Illegal immigration is a hot button issue in this country regardless of political party. There is disagreement on amnesty, benefits, rights and privileges, education, health care, and whether there is such a thing as illegal aliens at all. There are some people who don’t make a distinction between legal and illegal.
What do you think?
News of Venezuela’s referendum which would crown the hemisphere’s idiot, Hugo Chavez, as dictator for life, and usurp the democracy movement is sounding all too familiar. Too close to call. Opponents are acting confident that they won by an 8 percent margin. The government has not released the results yet. Will be interesting to see what Chavez does if he loses.
UPDATE: 1-hour later: Chavez loses referendum 51% to 49%. OK, now stand back and watch how well Chavez takes this news.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin did what Chavez hoped to do. His political party won by a landslide. Of course, it helps when you only allow the opposition (pro-Western) party on the tightly controlled state airwaves and characterize them as provocateurs in the pay of foreign overlords. Scaring voters of a ‘western plot’ also helps.
A small victory for democracy in Hong Kong. But we’ll take it.
Things aren’t going well in Iowa for Sen. Hillary Clinton. Aside from polling second to Sen. Barack Obama in Iowa, she was booed by a group of 3000 fellow democrats in Des Moines when she spoke in favor of comprehensive immigration reform. Iowans correctly read that as nothing more than lipstick on a pig named ‘ amnesty.’ I read that as Iowa democrats are not liberal like she is. It highlights her arrogance, not leadership, to even go there after seeing how badly and how broadly the country rejected Bush’s comprehensive plan.
And qualifying for the Most Ridiculous Item Of The Day, the media comes to her aide in the aftermath of the hostage ‘crisis’ in one of her campaign offices like this.
When the hostages had been released and their alleged captor arrested, a regal-looking Hillary Rodham Clinton strolled out of her Washington home, the picture of calm in the face of crisis.
and this explains why.
It was a vintage example of a candidate taking a negative and turning it into a positive. And coming just six weeks before the presidential voting begins, the timing could hardly have been more beneficial to someone hoping to stave off a loss in the Iowa caucuses and secure a win in the New Hampshire primary.
I don’t remember when I’ve quoted anything from the LA Times that I agreed with. That’s how often it happens. Their take on last week’s CNN/youTube debate however is both unique and right on. In defense of CNN’s use of democrat operatives and members of the Clinton campaign, CNN put out this statement the next day . . .
“The whole point of these ground-breaking CNN/YouTube debates is to focus on substantive questions of concern to real people and to throw open the process to a wider range of Americans all around the country. CNN cared about what you asked, not who you were.”
CNN did not do either. The first and most obvious bit of journalistic malpractice is the selection of Democrat campaign operatives like Keith Kerr to hold the microphone in a Republican debate. The next thing, and maybe less obvious is they didn’t focus on the most important issues on the minds of Americans. They focused instead on what was important to CNN. Tim Rutten of the LAT begins . . .
THE United States is at war in the Middle East and Central Asia, the economy is writhing like a snake with a broken back, oil prices are relentlessly climbing toward $100 a barrel and an increasing number of Americans just can’t afford to be sick with anything that won’t be treated with aspirin and bed rest.
So, when CNN brought the Republican presidential candidates together this week for what is loosely termed a “debate,” what did the country get but a discussion of immigration, Biblical inerrancy and the propriety of flying the Confederate flag?
In fact, this most recent debacle masquerading as a presidential debate raises serious questions about whether CNN is ethically or professionally suitable to play the political role the Democratic and Republican parties recently have conceded it.
After citing examples of CNN’s “intellectual venality” in the questions it picked, Rutten continues. . .
[I]t pales beside the wickedness of using some crackpot’s query about the candidates’ stand on Biblical inerrancy to do something that’s anathema in our system — to probe people’s individual religious consciences. American journalists quite legitimately ask candidates about policy issues — say, abortion — that might be influenced by their religious or philosophical convictions. We do not and should not ask them about those convictions themselves. It’s nobody’s business whether a candidate believes in the virgin birth, whether God gave an oral Torah to Moses at Sinai, whether the Buddha escaped the round of birth and rebirth or whether an angel appeared to Joseph Smith.
It certainly makes a case for the uselessness of this kind of debate format, and the irrelevance of CNN, the most trusted name in news, when it comes to politics. It also makes the case for journalists to go back to asking, and taking responsibility for, their own questions. I couldn’t agree more with Rutten’s conclusion.
In any event, CNN has failed in its responsibilities to the political process and it’s time for the leaders of both the Republican and Democratic parties to take the network out of our electoral affairs.
related links:
LA Times, CNN: Corrupt News Network| The Lunch Counter: Joe Scarborough and Me | Not Just A Plant, But A Whole Nursery
NewsBustedTV is a rather comedic view of the news from the Right. Topics in this show: the United Nations, NASA debunking global warming, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and more!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq_TkXdZa0U[/youtube]
On the ‘Morning Joe‘ show this morning, Pensacola’s own Joe Scarborough gave his take on what the mainstream media has been playing really low key, if mentioning IT at all. The IT is the planting by CNN of questioners at last nights CNN/YouTube sponsored Republican debate.
He didn’t go into all the other phony questioners mentioned here, but he really didn’t need to to make his point. The retired ‘openly gay’ general not only had his video question aired, but CNN flew him from California, all expenses paid, so he could be in the audience and actually participate in the debate with the candidates. THAT was no coincidence. Nor is it a coincidence that he is on the “LGBT Americans for Hillary”1 committee. A national steering committee of over 65 leaders in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community.
The video from Morning Joe is HERE.
I saw the ‘debate.’ And from the opening bell with the folk singer, (folk singers are a staple for liberals (Baez, Mitchell, Young, Taylor)), it quickly became apparent from that tune, and from the way the questions that followed were framed, hitting all the stereotypes the left ascribes to republicans and conservatives, that CNN’s intent was to demean the candidates by casting them all as racists, homophobes, hypocrites and bigots. To their credit though, I thought all of the candidates handled the idiotic questions just fine. Unfortunately, for the few Americans who actually watched the debate, there was little to be learned from the candidates that everybody didn’t already know.
Chalk it up to a waste of time and a failed attempt to disparage the republican field of candidates. CNN did however manage to show themselves to be, to borrow a Chris Wallace phrase, ‘hyper-partisan’ in the staged event, to the point of making them look like total fools in the political arena.
1I have a screen capture of Hillary Clinton’s Campaign website in the event someone edits or removes the web page showing the general’s affiliation with her campaign.
While the news that CNN redacted the transcript of a democratic plant, among 6 democratic ‘undecided’ plants, in the Nov 15 Democrat debate they sponsored is still coming out, there is news today that a Hillary campaign operative was a plant in last night’s CNN sponsored Republican debate. The retired general, Keith Kerr, is actually a member of Hillary Clinton’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transexual Americans For Hillary Steering Committee. Anderson Cooper’s mea culpa below.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28CCf4cEDpI[/youtube]
Was CNN a victim, an accomplice of Clinton Inc., or just incompetent? A cursory search on the net reveals that this questioner was also on the Steering Committee of “Veterans for Kerry” AND was interviewed twice by CNN in 2003. But it doesn’t stop there. Michelle Malkin’s blog discovers many more.
It certainly makes a case for the uselessness of this kind of ‘debate’ format, and the irrelevance of CNN, ‘the most trusted name in news,’ when it comes to politics. It also makes the case for ‘journalists’ to go back to asking, and taking responsibility for, their own questions.
related links:
Free Republic- Transcript of CNN Interview with Gen. Keith Kerr 12/11/2003
Digging out more CNN/YouTube plants
Hillary plants question in Republican debate
CNN Hides Its Tracks, Edits Debate Transcript
More Planted Questions At CNN Democrat Debate
I’ve heard it all now. CNN, “the most trusted name in news” redacting the transcript of the
November 15th Democrat Debate. This doesn’t even come close to the fake news conference that FEMA held a few weeks ago.
It’s about LaShannon Spencer, who was identified as a member of the First African Methodist Church, but she is also an Arkansas Democratic Party operative. Hardly the ‘undecided’ she was purported to be.
Here is CNN’s version of their transcript. Try to find
the exchange. Maybe CNN is the most trusted name in news to lie for an agenda? Yeah, that’s it.
h/t Reality Hammer | Newsbusters | Doug Ross @ Journal | Rush Limbaugh
Justice Clarence Thomas of the United States Supreme Court has published his memoir called My Grandfather’s Son and has been doing interviews on all the usual media outlets that people do who come out with a book, except one. That would be Rush Limbaugh’s radio show. For the first time ever, Rush used his radio show airtime to interview Justice Thomas for 90 minutes. Minus the news and commercial breaks it boils down to just under an hour.
For kids today, Justice Thomas’ life story, the problems he faced and how he dealt with them in a segregated South, serves as a blueprint for how to deal with adversity and make the American dream your own. It is truly awe inspiring regardless of the color of your skin and I hope you take the time to hear his story in his own words.
Best I can say about the interview is, regardless what prejudices one might hold about Rush, or Justice Thomas, or blacks, or whites, or conservatives, put it all aside and listen to this interview, his story. In my humble opinion, his book, if not this interview, deserves a hearing in elementary schools everywhere.
Hear the entire interview HERE.
In one day, in the same issue, and on the same pages, the editorial pages echo a story on the front page called “Troubled Waters.” The Pensacola News Journal editorial page begins with “Still a long way to go in curbing toxic emissions.” Citing problems with mercury and lead both here and across the nation, raising the impact to “the critical importance of taking stronger steps to reduce or eliminate emissions of toxic chemicals.” It’s lead paint in houses, it’s PCB’s. What would we do without a ‘crisis’ to champion? And who eats houses anyway?
In the same section comes an article from Emerald Coastkeepers, an environmental group with strong ties to BIG law and Air America Radio talk show hosts Mike Papantonio and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., both of whom can lay claim to suing the pants off big corporations from Hudson Falls, NY to a mining town in West Virginia, and BIG pharm and BIG tobacco. This article says that the Coastkeepers are keeping and eye on a BIG company, Archer-Western, doing road infrastructure work for the county. Seems that all the state-required environmental precautions are no match for the occasional signature Florida rainstorm and some runoff goes into a bayou, Bayou Texar.
Curious thing about Bayou Texar is that it is lined with expensive homes with septic systems that leak raw sewage into it, rain or shine, 24-7-365, and the Coastkeepers are not concerned with stopping that. It’s about who has the deepest pockets, not who is doing the most damage.
The PNJ is just playing the responsible role in informing us of the environmental problems around us. And it is also laying the groundwork for the dynamic duo to go after those big, evil corporations again.
Digging deeper into this perfect storm shows the Independent News was the first to bring it up in their November 1st cover story. Coming off his “landmark environmental victory” in Spelter, W.Va, Papantonio says “I’m going to start doing cases like this in our area. I’m ready for it.” Papantonio sort of laid out his cards in an interview with editor Duwayne Escobedo like this . . .
“We have a generational issue here,” he says. “We had a generation of politicians, media types, businessmen, doctors and professionals who knew better but allowed the environmental devastation to happen anyway. There is going to be a backlash.”
He’s already thinking about the next environmental cases Levin Papantonio and its partners will do in Northwest Florida but he’s not ready to reveal them all yet.
Pressed about it, he does single-out lumber and paper company International Paper. Levin Papantonio filed suit last year on behalf of a handful of Cantonment residents against the company, the world’s largest paper company.
PNJ links: Still a long way to go in curbing toxic emissions
Emerald Coastkeeper monitors runoff problem
Troubled Waters
Nov 1 Independent News Cover Story: Papantonio Promises To Clean Up ‘Backyard’
related links in PNJ’s forum from an anonymous poster named hoagie. That would be me.
A Call To Harms, Slip & Fall Gone Wild | Here’s a suggestion
Here’s a story in today’s Washington Post that actually represents a fine tutorial on how illegal campaign contributions get to the Clinton campaign. But it could be to any-one’s campaign. The only thing missing in this article is how these ‘contributors’ who don’t have two nickels to rub together get their money back from Alonzo Cantu, a self-made multi-millionaire who literally owns McAllen, Texas, a small border town near the Rio Grande.
Well, it’s not exactly missing. Instead of checks to replace their contribution, those people do business with and get business from Cantu. There’s the quid pro quo. But try to prove that in court.
Campaign finance reform is the one thing that politicians really don’t want, but say they do. Bottom line, it doesn’t matter that congress, Bush, and the SCOTUS all had their hands in it. It needs to go.
The premise that special interests, aka money, are corrupting the politicians and that laws need to be made to limit the money, totally misses the point. If anyone is corrupt, it is the politician that does a quid pro quo or who otherwise breaks the law in money laundering and/or takes bribes like William Jefferson (D-La) did. It’s not the donor, it’s what the recipient does. Don’t re-elect a crook.
related links:
How Big Man In McAllen Bundles Big For Clinton | Way More Than The Lincoln Bedroom | Questions For John McCain and Russ Feingold