Come Hell or High Water

indyfromaz|  

The Congress that took the last week of July until Sept 13 off has now left Washington for all-out-war campaigning after working an exhaustive 17 days since late July and won’t be back until after they have had their heads chopped off by the American people.

Poor babies.
They left town without the House passing a budget for the first time since 1974. The 4th time the Senate has done it since 1974.
So the government that started a new fiscal year today with resolutions.
I bet your household budget works the same way. You just fake it. right?
They also left town without dealing with the Tax Increases coming on 1/1/11. They were too chicken. So they split town to save their own asses rather than tell you, your employer, or any potential employers if they were going to get hit with the largest Tax Increase in American History (for real).
Failure to extend the Bush tax cuts will also mean a reinstatement of the marriage penalty that makes some married couples pay higher taxes filing jointly than they would if they were single and filing individual returns. It will mean cutting in half the child tax credit from $1,000 to $500. It will increase tax rates on dividends from a maximum of 15 percent to 39.6 percent, which affects seniors who depend on dividends to supplement their Social Security and pensions. And it will raise the top capital gains tax rate from 15 percent to 20 percent, stifling business investment.
It will also raise taxes anyone who pays taxes. Regardless of income.

The President repeatedly says he want to raise taxes on the rich as a class warfare tactic, but in all these months has he actually proposed an actual bill for it?
Or was he hoping Pelosi or Reid would do it for him? Be the good Lieutenants and get all the troops in line to set up for the firing squad one more time?
But the fact remains it was all talk and no action. Much like the Congress since the passage of the business buzzsaw killing Financial Reform bill the Democrats have done nothing useful since (not that they did it before to be fair).
And who is to blame for the President not proposing and the Democrats not disposing of this part of the agenda, The Republicans.
The Minority party is at fault for the President not even sending a bill containing his Tax proposals to the House and the House not willing to come up with the bill and vote on it.
It’s all those damn Republicans fault!
HUH??
Now that’s a “transparent” “drain the swamp” “most ethical congress” “responsible”, “post-partisan” government isn’t it?
The real problem was there were enough Democrats  who were willing to join Republicans on an across-the-board extension of the Bush tax cuts that it made the Reid-Pelosi position of raising taxes on some higher earners untenable, so no tax bill moved forward.
But that was the Republicans fault too.


Members of Congress have now returned home to try to save their own jobs, never mind helping the millions of Americans who have lost theirs. “When we come back this fall, the election will be over,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told the Washington Post. “I hope that it also means that Republicans will finally be able to put the American people ahead of their short-term political interests and ambitions.”
Now that’s responsible government.  and very “post-partisan”.


So it’s time to get your Lame Duck Poisoning Prevention Shot.
The New Roman Empire is being invaded by a hoard of Barbarians are the gate. So it’s time to prep the wells for poisoning and to raze the crops and poison the soil.
What Reid and his counterpart in the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, are hoping is that Democrats who lose their seats in the election will be willing to pass legislation in a lame duck session that they know the voting public doesn’t support. In Reid’s logic, they will be free to vote their liberal ideology. And it won’t matter because they will have already lost their jobs. But it is precisely this kind of arrogance that has Democrats in such poor shape heading into the mid-term elections. (Linda Chavez)
Some say you have to admire our “rock star” (in his own mind and the media’s) President for sticking to his ideology as he is 200% in campaign mode, 2008 campaign mode, that he doesn’t care about moving to the center. He wants to move even farther LEFT. Hoping to spike turnout amongst those who were fainting in his presence 2 years ago.
Now their fainting from working so hard. But that doesn’t matter. And once again, it’s supposed to be how he says it, not what he says.
Let’s party like it’s 2008!

The perception that he’s The Anointed One is supposed to trump the reality of the last 21 months.
A couple of back-to-back statements by President Obama at a town hall rally in Des Moines, Iowa, tell us all we need to know about his economic philosophy and that we aren’t going to climb out of his recession and begin to slow the growth of the national debt as long as he’s calling the shots.
Voters, he said, tell him to “cut government spending.” But “most spending is for veterans, for education, for defense. … Finding $700 billion is not easy.”
Yet a few minutes earlier, in response to criticism over illegal immigrants getting health care in the United States, he had said, “It is very important that we have compassion as part of our national character.” (How about compassion for future generations of Americans?)
Does anyone see the disconnect here? If Obama believes our national character is deficient unless we expand the welfare state to illegal immigrants, then how could he ever preside over a balanced budget?
His wildly inaccurate statement about where the money is spent is equally revealing. For fiscal year 2010, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and other sources, benefits for veterans constituted about 3.5 percent of the budget; education expenditures were 3 percent; and defense and security totaled about 20 percent.
Even worse than these errors is his defeatist statement that “finding $700 billion is not easy.”
Well, of course it’s not easy if you have no desire to trim the size, functions and intrusiveness of government.
Didn’t he just say again the other day that he is “committed to fiscal responsibility”? Hasn’t he incessantly argued that President George W. Bush is the one who ran up these outlandish deficits?
We all know what a distortion and exercise in scapegoatery that is. President Bush fulfilled his promise to cut the deficit in half by 2006. In fiscal year 2007, the deficit was $161 billion. Hard to believe, isn’t it?
That’s just three years ago, and Obama says it’s nearly impossible to trim much? Even the final Bush year, which Obama continues to blame for all “this mess” and which Obama has used to establish his new deficit base line, was not actually the alleged $1.3 trillion, but closer to $800 billion when TARP repayments are factored in.
Assuming Obama even wants to bring down the deficit, his economic philosophy precludes him from advancing policies likeliest to do it. You cannot make much headway on the deficit in a period of recession, and his policies are leading us toward a double-dip recession.
Indeed, the dirty reality is that Keynesian policy works as a double whammy against fiscal sanity. It involves government’s spending money it doesn’t have, which, by definition, increases the deficit and debt. And it also increases the deficit by smothering the private sector and deterring real economic growth. There is no appreciable “multiplier effect” from monies that are spent by government fiat, as opposed to those spent in response to true market forces, including real consumer demand — as opposed to government  command.

We saw the devastating impact of reckless Keynesian policies during the Great Depression, and we’re witnessing them again today. As long as Obama is married to his redistributionist profligacy, we cannot reduce the deficit. And it’s even worse when you consider that Obama wants to raise taxes on the primary generators of economic growth, small businesses, during a slow economic period.
With his signature audacity, Obama told town hall attendees their taxes haven’t gone up in his administration. Puleeze! Obamacare, anyone — for starters? He also said Republicans haven’t been honest with voters about what needs to be done to revive the economy. “We can’t pretend that there are shortcuts,” he said.
Sorry, but he’s the one being dishonest. The Bush years saw robust economic growth until the last year of Bush’s second term. The policies that led to the subprime collapse, the recession and the skyrocketing deficit in his final year were brought upon mostly by liberal Democrats hellbent on demonstrating their “compassion” for people by insisting on loans to people who couldn’t repay them and cynically resisting President Bush’s efforts to rein in Fannie and Freddie.
President Reagan didn’t continue to blame Jimmy Carter for his malaise-ridden economy during his term. He didn’t implement policies that didn’t work after promising they would and then whine that it would “take 10 years to get out of this mess because it took us 10 years to get into this mess.” He passed tax cuts that launched an unprecedented period of peacetime growth — and not at the expense of federal revenues, as has been falsely alleged.
I don’t expect President Obama to come clean with the American people or to ever accept responsibility for his disastrous policies, much less to voluntarily change course, but it’s gratifying to see that people, including some of his supporters, are finally onto him. (David Limbaugh)

And if you were expecting the Media to do their job, of journalism. Forget it. The Propaganda ministers for Obama are in full damage control, but unlike 2008, people are less inclined to believe their spin.
But it’s all they have and if they say it often enough people will believe their lies.

Gallup: Distrust in Media Hits New High and Three Times as Many See Media as ‘Too Liberal’ Over ‘Too Conservative’

They are too busy kissing up to Rep. Alan Grayson’s so-blatant-it’s-a-supernova misrepresentation attack ad, Obama’a 2008 “glory days” (they actually use that term repeatedly) and the manipulation by the far left of a Maid of California Gubernatorial Candidate Meg Whitman who was an illegal alien (she was fired last year for this by Whitman) and now is being paraded around the media with a prepared speech and lots of crying in the most cynical of acts.

And the Liberal media eats it up and regurgitates it.

So don’t expect anything from them expect spin.

“I’m sad to report today a death of a good friend to all of us…..Journalism, the once esteemed 4th estate of our nation and the protector of our freedoms and a watchdog of our rights has passed away after a long struggle with a crippling and debilitating disease of acute dishonesty aggravated by advanced laziness and the loss of brain function.” — Gov. Mike Huckabee in 2009.

Doubt me?:
Watch ABC’s World News Runs White House Produced Pro-ObamaCare Video as ‘News’: http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/video.aspx?v=hdkUkUQueu

CNN urging liberals to promote the “Amazing Achievements” of the liberals: http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/video.aspx?v=hdkUSUZunz

Matt Lauer (Today Show) urging the President to be more forceful about attacking the Republicans: http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/video.aspx?v=hdkUSUqG6U

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

All aboard the Democrats Unsinkable Ship of Keynesian Economic  State, The Titanic!

And don’t forget to destroy the land behind you.

If they can’t have it, no one can!

Film at 11.

Did I Say That?

indyfromaz|

In the “WHOOPS! Did I say that?” Department:
As reported a few days ago about Colin Powell’s comments about illegal Aliens. Well, he’s gone into full reverse  mode!
In the interview , Powell said a path to legal status should be offered to illegal immigrants in the U.S. because they “are doing things we need done in this country.”
He added: “They’re all over my house, doing things whenever I call for repairs, and I’m sure you’ve seen them at your house. We’ve got to find a way to bring these people out of the darkness and give them some kind of status.”
This morning, however, comes word from Powell’s office that he “misspoke.”
Political Speak for I told you the truth of what I believe, but now it’s been pointed out that it’s bad politically to say it, so I am backpedaling like a maniac and a liar.
At least he didn’t say “misquoted” or “taken out of context”.
“I don’t hire illegal immigrants,” Powell says in a statement today. “On Meet the Press yesterday, I referred to illegal immigrants working around my house. I was referring to the many service contractors who work in my neighborhood, using mostly immigrant workers, who do good work. Some may well be ‘illegal.’ There are 11 million illegal immigrants in this country and most are working somewhere in our economy.”
An order of Foot (Foot in Mouth)  with side order of Crow for the General
*********************************************
Since the Media is now obsessed with politicians lives before their national prominence (cue Christine O’Donnell) here’s this ditty from The Washington Post  January 3,2007:
Long before the national media spotlight began to shine on every twist and turn of his life’s journey, Barack Obama had this to say about himself: “Junkie. Pothead. That’s where I’d been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man. . . . I got high [to] push questions of who I was out of my mind.”
The Democratic senator from Illinois and likely presidential candidate offered the confession in a memoir written 11 years ago, not long after he graduated from law school and well before he contemplated life on the national stage. At the time, 20,000 copies were printed and the book seemed destined for the remainders stacks.
As a presidential candidate, Bill Clinton thought marijuana use could be enough of a liability in 1992 that he felt compelled to say he had not inhaled. And President Bush has managed to deflect endless gossip about his past by acknowledging that he had an “irresponsible” youth but offering no details.
Through his book, Obama has become the first potential presidential contender to admit trying cocaine.
Do you think the media will be obsessed with this, or with what a teenager said once 12 years ago??
Depends on the party affliation.
Liberal Democrat: No
Republican and/Or Tea Party: 24/7 obsession.
But don’t worry, it’s “fair” and “balanced”.
And that matters to the Liberals.

“Christine O’Donnell is clearly a criminal, and like any crook she should be prosecuted,” CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan said in a release. “(Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington).

So Charlie Rangel, President Obama,Maxine Waters, Chris Dodd & Barney Frank, John Kerry,And other Democrats are next!

Too Bad the late Sen. Robert Byrd, Former Grand Wizard of the KKK isn’t still around.

Is that Hell Freezing over? Yes, I think it is…

The GOP’s chosen nominee for senator from Delaware is being asked to defend comments about the occult. Hey, it’s not as if she “dabbled” in the KKK or Marxism or seanced with a very dead Eleanor Roosevelt. Be careful whom you date in high school or what you dabble in to humor a boyfriend. Those skeletons in your closet may come back to haunt you, particularly if you become a conservative Tea Party candidate fighting to stop creeping socialism in America. Last Friday, comedian Bill Maher, whose cable show “Real Time” is considered by liberals as a real news source (unlike, say, Fox News), dug up and showed an 11-year-old interview from 1999 in which O’Donnell, then 30 years old, said she “dabbled in witchcraft” because she “hung around people who were doing these things” in high school.
O’Donnell graduated from Moorestown (N.J.) High School in 1987, a dozen years before the Maher appearance. If political candidates are to be judged by what they did or hung with in high school, we are taking the vetting process to extremes.
Two days later, pundit Karl Rove, whose primary night critique of O’Donnell caused a stir, was on “Fox News Sunday” saying: “In Delaware, where there are a lot of churchgoing people, they’re going to want to know what this is all about.”
Perhaps, but they also want to know about her position on the repeal of ObamaCare and extending the Bush tax cuts.
Delaware voters, many of whom probably check their horoscope before they go to church, might indeed want to know what a Delaware teenager was up to back then. She might even have dabbled in marijuana without inhaling.
But we suspect they might also want to know about her opponent, Chris Coons, dabbling in Marxism in college, writing a paper about his transformation to a “bearded Marxist.”
“There’s been no witchcraft since. If there was, Karl Rove would be a supporter now,” O’Donnell jokingly told a GOP picnic in southern Delaware on Sunday. To be fair, two groups started by Rove, Crossroads GPS and American Crossroads, have contributed mightily to Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid’s Tea Party opponent, Sharron Angle. This makes Rove’s continued criticism curious.
Voters, we would think, would be more interested in Democrat Coons’ disastrous record as Newcastle County chief executive. During his tenure, spending increased 10% and he shifted the burden for his irresponsibility to taxpayers with property tax hikes of 5%, 17.5% and 25%. In 2008, Fitch Ratings downgraded the county’s “rating outlook” from stable to negative because the county’s cash balances were decreasing under Coons’ stewardship.
Republican voters have already decided that O’Donnell was a better choice to represent them than establishment Congressman and two-term former Delaware Gov. Mike Castle. If O’Donnell starts out behind in the polls, well, that’s why we have campaigns.
West Virginia voters tolerated Sen. Robert Byrd, who in his relative youth dabbled in racism and bigotry as a grand kleagle in the Ku Klux Klan. Byrd’s association wasn’t a high school fad. He joined the KKK in 1942, when he was 25; four years later, he was still talking about his hope for a KKK renaissance in West Virginia. And 18 years after that, he famously filibustered the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
“He once had a fleeting association with the Ku Klux Klan,” President Bill Clinton said of Sen. Byrd. “What does that mean? I’ll tell you what it means. He was a country boy from the hills and hollows from West Virginia. He was trying to get elected.” At least he didn’t dabble in Wicca.
Hillary Clinton, during her time as first lady, participated in seance-type sessions that included strange moments of imaginary conversation with a deceased Eleanor Roosevelt from the solarium atop the White House, according to Grove City College professor Paul Kengor’s biography, “God and Hillary Clinton.”
Keep rocking the establishment, Christine. Continue to do that voodoo that you do so well. (IBD)
Leftist Richard Cohen on “Witchcraft” : The unseen effects of witchcraft are clearly the reason about one-fifth of Americans believe Obama is a Muslim. In fact, as time goes by, more and more people subscribe to this belief — a phenomenon so at odds with logic or rational thinking that the explanation has to lie in the darkest of arts — witchcraft and voodoo.
This fatuous infatuation with the Constitution, particularly the 10th amendment, is clearly the work of witches, wiccans and wackos. It has nothing to do with America’s real problems and, if taken too seriously, would cause an economic and political calamity.
O’Donnell is where the GOP has been heading for some time. The party’s leaders have steadfastly refused to take a stand against any idiocy, even suggesting they agree that Obama might not be a Christian. Their intellectuals have supported and advanced the know-nothingness of Sarah Palin. Nothing to them is beyond the pale. This party is not fit to govern. It would support the Joker but not Batman, who hangs too much with Robin.
So now it has a candidate in Delaware who truly is a career politician. She seems to have no means of support except campaign funds. She supposedly lives in her headquarters, although this is somewhat in dispute. Whatever the case, she has no job and no views worth a moment’s consideration. (She even appalls Karl Rove.)
She’s not likely to win, but the way things are going this year, she just might. People are angry. People are mad. The night is dark. Witch way out of here?
Isn’t the dripping condescension and the ad hominems just glorious arrogant?
And it’s perfectly liberal.
You aren’t smart enough to see the hypocrites on the left for what they are.
And if the people voted for her, she now has to stand on her own against thre liberal attack machine, or just go quietly.
We’ll see.
But one things for sure, The Ministry of Truth will be digging through her birth records and interviewing every person (including the waiter at restaurant when she 2 that she spit up on ) she ever met in her entire life because they care about the facts and nothing but the facts, it’s not personal.
Sorry…Have to stop…. now…Hell… froze… over…

Transparent Steal

No that title was not meant to say “steel”.
I have maintained all along that Obama is very transparent, in his radical socialist ways and the Ministry of Truth is very transparent. If you’re willing to look at it from the jaundiced eye of a cynic.
But the illusion of transparency at least is no more. But it will be transparent that the media won’t talk about it. So I will, along with sources.

President Obama has abolished the position in his White House dedicated to transparency and shunted those duties into the portfolio of a partisan ex-lobbyist who is openly antagonistic to the notion of disclosure by government and politicians.
Obama transferred “ethics czar” Norm Eisen to the Czech Republic to serve as U.S. ambassador. Some of Eisen’s duties will be handed to Domestic Policy Council member Steven Croley, but most of them, it appears, will shift over to the already-full docket of White House Counsel Bob Bauer ( his previous job as the president’s personal lawyer, as well as counsel to the Democratic National Committee).

With Mr. Eisen headed to Europe as an ambassador, his move from the White House “is the biggest lobbying success we’ve had all year,” Tony Podesta, one of the most influential lobbyists in Washington, said with a laugh.(NYT)

Bauer is renowned as a “lawyer’s lawyer” and a legal expert. His resume, however, reads more “partisan advocate” than “good-government crusader.” Bauer came to the White House from the law firm Perkins Coie, where he represented John Kerry in 2004 and Obama during his campaign.
Bauer has served as the top lawyer for the Democratic National Committee, which is the most prolific fundraising entity in the country. Then-Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., the caricature of a cutthroat Chicago political fixer, hired Bauer to represent the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. In the White House, Bauer is tight with Emanuel, having defended Emanuel’s offer of a job to Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Pa., whom Emanuel wanted out of the Senate race.
Another Bauer client was New Jersey Sen. Robert “Torch” Torricelli back in 2001. When one Torricelli donor admitted he had reimbursed employees for their contributions to the Torch — thus circumventing contribution limits — Bauer explained, “All candidates ask their supporters to help raise money from friends, family members and professional associates.”
Bauer’s own words — gathered by the diligent folks at the Sunlight Foundation — show disdain for openness and far greater belief in the good intentions of those in power than of those trying to check the powerful. In December 2006, when the Federal Election Commission proposed more precise disclosure requirements for parties, Bauer took aim at the practice of muckraking enabled by such disclosure.
On his blog, Bauer derided the notion “that politicians and parties are pictured as forever trying to get away with something,” saying this was an idea for which “there is a market, its product cheaply manufactured and cheaply sold.” In other words — we keep too close an eye on our leaders.
In August 2006 Bauer blogged, “disclosure is a mostly unquestioned virtue deserving to be questioned.” This is the man the White House has put in charge of making this the most open White House ever.
Most telling might have been Bauer’s statements about proposed regulations of 527 organizations: “If it’s not done with 527 activity as we have seen, it will be done in other ways,” he told the Senate rules committee.
“There are other directions, to be sure, that people are actively considering as we speak. Without tipping my hand or those of others who are professionally creative, the money will find an outlet.”
This perfectly captures the Obama White House’s attitude toward disclosure. Sure, the administration publish the names of all White House visitors, but, as the New York Times reported a few weeks back, White House folks just meet their lobbyists at Caribou Coffee across the street. Sure, they restrict the work of ex-lobbyists in the administration, but lobbyists who de-list aren’t questioned.
And we’ve seen just a few of the e-mails former Google lobbyist, now Obama tech policy guru, Andrew McLaughlin traded with current Google lobbyists using his Gmail account, but who knows what else the White House whiz kids are doing to avoid the Presidential Records Act — Facebook messages? Twitter direct messages?
Did I mention Bauer was a lobbyist? At Perkins Coie, Bauer lobbied on behalf of America Votes Inc., a Democratic 527 funded by the likes of the AFL-CIO and ACORN.
As with his other reformer rhetoric, Obama’s transparency is mostly smoke and mirrors. (Washington Examiner)

I would argue he is very transparent in his disdain for anyone who isn’t the Harvard elitist liberal socialist that and his apparatchiks are. He’s so open about it that it’s nearly invisible.
And he gets all the help he needs from his socialist friends in the media.

When the open-government activist group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) sued the Bush administration to get the records of White House visitors from Secret Service logs, media outlets practically fell over themselves to join the effort.  Newspapers like the Washington Post and USA Today and wire services like AP and Reuters filed amicus briefs with the court, and the Obama administration eventually agreed to start releasing the records.  Now, however, the same news organizations have discovered a new sense of privacy when it comes to their attendance in an off-the-record event with Barack Obama:
White House reporters are keeping quiet about an off-the-record lunch today with President Obama — even those at news organizations who’ve advocated in the past for the White House to release the names of visitors.
And guess who filed briefs supporting that argument? Virtually every newspaper that covers the White House.

Through July 20, Ms. Kumar counted 36 press conferences since Mr. Obama took office. That compares with the same number for the second President Bush, 66 for President Clinton and 54 for the elder President Bush the same amount of time into their presidencies.

But that leaves out some context.  Obama was holding press conferences every week or two in his first months in office, which is why he got to 35 by the end of July 2009, when it became clear that Obama was a gaffe machine when off of the Teleprompter.  Since then, he’s held a grand total of one, and it doesn’t look like the White House has any more planned after the late May Gulf spill presser.
When media outlets participate in off-the-record events, they give Obama a chance to spin coverage without doing so on the record.  It wouldn’t be a problem if Obama made himself regularly available in an open Q&A setting to the press corps, which complained when Obama’s predecessor would go a couple of months between pressers.  With the White House butting up Obama and keeping him off the record, participation in the luncheon is really just enabling the silence.  If media outlets felt so strongly about transparency as to demand the White House visitor logs, the least they can do is to acknowledge their own roles in letting this President off the hook for accountability and transparency. (hot air.com)

Just reinforces the fact that he is not a public servant, he is a public parent. This is the mommy-state way of saying, “Do as I say, not as I do.” (comment on hot air.com).

Well, they are the Insufferably Superior Left,after all. And remember if you agree with them you are intelligent, tolerant and well mannered.
If you disagree with them you are barking mad loonie who foams at the mouth and has the IQ of a dead light bulb. You’re “stupid”, “racist”,”ignorant” a “moron”, etc. ad nauseum.
So why should anyone take a raving loonie seriously?


In fact, according to a March 2010 Associated Press analysis of FOIA responses at 17 major agencies, 466,872 FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) denials were issued during the Obama administration’s first year in office – a 50 percent increase over the previous year.
In addition to denying more FOIA requests, Obama has refused to call for an audit of the secret Federal Reserve Bank and rescinded Bush-era disclosure requirements for labor union leaders – the same union bosses who provided over $100 million (and nearly half a million volunteers) for Obama and Democratic Congressional candidates in 2008.
The hypocrisy on transparency doesn’t end there, though.
As part of the draconian new financial regulations Obama and his Congressional allies are imposing on the private sector, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is now virtually exempt from FOIA law.† Under a little-known provision of the new law, the SEC would not have to release any information derived from “surveillance, risk assessments, or other regulatory and oversight activities” – a purposefully broad definition that encompasses virtually everything the SEC does.
You know the SEC, the ones who were too busy wanting porn 24/7 to watch either Wall Street or Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to care. And now, by law they don’t have to care. More Porn for the SEC, please….
“It allows the SEC to block the public’s access to virtually all SEC records,” former agency attorney turned whistleblower Gary Aguirre told FOX News. “It permits the SEC to promulgate its own rules and regulations regarding the disclosure of records without getting the approval of the Office of Management and Budget, which typically applies to all federal agencies.”
In fact, within days of the new law being signed, the SEC was already turning down FOIA requests from media outlets citing the new exemption.
But don’t worry, Big Brother will not lie to you…


The Ministry of Truth is involved with news media, entertainment, the fine arts and educational books. Its purpose is to rewrite history and change the facts to fit Party doctrine for propaganda effect. For example, if Big Brother makes a prediction that turns out to be wrong, the employees of the Ministry of Truth go back and rewrite the prediction so that any prediction Big Brother previously made is accurate. This is the “how” of the Ministry of Truth’s existence. Within the novel Orwell elaborates that the deeper reason for its existence is to maintain the illusion that the Party is absolute. It cannot ever seem to change its mind (if, for instance, they perform one of their constant changes regarding enemies during war) or make a mistake (firing an official or making a grossly misjudged supply prediction), for that would imply weakness and to maintain power the Party must seem eternally right and strong. (1984)
It’s transparent in it’s complete lack of transparency or even it’s appearance therein.


doublethink is the act of simultaneously accepting as correct two mutually contradictory beliefs.
To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself — that was the ultimate subtlety; consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word ‘doublethink’ involved the use of doublethink..    ”
“     The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them….To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.
I said earlier that the decadence of our language is probably curable. Those who deny this would argue, if they produced an argument at all, that language merely reflects existing social conditions, and that we cannot influence its development by any direct tinkering with words or constructions.–George Orwell
The basic idea behind Newspeak is to remove all shades of meaning from language, leaving simple dichotomies (pleasure and pain, happiness and sadness, goodthink and crimethink) which reinforce the total dominance of the State.
How could you have a slogan like “freedom is slavery” when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness. ⁽¹⁹⁸⁴⁾
The phrase “two plus two equals five” (“2 + 2 = 5“) is a slogan used in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four as an example of an obviously false dogma one must believe, similar to other obviously false slogans by the Party in Nineteen Eighty-Four. It is contrasted with the phrase “two plus two makes four”, the obvious – but politically inexpedient – truth. Orwell’s protagonist, Winston Smith, uses the phrase to wonder if the State might declare “two plus two equals five” as a fact; he ponders whether, if everybody believes in it, does that make it true? Smith writes, “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”

Now that’s transparent and on MSNBC,CBS,NBC,ABC,CNN,Their websites, The Huffington Post, The New York Times, et al. that 2+2=5. Now you just have to believe it.
It’s so transparent it’s nearly invisible.

Channeling Your Inner Banana

The Indoctri-Nation.

June 26th I wrote a blog entitled, “Getting in Touch with your Inner Banana” (http://indyfromaz.wordpress.com/2010/06/26/) in which I espoused about the coming more than just leanings of Banana Republic Dictatorship that our current President seems to aspire to.
Well, it’s Time for a sequel.
But first a word about his friends in the Ministry of Truth (The Mainstream Media).

The TV networks have aggressively demonstrated their dislike of Arizona’s state law “cracking down on illegal immigrants,” a law that “pits neighbor against neighbor.” An MRC review of morning and evening news programs on ABC, CBS, and NBC from April 23 to July 25 found the networks have aired 120 stories with an almost ten-to-one tilt against the Arizona law (77 negative, 35 neutral, 8 positive).
The soundbite count was also tilted over the last three months — 216 to 107, or an almost exact two-to-one disparity. Network anchors and reporters sided against defenders of border control and championed sympathetic illegal aliens and their (usually American-born) children. In 120 stories, they never described “immigrants rights activists” as liberals or on the left.



Between them, the three networks described the Arizona law as “controversial” on 27 occasions, despite its popularity in opinion polls. The Obama administration’s decision to sue file a lawsuit against Arizona to crush the law was never described as “controversial.”
These are the Journo-Lists who profess to be “journalists” that are fair and objective. They are anything but.
They are toadies for their guy and their ideology. Nothing more, Nothing less than full on indoctrination.
The networks highlighted the “army” of protesters against the Arizona law and ignored their sometimes radical connections. As with sympathetic media coverage of large amnesty rallies in 2006, none of the stories allowed anyone to suggest it was improper for illegal aliens to petition the government whose laws they’re breaking or cancel out the votes of law-abiding citizens.

On May 30, ABC anchor David Muir asked, “Will an army of protesters be heard?” Reporter Jeremy Hubbard began his story for World News: “In their most massive numbers yet, a deluge of adversaries rally and rail against what could soon be the law of the land in Arizona.”
Network correspondents routinely mourned how illegal aliens didn’t feel welcome in Arizona, and felt they had to move back to Mexico or other friendlier states. On July 8, NBC reporter Lee Cowan sympathized with Marcial Bolanos, who didn’t think Arizona was a good place any more. “He took his 15-year-old son out of school and is headed back to Mexico, which brings Hugo to tears. But you’re really going to miss your friends?” Hugo said “Yeah.” The networks didn’t apply this blatant emotional appeal on behalf of families who’ve lost loved ones in crimes committed by illegal aliens.
You get one sob story after another, emotional appeals about heartless Arizonans who want to destroy “immigrant” (not illegal immigrant) families and friends.
Only Fox as far as I can see ever mentions Richard Krentz, the farmer who was murdered on his own land by drug smugglers as a victim. they even talked to his widow. If they do mention him, it is only in passing.
Take ABC News:  Ranchers have seen cattle slaughtered and pulled apart by hungry people stealing across the border, and one resident, Robert Krentz, may have been shot dead by an alleged illegal immigrant as he patrolled his land last month.
They tracked the killers all the way to the Mexican Border, by the way.
Then the media always follows up with their own lies, damn lies and statistics.
The U.S. Border Patrol says apprehensions along the Arizona-Mexico frontier are up 6 percent from October to April.
The Arizona Republic went on to report that, “according to the Border Patrol, Krentz is the only American murdered by a suspected illegal immigrant in at least a decade within the agency’s Tucson sector, the busiest smuggling route among the Border Patrol’s nine coverage regions along the U.S.-Mexican border.”
So it’s no big deal. Nothing to see here. But then again, he was white, so not much sympathy there.
In 18 of 120 stories, the networks mentioned the public opinion polls, in which broad majorities favor the Arizona law. One poll question the networks didn’t ask was if it might seem odd for the Obama administration to sue Arizona for trying to enforce immigration laws, but would not sue cities that vowed to ignore immigration laws, which call themselves “sanctuary cities.”
A Rasmussen poll found 54 percent favored the Justice Department suing “sanctuary cities,” and 61 percent favored cutting off federal aid to them. But the three networks haven’t used the words “sanctuary city” since 2007, when it was a hot topic in the Republican primary debates. It was never mentioned, so was never described as “controversial.” (MRC)
So upwards of 70% of the American People are for Arizona, but the Ministry of Truth Mainstream Media is not. So they continue to hammer the propaganda home.
Just like the media of a dictator.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey, taken after the judge’s Tuesday ruling, finds that 59% favor passage of an Arizona-like immigration law in their state, marking little change from earlier this month. Just 32% oppose such a law.
Support for the building of a fence along the Mexican border has reached a new high, and voters are more confident than ever that illegal immigration can be stopped.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 68% of U.S. voters now believe the United States should continue to build a fence on the Mexican border. That’s up nine points from March when the Obama administration halted funding for the fence and the highest level of support ever.
Support for the fence is strong across all demographic groups. But while 76% of Mainstream voters think the United States should continue to build the fence, 67% of the Political Class are opposed to it.
So what you have is a Mainstream Media that reports the news the way they want to hear it and the way they want you to think about it.
It’s Propaganda.

********
AMNESTY II
With Congress gridlocked on an immigration bill, the Obama administration  is considering using a back door to stop deporting many illegal immigrants – what a draft government memo said could be “a non-legislative version of amnesty.”
“This memorandum offers administrative relief options to . . . reduce the threat of removal for certain individuals present in the United States without authorization,” it reads. (see below)
The memo, addressed to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Alejandro Mayorkas and written by four agency staffers, lists tools it says the administration has to “reduce the threat of removal” for many illegal immigrants who have run afoul of immigration authorities.
“In the absence of comprehensive immigration reform, USCIS can extend benefits and/or protections to many individuals and groups by issuing new guidance and regulations, exercising discretion with regard to parole-in-place, deferred action and the issuance of Notices to Appear,” the staffers wrote in the memo, which was obtained by Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican.
The memo suggests that in-depth discussions have occurred on how to keep many illegal immigrants in the country, which would be at least a temporary alternative to the proposals Democrats in Congress have made to legalize illegal immigrants.
Chris Bentley, a USCIS spokesman, said drafting the memo doesn’t mean the agency has embraced the policy and “nobody should mistake deliberation and exchange of ideas for final decisions.”
“As a matter of good government, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will discuss just about every issue that comes within the purview of the immigration system,” he said in an e-mail statement. “We continue to maintain that comprehensive bipartisan legislation, coupled with smart, effective enforcement, is the only solution to our nation’s immigration challenges.”
He said the Homeland Security Department “will not grant deferred action or humanitarian parole to the nation’s entire illegal immigrant population.”
The memo does talk about targeting specific groups of illegal immigrants.
Mr. Grassley said it confirms his fears that the administration is trying an end-run around Congress.
“This memo gives credence to our concerns that the administration will go to great lengths to circumvent Congress and unilaterally execute a backdoor amnesty plan,” Mr. Grassley said.
The memo acknowledges some of the tools could be costly and might even require asking Congress for more money.
At one point, the authors acknowledge that widespread use of “deferred action” – or using prosecutorial discretion not to deport someone – would be “a non-legislative version of ‘amnesty.’ “
The authors noted several options for deferred action, including targeting it to students who would be covered by the DREAM Act, a bill that’s been introduced in Congress.
In testifying to the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 11, Mr. Mayorkas first said he was unaware of discussions to use these kinds of tools on a categorical basis, then later clarified that officials had talked about expanding the use of those powers.
“I don’t know of any plans. I think we have discussed, as we always do, the tools available to us and whether the deployment of any of those tools could achieve a more fair and efficient use or application of the immigration law,” he said.
He acknowledged, though, that he was not aware that those powers had ever been used before on a categorical basis.
Sen. John Cornyn, the Texas Republican who queried Mr. Mayorkas on the subject, warned him against pursuing that strategy.
“I think it would be a mistake for the administration to use administrative action, like deferred action on a categorical basis, to deal with a large number of people who are here without proper legal documents to regularize their status without Congress’ participation. I will just say that to you for what it’s worth,” Mr. Cornyn, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary immigration, border security and citizenship subcommittee, told Mr. Mayorkas.
“The American public’s confidence in the federal government’s ability and commitment to enforce our immigration laws is at an all-time low,” Mr. Cornyn said in a statement. “This apparent step to circumvent Congress – and avoid a transparent debate on how to fix our broken immigration system –  threatens to further erode public confidence in its government and makes it less likely we will ever reach consensus and pass credible border security and immigration reform.”
After reports earlier this year that the agency was working on these sorts of plans, Senate Republicans, led by Mr. Grassley, have sent letters to President Obama and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano asking for details.
In recent weeks, Sen. Chuck Grassley and others in Congress have been pressing the administration to disavow rumors that a de facto amnesty is in the works, including in a letter to Department of Homeland Security head Janet Napolitano. “Since the senators first wrote to the president more than a month ago, we have not been reassured that the plans are just rumors, and we have every reason to believe that the memo is legitimate,” a Grassley spokesman tells NR. (NR contacted DHS, but a spokesman did not have a comment on the record.)
Many of the memo’s proposals are technical and fine-grained; for example, it suggests clarifying the immigration laws for “unaccompanied minors, and for victims of human trafficking, domestic violence, and other criminal activities.” It also proposes extending the “grace period” H-1B visa holders have between the expiration of their visa and the date they’re expected to leave the country.
With other ideas, however, USCIS is aiming big. Perhaps the most egregious suggestion is to “Increase the Use of Deferred Action.” “Deferred action,” as the memo defines it, “is an exercise of prosecutorial discretion not to pursue removal from the U.S. of a particular individual for a specific period of time.” For example, after Hurricane Katrina, the government decided not to remove illegal immigrants who’d been affected by the disaster.
The memo claims that there are no limits to USCIS’s ability to use deferred action, but warns that using this power indiscriminately would be “controversial, not to mention expensive.” The memo suggests using deferred action to exempt “particular groups” from removal — such as the illegal-immigrant high-school graduates who would fall under the DREAM Act (a measure that has been shot down repeatedly in Congress). The memo claims that the DREAM Act would cover “an estimated 50,000” individuals, though as many as 65,000 illegal immigrants graduate high school every year in the U.S.
Mind you this Memo was 11 Pages long!
Grassley says it is “ridiculous” to think a memo containing this kind of detail was drawn up without specific direction from someone in the administration. “Bureaucrats don’t write memos like that for the fun of it,” he said.
This is not a school grade writing exercise, after all.
And the memo seeks to out ‘touchy-feely’ ‘emotional’ exemptions. So if you want to object to them you’re just a heartless, mean and cruel, uncaring bastard.
Sound familiar?

UPDATE: USCIS has released a statement on the memo:

Internal draft memos do not and should not be equated with official action or policy of the Department. We will not comment on notional, pre-decisional memos. As a matter of good government, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will discuss just about every issue that comes within the purview of the immigration system. We continue to maintain that comprehensive bipartisan legislation, coupled with smart, effective enforcement, is the only solution to our nation’s immigration challenges.
Internal memoranda help us do the thinking that leads to important changes; some of them are adopted and others are rejected. Our goal is to implement policies wisely and well to strengthen all aspects of our mission. The choices we have made so far have strengthened both the enforcement and services sides of USCIS — nobody should mistake deliberation and exchange of ideas for final decisions. To be clear, DHS will not grant deferred action or humanitarian parole to the nation’s entire illegal immigrant population.
Don’t mind us, we just write 11-page detailed judicial memos as way of just chewing the fat, nothing to see here.
Given the backroom secrecy that has been “transparent” in this administration shouldn’t the fact that they are even discussing ways to circumvent Congress worry you?
Yes, they should.
Much like the “promises” made about Health Care reform which we know now from sworn testimony to be false.
So doesn’t that sound like he and his apparatchiks are getting in even more touch with their Inner Banana (Dictatorship)?
It does to me.
Beyond the confines of the courtroom, however, that question is all that the controversy over S.B. 1070 is about: Do we as a country want to enforce the immigration laws or not? It’s time to answer that question.
And is the Government of The People, By the People and For the The People going to perish under a propaganda and legal parsers onslaught with the willing compliance of the touchy-feely Fifth Column Ministry of Truth Media?
That is the question.

The Countdown Begins

And I wholeheartedly agree…
*****************************************************
LET LOOSE THE LEFTISTS!
Every fringe loon, union thug, and race baiting whacko is going to be on parade for the Ministry of Truth to pump up their race war today and probably for awhile.
And add in their Class Warfare and you see where this going.
But the main thing will be the sanctimonious “outrage” and the freak show of crazies (aka “protesters”) that will be paraded out like they are the second coming of Martin Luther King and Gandhi.

But this was interesting:
Sir Elton John has waded into the debate over a new immigration law in Arizona, condemning artists who boycott the state over the controversy.
Acts including Rage Against the Machine, Kanye West and Maroon 5 are all refusing to perform in the state until officials reverse the controversial legislation.
But John has refused to join the protest and he reportedly slammed the campaigners during a concert at the Tucson Arena.
According to the Arizona Daily Star, John told the crowd of 8,800: “We are all very pleased to be playing in Arizona. I have read that some of the artists won’t come here. They are (expletive)”
“Let’s face it: I still play in California, and as a gay man I have no legal rights whatsoever. So what’s the (expletive) with these people?”(FOX)'

CNN: The protests will include busloads of labor union members from Los Angeles who oppose Senate Bill 1070 because they believe it promotes racial profiling,
They plan to dare law enforcement in Phoenix, Arizona, to put SB 1070 to the test, according to Maria Elena Durazo, one of the organizers of the rally.
“We will not be carrying ‘papers,’ ” said Durazo, of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO. “We will let them know we are coming, and we will tell them: Arrest us for being brown or black, arrest us for being suspicious.”
Union Thugs and crazies. Just what we need.

The protesters include immigrant students, religious leaders, day laborers and members of several unions including the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, the Teamsters and the Utility Workers of America Union.

The far Left Phoenix New Times: If ever there was a time for people to raise freakin’ hell in this city, July 29 is the day. As we all know, that’s when SB 1070, Arizona’s new “breathing-while-brown law” is slated to start harassing Latinos….

So you think you can reason with the Left still??
Think the Mainstream Media even cares about it’s Journo-List bias?
Now if there is a decision later today, if it’s not a total repudiation of SB 1070 the whackos will stay.
Even then, they’ll just party like is 1799.
The rhetoric and the distortions are at insane levels.

There are even idiots on the left who are going on about the 1993 Super Bowl Controversy as evidence we have been this racist state for years.
Naturally, facts don’t dent the sanctimonious emotional rhetoric of the left.
It would be nice if you mentioned in regards to the Super Bowl Controversy years ago that:
a) The Governor, Ev Mecham was a DEMOCRAT.
b) He was an idiot who got impeached.
c) He was fond of calling blacks “Pickaninny “
d) and he insulted asians and everyone he could find.
e) HE says his AG told him he could get sued (hmmm…) if he allowed the holiday. That was crap, but that was his reason.
I guess they left that out.
Funny that….
So as the crazies and the baiters converge to have their Sanctimony Hate Fest we can be secure in the knowledge that our Lords and Masters at the Federal Government who wish their will to be the only will that they will protect us.
So what if they want everyone to ignore the problem. It’s not our place to question their authority to rule over us.
They can tell us what we can eat, where we can live, what we can say, when we must die for the greater good because they are just so much better than us and so much more powerful.
It’s all good.
Your Lord and Master Big Brother Barack and Big Sis Janet says so.

The Democrat Strategy for 2010 Part 1: History & Media Bias

November 2010.

The most important election in American History.
And the Democrats know it.
So, get ready for anything goes.
Because after all, the end justifies the means.
There will be all out Nuclear Race War.
Class Warfare.
Bush Derangement Syndrome will be epidemic.
You’ll up to the sky in kitchen sinks.
Nothing will actually be off limits.
Everyone of you who even hints at disagreeing with them is a Racist or an Uncle Tom.
You know who you are.


And The Mainstream Media will be right there in their propaganda roll as the Ministry of Truth.
The Ministry of Truth is involved with news media, entertainment, the fine arts and educational books. Its purpose is to rewrite history and change the facts to fit Party doctrine for propaganda effect. For example, if Big Brother makes a prediction that turns out to be wrong, the employees of the Ministry of Truth go back and rewrite the prediction so that any prediction Big Brother previously made is accurate. This is the “how” of the Ministry of Truth’s existence. Within the novel Orwell elaborates that the deeper reason for its existence is to maintain the illusion that the Party is absolute. It cannot ever seem to change its mind (if, for instance, they perform one of their constant changes regarding enemies during war) or make a mistake (firing an official or making a grossly misjudged supply prediction), for that would imply weakness and to maintain power the Party must seem eternally right and strong.

Think how underplayed the greatest lie of the Obama administration is being ignored, That of the Health Care Mandate as a Tax then you get the idea.
Then it came out this week that many in the News Media (not just “commentators”) actively and with political forethought deliberately ignored, suppressed or actively worked against the Reverend Jeremiah Wright story when it broke and actively worked to get Obama elected in general by hook or by crook.
Absolutely no “objectivity” or “journalism” need apply.
Did you notice how fast it disappeared?  And anyone who brought it  after that was…<>…A RACIST!
And if you disagreed with Obama, you were de facto a Racist?
Then after he was elected the Tea Party sprung up, and guess what, they were Racists too!!
It was no accident. I was a calculated plan by the very journalists themselves.

Someone found a forum where “journalists” hung out and said what they really think.
But don’t expect to here it on the Mainstream Media, the very people who were saying it.
Daily Caller: It was the moment of greatest peril for then-Sen. Barack Obama’s political career. In the heat of the presidential campaign, videos surfaced of Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, angrily denouncing whites, the U.S. government and America itself. Obama had once bragged of his closeness to Wright. Now the black nationalist preacher’s rhetoric was threatening to torpedo Obama’s campaign.
According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.
In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”
Specifically, “If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us,” Ackerman wrote on the Journolist listserv in April 2008. “Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”
Michael Tomasky, a writer for the Guardian, also tried to rally his fellow members of Journolist: “Listen folks–in my opinion, we all have to do what we can to kill ABC and this idiocy in whatever venues we have. This isn’t about defending Obama. This is about how the [mainstream media] kills any chance of discourse that actually serves the people.”
ABC being the “tough questions” asked of the President about Rev. Wright in April 2008, just after it broke.
How dare they! That must be stopped!
The tough questioning from the ABC anchors left many of them outraged. “George [Stephanopoulos],” fumed Richard Kim of the Nation, is “being a disgusting little rat snake.”
“Richard Kim got this right above: ‘a horrible glimpse of general election press strategy.’ He’s dead on,” Tomasky continued. “We need to throw chairs now, try as hard as we can to get the call next time. Otherwise the questions in October will be exactly like this. This is just a disease.”
(In an interview Monday, Tomasky defended his position, calling the ABC debate an example of shoddy journalism.)
Thomas Schaller, a columnist for the Baltimore Sun as well as a political science professor, upped the ante from there. In a post with the subject header, “why don’t we use the power of this list to do something about the debate?” Schaller proposed coordinating a “smart statement expressing disgust” at the questions Gibson and Stephanopoulos had posed to Obama.
“It would create quite a stir, I bet, and be a warning against future behavior of the sort,” Schaller wrote.
Tomasky approved. “YES. A thousand times yes,” he exclaimed.
The members began collaborating on their open letter. Jonathan Stein of Mother Jones rejected an early draft, saying, “I’d say too short. In my opinion, it doesn’t go far enough in highlighting the inanity of some of [Gibson's] and [Stephanopoulos’s] questions. And it doesn’t point out their factual inaccuracies …Our friends at Media Matters probably have tons of experience with this sort of thing, if we want their input.”
Jared Bernstein, who would go on to be Vice President Joe Biden’s top economist when Obama took office, helped, too. The letter should be “Short, punchy and solely focused on vapidity of gotcha,” Bernstein wrote.
In the midst of this collaborative enterprise, Holly Yeager, now of the Columbia Journalism Review, dropped into the conversation to say “be sure to read” a column in that day’s Washington Post that attacked the debate.
Columnist Joe Conason weighed in with suggestions. So did Slate contributor David Greenberg, and David Roberts of the website Grist. Todd Gitlin, a professor of journalism at Columbia University, helped too.
Journolist members signed the statement and released it April 18, calling the debate “a revolting descent into tabloid journalism and a gross disservice to Americans concerned about the great issues facing the nation and the world.”
The letter caused a brief splash and won the attention of the New York Times. But only a week later, Obama – and the journalists who were helping him – were on the defensive once again.
Jeremiah Wright was back in the news after making a series of media appearances. At the National Press Club, Wright claimed Obama had only repudiated his beliefs for “political reasons.” Wright also reiterated his charge that the U.S. federal government had created AIDS as a means of committing genocide against African Americans.
It was another crisis, and members of Journolist again rose to help Obama.
Chris Hayes of the Nation posted on April 29, 2008, urging his colleagues to ignore Wright. Hayes directed his message to “particularly those in the ostensible mainstream media” who were members of the list.
The Wright controversy, Hayes argued, was not about Wright at all. Instead, “It has everything to do with the attempts of the right to maintain control of the country.”
Hayes castigated his fellow liberals for criticizing Wright. “All this hand wringing about just
how awful and odious Rev. Wright remarks are just keeps the hustle going.”
“Our country disappears people. It tortures people. It has the blood of as many as one million Iraqi civilians — men, women, children, the infirmed — on its hands. You’ll forgive me if I just can’t quite dredge up the requisite amount of outrage over Barack Obama’s pastor,” Hayes wrote.
Hayes urged his colleagues – especially the straight news reporters who were charged with covering the campaign in a neutral way – to bury the Wright scandal. “I’m not saying we should all rush en masse to defend Wright. If you don’t think he’s worthy of defense, don’t defend him! What I’m saying is that there is no earthly reason to use our various platforms to discuss what about Wright we find objectionable,” Hayes said.
(Reached by phone Monday, Hayes argued his words then fell on deaf ears. “I can say ‘hey I don’t think you guys should cover this,’ but no one listened to me.”)
Katha Pollitt – Hayes’s colleague at the Nation – didn’t disagree on principle, though she did sound weary of the propaganda. “I hear you. but I am really tired of defending the indefensible. The people who attacked Clinton on Monica were prissy and ridiculous, but let me tell you it was no fun, as a feminist and a woman, waving aside as politically irrelevant and part of the vast rightwing conspiracy Paula, Monica, Kathleen, Juanita,” Pollitt said.
“Part of me doesn’t like this shit either,” agreed Spencer Ackerman, then of the Washington Independent. “But what I like less is being governed by racists and warmongers and criminals.”

Ackerman went on:

I do not endorse a Popular Front, nor do I think you need to. It’s not necessary to jump to Wright-qua-Wright’s defense. What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically.

And I think this threads the needle. If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us. Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists. Ask: why do they have such a deep-seated problem with a black politician who unites the country? What lurks behind those problems? This makes *them* sputter with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction.

Ackerman did allow there were some Republicans who weren’t racists. “We’ll know who doesn’t deserve this treatment — Ross Douthat, for instance — but the others need to get it.” He also said he had begun to implement his plan. “I previewed it a bit on my blog last week after Commentary wildly distorted a comment Joe Cirincione made to make him appear like (what else) an antisemite. So I said: why is it that so many on the right have such a problem with the first viable prospective African-American president?”
Several members of the list disagreed with Ackerman – but only on strategic grounds.
“Spencer, you’re wrong,” wrote Mark Schmitt, now an editor at the American Prospect. “Calling Fred Barnes a racist doesn’t further the argument, and not just because Juan Williams is his new black friend, but because that makes it all about character. The goal is to get to the point where you can contrast some _thing_ — Obama’s substantive agenda — with this crap.”
(In an interview Monday, Schmitt declined to say whether he thought Ackerman’s plan was wrong. “That is not a question I’m going to answer,” he said.)
Kevin Drum, then of Washington Monthly, also disagreed with Ackerman’s strategy. “I think it’s worth keeping in mind that Obama is trying (or says he’s trying) to run a campaign that avoids precisely the kind of thing Spencer is talking about, and turning this into a gutter brawl would probably hurt the Obama brand pretty strongly. After all, why vote for him if it turns out he’s not going change the way politics works?”
But it was Ackerman who had the last word. “Kevin, I’m not saying OBAMA should do this. I’m saying WE should do this.”
Karl Rove played down the notion that members of the mainstream press agreed with Ackerman but he said he found it curious that such talk was tolerated within the group. It was important, he added, not to judge the motives of members who chose not to respond.
“I thought it was a revealing insight in the attitude of one minor player in the D.C. world of journalism,” Rove said of Ackerman’s comments. “It’s an even more important insight into a broader group of more prominent journalists that they seem to be willing to tolerate the suggestion that they should all tell a deliberate lie or that they should take somebody’s head and shove it through a plate glass window. I would hope that somebody would say, ‘Mr. Ackerman, do you really believe we ought to fabricate a lie about people just because we don’t agree with them?’”
Barnes added that even if there was an effort on the left to smear opponents as racists, the plan wouldn’t work.
“The charge has been made so often without any evidence that it has lost its sting,” he said. “It has become the last refuge of liberal scoundrels.”

Interview on FOX: http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/20/publisher-neil-patel-chats-with-megyn-kelly-about-journolist/

And Now Part II: The Enemies List

If you were in the presence of a man having a heart attack, how would you respond? As he clutched his chest in desperation and pain, would you call 911? Would you try to save him from dying? Of course you would.
But if that man was Rush Limbaugh, and you were Sarah Spitz, a producer for National Public Radio, that isn’t what you’d do at all.
In a post to the list-serv Journolist, an online meeting place for liberal journalists, Spitz wrote that she would “Laugh loudly like a maniac and watch his eyes bug out” as Limbaugh writhed in torment.
In boasting that she would gleefully watch a man die in front of her eyes, Spitz seemed to shock even herself. “I never knew I had this much hate in me,” she wrote. “But he deserves it.”
Spitz’s hatred for Limbaugh seems intemperate, even imbalanced. On Journolist, where conservatives are regarded not as opponents but as enemies, it barely raised an eyebrow.
In the summer of 2009, agitated citizens from across the country flocked to town hall meetings to berate lawmakers who had declared support for President Obama’s health care bill. For most people, the protests seemed like an exercise in participatory democracy, rowdy as some of them became.
On Journolist, the question was whether the protestors were garden-variety fascists or actual Nazis.
“You know, at the risk of violating Godwin’s law, is anyone starting to see parallels here between the teabaggers and their tactics and the rise of the Brownshirts?” asked Bloomberg’s Ryan Donmoyer. “Esp. Now that it’s getting violent? Reminds me of the Beer Hall fracases of the 1920s.”
Richard Yeselson, a researcher for an organized labor group who also writes for liberal magazines, agreed. “They want a deficit driven militarist/heterosexist/herrenvolk state,” Yeselson wrote. “This is core of the Bush/Cheney base transmorgrified into an even more explicitly racialized/anti-cosmopolitan constituency. Why? Um, because the president is a black guy named Barack Hussein Obama. But it’s all the same old nuts in the same old bins with some new labels: the gun nuts, the anti tax nuts, the religious nuts, the homophobes, the anti-feminists, the anti-abortion lunatics, the racist/confederate crackpots, the anti-immigration whackos (who feel Bush betrayed them) the pathological government haters (which subsumes some of the othercategories, like the gun nuts and the anti-tax nuts).”
“I’m not saying these guys are capital F-fascists,” added blogger Lindsay Beyerstein, “but they don’t want limited government. Their desired end looks more like a corporate state than a rugged individualist paradise. The rank and file wants a state that will reach into the intimate of citizens when it comes to sex, reproductive freedom, censorship, and rampant incarceration in the name of law and order.”
On Journolist, there was rarely such thing as an honorable political disagreement between the left and right, though there were many disagreements on the left. In the view of many who’ve posted to the list-serv, conservatives aren’t simply wrong, they are evil. And while journalists are trained never to presume motive, Journolist members tend to assume that the other side is acting out of the darkest and most dishonorable motives.
When the writer Victor Davis Hanson wrote an article about immigration for National Review, for example, blogger Ed Kilgore didn’t even bother to grapple with Hanson’s arguments. Instead Kilgore dismissed Hanson’s piece out of hand as “the kind of Old White Guy cultural reaction that is at the heart of the Tea Party Movement. It’s very close in spirit to the classic 1970s racist tome, The Camp of the Saints, where White Guys struggle to make up their minds whether to go out and murder brown people or just give up.”
The very existence of Fox News, meanwhile, sends Journolisters into paroxysms of rage. When Howell Raines charged that the network had a conservative bias, the members of Journolist discussed whether the federal government should shut the channel down.
“I am genuinely scared” of Fox, wrote Guardian columnist Daniel Davies, because it “shows you that a genuinely shameless and unethical media organisation *cannot* be controlled by any form of peer pressure or self-regulation, and nor can it be successfully cold-shouldered or ostracised. In order to have even a semblance of control, you need a tough legal framework.” Davies, a Brit, frequently argued the United States needed stricter libel laws.
“I agree,” said Michael Scherer of Time Magazine. Roger “Ailes understands that his job is to build a tribal identity, not a news organization. You can’t hurt Fox by saying it gets it wrong, if Ailes just uses the criticism to deepen the tribal identity.”
Jonathan Zasloff, a law professor at UCLA, suggested that the federal government simply yank Fox off the air. “Do you really want the political parties/white house picking which media operations are news operations and which are a less respectable hybrid of news and political advocacy?”
But Zasloff stuck to his position. “I think that they are doing that anyway; they leak to whom they want to for political purposes,” he wrote. “If this means that some White House reporters don’t get a press pass for the press secretary’s daily briefing and that this means that they actually have to, you know, do some reporting and analysis instead of repeating press releases, then I’ll take that risk.”
Scherer seemed alarmed. “So we would have press briefings in which only media organizations that are deemed by the briefer to be acceptable are invited to attend?”
John Judis, a senior editor at the New Republic, came down on Zasloff’s side, the side of censorship. “Pre-Fox,” he wrote, “I’d say Scherer’s questions made sense as a question of principle. Now it is only tactical.”
Jonathan Zasloff, a law professor at UCLA, suggested that the federal government simply yank Fox off the air…
“If this means that some White House reporters don’t get a press pass for the press secretary’s daily briefing and that this means that they actually have to, you know, do some reporting and analysis instead of repeating press releases, then I’ll take that risk.”

A comment on the website after the stories summed it up beautifully:
This expose simply confirms what many of us have known all along. Liberals in the MSM are rigid idealogues who write for each other. They passionately believe they are on the side the angels while conservatives are just plain evil. In their world the ends justify the means and advocacy journalism is their contribution to advancing the cause. They are no better than the “journalists” who wrote for TASS or PRAVDA and their mindset is as rigid and narrow as what you would find in areas where the Taliban has complete control. 

Excerpts: http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/21/a-few-excerpts-from-journolist-journalists/

Tomorrow, the question will be how do you fix voters…CHEAT like You have CHEATED before!

One Hint: The Electoral College is Evil and must be stopped!

The Philadelphia 86ers

In the final days of the Bush administration, three Black Panthers —  Minister King Samir Shabazz, Malik Zulu Shabazz and Jerry Jackson — were charged in a civil complaint with violating the Voter Rights Act in November 2008 by using coercion, threats and intimidation at a Philadelphia polling station — with Shabazz brandishing what prosecutors called a deadly weapon.

Imagine, multiple witness, including a Well-Respected Democrat Civil Rights Activist hearing “Now you know what it will be like to be ruled by a black man, Cracker!”
Cracker, for the uninitiated is a racial slur for white people. But since it’s is not politically incorrect no one actually cares that it’s a racial slur.
Imagine, a tall Black man with a knight stick and his buddies outside a Philadelphia polling place.
Imagine, They called people “white devils”. They menaced, they tapped their baton. They tried to stop people from entering the polls.
And it is all on tape!!
But since the Ministry of Truth and the Liberal Spin machine will dismiss it as a “republican” ploy enter Lifelong Democrat, and Civil Rights Advocate Bartle Bull.
He’s a long time Robert F. Kennedy civil rights activist, worked in Mississippi in the ’60s. He said it was the worst case of voter intimidation he has ever seen in his 40 years of practicing civil rights laws.
He was There.
He also alleges that ACORN registered at least 400,000 people in the last election that were fraudulent also.
http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/america-live/index.html#/v/4267253/civil-rights-attorney-on-accusations-vs-doj/?playlist_id=87651
So you have voter fraud and voter intimidation allegations from a Diehard Liberal Democrat!
“But I do know already that the President of the United States has violated his oath of office to enforce the laws of the United States. Because he is not enforcing the Voting Rights Act. Which he swore to do.’ – Bartle Bull.
Text of the Interview with Former DOJ Attorney: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,595683,00.html
Excerpts:
KELLY (FOX): Ok, so you bring the case against these four defendants. The two guys we see on camera, the party and the head of the party. And what happens next?
J Christian ADAMS (Former DOJ): Well you cruise along. The defendants didn’t even appear, they didn’t even answer, the just ignored the charges.
KELLY: They didn’t bother to defend it in any way?
ADAMS: No, it’s like ignoring a speeding ticket. They just blew it off. They didn’t show up for court, they didn’t file any papers, they didn’t do anything.
KELLY: So you get something that’s called a default judgment, meaning a judgment because they didn’t bother to defend it and the judge says to you at the Department of Justice, OK, write up an order and tell me whether you want to make this final essentially.
ADAMS: Yeah, the court had already found and entered the fault against the defendants. It was done. All we had to do is tell the judge what we wanted for punishment.
KELLY: OK, but instead of doing that, something changed at the Department of Justice. What happened?
ADAMS: Well, the case was dismissed on May 15. All the charges were dropped against three of the defendants and the final order against one of the defendants was a timid restraint.
KELLY: So, the only person who wound up facing any punishment was the guy with the baton. And instead of having a permanent injunction, which is what you guys wanted, never let this guy near a polling station to do this, to do this kind of thing again, he got what?
ADAMS: He’s stopped from appearing at the polls with a weapon only in the city of Philadelphia and only for a couple more years.
KELLY: And the other three defendants?
ADAMS: Nothing. They’re dismissed from the case completely.
KELLY: Ok, so what happened at the Department of Justice to get you to the point where you literally snatched defeat from the jaws of victory?
KELLY: So, but what was the reason? That’s what I’m trying to get at. You, the trial attorneys, the career lawyers at DOJ said we have a victory. We think this case has merit. And you were told what?
ADAMS: Dismiss the case. That the facts and the law don’t support this. I can’t explain it.
KELLY: What was really going on?
ADAMS: Well, I mean, there is a pervasive hostility to bringing these sorts of civil rights cases. I’ve worked on other ones at the Justice Department. I’ve worked on cases in Mississippi. I’ve represented both black victims of racial discrimination and Hispanic victims and in this case a white victim of racial discrimination. There is a pervasive hostility within the civil rights division at the Justice Department toward these sorts of cases.
KELLY: Do you believe that the DOJ has a policy now of not pursuing cases if the defendant is black and the victim is white?
ADAM: Well, particularly in voting. In voting that will be the case over the next few years, there’s no doubt about it.
KELLY: There isn’t?
ADAM: None, I mean, instructions were, if you had all the attorneys that worked on this case I am quite sure that they would say the exact same thing. And that other attorneys gave instructions that the voting section would not be pursuing these sorts of cases.
Response: The department “is committed to comprehensive and vigorous enforcement of both the civil and criminal provisions of federal law that prohibit voter intimidation. We continue to work with voters, communities, and local law enforcement to ensure that every American can vote free from intimidation, coercion or threats,” Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler Schmaler said.
There’s that word again, “comprehensive”. And could you be a little more political and platitude-y in your response please.
But Adams told Fox News that the department’s decision to dismiss the case reeked of racial politics and corruption.
“I don’t think the department or the fine people who work there are corrupt, but in this particular instance, to abandon law-abiding citizens and abet wrongdoers constitutes corruption,” he said.
Adams said he quit last month after the department ordered attorneys to ignore a subpoena from the commission.
“After being ordered not to comply with the lawful subpoena, after hearing the lies that are being said about the case, after the corruption that we had witnessed in the case, I just said that’s it, that I resign and now I’m no longer there,” he said.
Adams also said the department has been caught lying about the case, including the assertion that the decision to dismiss the charges was made only by Loretta King, acting head of the civil rights division, and Steve Rosenbaum, an attorney with the division.
Citing a Washington Times article, Adams said Associate Attorney General Tom Perrelli, the No. 3 official in the department, was responsible for the decision. He also said a written response from the department to the commission revealed that Attorney General Eric Holder was also briefed on the case.
“The initial statements of the department are being proved in hindsight to be false,” he said.
When asked whether Holder signed off on the decision to dismiss the case, Adams said, “I can’t answer that. We were just doing our job. We didn’t even know these things. We thought we had a good case. We thought it’s all going to be over with soon and we’re going to win. And then it wasn’t.”
But Adams noted that a former Justice Department official testified to the commission that it would be “unheard of” for a decision like this to be made without the attorney general’s blessing.
Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez provided false testimony in May to the United States Commission on Civil Rights, which is investigating the department’s decision to drop charges against three members of the radical group in a case that the government won.
Perez told the commission that the facts and the law didn’t support the case against the group.
“I know about the truth…and I know what the truth is and I know to say the facts and law don’t support the Black Panther case is not true,” Adams said, adding that Perez ignored his warnings not to provide false testimony.
“We made it very clear that continuing to say that the facts and the law don’t support this case would not be consistent with the truth,” he said.
Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler called Adams’ allegations “baseless.”
So you catch several Blank Panther radicals brandishing weapons and yelling racial epithets and intimidating people at the polls.
You win the case. It’s a Slam Dunk. It’s all on Tape. You have multiple credible witnesses.
Then your new boss says drop it.
Why?
Because,“the facts and law do not support  the case”, they say.
It’s ON TAPE! Slapping you in the face with a 2X4!
So what they are are the power now (Democrats) and they decided what laws are to be enforced and when.
And this was not going to be enforced.
Racism requires the perpetrator to be in a position of power. Obama comes from a “church” of black liberation theology (Rev. Wright). Holder is no newcomer to controversy and the politics of race. Obama holds the office of President of the United States and Eric Holder holds the office of Attorney General of the United States.
Who has the power?
We are from the government and we are here to serve you.
TO SERVE MAN.
“It’s a Cook Book! It’s A Cook Book!”

Dissing The Tomb

President Obama has decided that this Memorial Day weekend is much better spent with his marxist peeps in Chicago and doing a photo ops at cemetery in Illinois rather than the modern tradition of going to the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington Cemetery.
Well, Obama does have disdain for American traditions, after all.
Working hard to achieve success, rather than having it handed to you by the government from someone else’s labor, for instance.
Free enterprise, for another.
He has to takeover everything first.
And you can bash George W. Bush, even now for Katrina, but you can’t say boo about Obama and his passive aggressive disinterest in the biggest ecological disaster in this part of the planet.
Nope, can’t do it.
But what is funny, is that the Ministry of Truth/Mainstream media is starting to hammer him.
Even Mr. “tingle up my leg” Chris Matthews was heard to be criticizing his God.
Chris Matthews argued during a “Tonight Show” appearance that the President was “acting a little like a Vatican Observer.”
“The President scares me,” he said. “When is he actually going to do something? And I worry; I know he doesn’t want to take ownership of it. I know politics. He said the minute he says, ‘I’m in charge,’ he takes the blame, but somebody has to. It’s in our interest.”
Even super-lib mastermind James Carville is annoyed.
Democratic strategist James Carville and MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews, two reliable supporters of President Barack Obama, have issued withering critiques of the administration’s handling of the Gulf oil spill.
Carville, the famously outspoken Louisianian who was a chief political aide to Bill and Hillary Clinton, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Thursday that the administration’s response to the spill has been “lackadaisical” and that Obama was “naive” to trust BP to manage the massive clean-up effort.
“I think they actually believe that BP has some kind of a good motivation here,” he said. “They’re naive! BP is trying to save money, save everything they can… They won’t tell us anything, and oddly enough, the government seems to be going along with it! Somebody has got to, like shake them and say, ‘These people don’t wish you well! They’re going to take you down!’”
Carville also accused the White House of going along with what he called the “let BP handle it” strategy.
“I’m as good a Democrat as most people, and I think this administration has done some good things. They are risking everything by this ‘go along with BP’ strategy they have that seems like, lackadaisical on this, and Doug is right, they seem like they’re inconvenienced by this, this is some giant thing getting in their way and somehow or another, if you let BP handle it, it’ll all go away. It’s not going away. It’s growing out there. It is a disaster of the first magnitude, and they’ve got to go to Plan B.”
Imagine that.
***************
Now, on to the Pro-Illegal crowd being hoist by their own petard.
The City of Seattle voted sanctimoniously to join in on the hatefest directed at Arizona.
But then I saw this on a local Seattle TV Station’s Website:
EDMONDS, Wash. – The KING 5 Investigators have learned that an illegal immigrant accused of raping a woman in Edmonds Sunday has been deported nine times. That’s much more than previously reported.
Immigrations and Customs Enforcement won’t comment on the case of Jose Lopez Madrigal. But KING 5 got the information through confidential sources and documents.
Larry Klein was the man who heard the alleged victim’s cries for help. Police say the suspect pulled the woman off the street to a dumpster and raped her.
“I could see the back of his head. I could see his pants were down. I could see her lying on the ground. I could hear her crying, but I couldn’t really see her face,” said Klein.
Klein called police, who quickly arrested the suspect. But learning his identity took much longer because of some 30 aliases. It was only through fingerprints that they identified him as Madrigal, a Mexican citizen.
Madrigal’s arrest and immigration record includes a staggering number of contacts with law enforcement since 1989. That’s the year he was convicted of theft using a firearm in California.
He was deported a couple of times after that. Then in 1999, he was arrested for drug sales in both San Diego and San Francisco. Records show that he was deported three times that year between April and August.
He was arrested for drugs again in Stockton, Calif. in 2000. In 2002, he pleaded to third degree sexual assault in Denver. Later that year, he was deported again. And in 2003, records show he was deported three more times.
People who live near the scene of Sunday’s alleged rape wonder how it could keep happening.
“Makes you wonder, what are we doing wrong? How is he getting back in here?” said Kirby Aumick.
“It’s troubling. I mean, if this man should not have been in this country, he should have been behind bars then, really, this is a senseless tragedy,” said Klein.
According to our sources, Madrigal’s last contact before Sunday was around 2003. So, it’s not clear how much of that time Madrigal was in this country.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has refused to comment on the case which started making national headlines when it was learned that Madrigal had been deported several times prior to the Edmonds case.
In reviewing records and talking with confidential sources, the KING 5 Investigators learned just how extensive Madrigal’s immigration and arrest record is.
They found he was first deported in California in 1989 and since then he’s returned from his Mexican homeland and been arrested for drug crimes, a sex assault in Colorado and other offenses.
One criminal justice source says Madrigal is a “poster boy” for the federal governments ineffectiveness at keeping the most serious “criminal aliens” – illegals who commit crimes – out of the  United States.
Do they honestly have no idea how he was deported 9 times and came back every time? Really?
I feel sorry for the victims, actually.
If the border had been secured to begin with, they wouldn’t be victims.
But don’t worry, the La Raza protests this weekend in Phoenix will get 1000 times more air play than this will.
*****
From the horrible to the ridiculous courtesy of the Washington Post:
The new Arizona law will intimidate crime victims and witnesses who are illegal immigrants and divert police from investigating more serious crimes, chiefs from Los Angeles, Houston and Philadelphia said. They will join their counterparts from Montgomery County and a half-dozen other U.S. cities in meeting Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Wednesday morning to discuss the measure.
Wonder if he’s read it yet?

“This is not a law that increases public safety. This is a bill that makes it much harder for us to do our jobs,” Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said. “Crime will go up if this becomes law in Arizona or in any other state.”
The delegation, organized by the Police Executive Research Forum, an independent think tank in Washington, comes as 15 states are considering their own versions of the Arizona law. That statute defines illegal immigration as criminal trespassing and requires police to request documents of anyone they stop and have a “reasonable suspicion” is in the country illegally.
Several recent public opinion polls indicate that as many as 70 percent of Americans surveyed support such a police requirement.
******
And finally from USATODAY:
TULTITLN, Mexico — Arizona’s new law forcing local police to take a greater role in enforcing immigration law has caused a lot of criticism from Mexico, the largest single source of illegal immigrants in the United States.
But in Mexico, illegal immigrants receive terrible treatment from corrupt Mexican authorities, say people involved in the system.
And Mexico has a law that is no different from Arizona’s that empowers local police to check the immigration documents of people suspected of not being in the country legally.
“There (in the United States), they’ll deport you,” Hector Vázquez, an illegal immigrant from Honduras, said as he rested in a makeshift camp with other migrants under a highway bridge in Tultitlán. “In Mexico they’ll probably let you go, but they’ll beat you up and steal everything you’ve got first.”
Mexican authorities have harshly criticized Arizona’s SB1070, a law that requires local police to check the status of persons suspected of being illegal immigrants. The law provides that a check be done in connection with another law enforcement event, such as a traffic stop, and also permits Arizona citizens to file lawsuits against local authorities for not fully enforcing immigration laws.
Mexico’s Foreign Ministry said the law “violates inalienable human rights” and Democrats in Congress applauded Mexican President Felipe Calderón’s criticisms of the law in a speech he gave on Capitol Hill last week.
Yet Mexico’s Arizona-style law requires local police to check IDs. And Mexican police freely engage in racial profiling and routinely harass Central American migrants, say immigration activists.
“The Mexican government should probably clean up its own house before looking at someone else’s,” said Melissa Vertíz, spokeswoman for the Fray Matías de Córdova Human Rights Center in Tapachula, Mexico.
In one six-month period from September 2008 through February 2009, at least 9,758 migrants were kidnapped and held for ransom in Mexico — 91 of them with the direct participation of Mexican police, a report by the National Human Rights Commission said. Other migrants are routinely stopped and shaken down for bribes, it said.
A separate survey conducted during one month in 2008 at 10 migrant shelters showed Mexican authorities were behind migrant attacks in 35 of 240 cases, or 15%.
Most migrants in Mexico are Central Americans who are simply passing through on their way to the United States, human rights groups say. Others are Guatemalans who live and work along Mexico’s southern border, mainly as farm workers, as maids, or in bars and restaurants.
The Central American migrants headed to the United States travel mainly on freight trains, stopping to rest and beg for food at rail crossings like the one in Tultitlán, an industrial suburb of Mexico City.
On a recent afternoon, Victor Manuel Beltrán Rodríguez of Managua, Nicaragua, trudged between the cars at a stop light, his hand outstretched.
“Can you give me a peso? I’m from Nicaragua,” he said. Every 10 cars or so, a motorist would roll down the window and hand him a few coins. In a half-hour he had collected 10 pesos, about 80 U.S. cents, enough for a taco.
Beltrán Rodríguez had arrived in Mexico with 950 pesos, about $76, enough to last him to the U.S. border. But near Tierra Blanca, Veracruz, he says municipal police had detained him, driven him to a deserted road and taken his money. He had been surviving since then by begging.
Abuses by Mexican authorities have persisted even as Mexico has relaxed its rules against illegal immigrants in recent years, according to the National Human Rights Commission.
In 2008, Mexico softened the punishment for illegal immigrants, from a maximum 10 years in prison to a maximum fine of $461. Most detainees are taken to detention centers and put on buses for home.
Mexican law calls for six to 12 years of prison and up to $46,000 in fines for anyone who shelters or transports illegal immigrants. The Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that the law applies only to people who do it for money.
For years, the Mexican government has allowed charity groups to openly operate migrant shelters, where travelers can rest for a few days on their journey north. The government also has a special unit of immigration agents, known as Grupo Beta, who patrol the countryside in orange pickups, helping immigrants who are in trouble.
At the same time, Article 67 of Mexico’s immigration law requires that all authorities “whether federal, local or municipal” demand to see visas if approached by a foreigner and to hand over migrants to immigration authorities.
“In effect, this means that migrants who suffer crimes, including kidnapping, prefer not to report them to avoid … being detained by immigration authorities and returned to their country,” the National Human Rights Commission said in a report last year.
As a result, the clause has strengthened gangs who abuse migrants, rights activists say.
“That Article 67 is an obstacle that urgently has to be removed,” said Alberto Herrera, executive director of Amnesty International Mexico. “It has worsened this vicious cycle of abuse and impunity, and the same thing could happen (in Arizona).”
A bill passed by the Mexican Senate on Oct. 6 would eliminate the ID requirement in Article 67 and replace it with language saying “No attention in matters of human rights or the provision of justice shall be denied or restricted on any level (of government) to foreigners who require it, regardless of their migration status.”
The Mexican House of Representatives approved a similar measure on March 16, but added a clause requiring the government to set aside funds to take care of foreigners during times of disaster. The revised bill has been stuck in the Senate’s Population and Development Committee since then.
To discourage migrants from speaking out about abuse, Mexican authorities often tell detainees they will have to stay longer in detention centers if they file a complaint, Vertíz said.
A March 2007 order allows Mexican immigration agents to give “humanitarian visas” to migrants who have suffered crimes in Mexico. But the amnesty is not automatic, and most migrants don’t know to ask for it, the commission said.
Hawley is Latin America correspondent for USA TODAY and The Arizona Republic
Wonder if the Ministry of Truth will pick up on this, or will screaming La Raza maniacs dominate the news in the coming days.
Hmmm….You be the Judge.
The honor of the people who have died for this country is being dissed.
And the country divided for political advantage and done with such sanctimony and false morality.
We are the victims.
We need to stand up and be counted.