Reading Mao isn't the same as admiring Mao

"Taking its cue from the White House, CNN, the 4th most popular cable news network and fact-checker of Saturday Night Live skits skewering the president (even Jon Stewart snorted at that one), picks up the canard and runs with it.

But it's not just Dunn, a Democrat, who has used Mao as someone she reads.
Media Matters for America, a liberal media watchdog group, points out that former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, also a Fox News contributor, quoted Mao in a 1995 Roll Call profile.

"War is politics with blood; politics is war without blood," Gingrich said, citing Mao.

Karl Rove, another Fox News contributor, wrote in a December 2008 Wall Street Journal op-ed that President Bush "encouraged me to read a Mao biography."

Sometimes people read books to understand the depravity of their opponents and those who would destroy them. After all, lots of Republicans like Rove and Gingrich have read Mao, right along with Rules for Radicals and Dreams from my Father."

CNN's lame excuse

Emboldened White House

Those of you who think the White House is just acting a bit like a snotty, rebellious child caught with his hand in the cookie jar, ought to wake up and see the seriousness of Obama's henchmen attacks on a news agency

The White House stopped providing guests to "Fox News Sunday" after host Chris Wallace fact-checked controversial assertions made by Tammy Duckworth, assistant secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, in August. Dunn said fact-checking an administration official was "something I've never seen a Sunday show do." "She criticized 'Fox News Sunday' last week for fact-checking -- fact-checking -- an administration official," Wallace said Sunday. "They didn't say that our fact-checking was wrong. They just said that we had dared to fact-check."

Each day I am getting more and more chilled and concerned by this mess you guys elected for us. It doesn't even sound like my country any more.

Story

A grieving father blogs. . .

Robert J. Avrech is an Emmy Award winning screenwriter, an observant Jew, a religious Zionist, a conservative Republican, and a member of the NRA. He writes the blog, Seraphic Secret. His son died of cancer at age 22 in 2003. He writes that time has not healed.

It's not health care reform

This op-ed piece in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette finds the real problem, and it's not insurance:

Health care costs too much in our country because we deliver too much health care. We deliver too much because we demand too much. And we demand it for all the wrong reasons. We're turning into a nation of anxious wimps. I still love my job; very few things are as emotionally rewarding as relieving true pain and suffering, sharing compassionate care and actually saving lives. Illness and injury will always require the best efforts our medical system can provide. But emergency departments nationwide are being overwhelmed by the non-emergent, and doctors in general are asked to treat what doesn't need treatment. In a single night I had patients come in to our emergency department, most brought by ambulance, for the following complaints: I smoked marijuana and got dizzy; I got stung by a bee and it hurts; I got drunk and have a hangover; I sat out in the sun and got sunburn; I ate Mexican food and threw up; I picked my nose and it bled, but now it stopped; I just had sex and want to know if I'm pregnant. . . . Our society has warped our perception of true risk. We are taught to fear vaccinations, mold, shark attacks, airplanes and breast implants when we really should worry about smoking, drug abuse, obesity, cars and basic hygiene. If you go by pharmaceutical advertisement budgets, our most critical health needs are to have sex and fall asleep."

HT Kat

Medical marijuana

I'm sure most conservative commentators and bloggers will jump all over Obama for this one--the new federal guidelines. Not me. Maybe there is no benefit, maybe medical marijuana is just another placebo, but we'll never know until there are large clinical studies, and there won't be any if we make criminals out of the doctors and patients who are trying to ease chronic, debilitating pain. It certainly can't be worse or more addictive than some of the prescription medications like Oxycontin. Is this another follow the money fight? Now let's see if the state and federal regulations can control this as a medical treatment. Probably not.

Need a fact checker

Our church went to plastic communion cups years ago, not for sanitation but because there weren't enough ladies left in the altar guild to wash them when the congregation grew. Some congregations/denominations are doing away with the common cup due to fear of disease transmission. Somewhere years ago when I first started serving communion (and we do occasionally have common cup in small services), I heard that someone had tested a common cup against the individual glass cup, and found more germs on the glass due to inadequate washing and storing. Anyone know more about this? I would think the alcohol will kill some germs, although not handling the bread so much would make sense.

Obama's military expenditure projection

"To carry out the Obama administration's defense plans, the Pentagon will need its non-war-related spending over the next 18 years to average 6 percent more than the amount sought in its fiscal 2010 budget request, according to CBO testimony Wednesday before the House Budget Committee.

Despite efforts to cut unnecessary programs and otherwise rein in defense budgets that have spiked since 2001, the Pentagon still will need roughly $567 billion annually, in constant 2010 dollars, for its base budgets between fiscal 2011 and fiscal 2028, Matthew Goldberg, CBO acting assistant director, told the panel. That figure, which does not include war costs, marks a $33 billion increase over the fiscal 2010 base defense budget request. . .

Meanwhile, spending on operations in Iraq and Afghanistan still makes up about 35 percent, or $154 billion, of the total defense budget request for fiscal 2010. Long-term estimates on war spending hinge largely on whether and how many additional troops President Obama decides to send to Afghanistan.

Daggett also noted that each U.S. soldier deployed to Afghanistan for one year costs about $1 million. By comparison, one Afghan soldier costs $12,000 annually.

Meanwhile, the current monthly "burn rate" in Afghanistan is $3.6 billion. But that would grow to about $7.2 billion -- or the same rate that the United States is spending monthly in Iraq -- if Obama decides to send in 50,000 additional troops, he said." Link

White House goes Palin with Sotomayor

"Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor says her nomination process was so tightly scripted that even her clothes were chosen for her.

Sotomayor made the comments when she appeared at her 30th Yale Law School reunion on Saturday. . . Sotomayor talked about shopping for clothes to wear to her acceptance ceremony. Government officials, however, told her to bring five suits and they recommended which one she should wear."

Source: Newsmax

Maybe the parties do this with male candidates too, and they just don't make the news because people don't care? Pin stripe or plain; yellow tie or blue stripe; tiny flag pin. What do you think, Mr. WH Clothing Czar?

800 U.S. war dead in Afghanistan

Since October 1, 2001. Think about that. That's less than the murder rate in most major American cities (see Forbes, "America's most murderous cities"). It's far below the death rate for teen drivers and passengers (16-20), which is something like 5,000 a year (NHTSA)! If the soldier is your son or daughter, father, husband, brother, then the totals don't matter. But I think war protesters ought to think about totals. The Iraq War protesters extended the war, just like they did during the Vietnam era. It gives courage and resolve to the enemy and makes little difference to the people in government. The Iraq War had the backing of many Democrats in Congress, until they decided there was political capital in changing their minds and blaming Bush saying they were misled. That's an ugly thing to do. Either they are liars or easily intimidated wimps. Maybe both. And now we have a President who doesn't believe in victory, waffles on Afghanistan and has changed his mind on Sudan, endangering every military family and America's security in general. And Democrats are still divided, still trying to blame Bush.

But back to the numbers. Did you know the recession has saved lives? Yes, less driving, fewer deaths. Fewer in 2008 than 2007--down 9.7%--and 2009 will probably drop even more. And motorcycle deaths are increasing--probably some folks trying to save gasoline! And did you know that the decade following 1995 when the speed limits went back up (had been 55 mph), studies show an additional 12,500 people died and about 36,500 injured through 2006, even though overall deaths are going down due to safer cars, more seat belt use, and alcohol crack downs.

So why does the media and special interest groups try to get political mileage out of 800 deaths in 9 years, and pretty much ignore 12,500 deaths in 10 years which resulted from societal pressure and special interests? Are those families grieving less because the white cross is along interstate 70 or Rt. 64 and not in a military cemetery? Also, a new study shows that texting increased the danger of driving by 23.2 times--taking your eyes off the road is a lot more dangerous than talking on a cell phone. So what's up? Why is one story so much more compelling, more political, and yet the carnage is so much worse on the highways? [from "Studies probe US traffic injuries, deaths" by Mike Mitka, JAMA, Sept. 16, 2009, p. 1159-1160 using figures from NHTSA]

Kiss and Tell Books

If I'd never known about Bwabwra Walters affairs, or that McKenzie had sex with her father, I would not be impoverished. I wish these attention seekers would just stay in the closet of family secrets. So too with the people who guard the Presidents. I think its a bit creepy. They aren't too kind to Jimmy Carter, but at least the revelations sound like what we all guessed in Ronald Kessler’s book In the President’s Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents they Protect. My other two examples, not.

Carter is portrayed as a phony according to the agents interviewed by Kessler. Carter would put on a show for the public to convey himself as a common man, but it was never anymore than an act. For instance, we are told that when Carter would make a point of carrying his own luggage in front of the press, he was really carrying empty bags. He expected others to carry his real luggage. Unfriendly, Carter “didn’t want the police officers and agents looking at him or speaking to him when he went to the [Oval] office,” explained an assistant White House usher. “The only time I saw a smile on Carter’s face was when the cameras were going,” one former agent told Kessler. After his presidency, Kessler reports that when Carter would stay at a townhouse maintained for former presidents in D.C., he would take down pictures of other presidents and put up more pictures of himself! “The Carters were the biggest liars in the world,” one agent told Kessler of the Carter era. Carter, not surprisingly, denied to Kessler through a lawyer many of the allegations in the book. from Hot Air

Sigh. If he'd just kept building houses instead of trying to have a 2nd and 3rd term while others were in office, he probably could have recovered from his record and been a well-loved ex.

HT Sister Toljah

Calling Dr. Glenn

I noticed this comment at Dr. Sanity's blog--she's out ill.

For the past five years, researchers in a modest office overlooking the New Haven green have carefully documented cases of assassination and torture of democracy activists in Iran. With more than $3 million in grants from the US State Department, they have pored over thousands of documents and Persian-language press reports and interviewed scores of witnesses and survivors to build dossiers on those they say are Iran’s most infamous human-rights abusers. But just as the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center was ramping up to investigate abuses of protesters after this summer’s disputed presidential election, the group received word that - for the first time since it was formed -- its federal funding request has been denied.

You just never know the accuracy of these comments--God knows I get some weird people here! So I checked for the original news story and found it at the Boston Globe by Farah Stockman.

Many see the sudden, unexplained cutoff of funding as a shift by the Obama administration away from high-profile democracy promotion in Iran, which had become a signature issue for President Bush. But the timing has alarmed some on Capitol Hill. “The Iran Human Rights Documentation Center is at the forefront of pioneering and vitally important work,’’ said Senator Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, in a statement yesterday. “It is disturbing that the State Department would cut off funding at precisely the moment when these brave investigations are needed most.’’ Michael Rubin, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington-based think tank, said, “It is a shock that they did not get funding.’’ A reason, he asserted, may be that “the Obama administration is so focused on engaging Iran that they don’t want this information to get in the way.’’

When Joe Lieberman left the Democratic Party it not only lost its soul, but its conscience.

Who is Andrew Breitbart, MSM slayer and acorn crusher?

James Taranto looks at the man who scooped all the media with an ACORN story so outrageous, they finally had to take a look at its corruption, scamming of the poor, and links back to Obama.

Mr. Breitbart, 40, grew up in Hollywood, though his parents weren't in show business. (His father was a restaurateur, his mother a banker.) After graduating from Tulane University, he returned to Southern California, where he dabbled in film production and music journalism before finding his calling online in the mid-1990s. "I just like the Internet," he says. "I feel more natural in this environment, where I am part of the media and not a passive receptacle of the media." He worked for a time on the Drudge Report, and Matt Drudge introduced him to Arianna Huffington, now the doyenne of liberal bloggers. Mr. Breitbart designed a Web site for her back when she was still a Republican.  He held inchoate liberal views until 1991, when the Clarence Thomas hearings occasioned a conservative awakening. He came to loathe the left-wing show-biz culture, the subject of his 2004 book, "Hollywood, Interrupted," and of his group blog Big Hollywood, launched early this year. "These people believe that Christians and conservatives and Republicans and libertarians are all variations on the Nazi theme."

Read the whole story--there’s more to come.

I remember listening to the Thomas hearings on my lunch hour in the car. That's when I really started to catch on about the party of my choice. It took another 9 years, of gag reflexes, ignoring the problem, and then soul searching, but I finally fled. But it began with Alanon.

Dunn doesn't mind a double dip salary

For someone who finds Chairman Mao a man to be admired for his methods, results and goals, Anita Dunn doesn't mind burning the salary candle at both ends--from the White House as interim communications chief and at her own firm, Squier Knapp Dunn.

“From Anita Dunn—referred to in Time magazine as Obama's "mega-advisor" to Bill Knapp, one of the nation's savviest campaign strategists – we have helped countless Democratic candidates and campaigns navigate tough races and win.” No other firm had as far-reaching a role in President Obama's election than Squier Knapp Dunn, with Anita Dunn serving as one of the top officials of the campaign and the firm producing both television advertising and direct mail for the campaign.

From her position at the White House, Ms. Dunn attacked the right of dissent and free speech of every American with her attacks on Fox News, claiming it was an arm of the Republican party (as if the rest of the media hadn't helped elect Obama), then down played the video of her speech through the leftist Media Matters. She attacked the messenger for her own words which millions saw and understood, spoken at a high school graduation. SKD also helped elect Ohio's own Senator Sherrod Brown.

Label: Anita Dunn

Teaching queerly--Kevin Jennings, the bullying czar

I've been out of school a few years, and my youngest graduated from highschool 22 years ago. I didn't know there was such a thing as "teaching queerly." Calling someone a "queer" used to be an insult, but that went out in the 70s--I knew that because I was a librarian. Not that librarians are queer, mind you, but I used to get all kinds of publications coming across my desk and kitchen table, including a newsletter from the Bay Area radical librarians for anarchy in the stacks (or something like that). Their newsletter was lavendar, I kid you not.

Fox News has been roundly criticized for even reporting this story, and of course, the opinion shows on Fox are running with it--you'd never see CNN or MSNBC even touch it. Jennings apparently wrote the introduction for this book, now 11 years old. So you would think someone would have figured out in the vetting (who? what? when?) process that this just might come up.

"Those who teach queerly refuse to participate in the great sexual sorting machine called schooling where diminutive GI Joes and Barbies become star quarterbacks and prom queens, while the Linuses and Tinky Winkies become wallflowers or human doormats. Queeering education means bracketing our simplest classroom activities in which we routinely equate sexual identities with sexual acts, privilege the heterosexual condition, and presume sexual destinies. Queer teachers are those who develop curriculum and pedagogy that afford every child dignity rooted in self-worth and esteem for others. In short, queering education happens when we look at schooling upside down and view childhood from the inside out. This groundbreaking volume demands we explore taken-for-granted assumptions about diversity, identities, childhood, and prejudice." From the Product information on the book at Amazon.

A review of the book in Washington Times: “Advocating the indoctrination of kindergarten children based on anecdotal evidence or flawed science isn't Mr. Jennings' worst offense. But it's certainly not what Americans expect from a White House "safe schools czar" who is responsible for making policy decisions that impact children's safety.”

But here's the incident that got Jennings in trouble with conservative law makers, and which the MSM is defending.

Jennings, the founder of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, has described in writings and speeches how a high-school student confided to him in 1988 that he was having a relationship with an older man.

The student has since spoken out in defense of Jennings, claiming he was 16 at the time, which was the legal age in Massachusetts, and that he was not sexually active.

But Jennings has described the relationship as sexual, and in 2000 he said the boy was 15 years old.

A Columbus principal was fired, her assistants put on leave, and she lost her license when she called the father first instead of the police when a mentally challenged girl was sexually assaulted in her school. (Dispatch story) So whether the liberal news agencies believe Jennings did the right thing to protect the boy, there are procedures and rules for these things.

Huffpo slinking away from the Limbaugh quotes

From NewsBusters.

"Earlier today, the Weekly Standard’s John McCormack reported that the Huffington Post had asked author Jack Huberman to document quotes allegedly from Rush Limbaugh declaring that slavery “had its merits” and that the assassin of Martin Luther King, Jr. deserved the Medal of Honor.

The quotes were widely cited as real by several sports writers and on CNN and MSNBC in the past week as proof that Limbaugh was a racist who did not deserve to own part of the St. Louis Rams football team. But the Huffington Post has now removed them, saying the author has not been able to substantiate them."

Oh, I so hope Rush sues! It's going to track back to Obama--you wait and see.

It has now been discovered by tracking IP addresses where the false quotes in Wikipedia (source of all the lies that no one checked) came from, and also that there are ties back to Attorney General Holder in the Obama Administration. NFL Players Association Executive Director DeMaurice Smith served as counsel to Attorney General Eric Holder and was a member of Barack Obama’s transition team.

Another Marxist in the White House

No wonder Anita Dunn won't call Glenn Beck to correct his errors.



She was already on schedule to leave--she's "interim."

Obama says he's not tired--critical of the "socialist mop" group.

Mr. President, I'm tired of this nonsense. Is there no one close to you who is not a radical, a socialist, a Marxist, a Communist, a tax cheat, a crook, or a National Socialist? Have you gone so far 'round the bend that no one can bring you back?

Label: Anita Dunn

Obama's not tired, he says, just getting started

Glenn Beck says he’s tired of socialism and the corruption in Washington; Obama says he’s not. Tired, that is. Someone at the White House is listening to Beck and mimicking him.

“When I’m busy, and Nancy’s busy, with a mop cleaning up somebody else’s mess, we don’t want somebody sitting back saying, ‘you’re not holding the mop the right way’ … ‘you’re not mopping fast enough’ … ‘that’s a socialist mop.’”

“Grab a mop. We need help.”

Obama, at the Westin St. Francis Hotel here after visiting New Orleans earlier in the day, addressed a small group of donors at an intimate dinner for 160, and then moved several floors downstairs to a larger ballroom, where he addressed a sold-out crowd of about 900 attendees. The singer Tracy Chapman warmed up the ballroom crowd with her 1988 hit, “Talkin’ ‘Bout a Revolution.”

Guests at the dinner contributed $34,000 per couple, and tickets for the main event ranged between $500 and $1,000. The DNC expects to have raised about $3 million in total.

. . . “I hope that all of you guys understand that we’re just getting started.”

“Some of our opponents think that they can wear us down,” he said. “I’m not tired. I’m refreshed. We are not going to stop.” Politico

The WSJ Washington Wire didn’t mention the “socialist mop” statement, maybe because they know that’s the only one he’s got?

Remember, folks, he said he intended to fundamentally change the United States of America. He said he was going to redistribute wealth. He was going to raise energy costs with cap and trade. He was going to take over the health care system. He told us. Think back a year ago, two years ago. Was your life so awful before he began the run for the White House? Are you better off now with all this "change?"

Rotten sausage is being made in Congress

This is a really excellent summary of the mess in Congress prepared by the Arkansas Republican Assembly (ARRA). Includes

2010 Energy and Water appropriations bill, H.R. 3183

2010 Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations bill, H.R. 2847

McConnell and Boehner joint press conference on the biggest tax increase ever (health care)

Henry Reid's closed door meetings

Republicans prepare for floor debate

"Making a new law that takes away individual freedom, choice and even property through mandatory taxes is anathema. The intended final sausage - the health care bill - is already rotting. It stinks not only in the halls of Congress and Washington, D.C., but the stench has reached the heartland of America."

Snooping on Joe the Plumber

And still insulting Sarah Palin. My goodness. Don't these guys ever give up?

"A former contractor for the Ohio Association of Chiefs of Police has been charged with rummaging through state computers to retrieve confidential information about "Joe the Plumber."

Brett A. Gerke, 52, of 2329 Woodcreek Place on the Far North Side, is charged with attempted unauthorized use of property.

Gerke entered a diversion program on Oct. 2, which typically results in the dismissal of a criminal charge. He has not entered a plea. The charge is a first-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail.

The State Highway Patrol says that Gerke used a law-enforcement computer network on Oct. 16, 2008 to access personal information about Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher."

Columbus Dispatch

No word yet if Gerke is a Democrat operative. Or whether Dave Letterman is a jerke.

Obama's war against Fox

"This weekend, after White House communications director Anita Dunn forthrightly declared war on Fox News, some people thought she might have gone a little too far in explaining a tacit understanding in the Obama administration that they didn't deal directly with the right-leaning network. One almost expected to see a clarification of the remarks afterward, as Fox anchors like Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck gleefully ran with the story. But of course, Dunn's statements had been carefully scripted by the Obama team — as is pretty much everything you hear from them, except things that are supposed to be off the record. And what's more, Dunn herself was selected to fire off the opening salvo for a specific reason: On a strategy team largely dominated by men, she's acknowledged to be the toughest member."

The rest of the story at New York Magazine.

Hint: She's expendable, she's female, she's interim.

Update: Anita Dunn is also an ardent admirer of Chairman Mao. Glenn Beck showed a very long clip of a speech she gave, apparently to a graduating class in June, about how much she admired Chairman Mao, a man who killed 70,000,000 of his own subjects/citizens. And folks, these were not easy deaths. My college roommate's family fled China for their lives to Brazil. Heads chopped off. Brains blown out. Starvation. Worked to death in labor camps. Go to your library and get out an old Look or Life Magazine. These are the people our President surrounds himself with now, and with whom he grew up and went to college, and schmoozed with in Chicago's fancy Hyde Park. The people who saw real possibilities in his acceptable appearance and speeches, and tapped him on the shoulder to be their front man.

The formerly Main Stream Media, now increasingly the Irrelevant by-stander media, can't find John Kerry's military records; can't find John Edward's mistress' baby; can't find Van Jones' prison record; can't read Ezekiel Emanual's article about rationing health care for the elderly; can't figure out polar bears aren't dying; can't find Valerie Jarrett's Communist background; and certainly couldn't find out Anita Dunn's admiration and love for Mao Tse Tung.