In today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss the latest GDP numbers, Obama’s fiscal train wreck, and his views on the economy shared this week on the Daily Show.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. You can find our iTunes feed at CoffeeandMarkets.com. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Roubini: U.S. Heading for “Fiscal Train Wreck”
Obama No Longer Bothering to Lie Credibly: Claims Financial Crisis Cost Less Than S&L Crisis
Obama on the Daily Show

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In the context of many congressional seats being up for grabs in what pundits and prognosticators are predicting to be a GOP wave election, Obama stated that many of his allies in Congress voted for politically tough bills because they believed “it was the right thing to so” despite being in conservative-leaning districts.

On the surface, what the President says sounds so noble. These politicians are doing what they think is right. They’re standing up despite outside pressure! Except they aren’t standing up for the right people: their constituents. “Doing what they think is right” is warm and fuzzy code for “what Nancy Pelosi / President Obama tells them is right.”

Elected officials aren’t supposed to vote for what is right in their minds alone. What seems right in the halls of power amidst meetings with tax-eater special interests and arm-twisting White House political hacks is quite likely not what’s right for the people elected officials are supposed to represent. This sort of backwards thinking, internalized even by the President, is exactly why the American electorate is upset with the political status quo. Elected officials are supposed to vote for what is right in the minds of their constituents for whom they work.

This concept is a foreign notion to the political class, particularly the liberals who currently have the reins and are, to borrow an analogy from the President and funny-guy-turned-scary Senator Al Franken, driving our country off a cliff.  They believe that it is their job to determine what is right and then “communicate” it to the ignorant, confused masses, which is why they are already selling the likely losses in the upcoming election as PR issues. But it isn’t. It’s the policy, stupid.

If, as President Obama states, members of Congress are making “tough” votes that are tough because they are in sharp contrast to the will of their constituents, then these members are, by definition, not doing their jobs. Hopefully voters will keep this in mind as they exercise their right next Tuesday to make some serious personnel changes.

]]> http://biggovernment.com/amarcus/2010/04/01/jon-stewart-to-reids-egg-throwers-youre-not-helping/feed/ 163 http://biggovernment.com/mvadum/2009/09/25/nbc-to-anti-acorn-group-bite-me-jew-boy/ http://biggovernment.com/mvadum/2009/09/25/nbc-to-anti-acorn-group-bite-me-jew-boy/#comments Fri, 25 Sep 2009 21:22:21 +0000 Matthew Vadum http://biggovernment.com/?p=8842 **UPDATE** Politico: NBC Vehemently Denies Allegations Over Anti-Semitic Email

**UPDATE 2** ALG Statement in Response to Alleged NBC Email

**UPDATE 3** NBC News Statement

**UPDATE 4**Group Stands Ground Over Claims That NBC Employee Issued Anti-Semitic Email

Apparently NBC “Dateline” producer Jane Stone or someone else who has access to her Blackberry has a problem with groups that oppose ACORN and with an ethnocultural minority.

When Stone received an email urging Congress to defund ACORN from Alex Rosenwald, director of media outreach for Americans for Limited Government, the following sentence came back to Rosenwald from Stone’s account: “Bite me, Jew Boy!”

Bite me Jew boy! –

Americans for Limited Government released the following statement:

Americans for Limited Government does not contend that NBC or its parent company GE, are anti-Semitic. What is highly disturbing, however, is that there clearly is a culture at NBC that has allowed this person who clearly has issues to go unchecked.

Ms Stone claims she did not send the offensive email. If that is not the case, we at ALG call upon her to help ascertain who did send it using her Blackberry and her email address. If Ms Stone did, in fact, send it, we at ALG call upon Ms Stone to apologize to Mr. Rosenwald, and we call upon the NBC hierarchy above Ms Stone to join her in issuing that apology.

I am told by fellow right-leaning journalists that getting rude and offensive emails from reporters in the mainstream media is a fairly common occurrence.

It happened to me last fall when an occasional writer for the New York Times named Dan Mitchell sent me an electronic nastygram after I appeared on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” in a package about ACORN. I understand the newspaper disciplined Mitchell.

They were not going to report this blockbuster unless they were forced to. And they were. What’s more, it ain’t over yet. Not every hint I dropped in that piece about what was to come has played itself out yet.Stay tuned.

When filmmaker and provocateur James O’Keefe came to my office to show me the video of him and his friend, Hannah Giles, going to the Baltimore offices of ACORN – the nation’s foremost “community organizers” – dressed as a pimp and a prostitute and asking for – and getting – help for various illegal activities, he sought my advice. In the past, Mr. O’Keefe created brilliant social satire that rocked his college campus and even made its way on to the talk-radio and cable-news shows, but the magnitude of his latest adventure had the potential to rock the political establishment.

I was awed by Mr. O’Keefe’s guts and amazed by the footage, but explained that the mainstream media would try to kill this important and illuminating expose about a corrupt and criminal political racket, and that the well-funded political left would go into “war room” mode, with 25-year-old Mr. O’Keefe and 20-year-old cohort Miss Giles in the cross hairs. I felt I had a moral obligation to protect these young muckrakers from the left and from the media, and to devise a strategy that would force the media’s hand.

Once the American public saw with its own eyes the grotesque, common practices of ACORN’s housing offices, Mr. O’Keefe and Miss Giles could no longer be a legitimate focus of media scrutiny. Kill the messenger doesn’t work with the American people when they realize that the message is so devastating and honest. I think the video exposed the misuse of public funds and systemic manipulation of the tax code in the name of “helping the poor.”

If Mr. O’Keefe dumped the videos on YouTube, the political powers would have killed the expose before it got traction. I half-joked that he should secretly tape pitching the major television networks exclusive use of his videos for their nightly news broadcasts. But a simpler, less controversial method proved as fruitful.

I told him that in addition to launching his compelling and stylized Web videos, we needed to offer the full transcripts and audio to the public in the name of transparency, and to offer Fox News the full footage of each video before each was released.We had to devise a plan that would force the media to see the evidence before they had enough time to destroy these two idealistic 20-something truth seekers. Mr. O’Keefe agreed to post the full audio and full transcript of his video experiences at BigGovernment.com.

Thus was born a multimedia, multiplatform strategy designed to force the reluctant hands of ABC, CBS, NBC, the New York Times and The Washington Post.

Videos of five different ACORN offices in five separate cities would be released on five consecutive weekdays over a full week – Baltimore, Washington, New York, San Bernardino and San Diego. By dripping the videos out, we exposed to anyone paying attention that ACORN was lying through its teeth and that the media would look imbecilic continuing to trot out their hapless spokespeople.

Read the full article at the Washington Times.

“O’Keefe, a self-described filmmaker, and Giles, the eldest daughter of a conservative Christian minister in Miami, visited ACORN offices in the summer. An ACORN spokesman said they were turned away in Miami, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, where workers called police and filed a report. But workers welcomed them in the other cities.”

First of all, this reporter repeats the false and unsubstantiated claim from “an ACORN spokesman” that James and Hannah were turned away from multiple ACORN offices. (Let’s put this rumor to rest. Footage was obtained at every office they visited and you will see them all here on Big Government.)  More disturbing is the reference to Hannah’s father and his profession.  

And in case you missed it the first time, Mr. Fears repeats himself in the very next paragraph:

“Giles is a journalism novice who has written two columns for the conservative Web site Townhall.com. Her father, Doug Giles, serves as minister of the ultra-conservative ClashChurch near Miami, where he proclaimed that liberals “spit on the Word of God,” according to a report by the Miami New Times.”

No mention that Hannah attended the National Journalism Center in Washington, DC. Local angle, anyone? No, this reporter thought it was somehow more relevant to mention that her father conducts church services in Florida.

Pass the hand sanitizer, please.

As most of you outside of the MSM know by now, the House voted overwhelmingly last night to defund ACORN. And this vote, of course, came rapidly on the heels of a landslide vote in the Senate (83-7) to cut off federal funds to this organization.

Yet again there is no such headline on the front page of The Washington Post today. Nor will the reader find this headline on page 2 or 6…or 26. Instead Mr. Fears and Carol D. Leonnig present a puff piece about James and Hannah under the headline, “The $1300 Mission to Fell ACORN.” No mention of the House vote in this article, until you jump to page A16.

It seems that The Washington Post, once legendary for their commitment to investigative journalism, is demonstrating a bizarre new commitment to scrub the news from their newspaper.