Ohio Senator Acknowledges Any Health Reform Bill Will Lead to Public Option

When President Obama hit the campaign trail in an attempt to sway Dennis Kucinich (yes, he’s reaching so low in the barrel, he’s trying to convince Dennis Kucinich), the administration began its full-court press on its allies.

As has been said here and elsewhere a zillion times: the American people don’t want what the Democrats are offering.  But an acknowledgement by Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown on the Rachel Maddow Show gives an even better reason to oppose the legislation: it’s simply a wedge in the door to a “public option.”  From a Monday appearance:

MADDOW:  Should we not expect the public option anytime soon?

BROWN:  No.  Just—Rachel, you know history.  I‘ve seen your show enough to know that you understand sort of how progressive—the progressive movements worked.  When we passed, what, Social Security was passed in the ‘30s.  It wasn‘t all that great at the time.  When Medicare was passed, it was good, but not great.

… That‘s what happens here.  This—you can bet that a lot of us are going to introduce a public option bill.

(more…)

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Tags: Dennis Kucinich, ObamaCare, Ohio, public option, Rachel Maddow
Posted Mar 17th 2010 at 11:47 am in Congress, Healthcare | 91206127 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/kolson/2010/03/17/ohio-senator-acknowledges-any-health-reform-bill-will-lead-to-public-option/Ohio+Senator+Acknowledges+Any+Health+Reform+Bill+Will+Lead+to+Public+Option2010-03-17+18%3A47%3A17Kyle+Olson

Andrew Breitbart’s Address To CPAC 2010

Below is the full length speech Andrew Breitbart delivered to CPAC 2010. We have also taken the liberty of breaking out some of the best soundbites from the speech.

1. Mr. Podesta, we are watching you!
2. What I learned from Kurt Cobain
3. E Pluribis Unum
4. The Frankfort School roots of multiculturalism and political correctness
5. Big Education
6. MSM – You are not on the American team!
7. CPAC cuts Breitbart short

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Tags: Big Education, Columbia University, CPAC 2010, David Shuster, Frankfort School
Posted Feb 22nd 2010 at 5:41 pm in Culture, Featured Story, History, Media Criticism, News, Politics, Tea Party | 78850104 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/amarcus/2010/02/22/andrew-breitbarts-address-to-cpac-2010/Andrew+Breitbart%27s+Address+To+CPAC+20102010-02-23+01%3A41%3A32Andrew++Marcus

Reason.tv: 3 Reasons Not to Sweat Citizens United

No recent Supreme Court ruling have evoked more liberal fury than Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, a campaign-finance case involving government censorship of a political documentary called Hillary: The Movie. The Federal Election Commission prevented the anti-Hillary Clinton film from being shown on television just before the 2008 Democratic primaries, a decision that was upheld by lower courts. Siding with The First Amendment, the Court struck down laws regulating independent political advertising by for-profit and non-profit corporations before an election even as they reaffirmed rules about disclosure and disclosures for ads and against direct corporate giving to candidates.

Critics fear that corporations will now overwhelm the political marketplace with commercials and advertisements that will program citizens to vote for whatever agenda “the corprations” want at a given moment.

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann railed against the decision, calling it “a Supreme Court-sanctioned murder of what little democracy is left in this democracy” and comparing it to the notorious Dred Scott decision, which ruled that  had no rights under the Constitution. His fellow corporate media host at MSNBC, Rachel Maddow, exclaimed, “If you are a regular person who has ever made a campaign donation before, forget about ever having to do that again. What’s the point?”

(more…)

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Tags: Barack Obama, campaign finance, campaign finance reform, Citizens United, Dred Scott decision
Posted Feb 3rd 2010 at 12:59 pm in Big Labor, Congress, Justice/Legal, Media Criticism, Obama, Politics | 6929869 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/ngillespie/2010/02/03/reason-tv-3-reasons-not-to-sweat-citizens-united/Reason.tv%3A+3+Reasons+Not+to+Sweat+Citizens+United2010-02-03+20%3A59%3A01Nick+Gillespie

How David Shuster Lied to Get Me to Appear on MSNBC

Today is the day that I have been invited to go on MSNBC for the very first time.  At no point during the ACORN story was I put on the hot seat to defend the work of James O’Keefe.  My thesis from day one has been that the mainstream media is biased in favor of the left and MSNBC is its most obvious case study.

So when MSNBC led the charge on Tuesday against James O’Keefe when he and three others were arrested in New Orleans at Senator Landrieu’s office, it came as no surprise that the cable network seized upon a narrative that presumed O’Keefe’s guilt, falsely extrapolated that he was being charged with felony wiretapping and instantaneously coined and repeated endlessly the new buzz phase, “Watergate Jr.”

Thus it came as no surprise to me that Keith Olbermann’s super sub, David Shuster, called me early Wednesday.  ”Watergate Jr.” pushed MSNBC to send Shuster down to New Orleans to own the destruction-by-media of James O’Keefe and anyone in his proximity.  I immediately told Shuster that I had been getting emails about his absurd, over-the-top and rush-to-judgment journalism.  He told me that I had him confused with Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann, that he has “no horse in this race.”  He asked that I come on his show and that he would give me a fair interview.  He proceeded to send me the following emails to formalize the request.  See below <strong>(emphasis mine)</strong>:

As you see, Shuster is attempting to lure me into this story based upon the false premise of his objective neutrality on the issue. Notice he says, “As I said, I don’t have a horse in this race.” A simple Google search of David Shuster and James O’Keefe immediately finds that Shuster went into a Twitter frenzy to tar and feather James O’Keefe and propogated what are now provably false lies about the Landrieu case.

See below:

(Read the full post and watch the video of the interview at BigJournalism.com)

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Tags: ACORN, David Shuster, James O'Keefe, journalism, Keith Olbermann
Posted Jan 28th 2010 at 12:02 pm in ACORN, Featured Story, Media Criticism | 66502801 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/abreitbart/2010/01/28/how-david-shuster-lied-to-get-me-to-appear-on-msnbc/How+David+Shuster+Lied+to+Get+Me+to+Appear+on+MSNBC2010-01-28+20%3A02%3A49Andrew+Breitbart

MSM Leaping to Conclusions — While Big Government Waits for Facts

Wait until the facts are in.

Mainstream Media, ACORN, Media Matters (all the supposed defenders of due process and journalistic ethics) are jumping to conclusions over the arrest today of James O’Keefe, with the clear intention to smear and, if possible, convict O’Keefe and his alleged co-conspirators in the court of public opinion in order to taint the “jury of their peers.”

The ACORN story was a huge black eye for the organized left and their allies and cohorts in the mainstream media. So they are relishing every minute of this breaking story, making it their top story – while they ignored the initial ACORN story until they no longer could.

MSNBC and other “news organizations” are even billing this developing story as “Watergate”. What do  Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow know? And when did they know it?

(more…)

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Tags: ACORN, Carol Leonnig, due process, James O'Keefe, journalistic ethics
Posted Jan 26th 2010 at 9:20 pm in Featured Story, Justice/Legal, Media Criticism, News, Politics | 65666830 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/abreitbart/2010/01/26/wait-until-the-facts-are-in/MSM+Leaping+to+Conclusions+--+While+Big+Government+Waits+for+Facts2010-01-27+05%3A20%3A00Andrew+Breitbart

The Leftist Bullies

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.

(more…)

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Tags: Anderson Cooper, climategate, CNN, Keith Olberman, MSNBC
Posted Jan 7th 2010 at 10:49 am in Big Labor, Congress, Economics, Environment, Healthcare, Obama, Politics, Tax Reform, Tea Party | 56278308 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/johara/2010/01/07/the-liberal-bullying-psyche/The+Leftist+Bullies2010-01-07+18%3A49%3A21John+M.+O%26%2339%3BHara

Tea Parties: The Biggest Mistake We Could Make in 2010

It’s the end of 2009, the “aughts” are over, and we are about to embark on a new year — and what else are they but the “aughts”? Well, besides mostly a horrible and thankfully passed decade. In any case, we are at the end of the year and that means two things: lists about this year and predictions for the next. I’ve chosen the prognosticator’s art for this piece with the subject of what could be our biggest failure or mistake in 2010: the Tea Party movement.

We all know that just saying the words “Tea Party” is enough to raise American’s blood pressure. Some will become suspicious or even enraged by imagining I am about to attack the Tea Partiers, some on the left will be filled with disgust even thinking about the Tea Partiers at all, and still others will get their blood up thinking about why the Tea Party movement started in the first place. For 2009 “Tea” and “Party” were two words that raised American’s passions in a myriad of ways, for sure. That won’t change in 2010.

(more…)

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Tags: Doug Hoffman, gop, grass roots movement, Jerry Falwell, Keith Olbermann
Posted Dec 30th 2009 at 6:01 am in Congress, Economics, Featured Story, Tax Reform, Tea Party | 52778667 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/wthuston/2009/12/30/tea-parties-the-biggest-mistake-we-could-make-in-2010/Tea+Parties%3A+The+Biggest+Mistake+We+Could+Make+in+20102009-12-30+14%3A01%3A57Warner+Todd++Huston

Study: Has Editor & Publisher ‘Falsely Framed’ Peter Dreier as an Objective ACORN Critic?

Media criticism of our ongoing and still unfolding ACORN story has been as bad as it has been funny and sad. The racket that is the mainstream media is coming to an end and exposed reporters and journalists, no longer feigning neutrality, have chosen to drive off the cliff, a la Thelma and Louise, in a customized ACORN convertible.

Professor and ACORN Adviser Peter Dreier

On Monday Christopher R. Martin and Peter Dreier wrote a commentary entitled “Have the Media ‘Falsely Framed’ ACORN?” for Editor & Publisher, “the authoritative journal covering all aspects of the North American newspaper industry, including business, newsroom, advertising, circulation, marketing, technology, online and syndicates.“  E&P was once the bible of the newspaper and publishing business, but in recent years has moved hard left, hiding its ideological tilt under a patina of “scholarship.”

Martin and Dreier’s piece — while not framed as such — is an ideological defense of ACORN and an attack on those who have truthfully investigated and exposed the obviously troubled community organizing group. It’s basically, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men trying to put ACORN together again. But instead of attempting to rebuild the king, Martin and Dreier are trying to rebuild the media and the left elite, who use the poor and the downtrodden as their foot soldiers in order to maintain power in government, academia, the media and Hollywood.  For them, ACORN provides the perfect photo-op.

(more…)

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Tags: ACORN, acorn scandal, Alvivon Hurd, Bon Bon Hurd, Christopher Martin
Posted Nov 25th 2009 at 11:15 am in ACORN, Featured Story, Media Criticism, News, Politics | 3689050 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/abreitbart/2009/11/25/study-has-editor-publisher-falsely-framed-peter-dreier-as-an-objective-acorn-critic/Study%3A+Has+Editor+%26+Publisher+%27Falsely+Framed%27+Peter+Dreier+as+an+Objective+ACORN+Critic%3F2009-11-25+18%3A15%3A30Andrew+Breitbart

How the MSM Might Survive: Come Out of the Ideological Closet

Whenever reading Politico, everything should be washed through this filter. You must always keep in the front of your mind that this supposed “news” organization took the time to dig up and publicize dirt on a private citizen whose only sin was asking a perfectly reasonable question of a public figure. Politico’s warning to the everyday American was clear: get in the way of our guy and we will summon all our resources to publicly humiliate you. This all goes to prove that Politico is nothing more than a digital version of the Dinosaur Media — and just as clueless and dishonest as their unholy brethren, especially when it comes to explaining why their counterparts are drowning in the tar pits of obsolescence.

To hear Politico tell it, CNN’s stuck in humiliating fourth place behind FOX, MSNBC and their own Headline News because they’ve made the mistake of not appealing to the great unwashed who prefer partisan bickering and echo chambers:

With the proliferation of media across platforms these days, there’s less shared knowledge among people, who are increasingly heading to niche outlets for information. At the same time, there’s a large appetite for the new media world where the MSM gatekeepers no longer hold as much clout, and “he said, she said” journalism gives way to strong point of view. …

There’s no doubt that the over-the-top, and politically partisan, hosts are having more success attracting viewers on nights when there’s no major news event. (more…)

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Tags: ABC, Breitbart's Bigs, CBS, CNN, Daily Kos
Posted Nov 2nd 2009 at 12:03 pm in Media Criticism, Politics | 24210107 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/jjmnolte/2009/11/02/how-the-msm-might-survive-come-out-of-the-ideological-closet/How+the+MSM+Might+Survive%3A+Come+Out+of+the+Ideological+Closet2009-11-02+19%3A03%3A18John+Nolte

The Party of “No Ideas” Vs The Party of Failed Ideas – The Fight Between Conservatives and the Media on Health Reform

A friend of mine on Facebook recently wrote the following about an article on the life of the late Irving Kristol:

“Once upon a time, not too many years ago, the Republican Party was the party of ideas. Would even its staunchest supporters say so today? I think not. The sole substance of the Republican Party today is opposition to whatever the Democrats are for, period.”

Were it true, it would be damning.  Thankfully it’s not.

My friend, a former White House high-ranking employee in both the Reagan and Bush 41 administrations, grew angry, very angry, about the direction of the Republican Party under President Bush 43, something upon which I agree with him.  But, unlike him, I prefer to stay and fight for what’s right within the party I agree with most, not abandon it. He grew so angry that he voted for Obama in 2008.  Now, I don’t claim to know how any human being works internally, but I don’t understand how someone who claims to be a conservative could make that sort of switch. Simply because your side didn’t live up to their ideals doesn’t mean, to my mind, that  you switch to the side that advocates explicitly the opposite point of view.

But that’s neither here nor there. My friend, and everyone else, is free to vote for whomever they want, for whatever reason they want.  What I take issue with his the common mantra of the Left, echoed by my friend, that Republicans are out of ideas and Democrats are a fountain new ones.

(more…)

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Tags: Barack Obama, Bruce Bartlett, Canada, Ed Schutz, Facebook
Posted Oct 6th 2009 at 6:00 am in Congress, Featured Story, Healthcare, Politics | 1264660 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/dhunter/2009/10/06/the-party-of-no-ideas-vs-the-party-of-failed-ideas-the-fight-between-conservatives-and-the-media-on-health-reform/The+Party+of+%E2%80%9CNo+Ideas%E2%80%9D+Vs+The+Party+of+Failed+Ideas+-+The+Fight+Between+Conservatives+and+the+Media+on+Health+Reform2009-10-06+13%3A00%3A38Derek+Hunter

ACORN ‘Advisory’ Committee Has Huge Stake in Success of Group

As ACORN’s faux independent review gets under way, ACORN’s advisory committee, made of up key liberal allies, is watching it closely, as seen in a fresh media advisory issued by David Redlener of The Advance Group and obtained by ACORNcracked.com.  That’s because ACORN is a critical component to the Left’s agenda for America.

Remember during the bank bailouts the justification was because they were “too big to fail.”  Well, to the liberal Left, ACORN is too big to fail.  It has its hands in too many things and runs an effective ground operation through registering voters, turning them out on Election Day, as well as managing ballot initiative campaigns as a tool to boost Democratic turn-out.

Consider Professor Peter Dreier’s analysis of ACORN’s use of ballot initiatives, from a 2005 article he wrote:

ACORN’s strategy to inject this issue into state ballot measures is another important step. In early 2004, ACORN initiated a statewide ballot initiative in Florida to raise the state minimum wage, registered thousands of residents, mostly in low-income, minority neighborhoods in cities, to increase turnout on election day, and won a decisive victory the following November. On its own, this is an impressive accomplishment. Since its victory in Florida, ACORN and its labor allies have begun talking about grassroots minimum-wage initiatives in other states in 2006, particularly where Democrats have a chance to expand, or hold on to, key offices. Campaigns are already underway in Ohio, Michigan, and Arizona, and ACORN is exploring possibilities in six other states and several cities. The strategy is designed to increase voter turnout and to provide candidates with a clear economic-justice issue.

(more…)

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Tags: ACORN, acorn scandal, Andy Stern, ballot initiatives, Barack Obama
Posted Oct 1st 2009 at 11:20 am in ACORN, Big Labor, News, Politics, State Politics | 1099042 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/kolson/2009/10/01/acorn-advisory-committee-has-huge-stake-in-success-of-group/ACORN+%27Advisory%27+Committee+Has+Huge+Stake+in+Success+of+Group2009-10-01+18%3A20%3A17Kyle+Olson