn how to take off or land, remaining in the Phoenix office instead of being sent right to FBI headquarters in Washington. One of those men was Mohammed Atta and one can easily surmise what Clarke, Tenant, and Mueller would have done with that information. Atta wouldnt have been able to have a cup of coffee without the FBI knowing about it and it is a certainty the plot would have been discovered.

3. IGNORING INTELLIGENCE WARNINGS.

In July of 2001, George Tenant requested an emergency meeting with Condoleeza Rice at the White House. His concern was the messages contained in the Al-Qaeda chatter that the CIA had intercepted. In the meeting Tenant and the head of his counter terrorism group at the CIA told Rice that the intercepts of Al-Qaeda chatter have not only spiked to an all time high, but indicated the intercepts showed that the U.S. was going to be hit by a major Al-Qaeda attack and that the attack was "imminent". The head of CIA counter terrorism said he told Rice, " this country has to go on a war footing right now" with regards to Al-Qaeda. Both Rice and Bush dismissed them and took no action. Rice wa so disinterested she testified at the 911 Commission hearings that she didn't even remember the meeting taking place and even denied they took place but White House logs prove that it did. Rice was either so dismissive of terrorism that she honestly didnt remember the meeting or she was lying. As Richard Clarke himself said in a new Smithsonian documentary on 911, "talking to the Bush Administration about terrorism was like talking to a brick wall".

4. JULY AND AUGUST INTERCEPTS OF AL-QAEDA MESSAGES

Richard Clarke and George Tenant testified that in August of 2001, the spike in intercepted Al-Qaeda traffic was the highest Clarke had seen in 20 years. The CIA translations of one of the intercepts indicated that the major terrorist attack against the U.S. had been put into place ( the exact translation was " the match has been lit") and that in the words of the CIA memo, the attack was going to be "spectacular". Clarke testified that given this information he and George Tenant were "running around the White House like men with their hair on fire" trying to get Rice's and Bush's attention to tell them of the impending attack. They told Rice they needed to see or speak with Bush who was now vacationing in Crawford and they told her why. Bush refused to meet with them and Rice took no action.

5. THE AUGUST 6, 2001 PDB.

The presidential daily briefing of August 6, 2001 was titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Within the U.S". In this briefing, a compilation put together by all the intelligence agencies into one brief for the president, giving him what they consider to be the most important recent intelligence information related to national security and giving him intelligence they consider actionable, Bush was told that not only was Bin Laden going to strike inside the U.S. but that the FBI confirmed that more than 30 Al-Qaeda cells were now operating within the U.S. But even more startling, and more damning, on page 2 of the PDB Bush was told that part of the Al-Qaeda plot to strike within the U.S. was going to involve the hijacking of U.S. commercial airliners.( italics mine). Bush was also told that Al-Qaeda members had office buildings in New York city under surveillance. Bush and Rice took no action. Rice's defense? They had no idea would use the hijacked planes as missiles. Which begs the question, does that mean that hijacking U.S. airliners and holding hundreds if not thousands of people hostage was okay with them?

This was Bush's last opportunity to have prevented 911, only a month before the attacks but Bush ignored both the intelligence in the August 6,2001 PDB and the simultaneous intercepts of Al-Qaeda chatter occuring in early August 2001 indicating a major attack was imminent.

Had Bush simply out of a sense of erroring on the side of caution if nothing else, ordered the FAA to issue a high alert terrorist warning to all U.S. airlines and airports of a potential threat of a hijacking by middle eastern men 911 would have been stopped in its tracks.

We know this because had U.S. airlines and airports been put on a high alert for a possible threat of hijacking by middle eastern men, the 19 hijackers would have stood out like sore thumbs. They were all middle eastern, they all bought one way transcontinental tickets to California, none of them had luggage and they paid cash without having made reservations, paying the highest ticket prices possible. Had airlines and airports been alerted to the potential hijacking threat it is a virtual certainty they would have been considered 19 middle eastern men all with the same suspicious profile a potential threat and they would have been kept from getting on those planes.

There is more including the arrest of Zacarias Moussoui in Minnesota months before as a result of his also taking lessons at a flying school to learn to fly jumbo jets but not to take off or land. The investigation into Moussoui and the intelligence gathered indicating a terrorist plot was sent to FBI headquarters. After the attacks a scathing letter was written by FBI agent Colleen Rowly who was in charge of the investigation, to Robert Mueller accusing him of covering up for Bush politically when the party line was that was put out by the Bush administration was they he didn't have the information needed to have prevented 911. Mueller never contradicted it and Rowley knew it wasn't true.

From the day after the attack to this day, Bush Rice and Cheney blamed the ability of the 911 attacks on "faulty intelligence" when the only faulty intelligence was at 1600 Pennsylvania avenue. The press typically ignored the evidence presented at the 911 Commission hearing because they were clearly afraid and intimidated, as always, by the prospect of Republican attacks accusing them of being unpatriotic if they leveled criticism and accusations at Bush. For the Democrats, they also as usual, joined the press in the fetal position, afraid of the same thing and, for all their crowing about their love of national security, the goal of Republicans was to cover up what amounted to the worst case of gross negligence by a president in regards to national security in American history.

Condoleeza Rice's explanation shortly after the attacks that they "couldn't connect the dots" was actually the only completely truthful thing she said about the attacks. But in typical Washington press fashion, they mindlessly adopted her expression, still using it today, without giving any thought to what it actually meant.

Rice's admission that they couldn't "connect the dots" was, in her choice of analogy, her subconscious mind inadvertantly exposing the ineptitude, incompetence and negligence of Bush and Rice herself as national security advisor, something that went right over the heads of the press and still does. Because connecting the dots is in reality a child's game where a number of dots are right in front of you, all numbered consecutively and all you have to do is draw a line from one to the other and you get see the whole picture. Rice's analogy was an admission that they couldn't do that.

As long as the press and others allow the myths created by the Bush administration about the attacks to continue, most importantly that they couldn't have been prevented, when it was Bush's gross, even criminal negligence that allowed it to succeed, the truth about the 911 attacks will continue to remain what its been for ten years -- a casualty of war.

Did African Americans abandon Martin Luther King for Barack Obama?

2011-09-02T13:25:00.000-07:00

As the dedication to the Martin Luther King memorial is upon us, it's worth noting that a few weeks ago Maxine Waters, a Democratic African American member of congress from California was in Detroit giving a speech addressing the severity of unemployment as it has specifically impacted African Americans. The speech was disheartening for anyone who hoped there were politicians, especially African American politicians given all that blacks in this country have gone through, who would put their consciences first and not be led by politics.

Instead we heard Waters admit that black members of congress have been afraid of criticizing Barrack Obama because they have been afraid of a presumed backlash from their black constituents who, according to Waters are "proud" of Obama being a half black president and "love" him.

If that is so, if black members of congress have been afriad to speak their minds about Obama, it not only continues a pattern among Democratic members of congress (black white or Hispanic) of being weak instead of standing up for what they believe and saying so, it assumes all African Americans are a monolithic group who all think the same way based solely on race. It is a mistaken assumption. I have first hand experience with African Americans I know and talk to and I can assure Maxine Waters and others in the Congressional Black Caucus that all African Americans are not exactly proud of Obama or for that matter, love him.

Waters, generally a no nonsense lady who takes nothing from anyone, said she's been wanting to criticize the president on the jobs issue especially when it came to black unemployment but has been afraid to and asked the members of the audience, most of whom were black to "unleash us and let us criticize the president".

That is what was so disheartening -- to hear an African American member of congress asking the black community to "unleash us" -- and "allow us" to criticize Obama as if they want permission.

Maxine Waters told the audience, "we love the president". But what is it exactly that Maxine Waters and others in the Congressional Black Caucus assumes African Americans love? Obama's selling out of the public option to health insurance industry lobbyists when the votes were there to pass it? Watering down financial reform in giving in to Wall Street pressure? Capitulating to the Republicans not once, not twice, but three times in reneging on his pledge to end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 5%? Caving in to Republicans on the debt ceiling deal agreeing to cuts in everything including Medicare and social security without a dime's increase in taxes on anyone? Or does she and other black members of congress simply assume African Americans love Obama simply because of the pigmentation of his skin? And even if that were true ( and it's not) isnt it their job to lead and speak their minds and admonish those who think that way?

It's either a gross underestimation of African Americans or a belief that African Americans have abandoned the principles of Martin Luther King in order to celebrate Obama's election based solely on color. If so, one can imagine King looking down on Obama supporters both African American and white the way Moses looked down on the Hebrews dancing around the golden calf telling them " you didnt understand a word I said".

Because the guiding principle of King's life, his mission as he himself stated, and his legacy,was that he dreamed of a day when people would be judged only by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.

That day is almost here. It will take another giant step when members of the Black Congressional Caucus and African Americans everywhere begin judging Obama based on the job he's done as president, his duplicity, his lack of principle and conviction, the capitulations that werent necessary, and all the things that could have been accomplished while he had the biggest congressional majority in 60 years but weren't, and not the pigmentation of his skin. Then the Congressional Black Caucus can lead the way for a credible Democrat who has the qualities, convictions and principles Obama lacks, to challenge Obama in the Democratic primaries early next year and let Democratic voters decide who their nominee will be.

Charges against Strauss-Kahn dismissed but justice still not done.

2011-08-23T10:06:00.000-07:00

The Manhattan District Attorney has formally dismissed all charges of rape against Dominique Strauss Kahn.

But that still leaves justice undone.

As was presented here on this blog the day after the charges were filed, while the press did their usual water buffalo-like stampede and others assumed Strauss Kahn guilty based on nothing except their own prejudices relating to class, race and gender, the accusations made by Nafissatou Diallo accusing Strauss Kahn of rape were from the very beginning preposterous to anyone who read her version of events and were in possession of any of the facts.

It was Diallo's knowing that rape accusations would be taken seriously by the DA, no matter how preposterous, and her knowing that rape is a crime where it is more likely that an accused would be considered guilty until proven innocent, that led her to make her charges in the hopes of one thing -- making money. Her charges led the press and many others to take the knee out of knee jerk assumptions and most decided that because she was black, an immigrant, a single mom and worked as a hotel maid, she had to be telling the truth while Strauss Kahn, white, male, prominent, a person of financial means and someone in a position of power and authority, had to be guilty in spite of the fact that every shred of logic and piece of evidence pointed to the opposite.

The clearly false allegation of rape made against him by Nafissatou Diallo caused immeasurable damage to Strauss Kahn, but also caused damage and altered world politics since he was not only the head of the International Monetary Fund but the leading candidate to be president of France. Her false accusations, motivated by her own greed and dishonesty and not caring who she harmed in her scheme to get rich, has had repercussions around the world. And justice will not be done until she pays an appropriate price.

The only person to have provably committed a crime in this whole fiasco is Diallo herself. It is a fact that she lied to investigators about different aspects of her story including her whereabouts after the alleged rape, which is a felony in itself. It is a fact that she lied to prosecutors about different aspects of her story and changed them repeatedly which is another felony. She has admitted to lying to the grand jury about different aspects of her story which is a third felony. And all those felonies leads to another -- obstruction of justice. She also admitted to lying under oath on her immigration form in requesting asylum and admittance into the United States, concocting a detailed and totally fabricated account of a gang rape which is another felony and grounds for deportation.

So Diallo has committed five provable felonies and that doesn't even include the felony of filing false charges against Strauss Kahn.

Hopefully the DA will pursue criminal charges against Diallo for all of her felonies. Justice demands that she be sent to prison and do at least some time in jail and that her perjury on her immigration application results in her deportation when she has served her time. It would be another crime for the DA to just let her walk free.

If any good has come out of this its that members of the New York City Council are considering a bill to put an end to the "perp walk" which plastered Strauss- Kahn all over the news media not just in New York but around the world, caused him to have to resign his position at the IMF and threw French politics into turmoil. Had there been a system as I argued at the time, which gives the same anonymity to an accused as it does to an accuser until there is evidence which proves guilt, the damage to Strauss Kahn by Diallo's fabricated charges would never have happened.

While that might take the fun out of it for those who were self righteous over Diallo's charges which let them find justification in their ideas regarding class and gender war fare even at the expense of an innocent man, there is no reason not to give the same cloak of anonymity to an accused in a sex crimes case as an accuser. It would also remove any motivation someone might have in making false accusations for the purpose of ruining someone's reputation. Or, as in the case of Diallo, extortion.

Hopefully justice will be blind and no one will take race, class or gender into consideration and Diallo will be going to prison and then deported back to New Guinea. And hopefully in the future, the press will think twice before splashing someone's name and picture all over the front pages and on television as having committed a sex crime without a shred of evidence to support it. The City Council ending the perp walks would be a good start.

A few weeks ago Diallo began an orchestrated PR blitz including an interview for Newsweek trying to drum up sympathy for herself. after filing a civil suit against Strauss Kahn. Diallo said she was doing it because all she wanted was justice. Obviously Diallo has never heard the old adage, be careful what you wish for, you'll probably get it.

Telling Obama's fortune from a cookie.

2011-08-16T07:15:00.000-07:00

I ordered Chinese food the other night. When I finished I broke open a fortune cookie that came in the little plastic wrap, took out the slip of paper and this is what it said:

"Compromise is always wrong if it means sacrificing principle."

I thought about Obama's saying the disastrous deal he made on raising the debt ceiling was the nature of compromise, then blaming the Republicans for refusing to compromise and it occurred to me at that moment that there are people writing fortunes for Chinese fortune cookies who know more about what it takes to be president than Obama.

In the New York Times on Sunday, no less a persona than Warren Buffet made the case for raising taxes on the wealthy. He said it was essential. In every real budget compromise since the 1980's, both spending cuts and tax increases were part of the package. It was only Obama who agreed to a deal or "compromise" that consisted of spending cuts only leaving the burden of reducing the deficit falling on the middle class.

Hopefully the DNC and congressional Democrats won't need a fortune cookie to realize theirs and Obama's future because Obama has no chance of being reelected. Even if he wasn't the worst president in the history of the Democratic party, even if he wasn't the most blatantly dishonest, most duplicitous, and untrustworthy, even if he wasn't completely lacking in principles and convictions, even if he didn't have a 13 year history of accomplishing nothing which continued into his presidency, adding to his disasteous deal on the debt ceiling there is still history to be reckoned with which shows that no incumbent president with unemployment over 8% has ever been reelected for a second term.

And every economist of every stripe will tell you that no matter what policies are enacted, no matter how the economy comes back assuming it does, no matter what progress is made, no matter what positive signs may crop up, there is absolutely no chance that unemployment which now stands at 9.2% can get under 8% by November of 2012.

Add to that the total disgust so many Democrats feel towards Obama and his presidency, the discontent for all the things he failed to do but could have done when he had the largest congressional majority of any president in 60 years, all the promises reneged on, all the campaign speeches that were just what they seemed to be at the time -- empty slogans -- and there is no chance Obama can get another four years. The very idea is preposterous. In a recent poll in New York State Obama received only 49% of the vote against an unnamed Republican. His approval rating is down to 42% nationally.

The only chance for Democrats now is that the DNC and congressional Democrats start opening up the field to Democratic challengers to Obama in the primaries and let Democratic voters decide if they want Obama to be the nominee in 2012. You don't need a fortune cookie to know what the outcome of that will be.

But if the powers that be at the DNC won't allow challengers to Obama, if they try and repress free exercise of the democratic process the way they did in 2008 when they tried everything they could to stifle Hillary Clinton's campaign, ( with the attendant results) if they try to repress the process in the name of phony party unity as they did in 2008, then it wont be fortune cookies Democrats will be reading in 2012. It will be tea leaves.

UPDATE: Three days after this post, a new Gallup poll published today shows Obama now at an all time low not only in his overall job approval rating but in just about every other sub category that was polled. During the three day span of August 11-13 Obama's approval rating polled dropped to 39%. His weekly tracking number recovered slightly but only to 41%. Hopefully congressional Democrats and the DNC wont need fortune cookies to know what to do and will simply read the handwriting on the wall. If they don't they really do deserve to get what will clearly be the case in 2012 which is to lose. Again.

Obama tries snake oil on S&P downgrade and even more incompetence.

2011-08-08T11:34:00.000-07:00

Now that the full faith and credit of the United States has been downgraded and is less than a AAA+ rating for the first time since 1917, Barrack Obama, and his spokespeople are doing what Obama has done his whole political life about everything that makes him look bad -- lie.

Obama is trying to make an issue out of the fact that Standard and Poor admitted to making a $2 trillion error in assessing the future US debt, while choosing to completely ignore the fact that Standard and Poor made it abundantly clear that the numbers and the mistake had absolutely nothing to do with the downgrade in the first place.

Hoping to seize on what amounts to a clerical error for political purposes, the charge by Obama spokesmen that the downgrade was a "facts be damned" decision on the part of SP not only shows how thoroughly dishonest Obama can be once again, but how politically incompetent since the downgrade could have been used as a powerful political sword against the Republicans and the Tea Party ( and not the butter knife Axelrod tried to use in stupidly blaming the Tea Party for the downgrade when it was Obama's incompetence in not taking care of the debt ceiling a year earlier when the Democrats had large majorities, not to mention his 3 time capitulation on extending the Bush tax cuts and his caving in to Republicans on the debt ceiling all of which was the real cause of the problem.).

Obama's criticism of SP is simply snake oil on top of smoke and mirrors. SP made clear that the downgrade was a result of the political "brinksmanship" that allowed the debt ceiling debacle to go down to the wire, tying it to a deficit reduction plan (something Obama himself could have avoided in many ways, not the least of which was invoking the 14th amendment, something Bill Clinton said he would have done) and the fact that the deficit deal Obama struck with Republicans was, in S&P's opinion, inadequate in dealing with the deficit.

And one of the big reasons SP found the deficit deal inadequate was because Obama once again, and to the detriment of the country, agreed to a deficit reduction deal with no tax increases. He went along with the proven past failures of the Republican position which always puts ideology over the best interests of the country. Bill Clinton, over the staunch objections of Republicans, raised taxes in 1993 with the additional tax revenue earmarked for the deficit. While Republicans predicted disaster, it resulted in a zero deficit, a balanced budget and the greatest economic expansion in U.S. history.

Obama is now repeating the obvious -- that we need tax increases in order to have real deficit reduction. It was Republicans cutting taxes at the same time Bush took the country to war in Iraq, something that had never been done before -- that was the major cause of the problem in the first place. But like he has before, Obama is taking a position after the fact and after he reneged on ending the Bush tax cuts on three different occassions. .Like his 2007 about face on the Washington D.C. hand gun ban as a U.S. senator, his reneging on his promise to use public financing as a candidate, his reneging on the public option and financial reform as president, he has now turned around again ( remember "sanctimonious purists"?) and began making the case for ending the Bush tax cuts in the future.

Meanwhile the downgrade could not have been a more perfect weapon for Obama or any politically competent Democrat ( of which there seems to be none) to use against Republicans. After all it was John Boehner who boasted after the deal passed the House that " we got 98% of everything we wanted".

Even a marginally competent president or Democrat could easily make the case that getting 98% of everything the Republicans wanted, including holding the debt ceiling hostage in order to get the 98% of everything they wanted, is precisely what led to the first downgrade of American credit since 1917.

Instead of using the sword the Republicans gave him him, Obama has, as usual, tried to lay the blame for the downgrade on Standard and Poor's clerical error, something that had nothing to do with the decision to downgrade.

One can only hope that somewhere along the line the Democratic Party will finally take a page from S&P and downgrade Obama and look for credible challengers to Obama in the 2012 primaries. Because right now, both Obama's credibility and that of the Democratic Party is at an all time low along with America's credit rating. And if Obama is still the candidate in 2012 the American people will announce their own downgrade -- this one at the polls.

UPDATE: After both Geithner and an unnamed White House spokesman had denigrated Standard and Poor for two days over the downgrade, calling it a "facts be damned" downgrade,using the math error as the excuse, Obama has( what else is new?) reversed himself and in brief remarks to the press on the downgrade, dropped the attack on SP and finally and correctly attributed the downgrade to the political logjam and inadequate deficit package ( a package he capitulated to) as the cause behind SP's decision.

What he didnt mention was that every proposal for deficit reduction from Simpson-Boles to the Gang of Six included tax increases on the wealthy and the closing of tax loopholes, the one issue that Republicans were intrangient over, refused to agree to, used to hold the US credit rating hostage, and was capitulated to by Obama.

Obama's case for tax increases by eliminating the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, something he mentioned again in his remarks were made a year ago. And he did nothing. And there is no reason to think it will change now unless Democrats can find a candidate to replace him.

The Tea Party celebrates, progressives suck their thumbs.

2011-08-04T06:45:00.000-07:00

That wonderful political group known as progressives, a group who formerly called themselves liberals but didn't have the guts to stand up to Republican attacks on liberalism and so changed their name, were left out in the cold again with their noses pressed up against the White House window pane ( or is it pain?) as they were again sold out by Barrack Obama on the debt ceiling, just as they have been every day he's been in the White House.

These are the people who, along with many in the press, for three years going back to the 2008 Democratic primaries went into a fetal position on the subject of race for Obama's benefit, throwing away the content of his character ( which wasn't much), and judged him by the color of his skin, and still haven't come out of it while they watch Obama further destroy the Democratic Party and everything they have traditionally stood for.

Only two weeks ago, the Progressive Campaign Change Committee delivered a petition to Obama with a dire threat, warning Obama in no uncertain terms that if he cut social security and medicare and capitulated to Republicans, they would vote for him anyway.

That gets first prize as the most pathetic political petition in world history.  There were serfs in Saxony in 1056 who wrote stronger petitions to the king than the PCCC gave to Obama. Their petition told Obama that if he sold out again, this time they would not work for him or donate money. But made it clear they would vote for him anyway. I guess that meant that if he sold out on Medicare and socical security and didnt get rid of the Bush tax cuts they would refuse to wear Obama beanies in 2012 or set up card tables outside the local Stop N Shop.As for not donating money considering what Obama might get from the banks for selling out financial reform and from the health insurance industry for selling out the public option I dont think Obama will notice their money is missing.  I have no doubt that privately Obama and those around him laughed at their petition.

So while progressive groups like the PCCC and MoveOn continue to show symptoms of BOSS -- Battered Obama Supporter Syndrome, the Tea Party who really know how to threaten politicians and make their presence felt, are celebrating.And so are Republicans who once again demonstrate they know how to wield power and made the Democrats look like amateurs.

And speaking of MoveOn, ( who should change their name to MoveOver) how pathetic are they? I received an email today from MoveOn. This is what was in the first paragraph::

" Tea Partiers hijacked the debt ceiling deal threatening to crash our economy to protect tax breaks for the wealthiest 1% and most Democrats caved in to their demands".

The Tea Party hijacked the negotiations? It's the Tea Party's fault that Obama is missing the part of the anatomy that James Carville said he's missing? It's the Tea Party's fault that MoveOn backed a candidate with no princples, no backbone, no convictions and no qualifications to be president? The truth is MoveOn is mad at the Tea Party because those people had more guts,were more galvanized and were willing to make more credible threats against their members of congress than MoveOn, the PCCC or anyone else was against Obama. And that's the Tea Party's fault?   It's the Tea Party's fault that they were able to do what MoveOn and the PCCC and other so called progressive groups were too timid to do by threatening to find credible challengers to those who dont vote to support their agenda?   Yes the demands of the Tea Party were close to treasonous in supporting an American default, their values have no place in America because all they care about, all that motivates them is more money in their pockets and to hell with their childrens education, healthcare for everyone,a healthy economy and low unemployment. But whose fault is it that they won? Notice how they say, "and most Democrats caved into their demands". "Most Democrats" didnt. Barrack Obama did. Nancy Pelosi did. Harry Reid did. The Democratic Congressional Black Caucus called Obama's deal a "sugar coated Satan sandwich" the closest anyone has come to telling Obama to go to hell. But for MoveOn and their racial neurosis, its everyone else's fault but Obama. Thats why I call their disease BOSS -- Battered Obama Supporter Syndrome. They are like battered women who, without help, without wanting to see the truth, keep going back to the batterer and wont admit where the problem really is and that what they need to do is get out, slam the door and never go back. Instead they make excuses and go back for more.

And how truly pathetic was Obama on the debt ceiling negotiations? As pathetic as he was in caving in to health insurance lobbyists in dropping the public option, as pathetic as he was in caving into to Wall Street and banks on dropping the language from the financial reform bill that would have banned derivatives, the financial instrument banks gambled with and lost which caused the financial meltdown in the first place, and as pathetic as he has been in not once, not twice, but three times caving in on the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, something he vowed to end since he began his run for the presidency, and something he has reneged on ever since. And all that is the fault of the Tea Party? Even now Obama is trying to sell his snake oil saying that there must be tax increases on the wealthy and pledging to get them. Which shows neither he nor MoveOn know the rules of the game. Because its three strikes and youre out not four.

This is how useless Obama was in the debt ceiling negotiations compared to Republicans and what MoveOn's ridiculous email tries to ignore.

Obama: "Am I happy with the bill that passed? No. But its compromise"

Boehner: "We got 98% of everything we wanted".

Now, does that sound like a compromise to you? Maybe it's me. Maybe I'm just a sanctimonious purist. But that sounds like Obama's negotiating strategy was " heads you win tails we lose".

Boehner also boasted to the Tea Party that " we changed and framed the debate". That they did. But when you are debating someone with debating skills below that of a throw pillow that's not too hard.

The most disheartening ( for Democrats) example of just how pathetic Obama was during the negotiations, something by the way, that never would have occurred had he taken the bull by the horn and the recommendations of his own commission a year ago when Democrats controlled both houses of congress, were these significant comments about the Republican position in contrast to what Obama and the Democratic leadership agreed to:

" I agree that we need large tax increases to pay down the deficit and that the wealthy in this country should be the first to pay. Obama folded twice before on ending the Bush tax cuts and he just folded again".

Guess who said that? David Stockman, Ronald Reagan's Budget Director and he said it the night the House passed the debt ceiling bill.

The Republican position and tactics on the debt ceiling was publicly attacked and criticized from another quarter on four major points and the four points of criticism against Republicans are reprinted here verbatim:

1. Forcing the US to the verge of default

2.Shrugging off the needs and concerns of millions of the unemployed.

3. Protecting every single loophole, giveaway and boondoggle in the tax code as a
    matter of conservative principle.

4. Massive government budget cuts in the midst of the worst recession since WWII.

Those on target criticisms of the Republican and conservative position were made by David Frum, Republican and former White House speech writer for George W. Bush.

Here is a clue to MoveOn. When you are a Democratic president and your negotitating position is to the right of Ronald Reagan's budget director and a White House speech writer for George W. Bush you should be finished as a Democratic president. And when Reagan's budget director and Bush's speech writer can make a more cogent and effective case again the Republicans than a Democratic president, its long past time to find a challenger to Obama for the Democratic nomination. And long past time for progressive groups like MoveOn and the PCCC to take their collective thumbs out of their mouths and realize that ":daddy" is never going to be what they deluded themselves into thinking he is.

Unless progressive groups stop sucking their thumbs and grow up, and unless the Democratic party itself recognizes the catastrophe that is Barrack Obama and that this catastrophe will only continue and get worse, unless they find a credible challenger in the primaries for the Democratic nomination, a challenger that almost surely would win, they can kiss the White House goodbye and their agenda at least until 2016. And they deserve to.

There is at least two credible potential Democratic challengers out there, ( and possibly more) who would not only beat Obama handily in the Democratic primaries but win the general election. And he would energize the party and end the stupor and malaise caused by and perpetuated by Obama and the progressive groups still suffering from BOSS. ( or is it "YES BOSS"?) . Democrats in congress and every progressive group in the country should do everything possible to try and get challengers to run. And two that could win are Senator Bill Nelson of Florida,a former astronaut and the other is Al Gore.

The debt ceiling crisis in 3D: Deceit, Dishonesty and Dysfunction.

2011-07-29T14:49:00.000-07:00

One of the reasons, if not the single biggest reason for the stalemate on the debt ceiling and deficit reduction is that the two forces at the center of the negotiations, Republicans and Barrack Obama, are the two most dishonest, duplicitous politically underhanded, deceitful and inept forces in the history of American politics.

The history of their dishonesty is long, well documented and there for all to see. And with the full faith and credit of the United States in the balance, it is these two thoroughly decietful and incompetent forces who are squaring off and are in the center the debt ceiling negotiations.

With Obama, he has been nothing short of a snake oil salesman his whole political life, selling empty promises he knew he'd never keep and bamboozling people into believing the water with the food coloring was good for what ailed them. Whether it was his bald faced lying to the people of Ohio on NAFTA during the primaries and then lying to the media about it for days after getting caught, ( lies the media chose to turn a blind eye to) lying to Jim Leher on PBS that he never campaigned for a public option, not to mention selling it out to health industry lobbyists behind everyone's back, or twice reneging on ending the Bush tax cuts, Obama's dishonesty and deceit as well as his lack of ability or convictions has been for him a political way of life.

The Republicans for their role, have demonstrated irrefutably for the last 20 years that they are not only unfit and unqualified to deal with any economic issues at all, they will lie, distort, even commit fraud as they did during the 2008 presidential election in New Hampshire resulting in a prison sentence for the chairman of the New Hampshire Republican committee in order to force their agenda which has consistently failed miserably every time they get the chance to implement it, down the throats of everyone else.

And their supporters in congress and the Tea Party, consisting of the biggest collection of incompetents and partisan hypocrites on both policy and politics have become the Republicans biggest obstacle while moderate Republicans look on in horror. To these Tea Baggers, the U.S. defaulting is what they want, if they dont get their way.

This is why there is a crisis on the debt ceiling, why its close to going over a cliff, why both Obama and the Republicans have already caused immesurable damage to the stability of the American economy, and why nothing has budged in weeks.

So here are some facts: Republicans quite simply are solely totally and completely responsible for the economic disaster we are now in though you'd never know it by listening to journalistic sycophants like Wolf Blitzer or Andrea Mitchell who set world records every day for using the words " both parties".Both parties are not to blame. Republicans are solely responsible for the mess. They inherited a balanced budget, they inherited a $0 deficit, they inherited a $5 1/2 trillion budget surplus and they blew it all. A Republican president and a Republican controlled congress, on their own, implementing their own policies and their own economic ideology and their own beliefs about what was good for the country, with no Democratic input, destroyed the balanced budget, destroyed the $0 deficit, sent the country back to the worst deficits in our history and in less than 3 years dissipated a $5 trillion surplus, enough money to have paid off our debt, all our bills and still have $ 1 trillion left over. And just for good measure they enacted policies that led to the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression.

The fact that Obama is so inept and spineless that he doesn't have the political backbone or wherewithal or even grasp of the issues to make that case to the country and use it to solve the crisis, instead capitulating constantly to Republicans, is another chapter in the legacy of the most unfit, dishonest, duplicitous and useless president in the history of the Democratic party.

That the Republicans with their track record of unmitigated failure and economic disaster are the ones who dont want to "give in" and are insisting its their way or default, and that Obama cant beat them back is a pathetic thing to watch.

For their part, Repulicans dont want to budge because they have seen Obama fold on every issue of contention since taking office from the public option to the Bush tax cuts and they are counting on Obama caving in again.

What is even more amusing is seeing the Tea Party, those ignorant crazies who dress up in colonial America Halloween costumes, pretend to be "patriots" and insist that the Republicans hold out and advocate default. Had these "patriots" been alive in 1776 and held the same positions and views on the things they do now George Washington would have had them all hung.

The Democrats have big problems of their own. Obama is a political narcissist who cares only about himself and his own political standing and not much else and so can never be trusted. Pelosi, the one who laughably said Obama had the judgement to be president from day one is in no position to lead having led the Democrats in the House off a cliff in the last election.

As for Republicans, like Obama, they cant be trusted either. Like Obama they are politically and intellectually dishonest and like Obama will lie about anything at any time to get whatever political advantage they can. And as far as policy results, they both have been miserable failures.

The systematic deceit of Republicans was most recently on display with John Boehner's decision to go back and revamp his deficit reduction plan, delaying the scheduled House vote because the CBO said his plan would only cut $850 billion not the $950 billion Boehner said it would.

Boehner's decision to revamp his plan based on the CBO scoring, exposed Republican deceit for what it is since during the healthcare debate, when the CBO scored the public option as something that would reduce the deficit by $160 billion, Boehner and the Republicans trashed the CBO and their scoring, calling their number bogus, denigrated the CBO in general, and denigrated their accounting methods calling it smoke and mirrors and said that it couldn't be trusted.

Now, with the debt ceiling and deficit crisis growing more acute every day, Republicans are not willing to play games with the CBO so their scoring was taken seriously but it exposed their tactics and how dishonest they are willing to get.

It's important to bring this up because the only way out of this mess and to know where to go is to know how we got here. And it was through incompetence, dishonesty, deceit, and political and policy ineptitude by Obama and Republicans and their supporters that got us here. With a competent president, and Democratic leadership these issues would have been taken care of a year ago when Democrats had large majorities in congress. Instead Obama folded. And in knowing how we got here and what to do about it, its simply a matter of physics. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. A Republican congress and a Republican president took the country to war and cut taxes at the same time for the first time in American history. The result was that the $ 1 trillion the Iraq war cost the U.S. treasury was not paid for because the Republicans reduced the revenue the government brought in with their tax cuts. The $1 trillion for the Iraq war is $1 trillion of the $1.7 trillion deficit. All you do is end Bush's war AND Bush;s tax cuts and the American economy starts to make its way back to where it was before the war and before the Bush tax cuts. Obama is incapable of making that case. He doesnt have what it takes.

So now its time for the grown ups, if there are any, to take over. Obama has already given away the store on cuts and the Republicans are holding up the deal over their indefensible tax cuts for upper income earners and corporations that caused much of the problem in the first place.

Since Obama cant make a case for anything, he either has to do what Bill Clinton said he'd do, which is invoke the 14th amendment and by executive order raise the debt ceiling without congress, ( something Obama has been too spineless to do and could have done months ago), or Republicans are going to have to fumigate the room of the Tea Party and agree to the tax increases which by the way, is what Bill Clinton used to bring the deficit down to $0.

Either that or pass the Reid McConnell compromise which at least takes the issue out of the hands of Obama and Boehner and settles the issue through 2013. Then each caucus can deal with their own problems, the Republicans the intransigent Tea Party who border on treason, and Democrats having to take the agenda out of Obama's hands and then find a credible Democratic challenger to Obama in the 2012 primaries since he has no hope ( justifiably) of getting re-elected.

Either way, this should be a teachable moment, a time when both sides realize its long past time to cut the crap and balance, and agree that from now on, dishonesty and partisan politics will be taken out of the process especially when a crisis faces the country and that the only thing that will matter is what is best for United States and the majority of its people.

Cut the Crap and Balance.

2011-07-22T07:41:00.000-07:00

If the Democrats or Barrack Obama had any backbone they would counter the Republican deficit plan of "Cut Cap and Balance" with a plan that would actually work -- Cut the Crap and Balance.

The Crap of course comes from conservative Republicans and those ignorant partisan charlatans called the Tea Party, those wonderful patriotic folks who stood by and said nothing while Bush and the Republicans blew a $5 1/2 trillion budget surplus left by Clinton, blew the balanced budget left by Clinton, destroyed a $0 deficit left by Clinton, and sent the country back into the worst deficits in its history. Miraculously they did all of that in Bush's first term. The Tea Party was so upset they re-elected Bush along with a Republican congress who then continued with economic policies that drove the country into the worst economic crisis since the Depression.

That is the crap the Republicans and the Tea Party brings to the table, that and a willingness on the part of many conservative Republicans and those in the Tea Party to commit treason against the United States by letting the country default on its debt violating the 14th amendment which states " the debt of the United States shall not be questioned". Only a rank idiot would say that America defaulting on its debt would not cause the debt of the United States to be questioned. Its already being questioned by Moody's and Standard and Poors. So along with the worst economic policies in American history, the Republicans and the Tea Party have also put treason on the table. That is a lot of crap that needs to be cut.

Obama, who has the negotiating skills of a drunken sailor on a Saturday night in Bali and the integrity of a snake oil salesman, refuses to hold Republicans accountable for their devastating and wrong headed past economic policies. Policies that produced results that prove their ideology doesn't work. It's long past time that Democrats held them accountable and turned public opinion against them and the Tea Party. The fact that they have shown they haven't had the backbone to do just that is Democratic crap that needs to be cut..

This is how an article on the CNN web site has described the negotiations:

"Republicans are staunchly opposed to any tax cuts, Democrats are desperately trying to protect...."

There is the core of the problem. Republicans are staunch, Democrats desperate. That describes the approach and position of the two parties and how Democrats have let the Republicans get away with their crap the last 11 years.

If Democrats want to Cut the Crap and Balance, they can start with the Bush tax cuts for the upper 5% income earners and make it NON NEGOTIABLE. Ending those tax cuts is something Obama has reneged on twice and is one of the reasons his lack of leadership has put the country in this position. And just as a reminder, when some Democrats complained about Obama's capitulation to Republicans on the Bush tax cuts he called them " sanctimonious purists":. Now we see what happens when you have a sanctimonious capitulator and appeaser as president. Ending the Bush tax cuts for people making over $250,000 a year would reduce the deficit by almost $1 trillion over ten years. Of the $4 trillion they are looking for in deficit reductions that now brings the figure down to $3 trillion. Bring back the public option which the CBO said would reduce the deficit by almost $200 billion and we are down to $2.8 trillion needed in deficit reduction ( not to mention the huge positive economic impact that public option would have)

A reduction in pentagon waste, and withdrawing our forces from Iraq and Afghanistan would result in at least another $1 trillion over ten years bringing down the need for cuts to $1.8 trillion. Since the Biden Commission identified $3 trillion in cuts that means there are $1.2 trillion in cuts that can be returned, probably in Medicare and Social Security and still reach the $4 trillion deficit reduction package.

As for a balanced budget amendment, its fine as long as it only targets those who have been guilty of destroying the balanced budget to begin with -- Republicans. So an amendment that prohibits Republicans from initiating any economic policy that would unbalance the budget, like taking the country to war ( in Iraq) and cutting taxes at the same time for the first time in American history is fine with me. That is more Republican crap the country doesn't need.

Cut the Crap and Balance works. Clinton made the Republicans cut the crap in 1993 after they said his budget would explode the deficit, drive up unemployment and deepen the recession. That is the crap Republicans and the Tea Party bring to the table and the sooner Democrats cut the Republican crap the sooner a deal will be reached and the country can get back on its fiscal feet and have the kind of balanced budget that Bill Clinton left the country in 2000 and George W Bush and the Republicans promptly destroyed.

UPDATE: In the wake of John Boehner walking out of the debt ceiling talks with Obama and refusing to return Obama's phone call ( something Howard Dean should have done in 2008) Obama's admitted response to Boehner, in his own words at his 6 pm press conference was " what can the GOP say 'yes' to"?

Aside from Obama's humiliating bowing and scraping to Republicans, proving once again he has no convictions, beliefs or principles to begin with, much less to stand up for, he might as well have asked Boehner , "can I show you something in a sling back"? because Obama has now gone from snake oil salesman to shoe salesman.

NOTE: I couldnt help but mention an article I was sent, written by Time magazine political reporter Joe Klein written July 28, six days after this blog peice appeared. In it Klein writes:

"And so I have a proposal: the Cut the Crap Act.....The Cut the Crap Act isn’t actually my invention".

No it isnt your invention Joe. Klein goes in to say, "It is the White House’s best case scenario for the next five days."

At least I can say you heard it here first.

Why "progressive" is getting progressively worse: part II

2011-07-19T08:23:00.000-07:00

I received an email not too long ago from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee asking me to sign a petition that threatened Obama by telling him that if he sold out on social security and Medicare, they would, in no uncertain terms vote for him anyway.

I'm not kidding. That's what it said. If there has ever been a weaker more pathetic more useless political threat ever made I haven't seen it.

This, it seems, is what it is to be a "progressive". And they really wonder why they didn't get a public option, a decent financial reform law and an end to the Bush tax cuts and why Obama is ready to sell out anything to get a deal on the debt ceiling.

The Progressive Campaign Change Committee which calls themselves "Bold Progressives" ( can you imagine what the weak ones are like?) did manage to get 200,000 lost souls to sign that dog of a petition and it was sent to the White House. This is how CNN reported it:

"A liberal group upset over potential cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security delivered pledges Friday to President Barrack Obama's national campaign headquarters threatening to pull its support.

About a dozen people representing the Progressive Change Campaign Committee delivered what they said were 200,000 pledges from people who will refuse to donate or volunteer for Obama's re-election campaign if he cuts the entitlement programs. ( Italics mine).

"It's not a question of who they're going to support for president, they're going to vote for Barrack Obama. It's a question of where their time and money is going to go," spokesman T. Neil Sroka said."

That's telling 'em isn't it? Do what we say or we vote for you anyway. If that isn't the most pathetic, ineffective even comedic attempt at influencing a politician in the history of politics I haven't heard it. It's not a question of who they will vote for its a question of where their time and money will go? Here is a flash for Mr. Sroka. Obama doesnt care about or need your time or your money. What he needs is the only thing you have of value and that you refuse to withhold and you are pledging to give him no matter what he does -- your vote.

Contrast that statement with Tea Party statements to Republicans that " we will make examples of you" if they vote to raise the debt ceiling without getting the dollar for dollar cuts they want with NO raise in revenue.

The lunatic conservatives of the Tea Party have the Republicans on the run because they promise not to vote for them and to throw their support to Republican challengers who support their point of view. And Republicans care more about getting re-elected than what's best for the country so they are holding firm in supporting the Tea Party line.

Progressives on the hand have seen Obama sell them out on the public option even though he had the votes to pass it, then lie about his making a sleazy back room deal with healthcare insurance lobbyists, ( something he did before with the telecoms on the FISA bill when he was in the senate), and sell them out again on the Bush tax cuts twice and he is ready to sell out again on social security and medicare.

They are still so flummoxed about race that they refuse to acknowledge that Obama is the most underhanded unscrupulous, unfit, unqualified politically dishonest flim flam man to ever sit in the Oval office. As unscrupulous as Nixon without any of Nixon's political ability, convictions, or grasp of issues or government. Remember that Obama spent 11 years in the Illinois state senate and 2 years in the US senate and in all that time, all 13 years, accomplished nothing. Zero. NO bills, no laws, no legislation that he championed, no changes to anything. His utter lack of accomplishment was a joke among many during his primary run, something his supporters chose to ignore, like Nancy Pelosi, who famously said in defense of his unblemished record of non-accomplishment, " Obama has the judgement to be president from day one".

Also remember that Obama got his start in politics by politically stabbing his mentor in the back, a woman by the name of Alice Palmer who is the person who helped get Obama started in politics. When that's how you start that's how you finish so Obama's betrayals to people who supported him should be of no suprise. And if you think the "stabbing in the back" metaphor is too harsh, recall how Obama used the "stab in the back" gesture against Hillary Clinton in a speech during the primaries and for good measure, made a gesture of twisting the knife then laughing about it. Accompanied by much Obama supporter applause. I don't think any of those supporters feel there is much to applaud now.

And how truly pathetic is Obama as a negotiator on the debt ceiling ( not to mention everything else)? As pathetic as you might expect from someone with no real convictions or principles who just wants to get out of the kitchen because he can't stand the heat. According to David Frum writing on his CNN blog on July 19, Obama had offered Republicans 85% in spending cuts in return for a 15% increase in tax revenue and the Republicans still say no. They are holding out for 100% in spending cuts and 0% in tax increases because they know they are dealing with someone they have steam rolled before even when they were in the minority. The truth, that its been solely Republican economic policy and solely Republican and conservative ideas and ideology that has put the country in this mess in the first place, plus the facts to back it up, is a case that seems to be beyond Obama's capability to make.

Progressives are never going to get what they want with Obama as president. Obama knows he can wipe his feet on these groups like PCCC and MoveOn and they wont dare oppose him. or do anything meaningful. You can't even call these groups doormats. Doormats have a useful function. They not only help get rid of the dirt under one's feet so it won't get tracked into the house they are often decorative and welcoming. These groups have done nothing to keep the dirt from being tracked into the White House or into legislation and policy that have undermined the positive things Democrats could have done. That there is even a question that the country has to raise taxes, especially the upper 5% income earners, to pay for the war ( in Iraq) that Republicans refused to pay for ( which adds up to $1 trillion of the $1.7 trillion deficit) is a testament to how weak Obama really is. Not to mention the fact that Bill Clinton got a balanced budget and a zero deficit over Republican objections and opposition by raising taxes.

While these groups are filled with well meaning people with good intentions, they are obviously still bamboozled over race, afraid to criticize, afraid to get tough, afraid to dump Obama as so many others finally have and are still suffering from Battered Obama Syndrome, refusing to leave, refusing to say enough is enough, and coming back for more. The proof of their ineffective politicking is they have gotten zero results in two years even though Democrats had the biggest majority in 60 years. And what did they expect with threats like " we will vote for you anyway even if you lie again and betray again everything we believe in".

What's needed in the Democratic party finally is a real revolt among liberals to remake the Democratic party and get as tough with Democratic politicians and Obama as the Tea Party gets with Republicans. And that means letting the Democrats know they will not under any circumstances vote for Obama in the next presidential election or any Democrat who supports his policies, and start demanding that a credible Democrat challenge Obama in the primaries for the nomination.

That is the only way real progress can be made and unless liberals and even the groups that call themselves progressive, like the PCCC and MoveOn make it clear they've had it with Obama's sell outs, his brazen lies and his total lack of principle and conviction, Democrats and Obama are going to continue to get steam rolled by Republicans who show they are just tougher than they are even when all of the facts are against them and all of the facts AND proven results are on the Democrats' side.

If these groups and other liberal Democrats are going to fight now is the time. And if they are not going to fight and call threats like " we wont give you money or go door to door if you sell out social security and Medicare" effective politicking, they should all take their little red wagons and go home and just concede everything to the Republicans because they, Obama and congressional Democrats under Pelosi and Reid have not been willing to fight as hard for what they want as Republicans do, especially against their biggest obstacle, which has been, not Republicans, but Barrack Obama.