Take a look at the questions from the past debate (just the questions). Is this really helping send the message the RNC must to deliver to win in November?

What’s maddening about this malpractice by the RNC is that even the current chair knows what the main stream media is and who they are promoting. In a recent interview on MSNBC, Reince Priebus fought back against a question “loaded with DNC talking points” and quickly articulated his talking points by going around the media complex.

That response is perfect for an interview in enemy territory, but on a debate stage when one is expected to answer the questions given to you, simply ignoring the egregious premises of questions and rehashing a stump speech is seen as dodging the question. Although it is motivating to conservatives that yell at liberal programming on their televisions everywhere when former Speaker Newt Gingrich blatantly says he rejects the premise of (or in some cases, the entirety) the questions posed in a debate, the real issue is that Newt does not need to do that.

In a day where anyone can produce a semi-pro live stream with $50 software and a built in camera on their computer, the RNC can certainly produce a professional debate moderated by those who will actually ask questions the people of America need and want to hear. The main stream media may own the debates when it comes time to face President Obama, but the RNC willingly has our candidates debate not each other, but the gatekeepers that are the main stream media. Those gatekeepers ask questions such as, “Why didn’t the Bush tax cuts work?”

There have been over 20 debates or forums for these candidates to deliver the message that liberty, self-governance, and free enterprise leads to a prosperous nation. This view is a stark contrast to the current President and his policies. However, that message is continually choked off by the gatekeeper moderators who keep the focus on things such as English being the official language. This is either laziness or intentional sabatoge by the RNC. They are allowing the media to choose the Republican Presidential candidate, not Republicans.

Tonight’s debate on CNN at 8 p.m. ET will be be moderated by Wolf Blitzer. Does the RNC actually think that tonight’s debate will be more insightful than the past 20? Here’s a thought, Mr. Priebus: Host an internal live-stream debate and invite the media outlets and C-SPAN to set up a camera. Have some new-media moguls and some Tea Party Congressmen moderate. The American people will be far more informed by one event like this than all of the other 20+ debates combined.

Mr. Priebus knows this can be done, why hasn’t he done it already?

Obama election lawyer Samuel Issacharoff (left). Source: NYU Law School

The left is desperate to quash James O’Keefe’s exposé of potential voter fraud in New Hampshire–and to prevent voter ID laws from being passed and enforced in states across the nation.

On Tuesday, during the New Hampshire primary election, members of O’Keefe’s Project Veritas recorded poll workers from both parties providing ballots in the names of recently deceased voters at multiple polling places across the state.

New Hampshire does not require voters to present photo identification at polling places. The state’s Republican legislature passed a voter ID law last year, but Gov. John Lynch, a Democrat, vetoed the measure, and the state senate failed to override his veto.

Left-wing groups and the Obama administration are targeting voter ID laws in advance of the 2012 election. Recently, for example, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder blocked South Carolina’s new voter ID law.

Ryan Reilly of Talking Points Memo (TPM) Muckracker has attacked the Project Veritas sting in an article alleging that “O’Keefe’s allies could face criminal charges on both the federal and state level for procuring ballots under false names.” Citing “election law experts,” Reilly concludes that the undercover video “doesn’t demonstrate a need for voter ID laws at all.”

The media has picked up Muckraker’s talking points (pun intended) and run with them. Salon.com, for example, smugly declares: “O’Keefe has pretty clearly violated the law and TPM reports that a federal prosecutor is reviewing his video. But at least he finally proved that voter fraud is a very real threat….As we all know, once you prove that something is hypothetically possible, it is a factual certainty that ACORN has done it.”

Even the Wall Street Journal fell into step, citing Reilly’s article: “Election law experts say James O’Keefe’s affiliates who got the ballots under false names could face criminal charges, as federal law bans not only the casting of such ballots, but their procurement as well, according to TPM.” Few of the media outlets repeating Reilly’s claims appear to have consulted “election law experts” with different opinions.

Curiously, one of the experts Reilly spoke to is Samuel Issacharoff of NYU Law School.

Issacharoff happened to be on Barack Obama’s legal team during the 2008 election, and assisted John Kerry’s campaign in 2004.

Obama used Issacharoff’s textbook, The Law of Democracy, while teaching at University of Chicago Law School–and Issacharoff thanked Obama on page x of the introduction for his help with the manuscript.

In 2009, Issacharoff regaled an admiring NYU audience with tales from Election Day in Chicago.

Reilly does not provide those highly relevant facts en route to smearing O’Keefe.

Indeed, Reilly may have deliberately sought opinions that would support his evidently predetermined conclusion that O’Keefe’s associates had committed a crime. He sent an email to an election law listserv in which he opined that the sting was “the largest coordinated attempt at in-person voter impersonation fraud,” and asked for comment.

It is unclear whether the experts Reilly interviewed knew more about the Project Veritas sting than he told them. He argues that O’Keefe’s colleagues violated a federal law prohibiting the “procurement” of ballots, even though they left each polling station without voting. However, that law applies to those who attempt to “deprive or defraud the residents of a State of a fair and impartially conducted election process.” O’Keefe and Project Veritas were trying to defend the freedom and impartiality of that process.

Reilly also quotes UC-Irvine School of Law Professor Rick Hansen, who jokes that O’Keefe should “next show how easy it is to rob a bank with a plastic gun.” The more appropriate analogy is the undercover DEA agent who buys cocaine from a drug dealer to bust an entire smuggling ring, or perhaps the “white hat” computer hacker who highlights the security flaws of a computer system in the hope that they will be fixed.

Reilly quotes another professor, Henry Brady, who serves as Dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC-Berkeley: “Yes, this shows it’s possible to do what they did but you have to ask yourself… how many illegal immigrants would risk a jail term to vote illegally?” In fact, in one recent example in Illinois, two Iranian non-citizens were prosecuted after having voted fraudulently for years, and now face possible deportation.

The enthusiasm with which left-wing media have rushed to accuse O’Keefe of voter fraud–while denying that voter fraud is a problem–is laughable. Reilly even admitted, in an interview with Current TV’s David Shuster, that “New Hampshire doesn’t have, like many other states, make you actually sign a piece of paper when you accept your ballot, so that’s something that could potentially have prevented this as well. They do have some lax rules…” (5:51 to 6:05 below).

Al Sharpton of MSNBC devoted an entire segment to accusing O’Keefe of committing fraud–”He actually increased fraud in the state by 1200 percent to try to prove there was a problem that didn’t exist”–deliberately obscuring the point of the Project Veritas sting, which was to show the potential for voter fraud in the absence of photo ID requirements.

Last night, a furious Gov. Lynch called for the investigators to be “prosecuted to the full extent of the law, if in fact they are found guilty of some criminal act.” (Normally, people are prosecuted before being found guilty.) Last July, in explaining his veto of the voter ID law, Gov. Lynch had claimed: “There is no voter fraud problem in New Hampshire. We already have strong elections laws that are effective in regulating our elections.”

O’Keefe’s real “crime” is blowing the whistle on the weaknesses in an election system that does not require voters to prove their identity. Though Project Veritas showed that it was as easy for Republicans to cheat as Democrats, the left knows which party benefits most from the status quo. That why they’ve made O’Keefe–not voter ID–the issue.

Contrary to recent media reports, the Brazilian Blowout hair treatment is safe for use.

Oregon OSHA and Federal OSHA had already attacked Brazilian Blowout’s product, steering the media to focus on faulty aspects of their respective studies, and burying the truth  –  that the product does not release formaldehyde in amounts that exceed state or federal short-term or long-term exposure limits.

Enter Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D – 3 – OR).  Ontheissues.org labels him a “hard-core Liberal”, and you know what that means when it comes to anything involving chemicals or the environment.   Rep. Blumenauer sponsored nonsensical bills like HR 3311 that taxes drivers based on miles driven; a ludicrous bill to jump-start the funding of streetcars; a bill to establish under-the-radar death panels; a bill providing environmental education grants for outdoor experiences (huh?); and even one quashing free speech by attempting to ban a website promoting the perfectly safe Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump.

So Rep. Blumenauer reads about OSHA’s nonsense in the media and, because he’s a politician, doesn’t do his research, either.  Nor does he bother contacting the company to get their side of the story.   Instead, he grandstands by penning a letter to the Food and Drug Administration asking that they recall the product — a product already proven to meet OSHA standards!

I asked Rep. Blumenauer’s press secretary, Derek Schlickeisen, about this approach to policy.  His assertion was that politicians “can’t have a chemist on staff”, and thus rely on OSHA’s scientists to bring incidents like this to light.  When I mentioned that the company-funded study by Health Science Associates showed formaldehyde levels below OSHA standards, he inferred that the study held little weight because it was company funded.

Yet why is it that OSHA’s results are given any more credibility, especially when OSHA caused a panic based entirely on a faulty sample?  Are we to believe that OSHA scientists are somehow free of ideological bias?  Kermit McCarthy, one of the authors of the Oregon OSHA study, “likes” hard-core Liberal Sen. Ron Wyden according to his Facebook page.  Why isn’t his bias questioned?  If anything, a government worker is likely more biased than a private company to insert bias, because his very job depends on his work generating a result that permits the government to do something.  Otherwise, the agency’s existence, and the employee’s, have no purpose.

The FDA: Where Nonsense Meets Politics

Now the drama turns to the FDA, which should operate as an independent agency, but doesn’t.  It’s a political entity, and when a politician writes them a letter, they have to do something.  So they take several months to decide what to do.  In the interim, the Cosmetic Ingredient Review Panel effectively came down on the side of the company, saying:

“We urge FDA to work expeditiously with OSHA and appropriate state and local organizations to objectively determine if salon hair smoothing products emit levels of formaldehyde gas that are unsafe for consumers or salon workers under their intended conditions of use and taking into consideration salon ventilation practices [emphasis mine]“.

Meanwhile, FDA spokesman Arthur Whitmore confirmed that the FDA never conducted its own air sampling, which its Investigations Operations Manual permits.  Instead, Mr. Whitmore confirmed that the FDA “…did conduct experiments to simulate what occurs in a salon setting by heating the product at various temperatures and measuring formaldehyde production.”  But how much of the product did the FDA heat up?  The amount used in a treatment?  More?  Less?  And what about ventilation?  Did the FDA consider that salons are ventilated and whatever gross amount of formaldehyde that may have been released in a simulated situation does not in any way reflect reality?

Starting to see problems with the FDA’s approach?  I am.  This is ironic, considering the FDA’s own manual reads:

“4.1.3 – Responsibility.  Collect every sample as if you will be required to testify in court about everything you did concerning each and every event surrounding the sample collection. Mistakes or deficiencies, however trivial they may seem, can fatally damage the government’s case. Be objective, accurate, and thorough.”

Even worse, Mr. Whitmore said:

“FDA used information from a number of sources to support the warning letter including data obtained by Oregon OSHA, Federal OSHA, Health Canada, and FDA’s own laboratory studies. FDA data was obtained using HPLC and mass spectrometry, and it agreed with the data obtained from other sources. It also agreed with a recent study published in the November issue of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene”

This is known as “fruit of the poisonous tree”, in that it relied on data I have proven to be inaccurate and misleading in my previous articles.  In my next article, I also debunk the cited Journal study (it used more product than directed).

Nevertheless, the FDA had all of the following to examine:

• Oregon OSHA report showing the product is safe.
• Federal OSHA report showing the product is safe.
• Health Sciences Associates report showing the product is safe.
• It’s own guide to chemicals that shows methylene glycol and formaldehyde are different substances.
• A Liberal environmentalist politician’s letter asking them to ban the product.
• Heavily biased media reports.

And what does the FDA do?

They issue a warning letter.

And yet another round of media hysteria follows….in which the company is granted one sentence in each report, “denying the allegations”.

MSNBC

Huffington Post

ABC News

Fox News

Headline News

CNN

ABC local news

Company Fights Back; Media is Silent

In truth, Brazilian Blowout agreed to cooperate with the FDA to demonstrate that the product was neither adulterated nor misleading, and although they disagreed with the FDA over whether or not their product was considered “formaldehyde free”, they removed that language from their product.

Still, not a single media outlet has asked the company about their side of the story.

In fact, the company’s response letter to the FDA laid out a coherent and comprehensive rebuttal to the agency (available for review).  In short, the company presented all the evidence presented in this series along with two other major points.  First, they insist the product is not “adulterated” because it doesn’t “contain a deleterious substance that may render it injurious to users under the contradiction of use prescribed in its labeling”.   In other words, if people (and OSHA) use the product as directed, no injurious substance gets released.   Second, in relying on OSHA’s data, the FDA relied on a third party’s inferior method of sampling formaldehyde, a method that itself actually produces formaldehyde!

Now we turn to the media coverage of this forceful response.

The Perfect Storm

I’ve repeatedly stated that I conducted this investigation as a real journalist should have.  The truth is available for those who seek it — and it is available cheaply, easily, and rapidly.   That the mainstream media has repeatedly presented the government’s untenable position regarding this product, and ignored the other side of the story, goes beyond the excuse that “fear sells”.   Rather, they have pro-actively partnered in a Liberal environmentalist vendetta against a successful hair product company.

This sordid affair is demonstrative not only of the media’s own Leftist bias, but the problem of government.  Don’t tell me there isn’t bias inside a government agency, especially in this Administration and especially in Oregon.  What does it say when a politician doesn’t even have to conduct his own due diligence, and instead just points to a government agency, and use their findings as gospel even if proven to be flawed, and then leverage that to engage yet another government entity to try and kill a business?

It says that government is over-reaching and harming private businesses –in this case, hair product companies, salons, and stylists.  Why isn’t Rep. Blumenauer being held to account for attacking a company without doing his due diligence?  Where is OSHA’s accountability?  Where is that agency’s checks and balances?

I’ve at least injected enough doubt into this mess to demonstrate that the government is no longer working for us.  It’s working against us.

Next time: I’ll present a definitive study that acquits the company’s position and present yet another flawed study — this one by a private entity.  The contrast will shock you.

In the course of the interview, Schweizer responded to Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-GA), chair of the House Committee on Financial Services, who is fighting calls for his resignation. As it has become clear that the insider trading scandal is not going away, Rep. Bachus has abandoned his early reticence in favor of a more aggressive defense.

Schweizer, who was joined on the show by Steve Kroft of CBS, reiterated his case against insider trading in Congress:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Bachus seems to be fighting a losing battle, as momentum for reform builds in Washington. Even Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), the ranking member on Bachus’s committee–who belatedly discovered his enthusiasm for reforming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac when facing a serious public backlash and a tough re-election–is now calling upon Bachus to join efforts to pass the STOCK (Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge) Act.

Big Government has obtained a letter that Rep. Frank sent to Rep. Bachus urging him to support the STOCK Act–”which, I acknowledge, should have been addressed when I was the Chairman.”

Rep. Bachus’s letter to Schweizer’s publisher is posted below, followed by Schweizer’s response, and by Rep. Frank’s letter to Rep. Bachus.

Bachus Letter

***

Schweizer’s response:

There is nothing a Member of Congress can do that is more
important than uphold the public trust.

—Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL), November 16, 2011,
Letter to the President of Houghton Mifflin Publishing

Rep. Spencer Bachus is upset that my book, Throw Them All Out, has exposed the disturbing realities of his continual use of material nonpublic information to execute almost perfectly timed stock trades during the financial meltdown in the fall of 2008 that made him tens of thousands of dollars in profit.

His attempt to obfuscate his trading habits will not distract citizens from analyzing the facts I report in my book and that CBS aired during its 60 Minutes investigation of Congressman Bachus’s insider trading practices.

Indeed, even now, less than 48 hours after the book’s release, Senators Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and Susan Collins (R-ME) are announcing that they will hold hearings to examine how insider trading laws apply to Congress, and bipartisan support is growing for the STOCK Act to put an end to the kinds of behavior in which Rep. Bachus consistently engaged during the financial crisis of 2008.

In his letter to my publisher, Rep. Bachus never refutes the core facts I present involving his stock transactions. By implication, he accepts the following as fact. During the financial crisis of 2008, he actively and aggressively engaged in stock options trading in the following:

Sector SPDRS: September 2, October 15
IShares: October 22
Market Vector Trust: November 3
Sony Corporation: October 20
Powershares QQQ: October 7 (twice), October 9; October 20 (2 times); October 20 (2 times); October 21
Powershares Ultra-Short: September 19
S&P Depositor: October 6, October 7, October 14 (4 times)

As I point out in my book, these trades often came one day after either an important private meeting, or near the date of important legislative activities.

Instead, he raises questions about just a few of the forty transactions that happened during the time period discussed, none of which are germane to the point I make in my book that the insider trading laws that apply to us should apply to Congressman Bachus and the other 534 members of Congress.

The question remains: what on earth was Congressman Bachus, the ranking Republican member of the House Financial Services Committee, doing trading options in publicly-traded companies and the overall market while he had access to sensitive, private material information, even as America sat on the brink of a financial implosion?

Rep. Bachus also tries to paint a picture of the September 18th private meeting in which he took part, and which included senior congressional leaders overseeing the nation’s finances. The meeting was, in fact, so secretive that all cell phones, BlackBerries, or devices that could lead to communications to others that might roil world capital markets were banned from entering the room. Rep. Bachus does not deny being at that meeting.

The meeting was called by the Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. As has been recounted in numerous memoirs, books, and a C-SPAN interview with Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-PA), Mr. Bernanke and Secretary Paulson explained how of the mishandled bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers earlier in the week was triggering a financial tsunami that could potentially destroy the American financial system in 72 hours and the global system in three weeks, and perhaps lead to a breakdown of social order.

As described in Secretary Paulson’s memoirs, Bernanke told them: “It is a matter of days before there is a meltdown of the global financial system.” It was for that reason that the members sat “ashen faced.”

The purpose of the meeting was for the Secretary of the Treasury to ask for $800 billion to $1 trillion to stem the potential financial implosion. Thus began the saga of TARP. Furthermore, those inside the meeting were told that the information discussed was for their ears only, and that no discussion of the potential of a financial collapse of our country could be discussed. There is no record that any member of that meeting went on TV, radio, or talked to newspapers about the degree of financial calamity that the country faced until much later.

And what did Rep. Spencer Bachus do with this highly sensitive nonpublic information? At his first opportunity the next morning, he made a bet on the most aggressive type of options trading by placing a leveraged put that shorted the market (ProShares Ultra-Short QQQ) and would benefit tremendously from the potential crash. Rep. Spencer Bachus essentially used material nonpublic information to bet against his country and the people he represents in order to profit himself. And profit he did. He more than doubled his money. He has denied none of this.

Bachus’s claim that the meeting was no big deal and that everyone knew that the markets were in trouble is laughable and disingenuous. It fails to explain why both the Treasury Secretary and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve were extremely alarmed upon learning about the true scale of the financial calamity facing the nation. Furthermore, an examination of the Dow Jones Industrial Average eveals a several-weeks-long, precipitous decline of the market at that time. It was over the course of several weeks, not hours or days, that Americans and shareholders began to recognize the extent of the crisis. Yet Rep. Bachus knew it on September 18.

Similarly, Rep. Bachus’s letter has nothing to say about his long history of options trading, before and after the financial crisis, including a pattern of trading options in individual companies overseen by a committee on which he served. Should a representative who sat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee at the time, which regulates airlines, really have been trading stock options in United Airlines? I don’t think I need to answer that question.

It is revealing that Rep. Bachus, in a letter to my publisher, enclosed a column by Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. of the Wall Street Journal–an author who is openly skeptical of insider trading laws, and recently sided with Wall Street’s highest profile insider trading defendants. Even Jenkins acknowledges that “congressmen let themselves behave in ways they wouldn’t permit for the rest of us, indeed would denounce as greedy.”

Rep. Bachus has tried his best to confuse people on these matters. Of course, at this point, what other “option” does he have?

The time has come for Rep. Bachus to admit to the American people what he did, and to take responsibility for a pattern of behavior that has exacerbated a profound crisis of confidence in the integrity of our political system.

***

Frank Letter

It led to a popular song by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and all manner of public outrage.

These “Occupy” mutants would like nothing more than to repeat that, especially now that the liberal Public Policy Polling firm found their movement to be less popular than the body lice with which they are infested.

But in the age of the Internet and camera phones, that’s just not possible.

In 1970 there were just 3 television networks, filming events was rare, grainy and encumbered by bulky, expensive equipment. A photograph, like one iconic one from Kent State, had no context beyond what a writer gave it. That’s no longer the case.

Everyone has a camera, video is not in short supply, context can no longer be given extemporaneously. If and when violence breaks out from the “Occupiers,” who’ve pledged to shut down parts of major cities around the country tomorrow, they won’t be able to spin the context of their actions beyond what is already on the public record.

When a protester says “You’re going to see what a Molotov Cocktail can do to Macy’s” on camera, their intentions are clear. The continual flow of threats of violence, and acts of violence, from these mutants is well documented online. They’re proud of it. That wasn’t the case in 1970.

While the threats and actions were there, President Obama’s good friend Bill Ayers and his Weather Underground terrorists were just one of many groups engaging in terrorists attacks against the United States, the all important look inside the mind of those people wasn’t.

Radicals back then were paranoid, refusing to speak their intentions freely in front of anyone but their most trusted inner circle. Their public pronouncements were more measured and filled with what they determined to be digestible, acceptable statements. They were crazy, but they weren’t stupid. They knew the American people would never support their radical agenda, so they hid it. That is not the case today.

The narcissism of today’s radicals doesn’t afford them the consciousness of the unpopularity of their agenda. This comes from the radicals in academia who present only one side of issues and pop culture that relentlessly reinforces the lies they’ve been told. For those who’ve never questioned what they were told, accepted it whole-cloth, never stepping outside the liberal bubble, seeing what they were told reinforced everywhere they looked gave them an arrogance of false righteousness their forefathers didn’t have.

That’s why they live stream their meetings nightly. That’s why the gleefully embrace the “human microphone,” not thinking the stripping of individuality would be disconcerting to a nation founded on rugged individualism.

Yes, their fellow travelers in the mainstream media have done their best to conceal their violence, their threats and their general creepiness, but they’ve bypassed the traditional media because they arrogantly assumed “We the People” were on their side. But the more we saw, the more disgusted we became.

The Internet and the camera phone, the very devices they thought would be their most valuable tool in spreading their message to the masses, is their ultimate downfall.

No one will have sympathy for anyone killed or injured by police in a riot if there is video of people calling for violence and riots against police beforehand. If there is video of people making threats, engaging in violence, calling the police “pigs!” That doesn’t fly in the modern age.

So by the time the “National Day of Action” starts tomorrow, this minority of mutants has already damaged their “brand” beyond repair. The iconic image of the “Occupy” movement will never be a screaming woman over a dead body, it will forever be a man defecating on a police car, windows of businesses being broken or any number of other offensive things willingly and deliberately done and said on camera for the world to see.

In the end, the worst enemy of the “Occupy” mutants was not the establishment, it wasn’t Wall Street, it wasn’t Fox News, it wasn’t Republicans, it was they, themselves.

In 1971, John Kerry famously asked “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” Similarly, how can these “occupiers” ask, no hope, someone is the first to die for their’s?

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Color me naive, but CNN is not MSNBC. Liberal, sure. But, it at least tries not to seem totally in the tank for the left, unlike Politico and MSNBC. So, I don’t think the DNC will own the same real estate in Wolf Blitzer’s brain as it had in Harris/Williams. Then again, according to news reports today, it won’t have to. Amazingly, two leading candidates for the GOP nomination, Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann, look set to take a page from the DNC and ThinkProgress playbook and attack Gov. Rick Perry for daring to speak the truth about Social Security. Below is a flier the Romney campaign is distributing in Florida.

And, yesterday, Bachmann’s campaign had this to say to Byron York:

“Bernie Madoff deals with Ponzi schemes, not the grandparents of America,” says a Bachmann adviser. “Clearly she feels differently about the value of Social Security than Gov. Perry does. She believes Social Security needs to be saved, that it’s an important safety net for Americans who have paid into it all their lives.” … “She strongly disagrees with his position on that…”

So let me get this straight; we now have TWO GOP candidates against any kind of entitlement reform? Really? We can’t begin to get out from under our overwhelming debt burden unless we tackle these auto-pilot programs. You could close every government agency and slash defense spending in half and we’re still screwed if we don’t reform Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. How can Romney or Bachmann seek to be President if they don’t understand this basic fact? I mean, its not just a theory…its math.

Of course, they do understand this. Just as everyone in DC understands that these programs are unsustainable. You could fill every hour of the day attending conferences and meetings in DC where everyone discusses how our entitlement programs are killing us. For decades, there have been warnings, white papers and commissions detailing this very open secret. Seriously, EVERYONE knows this.

Gov. Perry simply had the chutzpah to admit it publicly. Michael Kinsley once famously observed that, in Washington, a gaffe is when a politician accidentally states the truth. Gov. Perry has done that. He has admitted what everyone already knows; Social Security IS a ponzi scheme, in any meaningful understanding of the term. We can’t “fix” it or “save” it until we admit this simple fact.

Now, I know supporters of Romney and Bachmann will counter that the candidates aren’t against entitlement reform, per se. And, I’m sure they have paragraphs of focus-group-tested words about the need to “reform” these programs. The problem is that we’ve heard similar talk from politicians for decades. Damn near 100% of the people elected to office over the last 30 years, from both parties, have publicly agreed that we need to “reform” entitlements. Hell, even Obama says this. The problem, though, is that no one ever does anything about it.

So, to a degree, Romney and Bachmann’s rhetoric is just standard operating procedure for politicians. Except, they are flirting with a dangerous game that is far worse. They are demagoguing the issue for short-term political advantage. They are exploiting DNC talking points and trying to terrify seniors into securing the GOP nomination for President. How can you possibly “reform” entitlements if your candidacy is based on scaring people about changes to these very programs? Were either to become President, there would be no mandate to reform entitlements. In fact, there would be an opposite mandate. Its the status quo that’s killing us. If 2012 is about anything, preserving the status quo ain’t it.

The other thing Romney and Bachmann are missing is that Gov. Perry is right on the politics of this. For decades, the American public has been fed a steady diet of happy-talk from politicians. And, the public sees where we are. The happy-talk isn’t working. It is long past time for politicians to come clean with the public. My sense is that the public is ready for this. Decisions over the next 18 months will determine whether we are again that “shiny city on the hill” or whether we are Detroit. DC consultants may not understand this…but the public does.

Let the truth set you free.

Today, it was reported that jobless claims spiked higher…yet again. The CBO reported that, through the last 11 months, the federal government has spent almost $1.3 Trillion more than it took in. European banks are on the edge of collapse and the entire world economy balances precariously on the edge of a global depression. If the US economy hasn’t technically yet entered another recession, it is only a matter of time before it does.

The housing market is set for another downturn. The number of Americans in the labor force is at historic lows. There is no prospect for economic recovery at any point in the future. I could go on and on, but you get the point. The economy is teetering on the edge of another collapse and government debt has so suffocated us that we are flirting with a period of permanent decline.

And yet, at last night’s GOP debate at the Reagan Library (!), neither John Harris with Politico nor Brian Williams with NBCMSNBCCOMCASTGE, asked a SINGLE question about these issues. Nothing about government spending, debt or the economy. Instead, we were treated to almost 90 minutes of questions on HPV vaccines, immigration, FEMA, TSA, welfare, poverty programs (more in need after 2+ years of Obama than ever) and science. Science?!?

Seriously, do John Harris and Brian Williams need an up-to-date calendar? Are they stuck in the 90s, when the economy seemed fine and all we had to worry about were so-called ’social’ issues, ’smart growth’ and school uniforms. We thought we were fat and happy then and could afford the luxury of the ’small’ issues. We aren’t anymore, but that is all they fed us. If I closed my eyes, I don’t know that I could have told you whether this ‘debate’ was for President of the state legislature.

Now, of course, John Harris and Brian Williams aren’t really idiots. They know perfectly well what year it is and what issues consume Americans these days. They know the economy sucks and is likely to get worse. They understand that large swathes of the country are worried about government spending and our debt. They realize that over 70% of Americans think the country is on the wrong path. But, asking any of those questions would afford the GOP candidates the opportunity to criticize the media’s protege, Barack Obama. Obama is a product of journOlisters like Harris and Williams. They glide-pathed his way to the White House. But for them, his approval ratings would be in the teens. Last night showed how far they are prepared to go to keep him in office.

The ‘tell’ was revealed early. In the first minute, Brian “I’m-a-lot-more-lefty-than-you-thought” Williams signaled that he was going all-in with Aces and Eights.  He made a reference to the bad economy and stated that “Americans” blame it on eight years of Bush. (!) Never mind that Obama and the Democrats had two years and $1 Trillion of our kids money to indulge their lefty policy fantasies. He then went on the attack against Gov. Rick Perry, using flawed talking points from ThinkProgress to try to undercut the very real Texas jobs miracle. That it was his opening play tells you how much that record terrifies them.

John Harris later nervously stepped up to the microphone (how much were his knees knocking under the table?) to cherry-pick excerpts from Rick Perry’s book to goad the other candidates to declare Perry unfit for polite society. Most, fortunately, didn’t take the bait. Of course, as Andrew has pointed out, they were all already on the hook by even participating in this “debate.”

It was, simply, not the finest hour of Presidential debates nor journalism. But, it also almost doesn’t matter. The public has moved on from the world Harris and Williams cling to. It is unfortunate the the GOP still plays this game, but I think they will slowly learn the lesson. Brian Williams, with his seven-figure salary and rapidly declining audience, is a dying breed. John Harris, who has pushed Politico further to the left then MSNBC, looks like the guy who arrived late to the party. He finally clawed his way to a position of influence in the mainstream media at the exact moment that influence is collapsing.

I hope their performance last night is studied in future journalism classes. They showed us what it looks like when you slip the bonds of journalism and become partisan hacks. Old media is dead. Long live the new media.