In an interview with Ginny Simone of NRA News, May 10, Congressman Trey Gowdy vented his frustration with House leadership for not moving forward with any actions against Atty General Eric Holder in the Fast and Furious investigation. He also suggested that if Holder became a big enough liability for Obama, (who is in full campaign mode), he would become the latest Obama crony to be thrown under the bus.
“Oh, I think the thing that drives 99.9 percent of all elected officials is very easy to put your finger on,” Gowdy said in an interview with NRA News’ Ginny Simone. “It starts with a ‘re’ and ends with ‘election.’”
“I think that if he [Obama] believes that the Attorney General has become something of an albatross, and is impacting his ability to carry some swing states, Eric Holder will be in the private practice of law quicker than you say Marc Rich,” Gowdy said.
On the question of moving on to the next step of holding Holder accountable, Gowdy had this to say:
“Congressman Issa is prepared to move forward – Congressman Issa has been prepared to move forward. – when I say leadership, I mean, really –-leadership. Chairman Issa is part of the solution and not part of the problem….”
He later noted that Holder would only put up, or step down if he believed Congress was serious.
Finally, in case his message of frustration with the House leadership wasn’t clear enough, he concluded the interview by making this statement in response to Simone’s comment that 2012 is the most important election in our lifetimes:
“There is some merit to keeping some of your attention on November – you certainly don’t want to commit unforced errors. On the other hand, how are you going to persuade people to let you govern, have all the gears of governance, if you’re not going to do anything right, or principled when you have the majority? There is no argument on the other side in compliance with a subpoena. I mean there is no argument! I mean anarchy is the only argument on the other side. So if we’re not willing to press the issue, are your listeners going to have any confidence that we’ll be bold and courageous if they give us the the White House and the Senate? I mean, why would they?!”
I suggest that next week, conservatives start making some phone calls to Boehner’s office.
Just like in 2008, the Obama campaign is supposed to be a sharp, unstoppable, well oiled machine that is guaranteed to carry him to his reelection. But there have been some glaring missteps…
And just when you thought Obama’s reelection campaign could not sink any lower, and get any more desperate - this happens:
On Wednesday, the President’s campaign website – under the hysterical rubrick of “Truth Team” aka “Keeping GOP Honest“ – published a video featuring Ed Schultz trashing presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):
So one of Obama’s biggest and most ridiculous shills is being tapped by his campaign to supposedly tell the truth to voters. What next? Will the Truth Team link to Keith Olberman’s Twitterfeed?
Newsbusters’, Noel Sheppard asks, “Does the White House REALLY want to associate itself with a man that has said or done the following in the past twelve months?”:
In what should be seen as a hopeful sign that global warming/climate change hysteria in the United States has finally, mercifully, all but petered out, none but the most die hard Gaia- worshippers convened on the National Mall, Sunday, for the big Earth Day festivities. Organizers reportedly had expected “tens of thousands”, but in reality the event attracted only – tens.
Monday’s Washington Post gave the badly-attended Earth Day rally on Sunday a whitewash on the front page of the Metro section. “Earth Day stands up to the rain,” was the headline, as reporter Tara Bahrampour said rain “didn’t stop the die-hards.” Online, the headline was funnier: “Rains don’t water down Earth Day enthusiasm.” The Post offered no attempts at a numerical estimate.
But at Examiner.com, ‘DC Green Business Examiner” Douglas Canter was more straightforward: “Earth Day Networks, which sponsored the event, expected tens of thousands of people. By midafternoon, about 40 people, including [Frisbee-throwers] Nick, Antonio, and a CNN crew, hovered near the stage awaiting the remainder of a long list of scheduled speakers and bands, including the Reverend Jesse Jackson and R&B singer Ledisi.”
He added: “About 50 yards away, several hundred people walked on the muddy grass and stopped under about 20 partially covered exhibits. Many were operated by companies that promoted their products.”
So let’s review: Earth Day organizers expected “tens of thousands” and drew 40. It received a large color photo (mother with child, avoid the “crowd” shot) and a front-page Metro story. In January, the March for Life turned out tens of thousands and it received two large color photos (one of an opponent) — one of and a front-page Metro story (and avoided a crowd shot). Post ombudsman Patrick Pexton nudged this quote from Post local editor Vernon Loeb: “In retrospect I wish we had given readers a better sense of the overall magnitude of the march. . .it was far larger than 17,000.”
The March for Life is always massive – and it’s always massively ignored by the MSM.
As Newsbustersreported, CNN barely Covered the March for Life, but hyped the much smaller Earth Day rally…
CNN prides itself on being a serious news network, but it submitted itself to being a simple megaphone for the Earth Day organizers. Correspondent Josh Levs admitted as much after airing a YouTube video that laid out the goals for the Earth Day movement.
“We have really stunning images to help you understand the extent to which the world has changed. So we want you all to know all about this. The kinds of things that they’re calling for on Earth Day, the kinds of things that are going on out there, and what the events are,” said Levs, who also directed the audience to links about the day on Facebook and Twitter.
One of the goals laid out by the movement, that CNN relayed to its cable news audience, was “trying to build a green economy and getting more green policies up there.” Such a goal could be considered a political agenda, but CNN had no problem carrying water for the movement.
“Earth Day 2012 activists want to pressure world leaders to address pressing issues like endangered wildlife, Arctic melting and air pollution,” noted anchor Don Lemon later on during the 6 p.m. hour.
Even with nodding approval and encouragement from the MSM, Earth Day Failed abysmally.
You get the full gist of how badly it failed from the Green-friendly blog, Freetaste:Celebrating Earth Day 2012 in Washington D.C. (photos) where you can view pic after pic of tens ones of people “mobilizing” to “save the earth” by building a “green economy”, etc. etc…
Always popular with environmental types, Captain Planet would have been a “crowd pleaser” if there had been a crowd.
Tents were set up but hardly anyone was around to check out the Green wares inside.
“The wet weather may have discouraged people to attend,” the blogger speculates.
“A band performs despite the small turn out of audience at the National Mall,”he reports.
“Earth Day celebrants braved the cold and wet weather.”
Okay, ENOUGH. It’s APRIL. How cold can it be? If Pro-lifers can get hundreds of thousands year after year in January, what does it tell you about the excitement and dedication of enviros to their cause, that hardly anyone showed up for what was supposed to be a massive rally, because of a little rain. “April showers” are not wholly unexpected events, you know.
One Saturday, last April, in fact, I had the opportunity to tour DC with my oldest daughter, and guess what – it was raining cats and dogs for the whole day. Did that stop us? No, it did not. We just put on our rain coats and toured the Capitol in the rain – and had fun doing it.
Feb of ’09 saw the birth of a new conservative, grass roots movement in US politics – the Tea Party. It was in its infancy all across America.
In Kansas City, we held our very first tea partyin a snow storm.The weather could not have been worse – really. And because we were conservatives, we’d never protested anything in our lives… but we believed in what we were doing.
I’ll never forget this grim faced girl:
History has proven us to be right. The Dems’ massive Stimulus did nothing to improve the economy, Obama’s spending on one boondoggle after another has been a disaster for this country. His “investments” in green energy have been particularly egregious.
With increasing numbers of people finally becoming aware of the Malthusian and Socialistic nature of Climate Change fraud, coupled with Obama’s massive Green Energy failures (at taxpayer expense), it’s no wonder even Greenies allowed the rain to give them an excuse not to participate in Earth Day, this year.
Javier Manjarreshas managed to find a Democrat source who is “a close associate” of Democratic National Committee Chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, an “insider”, if you will.
Wasserman Schultz, who represents the 20thcongressional district in Florida, is known to be one of those most strident, polarizing and egocentric members of Congress. Apparently, that has not made her popular with the Narcissist in Chief, who according to this source, once snapped at her,“It’s not about you, it’s about me.”(Oooooh…burn)
Rumors have been swirling around that Wasserman Schultz was not in President Obama’s top tier of candidates to sit at the helm of the Democratic National Committee.
A source within the Democratic Party who is a close associate of Wasserman Schultz has told the Shark Tank the details about the process that took place when the vetting of prospective candidates for the DNC chair.
The source told the Shark Tank that, “she (Wasserman Schultz) was not the first choice,” and that Wasserman Schultz feverishly lobbied her case of being a sitting ‘Jewish’congresswoman in a very safe Democratic district. According to the source, Obama was pressured into picking Wasserman Schultz because she impressed upon him that he needed her as a loyal foot soldier to run cover him and shore up his dwindling support with the Jewish voters as well as with women.
But while Obama has been able to rely on Wasserman Schultz to carry his water, the President has grown increasingly annoyed with the polarizing manner in which she attacks her political opposition-a style that has galvanized her Republican opponents and chased many of those coveted ‘Independents’ away.
Just recently, Wasserman Schultz defended her former aide and current DNC Jewish Outreach liason for her juvenile misstep of posting pictures of herself on Facebook that referred to her and her fellow Jewish girlfriends as “Jewbags.” President Obama was reported to be so upset with the aide’s publicized antics that he did not allow Wasserman Schultz to introduce him at any of the events during his most recent trip to Florida.
Wasserman Schultz is known to always introduce the President whenever he is in Florida, and he did so during his previous visit to the Sunshine State, a little over a month ago. Then ‘Jewbag-gate’ broke, and on Obama’s subsequent trip a couple of weeks back, Wasserman Schultz only introduced the President at a couple of events and merely acknowledged her presence at others. Ouch! But in all fairness, the truth is that Wasserman Schultz’s role in President Obama’s recent trip was already scripted by his campaign.
It seems as if the relationship has soured to the point that according to the source, “He does not want her in the DNC anymore.”
Apparently, President Obama had discussions with the DNC Chairwoman regarding her approach, even telling her, “Don’t forget you work for me.”
It’s not about you, its about me. – attributed to President Barack Obama to Debbie Wasserman Schultz, as per our source.
Manjarres opines that this would be an awkward time for Obama to dump her because it would look like the party was in disarray, but “it would be very hard to find someone that is both in lock-step with his agenda and willing to run cover for him as she has done.”
Oh, I don’t know about that – there are plenty of lick-spittles in the Democrat party, (and the MSM, BIRM) who are willing to carry Obama’s water. Most of them come off as insane, but that’s beside the point.
Stay tuned at The Shark Tank for more exciting revelations to come from his new source!
Ahead of today’s 1:30 PM (est) GSA Hearing, the committee on Government Oversight and Reform posted a mashup to help get folks up to speed on the issues.
Even lefty-wing John Stewart couldn’t overlook the assploding hypocrisy in this scandal, or as he put it, irony!
“The people holding the conference, that wasted a ton of government money… are the people in charge of making sure the government doesn’t waste a ton of money!”
Bonus quote (much to his lefty audience’s chagrin): “It’s like the Justice Dept selling guns to Mexican drug dealers. “
1:30pm on Monday, April 16, 2012 in 2154 Rayburn House Office Building
The details that have come to light about a General Services Administration Conference held in Las Vegas have raised serious questions in the minds of the American people about how government is using their tax dollars. What has come to light surrounding GSA’s activities should give pause to anyone who has opposed cutting government size and spending.
Wasteful spending is a problem that transcends multiple Administrations and multiple Congresses but it’s incumbent on the present Administration and the current Congress to mandate a culture that prevents this type of waste and mismanagement, no matter what happened before them.
Why did it take eleven months for the Obama Administration to take meaningful action? The Inspector General briefed the Administration with details about the specific action of those responsible for gross waste, yet documents show that some political appointees believed even this year that the report could be kept private and the outrageous details dealt with quietly.
Some of those same senior political officials approved a bonus for Jeff Neely, the regional public building commissioner who was chief organizer of the 2010 Vegas conference. In the same e-mails where senior leaders are discussing whether or not to offer Neely a bonus, they are speculating on the timing of the release of the IG’s report and the political impact it will have.
Furthermore, if the political officials responsible for taming bureaucratic excess ignored and dismissed such flagrant and flamboyant violations of the rules, then what confidence do we have that GSA can prevent more shrewdly executed fraud and waste the future?
I look forward to hearing testimony from the witnesses attending Monday’s hearing as the committee continues its ongoing efforts to shine a light on a culture of wasteful spending within the federal bureaucracy. Changes have been made at GSA, but whether they are enough to change a culture of lavish excess remains in question.
Appearing on Fox News, with Chris Wallace, Sunday morning, Axelrod was off his game, and mangled his talking points, badly. Jennifer Rubin described it as a TKO by Chris Wallace.
David Axelrod was shredded this morning by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. Wallace kept Axelrod on defense and off balance throughout. The major bloodletting occurred here:
“The choice in this election is between an economy that produces a growing middle-class and that gives people a chance to get ahead and their kids a chance to get ahead and an economy that continues down the road we’re on.”
And the full story of that history has some deep roots in the Old Left, from New York to Chicago. Ax and Obama are the marriage not only of two modern liberal Democratic success stories but also of the Left’s old guard, progressives and communists, with the current generation. Obama and Axelrod and their world are a reflection of Democrats’ decades-long marriage with some unsavory elements, making for a perverse political culture that too frequently goes unexamined and acknowledged, especially by protectors and enablers in the mainstream media.
From the milieu of that political culture, an operative like David Axelrod has carved himself a nice political career. And he is far from finished, as the messenger and image-maker is poised to crown his wondrous “change agent” with yet another November coronation.
I would venture that even the best “messenger and image maker” in the world should have trouble selling this lemon one more time to the American public.
Pssssst TSA: Doesn’t this sorta defeat the purpose?!
According to Judicial Watch,Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is actually considering waving airport pat downs for Muslim women who consider them offensive. I consider them offensive – do I get an exemption, too?
The demand came last week from the politically-connected Muslim rights organization that serves as the U.S. front for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. Calling the searches “invasive” and “humiliating,” the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) advises Muslim women wearing religious head covers known as hijabs to reject full-body checks before boarding planes.
Those who are selected for the secondary screenings should remind Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers that they are only supposed to pat down the head and neck and that they should not subject Muslim women to a full-body or partial body pat-down, according to CAIR’s advisory. It further says that, instead of a body search, Muslim women can request to check their own hijab and have officers perform a chemical swipe of their hands.
While Americans are forced to deal with the degrading searches, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is actually considering exempting Muslims as per CAIR’s demands. Madame Secretary confirmed this week that there will be “adjustments” and “more to come” on the issue of Muslim women in hijabs undergoing airport security pat-downs.
In the meantime her agency is targeting a San Diego man who received worldwide media coverage for refusing to let a TSA agent conduct a thorough body search that he felt amounted to a “sexual assault.” Referring to his genitals, the man told the TSA officer; “you touch my junk and I’m going to have you arrested.”
The head of TSA in San Diego called a press conference this week to announce that the agency has launched an investigation into the 31-year-old software programmer who was not allowed to board the plane. The feds plan to prosecute and fine him thousands of dollars for making them look bad. Actually, the official charge is leaving the airport’s security area without permission, which is prohibited to prevent terrorism.
This is how completely upside down this country’s national security posture has become. The people who frankly, should be receiving the most attention at airport screenings may get exempted from the offensive grope and grabs, while innocent toddlers in wheelchairsget worked over.
The “Don’t Touch My Junk” guy is a national hero. In saner times, he would be given a medal for refusing to submit to an insane, and unjust policy.
But that was before the Obama camp began their full court press strategy of steering the debate away from a religious freedom issue to a women’s rights issue. They accused the hapless GOP of waging a war on women with an assist from feminist plant, Sandra Fluke. Rush Limbaugh unintentionally aided and abetted the faux narrative when he used rhetoric more characteristic of left-wing commentators to describe the 31 year old reproductive rights activist.
What happened next was predictable. The institutional left erupted in spasms of sputtering faux outrage and numerous craven sponsors left the Rush Limbaugh Show. Rush apologized for sinking to the level of discourse that he did, and the Stalinist left, smelling blood in the water, didn’t accept his apology, and instead opted to ramp up the pressure on his sponsors.
As should be obvious, this is not really a reaction to a bad word, or the left would be spending more of its time policing its own side. It’s simply an excuse to continue their jihad against talk radio, because that is the only place where conservative speech dominates.
The Obama war room probably thought they were going to kill two birds with one stone — flip the contraception narrative from their toxic war on religion to a phony GOP war on women and drum Rush off the air, once and for all. The White House’s contraception narrative had been forming since early January, after all – before anyone knew why it was an even an issue. The Rush thing was just an added bonus.
Unfortunately for Obama and his minions, though, conservatives were on to their Alinsky tactics, and rallied around Rush. We brought up example after example of lefty commentators saying worse things about conservative women. We brought up the million dollar misogynist, Bill Maher, and wondered why Obama’s PAC would accept the tainted money of one of the biggest creeps on the air. We exposed the left’s flaming hypocrisy and threw their words back in their stupid simpering faces. We put them on the defensive. The latest fallout: David Axelrod bails out of Bill Maher appearance.
And we’re not through. Since the left wants to play this game, we’re happy to oblige. Because when it comes to unhinged, ugly, demented, hateful and insane rhetoric – the right cannot begin to compete with the left. .
Take Al Sharpton. Back in the day – before he had teleprompters to help him to say “resist we much”, Al had some pretty — exotic things to say about all sorts of people.
Breaking today at the American Spectator is more bad news for a network devoting so much of its airtime to creating a rule that says someone should be pulled off the air for anything he or she has said that might be considered offensive.
Using MSNBC’s own standards, should the man who once said the following be allowed to hold a primetime MSNBC slot?
David Dinkins, you wanna be the only nigger on television, only nigger in the newspaper, only nigger that can talk. Don’t cover them, don’t talk to them, ’cause you got the only nigger problem. ‘Cause you know if a black man stood up next to you, they would see you for the whore that you really are.
That’s MSNBC’s Al Sharpton–many years ago, but just as shocking today. I can already hear the excuse — that it’s okay for him to use the N-word because he’s black. But I wonder what CNN’s Roland Martin will think of this:
White folks was in the cave when we were building empires. We learned to admire them, but they knew to admire us. We built pyramids without a ____, ____ new architecture ____. We talked philosophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it.
“Greek homos.”
Just a few weeks ago, Roland Martin was suspended from CNN after GLAAD took offense to a few Super Bowl tweets few but GLAAD could ever find offensive — tweets that never even broached the subject of homosexuality.
“Homo,” of course is an anti-gay slur, especially within the context you hear in Sharpton’s words.
But that’s not all! How about a side order of “Chinaman” to go with that “homo”:
You the best chicken ____ in the universe. Gonna buy some Colonel Sanders chicken. Then the Chinaman come in and throw some hot ___ [cough] ___. Then the Korean sells us watermelon. ___ watermelon all my life. They’re gonna cut it up and put it in a bucket with a rubber band around it, and then we’re gonna buy it like it’s somethin we didn’t know what it was.
And finally we have this:
“___ uh, white interloper I said I was wrong. uh, uh, cracker, though I think cracker is a certain personification of a certain type of person down south, just like redneck. I mean, you know some people misinterpret cracker meaning all whites, it’s not true. But the confusion means you shouldn’t use it. I mean, sometimes being flippant you say things you shouldn’t say, cause it gets in the way of your message and people don’t really understand what you’re saying.”
“White interloper.” I don’t even know what that means, but “cracker” is a slur against white Southerners — end of story.
As Nolte notes, MSNBC President Phil Griffin added Sharpton to the MSNBC lineup, knowing that he said this sort of stuff regularly. But as MSNBC is the media arm of the Obama White House, Sharpton’s main role at the network is to deploy the race card in promiscuous fashion as an election year racialist tactic to shore up the white guilt vote.. And he’s been doing just that. He wasn’t meant to be a liability.
So you might wonder – how does all this look to the average Joe?
Today, Obama sits at 41% in opinion polls — his lowest approval rating ever. Part of this poll collapse most certainly has to do with a stagnant economy and gas prices, but a lot of it has to do with the fact that Obama has started a stupid war against a nonexistent war on women (which is really Obama’s war against the Catholic Church and religious liberty), and the fact that he has once again been found hanging out with another divisive, radical racialist.
But surely most people agree with Obama on contraception?
Sure enough, when asked, “Should health insurance plans for all employees have to cover the full cost of birth control for female employees or should employers be able to opt out for moral or religious reasons?” women favored opting out by a 46-44 margin. The margin increased to a decisive 53-38 for “religiously affiliated employers, such as a hospital or university.”
That’s among women. Unbeknownst to those who read only the Times‘ main story, the poll asked the same question to men. They were not split. Men favored opting out by a 20 point margin (57 vs. 37), except when a “religiously affiliated employer” was involved, in which case the margin increased to 25 points. Combining men and women, a substantial majority (51-40) favors allowing an opt-out–increasing to 57-36 where religiously-affiliated institutions are involved.
These are not close results. It’s hard to read this poll and not conclude that, contrary to some accounts, Obama wasn’t such a genius to pick a fight over mandated contraception coverage–because he appears to be losing the public debate on the question.
Rick Santorum is being painted as right wing extremist who is obsessed with social issues and wants to take away a woman’s right to contraception. How’s that working out?
Pollster Evolving Strategies conducted a sophisticated poll they call a “message experiment,” and found “Santorum does not do worse with women than he does with men” and that “Santorum doesn’t appear to be seriously harmed by social issues, however there is evidence that he is harmed by a lack of focus on economic issues.”
Here’s the heart of it:
When we look to the data, we see that being socially conservative or liberal has a significant impact on a respondent’s vote, but men and women are fairly similar, with women a bit less conservative overall.
Furthermore, there is no significant interaction between being socially conservative or liberal and the Santorum treatment. In other words, there does not seem to be a significant backlash against Santorum in response to his social policy views.
Doh!
In light of all this, Andrew Breitbart, (who continues to inspire us even after his death) has a special message for the Obama White House:
In an opinion piece atCNN, Jane Fonda, Gloria Steinem and Robin Morgan are arguing that Rush Limbaugh should be taken off the air… for the unpardonable sin of saying bad words about a left-wing female:
Limbaugh doesn’t just call people names. He promotes language that deliberately dehumanizes his targets. Like the sophisticated propagandist Josef Goebbels, he creates rhetorical frames — and the bigger the lie the more effective — inciting listeners to view people they disagree with as sub-humans. His longtime favorite term for women, “femi-nazi,” doesn’t even raise eyebrows anymore, an example of how rhetoric spreads when unchallenged by coarsened cultural norms.
At least this most recent incident has turned a spotlight back on the vile, damaging statements Limbaugh has been promulgating for years. His sponsors are dropping him; his stations have begun to follow suit. VoteVets, a coalition of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, released a statement by female vets, including Katherine Scheirman, former chief of medical operations in the U.S. Air Forces, demanding that the American Forces Network drop Limbaugh from its programming.
They state, “Our entire military depends on troops respecting each other — women and men. There simply can be no place on military airwaves for sentiments that would undermine that respect.”
That makes this a fitting time to inquire of his syndicator, Clear Channel Communications, whether it intends to continue supporting someone who addicts his audience to regular doses of hate speech. Clear Channel’s Premiere Radio Networks Inc., which hosts Limbaugh’s program, has defended his recent comments.
If Clear Channel won’t clean up its airways, then surely it’s time for the public to ask the FCC a basic question: Are the stations carrying Limbaugh’s show in fact using their licenses “in the public interest?”
Spectrum is a scarce government resource. Radio broadcasters are obligated to act in the public interest and serve their respective communities of license. In keeping with this obligation, individual radio listeners may complain to the FCC that Limbaugh’s radio station (and those syndicating his show) are not acting in the public interest or serving their respective communities of license by permitting such dehumanizing speech.
I love how they object to being called “feminazis” while in the process of trying to drum someone off the air because he engages in speech they don’t like…
Allred, whose clientele seems to only include women famous for sensational sexual situations, wants to prosecute Limbaugh for asking his audience what one would call a woman who seeks money for sex: “you’d call that a slut, right?”
She wants to prosecute Limbaugh because what he said was so shocking and hurtful and inflammatory – etc.
It should be noted that Gloria Allred had no problem appearing on MSNBC with the left’s premiere misogynist, Keith Olbermann even though he constantly says offensive things about conservative woman – especially his violent verbal attack on Michelle Malkinwho he described as a “mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it.”
Dr. Christopher Flappitydo, from the Institute for Diversity & Tolerance & Multiculturalism & Compassion & Inclusiveness joins the NAGsfeminazisharpies outspoken feminists in their quest to thwart ugly, mean, dehumanizing speech: Right-Wing Bastards Need to Be Silenced for Hate Speech:
A recent spate of offensive hate speech spewed forth by right wing-pontificators has led to a never-ending litany of over-the-top racist, sexist, homophobic language. And it is high-time that moderate progressives do something about it.
The Koch brother-funded tea party terrorists behind the latest reactionary veer towards incivility have jettisoned the “new tone,” as decreed after Sarah Palin caused the tragic Gabby Giffords shooting.
We are fast approaching the situation when right-wing violence could explode at any time, all because a few conservative pundits have gone on a media shooting spree at our brave progressives fighting for the public good.
Here is what happened, for those who missed out on our “Rush to Silence” campaign:
The president suffered a painful “vetting” of his past, including facing uncomfortable questions about his college background and his association with so-called “radicals.”
A courageous young woman was subjected to a media witch hunt and was rhetorically set on fire – all for bringing to our attention the dire need for America’s youth to have access to free condoms.
Rush Limbaugh heatedly denied our allegations that he has a gay lover, which we found bigoted against homosexuals.
Keep reading. Dr. Flappitydo is just getting warmed up.
The ricochet effect gets Totenberg – ZING! – right in the face:
NINA TOTENBERG, NPR: You have to take a risk when you are running for president, and the risk that he did not take this week that he should have taken was to say something less than complimentary about Rush Limbaugh. It was a perfect opportunity for what is called in the political profession a Sister Souljah moment, to say that “I don’t always play it safe, I have real values, you went over the line.” And to make the optics worse, Bain Capital owns Clear Channel, which is the Rush network so to speak. Not that, he’s no longer an active partner of Bain, but the optics of it aren’t great.
Yes indeed – gosh – those optics! *Sigh*
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Look, I’m sure that’s a liberal’s dream, but when the President of the United States apologizes for what Bill Maher has said about women and receives a million dollars of his for…
TOTENBERG: I didn’t say he should apologize.
But he absolutely should say something “less than complimentary” because – because –ah – ummm -
KRAUTHAMMER: …for his, or even acknowledge or talk about it, when Obama speaks about Maher’s misogyny as he takes a million dollars for his campaign, then I’d expect Romney to denounce somebody else. But the hypocrisy on the left about this is just…
GORDON PETERSON, HOST: About what?
KRAUTHAMMER: About Rush Limbaugh as if he’s the spokesman of the Republican Party, and as if misogyny is exclusively the province of conservatives and Republicans. It is out there all the time with Maher, with Chris Matthews, and with this guy is it CK Louis, or Louis CK who’s going to be the emcee at the Congressional Correspondents’ dinner? And so when I hear a denunciation on the left I’ll expect one on the right
Video at link.
It keeps happening - those inconvenient facts keep coming out, making feminists look like the hypocritical tools they are.
Turns out the optics “about this” are not exactly what the Institutional left were bargaining for.
Alexa Shrugs reminds us of this affecting image of Breitbart from Ben Howe’s Tribute video, looking straight at the camera and simply saying, “War.”
Over the weekend, a funny thing happened in the right wing blogosphere. While at first, the faint-hearted were inclined to throw Rush under the bus for using over the top, inappropriate rhetoric to point out the absurdity of Sandra Fluke’s pathetic testimony before Congress. But over the weekend, the tide turned, and conservatives have gone to war, just as Breitbart would have liked it.
This is war. I am going to defend Limbaugh from the radical Leftists who want to take him off the air. And I am going to call out our opponents by name. Starting with Sandra Fluke, David Gregory and David Friend.
Sandra Fluke is a 30 year old woman who is president of Law Students for Reproductive Justice and went to Georgetown Law despite knowing that their insurance does not cover birth control – because they are a Catholic institution – and made it her mission to force them to change their policy. Remember when I mentioned how feminazis lied and said a Congressional hearing on religious concerns about the Obamacare contraceptive mandate was only men? They had wanted Sandra Fluke to testify – I guess Allison Dabbs Garrett and Dr. Laura Champion, the two women who DID testify at the “all-male” panel, just don’t count as women because they don’t toe the radical feminist line.
When Rush made his comments about Sandra Fluke, I thought he was going overboard in order to bring media attention to the farcical nature of her testimony. If that was his m/o, it backfired because the media firestorm that predictably ensued led to the DNC fund-raising off of it, and Rush losing a number of sponsors. The Democrat Media Complex is doing what it does best – picking a (conservative) targeting it, freezing it, and doing its best to de-legitimize it. Never mind the fact that the left is so consistently vile in its treatment of conservative women, it’s barely worth mentioning it when they call Sarah Palin, Michelle Malkin, or Laura Ingraham, and let’s not be sexist, here – even Rick Santorum – a vile name. Yes, thanks to the efforts of gay activist, Dan Savage, we’ve got a major candidate for President of the United States whose name, according to Google is defined in the most vile and depraved terms imaginable. And the MSM calls that “Santorum’s Google problem.”(yuk, yuk.) Because it’s HIS problem that left-wing activists have done this to him, and Google refuses to fix it.
Couldn’t it thus be said that Sandra Fluke has a “talk radio problem”. Because after all, it’s her own extreme views that led this to happen to her.
You see, Carbonite is also the sponsor for a radio show you probably have not heard of, The Ed Schultz Show. Ed Schultz made a similar remark to Rush’s although his was less a question about the usage of the word (as it was for Rush) and more him just screaming that Laura Ingraham is a “right wing slut.”
Now I wonder why Friend’s daughters don’t’ come to mind here? Could this be a publicity stunt? Could they just be dropping sponsorship of Rush in an effort to gain some exposure to help their company get new customers? Because let’s face it, they’ll get more exposure from dropping Rush then they’ll ever get from keeping Shultz. And they could probably use it given that companies like DropBox have moved forward into advanced cloud backups and access while Carbonite seems hopelessly invested in remaining in the year 2006, but I digress.
I asked them on twitter and on FaceBook why the difference in treatment and so far haven’t gotten a reply.
In the twitter verse, fellow non-Carbonite user Amish Dude pointed me to one possible reason.
On the bright side,DaTechGuybelieves the sponsors who have left Rush have chosen poorly:
Rush has been on the radio now since the late 80′s. People who were listening to him now have children who are listening to him. This is a vast and self-sustaining audience base and nothing he said or the media did will cause that base to abandon him. He will be drawing huge radio numbers long after Sandra fluke is a media footnote. There are many talk radio shows out there but there is only one Rush Limbaugh.
However for Sleep Number, Legal Zoom, Carbonate and pro-flowers and the rest, it’s a different story.
There are many alternatives to all of these companies and all of them are merely a click or two away.
For all the bluster of the left for all the tweets and facebook posts and MSM stories the real pressure these companies will feel is on their bottom line. It will come from the orders unplaced, the subscriptions unrenewed and the business that will flow to their competitors by Rush’s listeners looking for alternatives to the companies that dropped him.
These companies married the left in haste, they will repent at leisure, if they last that long.
The Obama administration withered for several weeks under the intense criticism from Catholic leaders regarding the forced violation of religious liberty within the HHS mandate. In an effort to turn the tables, Democrats suggested that the GOP want to abridge women’s rights because Republicans expect women to obtain and pay for their own birth control. This afternoon John Boehner, Carly Fiorina, and Rick Santorum bravely provided cover for the President and the ridiculous narrative of “the war on women.”
Each of them utterly failed in this response, but unlike Santorum, Boehner and Fiorina aren’t running a presidential campaign with the hopes of becoming the nominee so they can battle the media in the general.
This reason right here is why Republicans defeat themselves: It doesn’t matter what Barack Obama’s record is if Republicans so willingly allow the media to reframe a debate about religious liberty as a fight over women’s rights.
More have admonished Limbaugh’s description of Sandra Fluke than admonished a 30 year-old woman embarrassing herself before congress by testifying that she simply cannot stop getting it on and her inability to control her urges constitutes infringing upon everyone else for a bailout.
Rather belatedly, we are becoming aware that this supposedly typical Georgetown coed is not very typical at all:
[B]irth control is not all that Ms. Fluke believes private health insurance must cover. She also, apparently, believes that it is discrimination deserving of legal action if “gender reassignment” surgeries are not covered by employer provided health insurance. She makes these views clear in an article she co-edited with Karen Hu in the Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law.
The title of the article . . . is “Employment Discrimination Against LGBTQ Persons” and was published in the Journal’s 2011 Annual Review.
Remember, as Byron York previously reported, Fluke was rejected as a last-minute substitute witness at a Feb. 16 committee hearing because staffers for Chairman Issa were unable to discover Fluke’s claim to expertise relevant to the subject of the hearing.
Yesterday, after a Republican lawmaker reminded him of his now-infamous 2008 comment that gas prices in the U.S. should be as high as in Europe, Energy Secretary Stephen Chu told House appropriators that the Energy Department isn’t working to lower gasoline prices.
Instead, during the hearing on the DOE’s budget, he said the DOE is working to promote alternatives such as biofuels and electric vehicles.
“We agree there is great suffering when the price of gasoline increases in the United States, and so we are very concerned about this,” said Chu, speaking to the House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee. “As I have repeatedly said, in the Department of Energy, what we’re trying to do is diversify our energy supply for transportation so that we have cost-effective means.”
Chu specifically cited a reported breakthrough announced Monday by Envia Systems, which received funding from DOE’s ARPA-E, that could help slash the price of electric vehicle batteries.
He also touted natural gas as “great” and said DOE is researching how to reduce the cost of compressed natural gas tanks for vehicles.
High gasoline prices will make research into such alternatives more urgent, Chu said.
“But is the overall goal to get our price” of gasoline down, asked Nunnelee.
“No, the overall goal is to decrease our dependency on oil, to build and strengthen our economy,” Chu replied. “We think that if you consider all these energy policies, including energy efficiency, we think that we can go a long way to becoming less dependent on oil and [diversifying] our supply and we’ll help the American economy and the American consumers.”
As shocking as his remarks are, they shouldn’t come as a surprise. Chu has a long record of advocating for higher gas prices. In 2008, he stated, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” Last March, he reiterated his point in an interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace, noting that his focus is to ease the pain felt by his energy policies by forcing automakers to make more fuel-efficient automobiles. “What I’m doing since I became Secretary of Energy has been quite clear. What I have been doing is developing methods to take the pain out of high gas prices.”
One of those methods is dumping taxpayer dollars into alternative energy projects like the Solyndra solar plant. Another is subsidizing the purchase of high-cost electric cars like the Chevy Volt to the tune of $7,500 per car (which the White House wants to increase to $10,000). In both cases, those methods aren’t working. Solyndra went bankrupt because its product couldn’t bear the weight of market pressures, and Chevy Volts aren’t selling, even with taxpayer-funded rebates. What’s the president’s next plan? Harvesting “a bunch of algae” as a replacement for oil.
Meanwhile, the Obama Administration is seemingly doing everything it can to make paying for energy even more painful by refusing to open access to the country’s oil and gas reserves and blocking new projects that would lead to the development of more energy in America. Case in point: the president’s decision to say “no” to the Keystone XL pipeline, a project that would have delivered hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil from Canada to Texas refineries, while bringing thousands of jobs along with it.
No wonder I’ve been noticing an uptick in my stats on this post from April, 2011 on the gas pump sticky note campaign.
From one of my three visits to the pump on a trip to Little Rock, last April.
The idea originated with the blogger, Disrupt the Narrative, who provided a PDF you could download and print. Now, a simpler sticky-note crusade is gaining steam all across America. The Facebook site, The ‘Hope and Change’ Sticky Note Campaign, is dedicated to spreading the word about this grassroots activism:
****** “America’s GAS-ROOTS movement”! ******
Purchase a pad of large sticky notes. Write on each one, “How’s that Hope & Change working out for you?” Every time you stop to fill your vehicle with gas, place your sticky note somewhere on the pump before you drive away. DO NOT be destructive in ANY way! Place your sticky note somewhere, so as not to impede the next customer’s ability to read the pump’s digital readout.
After placing your sticky note, please consider taking a digital picture, then uploading it to our wall. Please tell us in which city and state the picture was taken. This is meant to be a “quiet” protest by our silent majority of Americans, to be served upon this administration!! Thank you all for your support!
Make sure to place your sticky note carefully, so you don’t impede the next customer’s ability to read the pump’s digital readout.
UPDATE:
This RNC ad hits Obama for his failure to advance “a comprehensive energy plan.”
Governor Bobby Jindal, recently did a brilliant job specifying what Obama could (but won’t) do to improve the situation.
Star of TV’s Parenthood, Dax Shepard, compared the pro-U.S. military film that stars actual Navy SEALs,Act of Valorto Adolf Hitler’s Triumph of the Will. On his Twitter feed the one time Ashton Kutcher prank boy fromPunk’dwrote: “Saw ‘Triumph of the Will’ tonight, oh wait, I mean ‘Act of Valor’ great action.” Apparently the reaction to Shepard’s obnoxious tweet, comparing this week’s #1 movie starring active duty Navy Seals to a Nazi propaganda movie was immediate, as he attempted to walk back his comments.
Shepard lamely claimed he was: “not comparing our military to nazis. Pointing out the exceedingly high level of propaganda in both.”
Yes, this is a tough one for the Hollywood left. It’s pro-SEAL, pro-US Military, so naturally they feel compelled to slam it. But how does one do that without slamming the heroes who are the subject of the film? How awkward.
I watched the film, last night, and I can tell you that the film stayed away from politics and ideology. In fact, I didn’t even know if it was set during the Bush era , or Obama’s. All I know is it was post 9/11.
The movie was pure good vs evil – Navy SEALs saving the country from a terrorist attack – so any comparison of this movie about SEALS to Nazi propaganda is a gross insult to the SEALS who starred in it.
Guys such as Peninsula home-boy Rorke Denver, born and raised in Los Altos, After college, he went straight into the SEALs, and like my hat, Denver was a willing volunteer.
After joining the teams, he took down drug lords in South America, helped American citizens escape from war-torn Liberia and even fought to stabilize the hellhole of Anbar Province in early days of the Iraq War. Most recently, he served as XO of the Naval Special Warfare Advanced Training Command in Coronado. In “Valor,” he leads a platoon trying to disrupt an unfolding terrorist attack on the United States.
Denver had doubts about being in the film, but then decided to embrace the project to help the American public better understand who’s fighting for them, what the job is like and why they do it.
“People say there’s romance in war,” Denver said. “If so, you only see it when you come home, and think about the way your brothers went out so valiantly to meet the enemy. Some paid heavily. Fighting is real hard work. You just grind it out, and it’s scary and hard and challenging and a very emotionally raw experience to be immersed in it.
“Why do we do it? I hope this film reveals a few things about our special SEAL community, the pride we take in the way our skills and teamwork get the job done. How much our guys care about our brotherhood and our families, and by extension, care about all the families in this country. That’s for real.”
At the end, the audience sat in silence as a scroll of all the SEALs killed in action since 9/11 unfurled onscreen. Then we filed out, blinking, into the sunlight — and into a slice of the world where peace obtains at present, thanks to the sort of courage we had just seen portrayed.
“It’s not a movie where you come out just feeling happy,” one nephew said. “More like, you’re sober.”
“You begin to realize that names on a war monument are not just names on a wall?” I asked. He nodded.
Well, MOST of us come out feeling sober. Some of us even had to go to directly the bathroom to fix our makeup after watching the last few minutes of the film and the scroll of SEALs killed in action since 9/11.
One guy shook his head and soberly remarked, “What would we do without them?”
And then some of us thought that it was just NAZI stuff.
The Heritage Foundation and the National Review Institute are hosting a panel today at 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM est. You can sign up to watch online, live, here. As you know, liberals have cynically taken to calling opposition to Obamacare’s anti-conscience mandate a “war against women.” That is a bold faced lie, and an insult to our intelligence. It’s about religious liberty — not birth control.
Religious liberty has become an early casualty in Obamacare’s collision course with liberty. Obamacare’s anti-conscience mandate forces employers to provide health insurance coverage of abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives, and sterilization -– regardless of religious or moral objections to such services.
The mandate’s coercion of employers is a serious affront to religious liberty and a warning sign of the problems inherent in a centralized health care system. Conflicts between individual liberty and the dictates of government bureaucrats on deeply personal health care decisions will only increase as implementation of what Obamacare deems to be an “essential benefits” package continues.
Join us as an expert panel discusses the specific religious liberty violations of the Obamacare anti-conscience mandate and the health care law’s profound threat to personal freedom.
The panel:
The Honorable Ann Marie Buerkle (R-NY) U.S. House of Representatives
Followed by a panel discussion with
Hadley Heath Policy Analyst, Independent Women’s Forum
Maggie Karner Director, Lutheran Church Missouri-Synod Life and Health Ministries
Pia de Solenni Diotima Consulting, LLC
Lori Windham Senior Counsel, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty
Co-hosted by Jennifer Marshall Director, DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society, The Heritage Foundation
Kate O’Beirne President, National Review Institute
RELATED:
I haven’t seen polling this negative against ObamaCare since , well – ever. More evidence that Obama’s contraception mandate was a huge political miscalculation.
Video from Buffalo, New York station WGRZ, reporting on a Town Hall Meeting held yesterday, 2/24/12 by Democrat Rep. Kathy Hochul (CD NY-26).
I wonder if she was expecting to be met with so much opposition to her support of the Obama administration’s contraception mandate.
New York Democrat Rep. Kathy Hochul (CD-26) is told by a man attending a Town Hall Meeting that Barack Obama’s mandate on religious institutions to violate their religious beliefs is “tyranny” – a “slap in the face” to Catholics in America, and an attack on “Religious Freedom.” Hochul supports Obama’s mandate, and her only response was to say she held a Town Hall somewhere else and the people there were focused on jobs!
The words flowed effortlessly from this righteously indignant man, and she had no response for him. How do you explain why you favor trampling on religious rights? “We’ll just agree to disagree?”
It’s beyond me why anyone in their right minds would be looking to Democrats for “ways to get people back to work”, at this point. None of their ideas work – they’ve had their chance, and failed miserably. But it’s funny how the contraception issue was put out there to deflect from Obama’s economic failures, and now this issue has become so toxic for them, they’re trying to shift back to the failing economy.
Nice job, Barry. Like I keep saying,picking a fight with the Catholic Church during an election year was not a smart plan.
More video from the town hall, with citizen after citizen speaking their minds, here.
I think we can safely consider Rep. Hochul, the ObamaCare contraception mandate’s first casualty. That was a fast two years, wasn’t Congresswoman? Send your complaints to Obama’s genius reelection committee.
A week ago or so, Duane Patterson and I got into a debate on my show over the impact of the HHS mandate on Catholic voters. Duane worried that Barack Obama had split Catholic voters, but I reminded Duane that the Catholic vote is always split, and usually tilts slightly towards Democrats. Obama won the Catholic vote by nine points in 2008. What Obama did was unify Catholics — and not just Catholics, either — in opposition to his arrogance. Bishops and priests are organizing opposition to this mandate, and this is just one small measure of the result.
Hochul, it should be remembered, is only in office because of Chris Lee’s virtual tomcatting on Internet dating sites. He resigned when the scandal broke, and Hochul won the special election in an R+6 district one year ago. It was one of the few rays of sunshine for Democrats midway through Obama’s term, but her chances of winning again seem to be dimming substantially in NY-26. This is a small measure of the political miscalculation made by Obama and his administration on the mandate, and perhaps a signal to opponents of the mandate in other districts to follow suit.
More than 2,500 Christian leaders have signed a letter opposing Obamcare’s anti-conscience mandate. The letter’s release adds to the most recent furor over the rule’s blatant violation of religious liberty and decries the mandate’s coercion of religious employers to subsidize abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives, and sterilization regardless of moral or religious objections to such services.
***
Looks like our side is pushing back against the left’s lame attempt to frame the issue as somehow about woman’s rights. It’s nothing of the sort.
Oh, Nancy, Nancy, Nancy. What are we going to do with you? You are such a constant source of disinformation on Catholicism:
“I’ve come from an era when (Catholic) women were deprived of receiving absolution if they confessed that they used birth control,” Pelosi complained, “It is good to get it out on the table.”
Oops. I’m not sure where, or how, you got that information. But it’s completely wrong. There is no sin God won’t forgive. But there are a couple of catches. Looks like it’s time to brush up on the sacrament of confession.
Mr. Obama has declared war on our Judeo-Christian culture. He understands the economic transformation of America cannot take place without a government-imposed social revolution: Smash religion and the family – the key institutions of civil society – and the restraints upon the federal leviathan are removed. The path is laid for a soft authoritarian nanny state. The president acts as if he is hell-bent on eradicating Christianity from the public square.
Via Sooper Mexican, I bring you another excellent letterpenned by Philip Ellender, President, Government & Public Affairs of Koch Companies, responding to Obama’s campaign Manager, Jim “punch back twice as hard” Messina’s latest moronic attempt to rile up the left-wing mob with nonsensical and sophomoric attacks on the Koch bros. Significantly, Ellender characterized the Obama Camp’s cynical attacks on private citizens “an abuse of the President’s position, and “a disservice to our nation”.
A Letter to the Obama Campaign
Mr. Jim Messina
Campaign Manager
Obama for America
Dear Mr. Messina:
Because every American has the right to take part in the public discourse on matters that affect the future of our country, I feel compelled to respond directly about a fundraising letter you sent out on February 24 denouncing Koch. It is both surprising and disappointing that the President would allow his re-election team to send such an irresponsible and misleading letter to his supporters.
For example, it is false that our “business model is to make millions by jacking up prices at the pump.” Our business vision begins and ends with value creation — real, long-term value for customers and for society. We own no gasoline stations and the part of our business you allude to, oil and gas refining, actually lowers the price of gasoline by increasing supply. Either you simply misunderstand the way commodities markets work or you are misleading your supporters and the rest of the American people.
If I may interject, here, Mr Ellender - Messina understands how commodities markets work. But he understands the mob mentality of the people to whom he’s appealing, even better. They have been taught what to think – not how to think, thus they react to dog whistles (Koch brothers! Big Oil!, Rich Corporations!), not reason and logic. Messina’s trying to stoke the inflamed passions of the mindless Jacobin mobs already protesting the evil 1 percenters.
Contrary to your assertion that we have “committed $200 million to try to destroy President Obama,” we have stated publicly and repeatedly since last November that we have never made any such claim or pledge. It is hard to imagine that the campaign is unaware of our publicly stated position on that point. Similarly, Americans for Prosperity is not simply “funded by the Koch brothers,” as you state — rather it has tens of thousands of members and contributors from across the country and from all walks of life. Further, our opposition to this President’s policies is not based on partisan politics but on principles. Charles Koch and David Koch have been outspoken advocates of the free-market for over 50 years and they have consistently opposed policies that frustrate or subvert free markets, regardless of whether a Democrat or a Republican was President.
If the President’s campaign has some principled disagreement with the arguments we are making publicly about the staggering debt the President and previous administrations have imposed on the country, the regulations that are stifling business growth and innovation, the increasing intrusion of government into nearly every aspect of American life, we would be eager to hear them. But it is an abuse of the President’s position and does a disservice to our nation for the President and his campaign to criticize private citizens simply for the act of engaging in their constitutional right of free speech about important matters of public policy. The implication in that sort of attack is obvious: dare to criticize the President’s policies and you will be singled out and personally maligned by the President and his campaign in an effort to chill free speech and squelch dissent.
