Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (44729)	9/4/2010 11:16:05 AM
From: Peter Dierks	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

David Limbaugh Brilliantly Skewers Obama by Christian Toto 09/04/2010 David Limbaugh’s Crimes Against Liberty: An Indictment of President Barack Obama doesn’t mince words—or chapter titles. There are sections labeled “Liar,” “The Anti-American” and “The Dictator,” as stark examples. Exhaustive, damning and urgent, Crimes Against Liberty finds Limbaugh railing against an administration rapidly eroding a once-great nation’s core strengths. The first chapter, dealing with Obama’s runaway ego, might be the least problematic in terms of governance. But it’s Obama’s narcissistic ways that feed into much of his agenda. A man who wrote two autobiographies before he truly accomplished anything special should have been a warning sign, the author notes. Later, as President, Obama would insert himself into speeches with references to “I” or “me” almost to the point of parody. But the media still couldn’t be bothered to notice. Obama the candidate promised he was above partisanship, a fraudulent position that nonetheless reeled in even a few conservative pundits. It was merely a pose, a way to pass hard-left legislation without drawing attention to his real agenda. Politicians often break campaign promises. But the audacious way Obama went about shattering his word proved breath-taking in its scope. The most “transparent” President ever went months without a press conference, shut out cameras from crucial healthcare legislation work and signed legislation without posting it online as promised. Those aren’t mistakes. They’re bald-faced lies, and Limbaugh calls Obama out on them. And forget about “bringing people together.” Even setting aside Obama’s inability to make a speech without blaming “his predecessor” for the problems he can’t fix—which Limbaugh lists in one telling section of the book—there’s the unsettling matter of his legislation record. Obamacare passed without a single Republican vote in the House. He did do a bit of uniting, Limbaugh notes, since 34 Democrats joined the other party in saying nay. The President’s stimulus package earned the approval of only three Republican senators, one of whom (Arlen Specter) switched parties a short time later. Obama’s “ban” on lobbyists was equally short-lived. He quickly passed legislation forbidding lobbyists from working in his administration on issues they once lobbied on. Then he went about making exceptions to his own rule—22 in all so far—and jammed his administration with former lobbyists. Limbaugh spends several pages on the President’s 2010 State of the Union speech, a relentless and fact-filled skewering. Obama’s aggressive policies have hurt plenty of people, but California farmers have been targeted brutally in these last two years. Limbaugh describes how environmental regulations have robbed California farms of precious water supplies, “a crushing blow to California agriculture,” he says. And when the stricken farmers pleaded with Obama to witness the devastation for himself, he declined their invitation. The President seems most animated when he’s pitting Americans against each other. Whenever it’s time to promote a new agenda item, Obama makes sure to line up his cast of villains in order to smear them and, as a result, bolster his plan du jour. Consider his disdain for doctors while trumpeting Obamacare. He suggested that doctors make decisions based on reimbursement considerations, not the welfare of their patients. Or, remember how Obama compared AIG and other big lenders to suicide bombers. Obama’s dislike of profit-makers doesn’t, however, include his political donors or labor unions. And while he once said that, at some point people have made enough money, he hasn’t given the bulk of his own largesse—much of it from his two books—to charities. Perhaps the most ruinous economic policy Team Obama embraced in its first term was the stimulus package meant to bring the economy back to life. “This stimulus, “ Limbaugh writes, “accomplished little more than political payoffs, expanding the public sector and proving the government was still the king of colossal waste.” Obama made sure that waste wasn’t even put into play all at once, since a good chunk of the stimulus funds remain unspent. And Limbaugh asks the kind of question the mainstream press won’t even consider: “Why did Obama intentionally hold back such a great portion of the funds for expenditure in later years?” Obama’s anti-American tendencies should have been clear when we learned he worshipped at the feet of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright for 20 years. Obama the candidate said he didn’t share that minister’s views. Seeing him in office, from his apology tour to his actions toward the country’s allies, told us otherwise. Limbaugh’s criticisms can be hard to process at times given their depth and severity, even if the text is plain spoken and direct. Take his evisceration of Obama’s attempt to fight terrorism, a disastrous blend of appeasement and moral relativism gone wild. But the author says the President’s economic policies may wreck the most damage in the end. “The ultimate scandal of the Obama Administration … is its exponential growth of the national debt to unsustainable levels that put the nation on a path to bankruptcy,” he writes. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mr. Toto is a freelance reporter and film critic for Movies in Toto, the movie community at washingtontimes.com. His work has appeared in People magazine, MovieMaker Magazine, The Denver Post, The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and The Washington Times. He provides movie commentary for the nationally syndicated Dennis Miller Show and runs the blog What Would Toto Watch? humanevents.com

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (44729)	11/16/2010 4:57:36 PM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 71588

Who’s Threatening Your Civil Rights Now? By George Savage - Ricochet \| Published: 12:47 PM 11/16/2010 \| Updated: 12:48 PM 11/16/2010 The leftist narrative during the Bush years held that civil rights were rapidly sublimating under the heat of post-9.11 measures such as the Patriot Act. Listening to Keith Olbermann and like-minded commentators in those dark days, we were all Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, subject to rendition and waterboarding at the whim of a despotic Vice President Cheney. According to this history, President Obama and large Democratic congressional majorities were elected to change course, guiding the Republic back to the sunlit uplands where privacy and personal freedom would once again be safe from erosion by a hyperactive national security apparatus. The closing of the detention facility at Guantanamo, repeal of the Patriot Act, end of Predator drone assassinations and successful resolution of the war in Afghanistan made good on the Democrats’ promises, ushering in a new era of enhanced civil liberties at home and. . . wait a minute—none of this actually happened. Instead of enhanced civil liberties we have the opposite, thanks in this case to the ineluctable logic of Security Theater, where the answer to each incremental threat is another intrusive mass-screening program. And every other consideration—effectiveness, cost-benefit analysis and personal freedom—must give way in favor of the appearance of doing something. A gun is used to hijack a plane? Bring on the magnetometer. C4-enhanced lingerie? Time for full body scans for millions of travelers. Don't worry, the image of your unclothed body will only be seen by government employees, and the x-ray dose is minimal. Sheesh, it’s not like the TSA is digging through your library receipts. And since this is America, you always have the right to object to the scan and select the infinitely more personal Groin Grope. But don’t decide to forgo both the ionizing photo and the tactile perineal exam in favor of going home or, as John Tyner is discovering, you may be fined and prosecuted. How do my fellow Ricochetans reconcile the Obama administration’s airport body scanning policy with its earlier civil libertarian rhetoric and the inconvenient truth of an intentionally wide-open southern border? And is this the beginning of a real backlash or just a blip on the radar? ricochet.com

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (44729)	5/18/2012 2:20:52 AM
From: greatplains_guy	3 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

The JournoList Is Alive and Well Media Downplays Obama's Past, Tries to Define Romney with Teen Prank John Nolte, Big Journalism May 12, 2012 Media bias isn’t just about what is and isn’t covered. It's also about how something is covered and rolled out. For instance, the failing and corrupt Washington Post has twice now attempted to use decades-old incidents to create ongoing media narratives meant to negatively define serious challengers to their precious Obama. The way in which this is done is to use huge splashes that are rolled out in a way that ensures plenty of attention and coverage (probably through coordination) from their fellow members of the corrupt media. In October of last year when Texas Governor Rick Perry was looking like a serious presidential contender, out of nowhere the Washington Post quite intentionally dropped a huge, attention-getting spread about a racist rock on a property neither Perry nor his family ever owned (they leased a portion of it for hunting) that was painted over who knows how many years ago. All the Washington Post wanted to do here was to link the N-word to Rick Perry and to blunt his message and criticism of Obama by tying him up in defensive knots over nonsense. The bigger goal, though, was to aid and abet Obama's reelection by using the weakest of reasons to define Perry -- and by extension, his supporters and the Republican Party -- as racist. Using the exact same m.o., this morning the Washington Post dropped what had to be an intentionally-timed bomb on presumptive nominee Mitt Romney. Within hours of Obama suddenly deciding to stop lying about his position on same-sex marriage, the Washington Post read Mitt Romney's teenage mind, found it anti-gay, and in a huge, attention-getting feature worked hand-in-hand with the Obama campaign to paint their likely challenger as a snooty, wealthy, homophobic, prep school bully. Compare today's story about Mitt Romney to a 2008 story the Washington Post published about then-candidate Obama's formative years. Just for starters, look at the difference in the headlines. Mitt Romney's immediately tagged as the prep schooler with troubling incidents in his past. By contrast, Obama is headlined as a thoughtful Seeker. The Romney article opens immediately with the tale of Romney's homophobic bullying. This is in stark contrast to the opening of the '08 Obama piece which paints a picture of Obama's hard-scrabble life growing up in Hawaii. Hilariously, you have to read -- no joke -- over 8,800 word before the words "drug use," "marijuana," or "cocaine" are mentioned in reference to Obama. This is how the Washington Post tries to get away with claiming it covered Obama's sordid past but also how it gets away with covering Obama's sordid past without defining Their Candidate in a way that might hurt his chances of winning an election. When it comes to Barack Obama's formative years (and not-so distant past), to cover its Palace Guarding ass, almost all of the media dutifully report the facts but, quite intentionally, almost always in a way that does the least amount of damage. And when these stories drop in one media outlet, other media outlets cooperate by not picking up on the story in a fashion that will create a news narrative. As you can see, this was reported before the 2008 election got started and we all remember how hard the media worked to tamp down the 20 years Obama spent at the knee of racialist demagogue Jeremiah Wright (but heard none of that crazy stuff!) and the troubling fact that Obama's political career began in the living room of admitted and unrepentant domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers. The timing of today's Washington Post hit-piece on Romney only confirms what I already suspected: That Journolist is alive and well and that the same news outlet responsible for bringing down a corrupt president through their extraordinary investigative reporting of Watergate, is now coordinating hit-pieces to amplify White House messaging. And it's only May. breitbart.com