Today, in 1947, British musician David Bowie was born. Enough said.

Transparency be damned.  It seems as if many of the elites in Washington, D.C. were for transparency before they were against it.

President Barack Obama, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid all promised and pledged transparency as part of a covenant with the American people to allow them to take power.  Those promises have been broken.  One Senior Congressional Staffer tells Big Government that “for elected officials that promised the most transparent Congress ever, I never believed them, but it is stunning how fast they are going back on their promises as if they think the voters are too dumb to remember things they said 3 years ago.” (more…)

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released their annual report this week on total healthcare spending in the U.S. for 2008. To the limited extent that this release was even reported, the headline was that the growth in healthcare spending “slowed” from the prior year. From a growth rate of 6% in 2007 to only 4.4% in 2008. This in fact represented the lowest rate of growth since the CMS first started reporting this data in 1960. Given all the hyperbole about exploding healthcare costs this past year, this would seem to be wonderfully good news, worthy of national media attention. Might the cost curve be bending down (gasp) without government intervention?

Not surprisingly, media coverage of the report – and even the press release from the CMS itself – convey a less positive interpretation of the underlying data. By focusing on the fact that healthcare spending as a percentage of GDP continues to rise (if only slightly), from 15.9 percent in 2007 to 16.2 percent in 2008. And by attributing the decline to the economic downturn, implying that it is only temporary, even though the co-author of the report acknowledged that “health-care spending is usually somewhat insulated from the immediate impact of a downturn in the economy”.

Why the glass half-empty view? I believe the answer can be found in this accompanying statement from CMS Director Jonathan Blum (emphasis mine):

This report contains some welcome news and yet another warning sign. Health care spending as a percentage of GDP is rising at an unsustainable rate. It is clear that we need health insurance reform now.

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President Obama came back to work this week after leaving the Presidency for his Hawaiian holiday vacation.  Hawaii proved to be a restful retreat for the President, his team and the White House press corps who all took time off from their regular duties to enjoy the Hawaiian sun and ignore their responsibilities.

But after 10 days of tropical silence, this week there is a sudden flurry of security reviews, media statements, ass-covering and more misstatements coming out of Washington from the Obama Administration.  But we still don’t know why the State Department didn’t revoke the visa of a man they knew had ties to al-qaeda.

Even the normally workaholic Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was enjoying a silent 10 nights on the matter.  Taking her time to get the facts and pack up the Christmas decorations, Hillary finally came out looking like she had just landed in Yugoslavia under sniper fire.

Secretary Clinton joined Janet Napolitano in glossing over the facts surrounding the Christmas Day attempted bombing of Northwest Airlines flight 253.  Not to be outdone that all went well with her agency while the boss was on vacation, Secretary Clinton said that the State Department “fully complied with the requirements set forth in the interagency process” about sharing threat information.

What?

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We live in seriously challenging times – times that warrant serious conversations on the state and direction of our nation.  From the fiscal crash course our nation is on to the ever-present threat we face from Islamic terrorism, there’s plenty of fodder for constructive political discourse.  Many on the Left, however, are bent on marginalizing opposing views by any means necessary.  The censorship and number fudging exposed in ClimateGate is one recent example.

The tea party movement seems to perpetually be in the crosshairs of the Left’s most insidious propaganda artists.  A post on taxpayer subsidized NPR’s blog that’s getting some attention this week features a video by Mark Fiore entitled “Learn to Speak Tea Bag.”  The cartoon gives mock step-by-step instructions on what Fiore believes is the modus operandi of tea party activists.  Fiore unintentionally serves up a nearly all-inclusive package on all that is dishonest and malicious about the Left’s continued campaign to discredit this wildly popular grassroots force.

Fiore’s isn’t the first and likely won’t be the last tea party hit job.  Everyone from the President to “mainstream” media commentators have joined in since the movement’s inception in February 2009.  This multifaceted attack on the tea party movement has revealed an interesting trend that mirrors the evolving tactics of a maladjusted, intellectual deficient schoolboy bully.

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Happy New Year.

If you thought that we were through writing about Barack Obama’s dangerous Safe Schools Czar because it’s a new year you would be wrong. This story just gets freakier and weirder and the fact that the mainstream media completely ignores this dangerous man working in the Office of Safe and Drug-free Schools makes the story even more scandalous. You’d think the AP could peel away a few of its reporters from Going Rogue to investigate this radical czar. This avoidance by the democratic-media complex won’t keep us from reporting the truth. Our goal of protecting children is greater than our desire to protect a political party.

Kevin Jennings’ was the founder, and for many years, Executive Director of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) until he left his post in 2008. GLSEN maintains a recommended reading list of books for children that the radical organization believes all kids should be reading. The books on the list promote all kinds of radical ideas from child rape, to first graders having sex to the joys of prostitution.

Recently it was discovered that these books were not only on GLSEN’s reading list but that Kevin Jennings personally promoted several of these books during his career. One of the books he promoted encouraged children to go to gay bars for sex with adults to see if they like it.
Mass Resistance Blog reported:

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The bosses of Service Employee International Union (SEIU) and American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Union (AFSCME), Andy Stern and Gerald McEntee, know that ObamaCare will hurt the very workers that they claim to represent.

But, it appears that they just don’t care!

These two union bosses who stand to gain the most power under ObamaCare are spending hundreds of millions of forced union dues promoting ObamaCare. A government run health insurance program is an SEIU and AFSCME “membership net” designed to eventually complete the capture of 21.1 million forced-dues paying government workers.

It is clear that Big Labor is banking on the probability that all healthcare workers eventually become federal, state, and municipal healthcare employees.

According to SEIU’s numbers submitted to the Obama transition organization (The National Heath Care Workforce Enhancement Initiative, 12/3/2008), public sector labor bosses like Stern and AFSCME’s Gerald McEntee have 21.1 million reasons to support ObamaCare. After the November election, Stern’s SEIU submitted the following health occupation numbers to Rahm Emmanuel et al. at Obama, Inc.:

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The American people were promised transparency under Democratic Party rule.  President Obama told the American people no less than eight times that legislative deliberations would be aired on C-SPAN, not behind closed doors. The call for reform and transparency became a rallying cry for the Obama campaign.

This process that produced the House and Senate health care legislation has been anything but transparent.

But what can be expected when the conversation starts with back door deals between the White House and both Big Health Insurance and Big Pharmaceuticals?  The health insurance industry received from Democrats, in exchange for their complicity and financial support, legislation that forces all Americans to buy their product regardless of want, need or ability to pay.  Talk about a massive transfer of wealth from younger, healthier, poorer individuals to an older, less healthy, more wealthy population.  PhRMA demanded that Obama keep certain things kept out of the health care bill in exchange for spending $150 million to support Democratic health care reform legislation.  Specifically:

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I don’t like life long politicians any more than the next guy, but the suggested remedy to the problem, term limits, are a bad idea.

First of all, term limits strike me as a smack in the face to the idea that we should be allowed to choose whomever we want to represent us, for as long as we want them to represent us. Much like the disgustingly offensive campaign finance “reform” where politicians decided to punish the average voter because elected officials are too greedy and corrupt to keep their hands out of the cookie jar, term limits seem equally offensive in a similar way.

Why should the voters of one state have to say goodbye to a good legislator simply because the voters of another state repeatedly elect a creep?

Voters in Colorado might not like the fact that voters in Massachusetts continually reelected a hypocritical, drunk, manslaughtering, liar to term after term after term, but that is their right. Massachusetts voters clearly have no shame, but under the constitution, they have the right to be greedy scum buckets interested only in the pork their clout can achieve. (Our apologies to anyone in Mass who had the dignity and ethics to vote against Kennedy before death finally drove him from office)

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Today, in 1980, President Jimmy Carter authorized the first federal bailout of Chrysler. Sometimes you have to wait a couple decades to say “I told you so…”

As a frequent contributor to Big Hollywood and Big Government, I was so proud to read Andrew Breitbart’s full-throated correction posted front and center at Big Government the other day.  I was not proud that we had made an error that required correcting, but I was proud that we treated it up front and loudly for all the world to see.  It is a stark contrast to corrections in the New York Times that are hidden somewhere between the crossword puzzle and the obituaries (which soon will include the Times, itself).

But, the more I thought about the story that prompted the correction (the fact that our headline stated that ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis visited the White House but it appeared that it was a different Bertha Lewis), the more I kept thinking to myself:  “What are the odds?”  You see, it isn’t just Bertha Lewis who has a name doppelganger out there.  The White House also claimed that the Jeremiah Wright who visited there was a different Jeremiah Wright.  And, even more credulity-defying, a different Malik Shabazz visited the White House this year as well. (more…)

The Virginia State Credit Union is mining for gold and it’s finding it.  Thanks to former Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, state employees are being duped into a credit product designed to take more money from their paychecks than the payday loans it was designed to replace.  Not only that, this spider catches its flies via unfair competition.

Welcome to The c, or “Virginia PDL Public Option”.  It’s as bad an idea as has ever come into the credit space, short of the credit default swap.  Naturally, it is the invention of Government.

I’ll jump over all the usual falsehoods that Mr. Kaine presents and cut to the chase.

What’s so bad about this program?  Let’s take the unfair competition part first.   I don’t have any problem with the government entering the consumer credit business, just as I have no problem with a fair public option for health care, as long as the playing field is level. Therein lies the rub.

The PDL Public Option provides loans up to $500, at a 24.99% APR, with a six-month term, and a limit of  2 loans annually.  It requires membership in the Virginia Credit Union (VACU), which administers the program.   The VACU also requires direct deposit of the borrower’s paycheck.

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It is with the authority of knowledge that is MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that he declared of the ‘teabaggers’,

“And they’re monochromatic right? … Every picture I see shows them to be. … Meaning they’re all white. All of them, every single one of them is white.”

Here’s a news flash for ya, Chris… my son and I were there, as were many other black people. Maybe your crack staff at MSNBC failed to show you these pictures I (a black man) posted on September 12, 2009.

Sorry about having my back to you, Chris, but I was covering the event for my site and the New Media Alliance.

But tell you what, Mr. Matthews. I know a few of the black people who attended the 9/12 Tea Party on The Hill, including some of the ones who SPOKE AT THE PODIUM! I guess your camera people missed them as well.

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On Sunday morning, Instapundit drew attention to a startling photograph posted on the internet by the White House. In it stands President Obama in black tie, leaning against a wall, his arms folded, speaking not a word, and looking down on Vice-President Biden with hooded eyes.

When this shot is shown in high resolution, as one perceptive observer soon noted, “Obama looks like he has contempt for Biden” –which, he added, may be the case “given Joe ‘The Gaff Machine’ Biden’s performance this year.” I am, he concluded, once again reminded “of how this administration seems to have become oblivious to the images they project to the public.”

I wonder whether this last point is right.

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I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation. It felt like a scene from a movie that conveniently ties plot points together when two critical characters in the storyline share a moment of implausible significance – where the intrepid reporter finally runs his target to ground.

So at first I had trouble getting my words out. “I’m Andrew Breitbart,” I exhaled. Instead of hanging up, Bertha Lewis laughed like someone I would probably like in a different setting – but certainly not in this lifetime now that we are permanently and publicly tied to one another as media-based adversaries.

I knew the awkwardness of the moment would turn into trouble when I started asking her pointed questions and, sure enough, we soon we found ourselves in trouble.

“Did you go to the White House last year?” I asked.

Bertha Laughed heartily.  ”No,” she said.

“Really?” I pushed.

“No. One hundred per cent not. Not this year. Not last year. Not ever,” she stated firmly, all the while maintaining an awkward and ironic joviality that was likely born of the weirdness of our impromptu exchange. (more…)

Brown’s chances have been speculative as the most recent poll, until today, was one from November which showed Brown trailing Coakley by 58-27 with 15% undecided. That’s changed since Rasmussen released their latest poll which shows Coakley’s lead sputtering:

State Attorney General Martha Coakley holds a nine-point lead over her Republican rival, state Senator Scott Brown, in Massachusetts’ special U.S. Senate election to fill the seat of the late Edward M. Kennedy.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely voters in the state finds Coakley ahead of Brown 50% to 41%. One percent (1%) prefer some other candidate, and seven percent (7%) are undecided.

Validating what we all thought: that Scott Brown can win this race. Especially if you consider:

The health care issue is expected to play a big role in the debate and Massachusetts voters hold modestly favorable attitudes about the proposed legislation. In the Bay State, 53% favor the plan working its way through Congress and 45% oppose it.

However, as is the case nationally, those who feel strongly about the bill are more likely to be opposed. The overall figures include 36% who Strongly Oppose the plan while 27% Strongly Favor it.

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With the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) set to make a decision on proposed net neutrality rules later this year, the fight between supporters of the controversial policy and its opponents continues to heat up.

Yesterday, a group of minority and women’s organizations reportedly called on the FCC to give serious consideration to the impact that net neutrality could have on what has been termed the “digital divide”—the widening of which, opponents argue, constitutes a potential unintended consequence of the policy, and one which has become a primary focal point of net neutrality critics’ concern.  In a letter and a proposal to the FCC, the groups—which include minority organizations that have previously spoken out regarding the net neutrality issue such as the Asian American Justice Center—have asked for a field hearing and workshop addressing the topic.

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With the unearthing of a memo detailing an ACORN scheme to use “dirty money hungry lawyers” to force “employers to open up negotiations” and its plan to create “a model for [union] organizing” that “building trades [unions] do not have,” ACORN almost assuredly fits the federal definition of a labor organization under federal law 29 CFR 401.9.

But, the detailed scheme gets even better and closer to the line that makes ACORN a labor union.

ACORN’s bombshell talks about an arrangement to “share dues” with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and opens up a whole new array of issues between these newly discovered Siamese twins.

Add in ACORN’s plans to create union organizing partnerships with other labor unions and Big Labor funded auxiliary organizations, and it becomes a tautology that ACORN is a big part of Big Labor.

These are the details of a scintillating e-mail between ACORN operatives.  While ACORN and SEIU big-wigs who are dreaming all this up may pass it off as just wishful thinking; the facts show something different.

Right now, ACORN files labor organization financial reports for SEIU 880 and SEIU 100 with the U.S. Department of Labor.  Other exposed relationships like the New York Teachers’ Union bosses – ACORN coordinated organizing effort illustrate an ACORN and Big Labor coordination, and a relationship that may have already crossed the line.

But wait, there is more!

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On the foreign policy front, the Democrats for years have blamed America for the actions of rogue nations and dictators.  Indeed, as Mona Charen pointed out at length, in her book Useful Idiots, the Democrats have been all too willing to Blame America First for the actions of others.  So the storyline goes, when Russia armed itself, it was a justified response to the American arms buildup – as if Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev were otherwise peace loving souls.

No mere academic cheer for Democrats, they have campaigned on their Blame America First theme for years.  In the minds of those Democrats, rather than display arrogance, America must be more humble, except blame for World troubles and not seek to impose its view on the world.  The latest iteration of that, of course, was Obama’s campaign.

According to Obama, following 9/11:

Millions around the world were ready to stand with us. They were willing to rally to our cause because it was their cause too – because they knew that if America led the world toward a new era of global cooperation, it would advance the security of people in our nation and all nations.” According to Obama, however, the Bush Administration “squandered that opportunity . . . [and]  . . . World opinion has turned against us.

What is the cure for such “mistakes,” according to Obama? As we have seen, it is to apologize on his world tours for American actions, to promise to talk directly to dictators, to abandon missile systems, to speak softly in the face of phony Iranian elections and crack downs on dissent, to bow in front of dictators, wear a thin mustache in front Middle Eastern leaders in Egypt, preach global responsibility, promise to close Guantanamo, give rights to Interpol over US territory, and on and on.

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