If Bush Had Done That

Santorum: Special Prosecutor Should Investigate Sestak Bribery Allegation

Shon Jimenez — Thu, 27 May 2010 19:47:59 +0000

Former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum tells Newsmax that a special prosecutor should be appointed to investigate whether the Obama administration offered Rep. Joe Sestak a job if he dropped out of the Pennsylvania Democratic primary race he eventually won against Sen. Arlen Specter.

In an exclusive Newsmax.TV interview, Santorum said the allegation, if true, amounts to bribery and possibly an impeachable offense. He also compared the situation with the federal charges disgraced former Gov. Rod Blagojevich in Illinois is facing.

“I think it’s very serious,” Santorum said. “The president of the United States cannot and should not be out there trying to bribe people to not run for political office.

“To put it in the inverse, you have a governor of Illinois who’s potentially going to go to jail by trying to sell an office,” Santorum said, referring to Blagojevich. “And here you’re trying in a sense to sell people on not running for an office by giving them another office. So I think that’s a big problem.”

Santorum, who served two terms in the Senate before losing a re-election bid in 2006, is a commentator for Fox News. A stalwart conservative, he is being touted as a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2012 and is traveling across the country to measure support for such a run.

In a wide-ranging interview, Santorum also said:

Attorney General Eric Holder is unlikely to launch an investigation into the Sestak affair because of “his track record of not prosecuting Democrats or liberals.”
The Obama administration’s national defense policy is a dangerous mishmash of political correctness that doesn’t see Islamic fundamentalism as a security threat but is worried about global warming.
Democratic attacks on the Arizona immigration law are not only incorrect but have become reprehensible, with standing ovations given to Mexico’s president in the Congress as he attacks America.
He was surprised by the collapse of Specter in Democratic primary, but believes the field is now wide open for GOP candidate Pat Toomey, who has money and popularity with grassroots conservatives in Pennsylvania.
Strong candidates who have emerged in Washington state, California and Connecticut have given the GOP a good chance of winning back the Senate as well as the House.

Santorum said he is deeply troubled by a pattern of political maneuvering that has characterized the Obama White House. A president who had campaigned on building bipartisanship has instead become one of the most divisive presidents in recent memory.

As a result, Santorum said he doesn’t expect that Holder will delve deeply into the Sestak affair. It was Sestak himself who originally alleged that the White House approached him, telling Fox News’ Bret Baier in March that he was offered a position in the administration to leave the Pennsylvania Democratic Senate primary.

Now that he has won the primary, however, Sestak has stopped talking about the allegation and refused as recently as this week to answer reporters’ questions about the incident. Seven senior Republican senators Wednesday told Attorney General Eric Holder they want a special prosecutor to investigate the allegations.

“I have nothing else to say on the matter,” Sestak said in the Capitol Tuesday.

The White House has been similarly tight-lipped. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs fended off a dozen questions about Sestak’s allegation during a press briefing last week. On Sunday, Gibbs told CBS’ Bob Schieffer, “I’m not a lawyer. But lawyers in the White House and others have looked into conversations that were had with Congressman Sestak, and nothing inappropriate happened.”

Santorum said that may be true, but the charges are so troubling they should be investigated.

“I’m not particularly confident in this attorney general given his track record of not prosecuting Democrats or liberals that he’ll do anything but I would hope that they would look at this and seriously analyze whether a law was broken,” Santorum said.

“If what he [Obama] did, actually offering a bribe to an elected official for that political purpose, then certainly committing a crime like that is an impeachable offense,” Santorum said.

Adding to Santorum’s skepticism is the fact that Sestak now has the momentum in the Pennsylvania senate race because of his surprise victory over Specter.

“It surprised me he got knocked off as easily as he did,” Santorum said of Specter. “And when I say that, Joe Sestak ran one of the weakest campaigns I’ve ever seen run in Pennsylvania. He didn’t have much of an organization. He didn’t do a particularly good job raising money. He went out and said some controversial things . . . such as the president potentially tried to bribe him to get him out of the race. I mean, he’s a bit of an erratic kind of guy and he basically knocked Arlen Specter out of the race with one television commercial.”

The lesson of the election was to stay true to your beliefs – a principle Specter violated, Santorum said.

“So I think what it shows is if you’re a 30-year incumbent and you switch parties and give up every belief you had and go to the other side then you’re rather cynical about why you’re running and people in this election are not going to be supporting you and that’s what happened,” Santorum said.

The key for Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections will be to lay out a clear vision in economic and national security policy that distinguishes them from the Democrats. One important area will be homeland defense, he said. Another will be the growing immigration issue triggered by the passage of Arizona’s tough but popular new law.

In terms of defense, Santorum said, Obama still doesn’t realize what the threat to the homeland really is.

Santorum pointed to the Quadrennial Defense Review, a blueprint for homeland defense that is updated every four years. The latest version doesn’t even mention the threat of Islamic-based terrorism.

“Not once was the word Islam or Muslim mentioned in that document,” Santorum said. “Yet they spent eight pages talking about the strategic threat to our country of global warming. So we have a politically correct atmosphere not just in the attorney general’s office, but in the defense department and in the White House and it’s coming from the top down.

“This is someone (Holder) who obviously who does not consider the threat that we’re engaged with – the people who tried to blow themselves up over Detroit, the people who did successfully kill people at Fort Hood, the situation in Times Square and others – to be a legitimate threat. But this is consistent with the entire administration,” Santorum added.

Santorum, trained as an attorney, also slammed the administration’s attacks on the Arizona immigration law. He called the attempts to characterize it as racist a blatant political move to win over Hispanic support in the elections.

In fact, the law has more protections against racial profiling than federal law – a fact that administration officials like Holder, who admitted he hadn’t read the law – have sidestepped.

“It’s a power play on the part of President Obama,” Santorum said. “This is a man who was supposed to be a conciliator, no red state/blue state, we’re going to bring people together – he has done anything like that.

“He has divided this country. He divides people by race. He divides people by gender. He divides them by every means you can possibly give to give special classes to folks and pit one group against the other for political advantage.”

Santorum was particularly insulted that the administration sided with Mexican President Felipe Calderon as he attacked the law during a joint session of Congress.

Calderon “stood before a joint session of Congress and insulted the people of Arizona and got a standing ovation from Democrats, which was reprehensible to see your country condemned and applauding that condemnation.”

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Justices say employers may not use discriminatory testing practices

Shon Jimenez — Tue, 25 May 2010 17:53:15 +0000

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Employers who use tests that have the effect of ruling out disproportionate numbers of women and minorities may be sued each time they use the results to hire, the Supreme Court ruled Monday.

So let me get this straight. Minorities take the same test as everyone else and they score lower than white people, so we have to dumb down the test so that these black people have a better chance to pass? What happened to picking the best man for the job? Maybe if they weren’t so dumb or illiterate they might be able to pass. I get so sick of everything being called racial or discriminatory because they can’t perform as well as white people. Maybe if these black wannabe firefighters cared more about education than their dubs, or slang, or their gats, they’d be more likely to pass a standard test. We should not dumb down a test for a very important job just so we can have more blacks employed.

The court ruled unanimously that a group of more than 6,000 African Americans may sue the city of Chicago on their claim that the way the city used a written application test kept them from being hired as firefighters. Justice Antonin Scalia said the city opened itself to liability each time it used the test results to hire a class of firefighters over a six-year period and rejected Chicago’s assertion that the applicants waited too long to sue.

“Under the city’s reading, if an employer adopts an unlawful practice and no timely charge is brought, it can continue using the practice indefinitely, with impunity, despite ongoing disparate impact” on minorities, Scalia wrote.

Federal law forbids employers from using an employment practice that “causes a disparate impact on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin,” even if there is no discriminatory intent. The only exception is if the employer can show the practice is job-related — a test of physical strength, for example — and “consistent with business necessity.”

John Payton, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, who argued the case on behalf of the black applicants, said the decision will reach far beyond Chicago.

“This is a very significant victory, which should cause other cities and other employers to stop using discriminatory tests as any part of their hiring process,” Payton said.

Business groups said the decision will force employers to defend themselves against allegations of discrimination that occurred years in the past.

“We are very disappointed with the court’s decision,” Karen Harned, executive director of the National Federation of Independent Businesses’ Small Business Legal Center, said in a statement. “It’s unfortunate that the court found that the statute of limitations will begin to run anew every time the employer applies the disputed practice.”

The court’s unanimity stood in stark contrast to the questions of employment discrimination that have split the court in the recent past.

In June, the court decided the flip side of the issue, saying the city of New Haven, Conn., was wrong to junk the results of its firefighter-promotion test because too few minorities qualified. The 5 to 4 decision in Ricci v. DeStefano set new standards for when efforts to protect one group amount to discrimination against another.

The delay-in-filing question was at the heart of the court’s divisive decision in May 2007 in Ledbetter v. Goodyear. That ruling said Alabama factory worker Lilly Ledbetter waited too long to sue when she found out her employer paid her less than her male co-workers.

In the loss, Ledbetter became a feminist heroine for some and her case became fodder for the 2008 presidential campaign. Her name sits atop the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act 0f 2008, which said each paycheck constituted a new act of discrimination.

But the Chicago case presented a different set of facts.

The city’s entry-level firefighter test drew 26,000 applicants, with the passing grade set at 65. Faced with a huge number of qualified applicants, the city created two groups: a “well-qualified” set of those who scored 89 or better, and a “qualified” group of those who scored 65 to 88. For years, the city limited its hiring to the “well-qualified” group, which was skewed racially — 76 percent were white and 11.5 percent were black. In all, the city created 10 classes of firefighter recruits, hiring some from the “qualified” group only after the “well-qualified” group was exhausted.

Thousands of black applicants who were deemed “qualified” sued and won. A federal judge said the city had known that the 89 cutoff score was “statistically meaningless” and that there was no proof those who scored higher on the test made better recruits. She ordered the city to hire 132 applicants from the class and ordered back pay that could amount to tens of millions of dollars, Payton said.

When the city appealed the decision, it did not dispute the court’s finding but said that the African American applicants had filed their claim too late. The city argued that those applicants were hurt when the hiring list was first compiled and the job seekers were told they would probably not be hired, but it contended that the applicants missed the 300-day deadline for filing a complaint.

Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley said in a statement that the city faces challenges no matter how it approaches firefighting hiring.

“For decades, we have tried to diversify the Chicago Fire Department,” Daley said. “But at every turn, like most cities, we have been met with legal challenges from both sides.”

The city in 2006 began categorizing applicants on a pass/fail scale.

Scalia acknowledged that each side made a good argument and sympathized with employers’ contention that practices they had used for years might now bring new disparate-impact suits.

But he said those are arguments to be made to Congress.

“It is not our task to assess the consequences of each approach and adopt the one that produces the least mischief,” Scalia wrote. “Our charge is to give effect to the law Congress enacted.”

The case is Lewis v. City of Chicago.

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Obama backs ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’

Shon Jimenez — Tue, 25 May 2010 16:55:49 +0000

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President Obama has endorsed a “don’t ask, don’t tell” compromise between lawmakers and the Defense Department, the White House announced Monday, an agreement that may sidestep a key obstacle to repealing the military’s policy banning gay men and lesbians from serving openly in the armed forces.

That’s all we need is a bunch of fairies corrupting the uniform of the Armed Services. Obama is not going to stop until he ruins evey facet of our once great country. Think about it an openly gay man, think Boy George, as the face of our military. Other countries will laugh at us, if they already don’t. Obama has to go in a bad way.

The compromise was finalized in meetings Monday at the White House and on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers will now, within days, vote on amendments that would repeal the Clinton-era policy, with a provision ensuring that any change would not take effect until after the Pentagon completes a study about its impact on troops. That study is due to Congress by Dec. 1.

In a letter to lawmakers pushing for a legislative repeal, White House budget director Peter Orszag wrote Monday that the administration “supports the proposed amendment.”

“Such an approach recognizes the critical need to allow our military and their families the full opportunity to inform and shape the implementation process through a thorough understanding of their concerns, insights and suggestions,” he wrote.

While gay rights advocates hailed the move as a “dramatic breakthrough,” it remained uncertain whether the deal would secure enough votes to pass both houses of Congress. Republicans have vowed to maintain “don’t ask, don’t tell,” while conservative Democrats have said they would oppose a repeal unless military leaders made it clear that they approved of such a change.

Even if the compromise language passes, a legislative repeal would take effect only after Obama certified that the change would not harm the nation’s military readiness.

In a statement, Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese said the announcement “paves the path to fulfill the President’s call to end ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ this year and puts us one step closer to removing this stain from the laws of our nation.”

The White House had initially hoped that Congress would wait until after the Pentagon study was completed before bringing up a repeal, but senior lawmakers made it clear that they intended to push ahead on the issue, with or without administration support. Now the controversial issue will return to the national conversation as fall reelection campaigns gear up.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who is running for reelection and had previously supported a repeal of the law, said at a recent congressional hearing that the legislation is “imperfect but effective” and that “we should not be seeking to overturn.”

Rep. Mike Pence (Ind.), a member of the House GOP leadership, said Monday of a repeal: “The American people don’t want the American military to be used to advance a liberal political agenda. And House Republicans will stand on that principle.”

While some Democrats, particularly in the House, wanted to wait for the Pentagon study to be finished, more-liberal Democrats were pushing for an immediate repeal. The compromise is designed to satisfy both concerns.

“We can live with this and we’re asking, enthusiastically, members to support and vote for it,” said Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network.

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Rep. Patrick J. Murphy (D-Pa.), the lead sponsors of repeal legislation, promised Monday night to pursue their goal quickly.

The White House letter clears the way for votes Thursday in the House on the overall spending bill, which Democrats expect will include Murphy’s amendment. The same day, the Senate Armed Services Committee will vote on its version of the spending bill, and Lieberman will introduce the same repeal language.

“It is our firm belief that it is time to repeal this discriminatory policy that not only dishonors those who are willing to give their lives in service to their country but also prevents capable men and women with vital skills from serving in the armed forces,” Lieberman and Murphy said in a statement.

If the compromise is approved, the 1993 policy could be removed from the nation’s law books within weeks. That would satisfy one of the most significant promises Obama made to the gay community during his campaign.

Once in office, however, Obama moved slowly, often causing frustration among his gay supporters.

In February, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, said they supported a repeal of the policy. Mullen said, “I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens.”

But Gates angered some activists by requesting time to assess how best to make the cultural shift within the ranks.

The effort to reverse the ban accelerated with Obama’s one-sentence endorsement of a repeal in his January State of the Union address, sources close to the negotiations said. The next morning, advocates began a multimillion-dollar effort to convince six moderate members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

On Sunday, White House officials invited gay rights leaders to the White House for a Monday-morning meeting with Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina and administration lawyers, according to sources familiar with the meeting.

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Spiraling Costs Make Obamacare a Prescription for Disaster

Shon Jimenez — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 01:56:37 +0000

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WASHINGTON – What’s it going to cost me?

That’s the single biggest unanswered question about President Barack Obama’s new healthcare overhaul law — and its weak spot.

Many experts believe the law falls short on taming costs, and that will force Congress to revisit healthcare in a few years.

While it seems hard to believe now, Republicans might want to participate in a debate over costs, perhaps opening the way for limits on malpractice lawsuits and other ideas they’ve advocated.

“Now that the baseline question of coverage has been answered, it would be irresponsible if we didn’t come back and try to do more on costs,” said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., who voted for the bill and led efforts to squeeze more savings.

“I think there is going to be a debate in the Republican Party on whether they should waste all their energy on repeal or make an effort to do something on cost containment,” Warner said.

For now, the political parties are too polarized — and lawmakers too exhausted — to contemplate healthcare 2.0. Conservatives are planning court challenges, and some Republican leaders hold out the promise of repeal. But economic reality probably will bring lawmakers back to the table.

Insurance premiums are likely to keep going up over the next few years. Experts predict that the law’s early benefits — such as expanded coverage for children and young adults — could nudge rates a little higher than would otherwise have been the case. Also, insurers and medical providers could try to raise their prices ahead of big shifts set for 2014.

Under the 10-year, $1 trillion plan, 2014 is when competitive insurance markets for individuals and small businesses are expected to open, and tax credits start flowing to help millions of middle-class households now uninsured. Medicaid will expand and pick up millions of low-income people. Most Americans would be required to carry health insurance, except in cases of financial hardship. Insurers no longer could turn away those in poor health.

More than 30 million previously uninsured people would gain coverage quickly — and they’ll start going to the doctor for care previously postponed. Increased demand will push up health care spending, putting more pressure on premiums.

The cost controls in the bill are unlikely to provide much of a counterweight. Democrats scrambling to line up votes for the final bill weakened a provision that would have enforced austerity through a hefty tax on high-cost employer coverage.

Other savings in the law — mainly Medicare cuts — may prove politically unsustainable, according to the government’s own experts.

The problem isn’t that the 2,700-page law is devoid of ideas for curbing costs. Many mainstream proposals are incorporated in some form. But what will work?

While the law creates a commission to keep pursuing deeper Medicare savings, there’s no overall cost control strategy and no single official to coordinate many experiments seeking greater efficiency.

“This bill takes a sort of spaghetti approach to cost control,” said MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, who supports the broad goals of the overhaul. “You throw a bunch of stuff against the wall and see what will stick. Healthcare, Round Two, is when we will make a serious effort at cutting costs down, based on what this law has shown us.”

If the law gets a B-plus for expanding coverage to 95 percent of eligible Americans, it probably deserves a C-minus or D for cost control. The U.S. spends $2.5 trillion a year on healthcare, with some results worse than what other developed countries get by spending far less.

“Most people who have problems with health care costs now are not going to see much change in the next few years,” said Mark McClellan, who ran Medicare under former Republican President George W. Bush. “Hopefully some of these ideas will work, but it’s not automatic. I do hope we can revisit this in a more bipartisan manner.”

A look at some of the law’s main cost control provisions:

INSURANCE MARKET

Starting in 2014, the overhaul sets up new state-level insurance supermarkets called exchanges, intended to enable small businesses and individuals buying their own coverage to pool purchasing power. In theory, that would inject competition into markets now dominated by one or two major insurers in most states.

It also would reduce insurers’ overhead by giving them access to many customers in one place. The companies would be heavily regulated by state and federal authorities, and proposed premium increases would get a close look.

“Individuals and small businesses will, over time, have something much more predictable to look at,” said Christine Ferguson, former Massachusetts public health commissioner under Republican Gov. Mitt Romney. “We will have much more predictable rates of growth in health care costs.”

Romney, a potential GOP presidential candidate in 2012, signed a similar law in Massachusetts, but is now calling for repeal of the federal version.

PAYMENT REFORMS

Using Medicare as the lab, the law includes experiments designed to change the way medical providers are paid. It encourages them to keep patients healthier by avoiding foreseeable complications.

Doctors and hospitals could band together to better coordinate care. Instead of paying piecemeal for visits and tests, providers would get a lump sum for managing patients with certain health conditions. Primary care providers would be encouraged to create “medical homes” for their patients, serving as wellness coaches and medical gatekeepers.

Successful experiments would be adopted as national policy.

MEDICARE BOARD

The law sets up a board to hunt for Medicare savings. Congress could reject the proposals, but it wouldn’t be able to tinker with them.

INSURANCE TAX

Employer-sponsored health insurance is part of total compensation, but traditionally it’s been tax-free.

The law imposes a 40 percent tax on health insurance plans worth more than $27,500 for a family plan, $10,200 for individual coverage. (Family coverage now averages $13,375.)

That could have been a firm nudge to get people into more frugal coverage. But facing stiff opposition from labor unions, Obama and congressional Democrats punted, postponing the effective date until 2018. That’s after the president leaves office, assuming he’s re-elected.

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Pataki Says Obamacare Can Be Repealed

Shon Jimenez — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 22:46:27 +0000

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Former New York Gov. George Pataki is leading a national effort to repeal Obamacare.

In an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV, Pataki said he is launching the effort because the recent healthcare plan signed into law by President Barack Obama imposes the heavy hand of the federal government into the healthcare decisions of all Americans, contrary to the great traditions of the United States.

The popular conservative Republican who was thrice elected to the Empire State’s governorship, has just launched a new organization, RevereAmerica.org, a group Pataki says is aimed at promoting American traditions such as personal freedom and free enterprise.

Pataki has had a stellar career in politics. In 1994, he defied the polls by defeating Mario Cuomo in a gubernatorial upset. He presided over New York’s economic resurgence in the 1990s and had been widely credited in leading New York City back to health after the devastating attacks of Sept. 11.

Pataki left the governorship in 2007 and took up private practice as a lawyer. But he coming back into the political fray with his new 501(c)4 nonprofit, RevereAmerica, where he serves as chairman.

The group’s main priority is to encourage Americans to go to the RevereAmerica.org website to sign an online petition where concerned citizens can voice their desire to repeal Obamacare.

The organization has also begun airing TV ads on Fox News and MSNBC featuring a Paul Revere figure on horseback with a message from Pataki urging Americans to “protect” the country’s freedom.

Pataki argues that many of the claims of Obamacare are not true. For example, he says the oft-made claim by Democrats that individuals will be able to keep their current healthcare plan if they like it, is not true.

He also noted that millions of seniors on Medicare Advantage will have to give up their healthcare plans because the program is essentially being eliminated.

“He said it wasn’t going to increase healthcare costs, but today Obama’s own HHS (Department of Health and Human Services) has put out a report saying Obamacare will drive up healthcare costs over this coming decade,” Pataki told Newsmax.TV.

“And then they said it’s going to reduce the deficit, and I think everyone understands that rather than reduce the deficit; they are going to create unsustainable deficits by hundreds of billions ̶ probably over a half-trillion dollars.

“It’s not what they said it was, and they thought the American people would roll over and accept it once they rammed it through.”

Pataki vows his organization will be among those leading the fight to repeal Obamacare and replace it with a better plan.

Republicans would likely need large majorities in both houses of Congress to override a presidential veto for any repeal legislation. Still, Pataki expressed his belief that Republicans could succeed.

“I’m realistic about it, and I think we can do it,” he said.

The former governor said winning Republican majorities in the House and the Senate was critical to his goal of repealing Obamacare.

“The president would have a tough choice if he had a Congress that passed a bill that would repeal and replace, with good reforms repealing Obamacare,” Pataki said. “And he may well sign it, but probably the most realistic of all is that we have over half ̶ a majority committed to repealing and replacing Obamacare ̶ then they could just refuse to fund important or critical parts of this law.”

Getting the healthcare reform law repealed will require popular resolve, and Pataki encourages everyone interested in repealing the law to sign the petition on his website.

Pataki favors replacing Obamacare with tort reform including an elimination of “junk lawsuits,” allowing competition for insurers across state lines, as well as making healthcare premiums and policies tax deductible for individuals.

“None of these provisions were in Obamacare except the insurance provisions, and they will drive down costs; they will give people the power to get better healthcare and make their own decisions the way they should be in this country,” Pataki said.

Asked about Obama’s financial reform bill, Pataki said the administration and the Democrats have quickly latched onto it in an effort to get Americans to forget about the healthcare debacle.

In other parts of the wide-ranging interview, Pataki said:

Trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his al-Qaida 9/11 co-conspirators in New York City would be an unconscionable mistake, and they should be tried and executed by a military tribunal.

Obama likely is supportive of the decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in civilian court.

New York Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand has failed New Yorkers by not taking strong enough of a stand against trying the 9/11 defendants in lower Manhattan.

As for speculation he may run for president in 2012, Pataki said he has no interest in doing so.

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Limbaugh Hits Back at Obama for Criticism

Shon Jimenez — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 05:59:36 +0000

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Rush Limbaugh is striking back at President Barack Obama.

On Friday, the nation’s top-rated radio host hit back at Obama, saying the president isn’t telling the truth and doesn’t have the support of the American people.

The controversy started Thursday, when Obama used an interview with CBS’ Harry Smith to level a broadside at Limbaugh and Fox News host Glenn Beck.

Smith asked Obama if he is “aware of the level of enmity that crosses the airwaves and that people have made part of their daily conversation” about him, including being called a Nazi and socialist.

Obama shot back, “Well, I think that when you listen to Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck, it’s pretty apparent, and it’s troublesome, but keep in mind that there have been periods in American history where this kind of vitriol comes out.”

The president said, “It happens often when you’ve got an economy that is making people more anxious, and people are feeling like there is a lot of change that needs to take place. But that’s not the vast majority of Americans. I think the vast majority of Americans know that we’re trying hard, that I want what’s best for the country.”

Limbaugh didn’t take Obama’s comments lightly.

In a response on his radio show, also posted to rushlimbaugh.com, the talk radio king said, “Who has called him a Nazi? Who do we know that has called him a Nazi? Socialist? Yeah. Stalinist? Yeah. Marxist? Yeah. Nazi? We have compared healthcare in America to what the Nazis tried to do in Germany and get the control of the people going in that regard.”

As for Obama’s claim to have the people’s support, “The American people do not think that Barack Obama is doing what’s best for the country,” Limbaugh said.

“They do not believe that in the slightest. Never in my life have I seen a regime like this governing so against the will of the people, purposely. I have never known more people personally who literally fear for the country.”

Limbaugh also lambasted the major media for its bias in favor of Obama.

“For Barack Obama to run around and say that this show and Beck and all of talk radio is filled with vitriol? Barack Obama sat in Jeremiah Wright’s church for 20 years and never once complained about the tone of Jeremiah Wright’s bigoted, anti-American, racist rants.”

Polling data suggests that Rush may be right, as Obama’s approval ratings sink.

Obama’s approval rating fell to 44 percent in the latest CBS News Poll, the lowest level of his tenure in office.

That compares to 49 percent in late March, just before the healthcare reform bill became law. His approval rating was 50 percent in January and 68 percent last April.

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Obama Throws White Half Under the Bus. Again

Shon Jimenez — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 05:47:49 +0000

: Image by karpov the wrecked train via Flickr

It is official: Barack Obama is the nation’s first black president.

A White House spokesman confirmed that Mr. Obama, the son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas, checked African-American on the 2010 census questionnaire.

The president, who was born in Hawaii and raised there and in Indonesia, had more than a dozen options in responding to Question 9, about race. He chose “Black, African Am., or Negro.” (The anachronistic “Negro” was retained on the 2010 form because the Census Bureau believes that some older blacks still refer to themselves that way.)

Mr. Obama could have checked white, checked both black and white, or checked the last category on the form, “some other race,” which he would then have been asked to identify in writing.

Aha! He could have checked off both, but chose not to. Full heritage, including his poor grandma, thrown under the bus yet again. I’m just surprised that he didn’t check off “Other” and then enter “Not a typical white person.”

Personally, I think I should have written in Wise Americana. Hey, I figure that I may as well use identity politics to my advantage; maybe I’ll score some extra points for my fancy womb. Identity politics is all that matters, isn’t it? Isn’t that the entire and sole reason for such a question?

Heck of a job, politically correct police. You’ve put people all into boxes. Instead of just being, you know, people.

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How to fix CNN

Shon Jimenez — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 15:56:39 +0000

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Close it down! They suck and always will. But here is what some on the left think they should do.

The future of CNN, never exactly bright the past couple of years, suddenly looked dire this week when ratings came out showing a 40 percent decline in prime-time viewers since 2009.

Jon Klein, the network’s president, has consistently defended its down-the-middle news strategy, despite the increasingly large ratings leads opened up by MSNBC and particularly Fox, with their ideological slants and big personalities.

So is it time for a radical rethinking of “the most trusted name in news,” the network of Larry King, Anderson Cooper, Campbell Brown and Wolf Blitzer? We asked a dozen or so prominent media watchers, former industry executives and CNN personalities for their recommendations.

Their near consensus: It has to change, get more personality, no longer be — as one media critic called it — “the view from nowhere.” Exactly how to do that was not so easy to agree on — and one person we asked, Phil Donahue, doesn’t think the network needs to change at all. But the responses from everyone else broke down into five different approaches.

Bring back “Crossfire”

Ask a couple of former “Crossfire” hosts for a solution to CNN’s ratings troubles, and maybe it’s not a surprise what their answer is: Resurrect their old show.

Both Michael Kinsley and Bill Press — each of whom had stints taking the liberal side of the right vs. left political slugfest — think it’s worth a shot.

By bringing back “Crossfire,” they argue, CNN could continue with its strategy of not falling squarely on the left or the right in prime time but still offer lively opinion on both sides — something it appears viewers want.

Five years ago, one of Klein’s first orders of business after becoming network president was killing off the long-running show, a pioneer in high-decibel political debate that had been the recipient of harsh on-air criticism from “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart just a few months before.

“When he unceremoniously dumped it, Jon Klein said he wanted straight news and not commentary or opinion,” Kinsley told POLITICO. “And now he’s got everyone expressing opinions left and right — because that’s what people like.’

“’Crossfire’ used to vie with ‘Larry King’ as the network’s No. 1 show — and we beat him on many nights, even though he had us as a lead-in and we had Lou Dobbs,” Kinsley said, adding that he means “the early Lou Dobbs, the boring corporate suck-up, not the new exciting xenophobic Lou Dobbs of legend.”

“We were No. 1,” said Press, a top liberal radio host who was on “Crossfire” from 1996 to 2003. He described Klein’s pulling the plug on “Crossfire” as “one of the biggest mistakes in the history of modern television journalism.”

Forget neutral — create a new identity

Davidson Goldin, the former editorial director of MSNBC, who now runs a communications business in New York, worked at CNN’s cable news competitor as it morphed into a liberal alternative to Fox in the evenings. From that experience, he thinks that “CNN needs to find an identity and own that identity.”

“A news channel trying to build a brand by saying they cover news is like a restaurant trying to become popular by saying it cooks food,” he said.

“What we understood from the get-go was that by focusing on opinion [and] analysis and using topic-area expertise to draw conclusions, we could easily differentiate ourselves from CNN, [which] was so wedded to just regurgitating the facts,” Goldin said.

New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen, author of the PressThink blog, said the choice doesn’t have to be between “the view from nowhere” — what reporters might call “straight down the middle” journalism” — and the Fox News/MSNBC model.

“Maybe the view from nowhere has failed, not because audiences want opinion rather than hard news but because the Voice of God isn’t as convincing as it once was,” Rosen said. “Nothing will improve at CNN until the people running the news report consider that viewlessness may not be an advantage, but ideology is not the only alternative.”

Press added that he thinks CNN “is going to have to bite the bullet and do some advocacy programming” because, in his opinion, “there ain’t no room in the middle.”

Viewers, he continued, get their straight news elsewhere and are “looking for opinion in prime time … anchors with an edge.”

Bring in big personalities

Adding more “edge” in prime time doesn’t necessarily mean rushing out to hire a fire-breathing host from the left or the right. Personalities larger than life, or so normal they stand out, would do the trick.

Michael Wolff, founder of Newser.com and a Vanity Fair contributing editor, pointed out that “the viewing audience is just less and less interested in traditional television, civic-minded news delivered by what are, in effect, news readers.”

“CNN has to figure out how to make the news either more efficient or more entertaining,” Wolff continued. “These are the two keystones of modern news, and the network is deficient on both counts. I suppose I would try formats that gave you what you need to know in minutes instead of blocks and personalities that had stronger voices — not necessarily ideological voices, but more unique and identifiable ones.”

As for who could fill that role, Wolff said it could be “anybody who doesn’t reek of conventional television.”

Wolff noted one of the secrets of Fox News Chief Executive Roger Ailes’s success: “Find people who don’t look or sound like what you think television people should look and sound like.”

Aaron Brown, who was replaced in 2005 by Cooper at 10 p.m., said that CNN doesn’t have the “big, broad personalities” who seem to excel these days in the evenings on cable news. Brown included himself in that group, along with Campbell Brown, John King and Cooper.

“If I were at CNN, the thing that would scare me is not that we’re losing but that it’s that reruns are beating us,” Brown said. “At 10 p.m., a 2-hour-old “Countdown” is beating my guy, the guy I have invested millions in [in] promotional dollars.”

Jazz up the broadcast

Atlantic contributing editor Michael Hirschorn, a former top executive at VH1 who founded production company Ish Entertainment, said CNN should step away from “headline-type news,” which has become “increasingly easy to access and, therefore, commodified.”

“What’s working right now is news packaged as entertainment,” Hirschorn continued, “which is a tempting route for them to go down and which they’ve gone down in a toe-in-the-water kind of way.” He pointed out the short-lived comedy news show hosted by D.L. Hughley as an example.

However, Hirschorn said that “it’s a gamble they can only take once in earnest.”

“What might yield more rewards is doing a full overhaul of their news operations,” he continued. “Update the look, the language, the production style. If you look at some of the stuff the BBC is doing, it’s a lot more nimble, raw, real, less larded with the kind of newsy bushwa Jon Stewart makes fun of. But that would involve firing a lot of producers and on-air personalities, and that’s always hard to do.”

Hirschorn believes CNN could find success by focusing more on specific audiences, creating “focused shows that serve specific audiences.” “’Morning Joe’ may have a small audience, but the people who love it love it,” he said. (While still behind “Fox & Friends,” the MSNBC morning show topped CNN, CNBC and HLN in number of viewers last month.)

Mix it up …

Others suggested everything from tweaking the current lineup — perhaps with a new personality or two — to scrapping it in exchange for something completely different.

If Northeastern University journalism professor Dan Kennedy had his way, the network would bring back Aaron Brown at 10 p.m. and move Cooper to 9 p.m.

Kennedy, who also writes the Media Nation blog, said that he likes “the idea of leaving CNN as the sole cable net doing news during prime time” and that he enjoyed it when Brown squared off against Brian Williams’s old 10 p.m. newscast on MSNBC. “They were both terrific, and you could just pick whichever one seemed most interesting on a given night,” he said.

“The 8 o’clock hour is probably going to be a loser no matter what you do, because CNN is up against the heavyweight bout between Bill O’Reilly and Keith Olbermann,” Kennedy said. “Yet it’s important to get things off to a good start, since you need a decent lead-in for 9 p.m.”

“Wouldn’t it have been great to have a newscast focusing on international news anchored by Christiane Amanpour?” he asked, referring to ABC News’s latest acquisition. “Too late for that.”

Rosen has his own ideas for a 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. lineup.

At 7 p.m., he would rename John King’s show “Politics Is Broken” and focus on “bringing outsiders to Beltway culture and Big Media into the conversation dominated by … Beltway culture and Big Media.”

Rosen would program “Thunder on the Right” at 8 p.m., a show where a well-informed liberal “mostly covers the conservative movement and Republican coalition and where the majority of the guests (but not all) are right leaning.”

The following hour would be “Left Brained,” a show offering the opposite mix of hosts and guests. And at 10 p.m. would be “Fact Check,” an accountability show with major crowd-sourcing elements” that would cut through “the week’s most outrageous lies, gimme-a-break distortions and significant misstatements with no requirement whatsoever to make it come out equal between the two parties on any given day, week, month or season.”

Rachel Sklar, editor-at-large of Mediaite, a media industry website, didn’t call for a return of “Crossfire” but does think one of its last hosts on the right should make a comeback on CNN. Her idea of a good pair: Tucker Carlson and Ana Marie Cox.

Both Carlson, who this year co-founded The Daily Caller, and Cox, currently the Washington correspondent for GQ, have had lively debates on The Washington Post’s website. Sklar described Carlson as “authentic and engaging on air” while noting that Cox has “a built-in audience, thanks to Twitter and [filling in for MSNBC host Rachel] Maddow and the cool-kid cred that CNN seems to crave.”

“They had a good thing going in their WaPo chats, and I bet that would play well onscreen — they’re smart and watchable, and neither of them is particularly afraid to piss anyone off,” Sklar continued. “And while they take the news seriously, they don’t take the players — or themselves! — seriously. As a general rule, maybe that’s the way to go.”

But don’t screw it up

“If they ‘fix’ CNN to be like Fox and MSNBC, then who will we turn to when we want that breaking news coverage?” Sklar asked. “The breaking news coverage without an agenda?”

Prime time, she noted, is only a “piece of the puzzle,” with the demo — the prized age 25-54 demographic — even smaller.

“Stop for a moment and think about what CNN stands for. It feels pretty important right now,” Sklar said. “So, yes, tinker with the execution, by all means — that’s clearly broken, and there are ways to fix it. But the central mission matters, and I still truly believe there’s a market for it.”

Aaron Brown, now the Walter Cronkite professor of journalism at Arizona State University, makes the point that while CNN is taking heat for its prime-time ratings, the network is still a “highly profitable business” overall.

“What they do have to do is endure the fact that each month or week or year, there are going to be stories about how they get their asses kicked,” Brown said. “But as a business, they are doing just fine.”

Indeed, while any network would want to turn a profit and take home bragging rights in the ratings, Brown pointed out that the former is still the primary goal for executives.

“If I had to choose and I’m [CNN Worldwide President] Jim Walton or the Time Warner guys, I’d choose to make a fortune,” Brown said. “If I’m anchoring the show, I’d want to win, or I wouldn’t want to lose to a rerun.”

And then there is Donahue, the daytime talk show pioneer who hosted an MSNBC prime-time show from 2002 to 2003. He said he hopes CNN will weather the current trend in cable news.

“At this moment, their competition is more entertaining than they are,” Donahue said. “And I admire them for holding on and not being seduced by that kind of arm-waving.”

But at this point, for CNN, holding on may not be enough.

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Reconciliation bill passes Senate

Shon Jimenez — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 19:40:51 +0000

The Senate has passed a package of fixes to the health reform bill, signed by President Barack Obama, by a vote of 56 to 43. The reconciliation bill now goes back to the House for a second vote after Senate Republicans succeeded in making minor changes to the bill. The House plans to vote later Thursday – finally capping a year-long effort to remake the American health care system.

But the work isn’t done quite yet.

The bill passed 56 to 43, with Vice President Joe Biden presiding over the chamber. Senate Republicans forced a pair of changes to the reconciliation bill overnight, sending it back to the House for a final vote later Thursday.

Democrats believe the minor changes – to language regarding Pell Grants for low-income students – won’t derail House passage, meaning that Democrats are set to finally conclude the legislative struggle needed to make health reform a reality.

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We Are Now Controlled by The Evil Empire

Shon Jimenez — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 21:18:03 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

We are the new U.S.S.R. Can’t you see it. I can. I knew once Obama was elected our country would change for the worse. Last night assurred that. We are one step from becoming 1930-1945 Germany. Obama is our Hitler. He makes you feel good, then stabs you in the back without you knowing it. He is moving his pieces into place for a government take over.

The left, neo nazi’s, are primed for a systematic takeover. Next you will have to line up and receive the mark on your arm to be able to get food and gas. Don’t believe me? Who would have thought Obama would have gone this far? He hasn’t even warmed up yet.

Pelosi is his henchwoman. Obama and the minorities are fixing to take over our country and there is nothing we can do about it. Not unless you ready to get your hands dirty and fight back. Fight dirty and unfair. We have to fight at their level to stop them. Being nice and filing law suits won’t do it. To fight evil you have to take their heads off. Unless you like everything chosen for you, you’d better get in the fight and stop Obama before he destroys everything we have built over the last 300 years.

Shon