O’Brien falsely asserted that the number of food stamp recipients rose more under former President Bush than Obama. Not only are her numbers off, but according to The Daily Jobs update, she failed to acknowledge that the respective increases took place over eight years for Bush and only three years under Obama. That alone is hardly an accurate comparison. And it gets worse.

Yes, usage went up by 11 million in eight years of Bush, but O’Brien claims that under Obama, the number of recipients went up 13 million, from 33 to 46 million. That’s incorrect. Obama’s baseline was 28 million, and usage has risen by 18 million to 46 million in just 3 years.

Clearly, there is no comparison. O’Brien uses percentages a math trick to obscure the genuine results. Eighteen million more people on food stamps in three years under Obama is obviously far worse than 11 million over 8 years of Bush.

This is also a fight much larger than “culture.” Culture is something that defines art and common belief. Culture is something that changes with the times and can actually be defined as you wish. Much of our culture today is not what it was 50, 100, or 200 years ago. What I think is culture, may not be what you think is culture. Yes, there is an “American culture, and I believe I know what it is, but I certainly don’t trust the media or this President (who would probably see me as a “bitter” American who “clings to guns and religion”) to tell me what it is.

The Constitution doesn’t work that way, certainly not the First Amendment which guarantees religious liberty and expression. I would like to think the Constitution would define our culture, but sadly that is not always the case. For the media to call this a “culture war” greatly diminishes its value, this is a battle over the First amendment of the US Constitution. Obama wants the Constitution circumvented to pander to his base, I would hope that most of us would be united with the Catholic Church in wanting it protected.

The new part of the ObamaCare law (that nobody read before they voted on it) says that churches that provide health care and insurance, must also provide contraceptives. The Catholic Church opposes contraception.

“The White House insists this achieves a balanced approach that respects women’s health care and religious liberty, but that’s not how the Republican candidates see it,” said Jake Tapper of ABC this morning. Jake, this does nothing to protect religious liberty. It tries to destroy it.

Thankfully, the presidential hopefuls joined in the fight.

“We must have a president who is willing to protect America’s First right, a right to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience. This is a violation of conscience,” said Mitt Romney

Rick Santorum says Obama has been “hostile to people of faith particularly Christians and specifically Catholics.”

Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul have also been avid opponents to Dear Leaders actions on this. Not just because they want to be seen as opponents, they all believe what he is doing in inherently wrong.

The Catholic Church sees it as our Founders saw it. “Never before, unprecedented in American history, for the federal government to line up against the Roman Catholic Church,” said Catholic League head Bill Donohue.

The media, the bastain of safety that says it will be there to protect our babies from dangerous high chairs and deadly car seats, will not be there to protect us when our Constitution is under attack. They just won’t. They will think they are picking sides and they certainly will not pick sides against Dear Leader. In fact, they will call it something else to water it down and make a fight over the First amendment the same as a battle over an art fair downtown. Well, actually, now that I think of it, if there is a battle over an art fair downtown the media will invoke the First amendment to get it done—yes they will. But in this case, a battle to the core of the our freedom to worship, it is just culture.

Yes, this is a battle, it is a fight. It is a fight between all Americans who believe in the God given right to worship as we please and express our religious preferences, and this White House, that believes it has the right to tell Catholics how they should worship. You don’t get closer to Ground Zero in a Constitutional battle than this. This is a Constitutional War, and the media should call it that.

Image credit: Corey Wilson, Green Bay Press-Gazette

Let’s shower this POS with our calls. I have left a message. So should all of you. Maybe this is a distraction, but much is at stake-a woman’s right to choose. And not to mention the poor and their hunger are being used as political chips by the callous right. Pro-life. Bullshit.

The Planned Parenthood location posted an item on their Facebook page. A scroll down the page indicates they were very active in the campaign to intimidate Komen over Planned Parenthood funding.

Paul’s Pantry refused our food donations collected by our area health center to help combat local hunger. This level of extremism impeding individual access to essential health care and now food is outrageous and must be stopped.

As best as can be ascertained for now, Paul’s Pantry claims this has always been standard policy. Evidently, that’s not enough for Planned Parenthood and the left. Now, to operate as a private charity in America, it would seem any organization must support abortion and Planned Parenthood in particular or risk attack.

Below is contact information for Paul’s Pantry, if you wish to offer your support to counter the left’s attempt at intimidation.

920-433-0343
Paul’s Pantry 1529 Leo Frigo Way Green Bay, WI 54302-1163
info@paulspantry.org
Craig Robbins – Director

Says Cohn:

“Romney also benefited from the lottery of life – among other things, by being born into a family that could afford to provide him with the very best education at every step of the way. He seems unaware of that fact and the possibility that others, born into less fortunate circumstances, might need some of the government programs he’s promised to undermine.”

In other words, because of Romney’s wealth, he simply does not understand the needs of those who use government assistance. So what is Cohn’s argument, then? That only those who had a hardscrabble upbringing need apply for the presidency?

For a columnist who clearly is in the Democratic camp to offer such a notion is utter hypocrisy. In 2004, the “party of the little guy” offered up as their standard-bearer Senator John Kerry, who was at the time the richest man in Congress. Not only was Kerry fabulously wealthy (~$500+ million net worth), but he didn’t even earn it! He married it. Add to this Kerry’s coiffed and grinning side-kick John Edwards was a sleazy trial lawyer who amassed his own pile of tens of millions by bankrupting obstetricians using junk science, and you hardly have a representation of the 99%. So how come in 2004 the Democrats felt that immense wealth didn’t matter, yet now suddenly it is a legitimate issue?

When I asked him about the hypocrisy of a party that has nominated gazillionaires for president suddenly attacking an opponent’s wealth, Cohn told me: “Kerry wasn’t proposing to dismantle the safety net, slash funding on college assistance and other programs to support upward mobility, and make the tax code more regressive. He understood that most people weren’t as wealthy as he was – and could never become as wealthy as he was. JFK & FDR got that too. Romney doesn’t and, as I said, seems to lack any sense of the financial challenges large numbers of Americans face.”

Let us set aside that Cohn has labeled a man whose heart he does not know,  yet who has been a missionary and given far more to charity and causes than Obama–fifteen times more as a percentage of  his income in fact–as insensitive to the less fortunate.  His general argument is fallacious.  By Mr. Cohn’s logic then, only those who have depended on Social Security to live, utilized Medicare or Medicaid for treatment, or relied on food stamps for sustenance, etc. have the right to initiate cuts in social programs?  That is utter nonsense.  When Mr. Cohn says that Obama highlighting Romney’s wealth is not class warfare but a matter of “policy,” he cannot be serious.

The irony of Cohn’s position is side-splitting. The Democratic Party—whose president has raised more money from more wealthy individuals and corporations than ever before in history—long ago gave up the mantel of the party of the non-elites.  Their unfeeling statist policies have bled the coffers dry with little to show but an immorally high debt and crushing taxation burden for the middle class; indeed the very poor and minorities they claim to represent also have suffered catastrophically at the hands of their “Great Society” whose inevitable verdict is now revealed in the form of devastated inner cities, socially destructive illegitimate birth rates, criminally uneducated poor leaving the public school system to face crime-ridden ghettos and an entire underclass of permanent dependents psychologically lobotomized out of any initiative to rise above their hopeless station.

Forget that Romney is not proposing to “dismantle the safety net” but rather bring unsustainable costs under control (although to liberals, these are one and the same, I guess). Mr. Cohn seems to labor under the common self-righteous delusion that only the left-wing uber-rich can have compassion (even though the odds are they too never received a student loan).

His examples of FDR and JFK are interesting and need historical context. FDR began many of his programs during a period when there were no safety nets at all (there are roughly ninety government assistance programs today), the country was in a depression and, most importantly, they would not break the bank…yet. JFK may or may not have been compassionate, but he did understand that higher taxes do not equal either social justice nor sound economics. JFK in fact slashed taxes to spur growth… something Mr. Cohn would surely oppose today but that does not prevent him from using JFK as a model.

But that was then. The system today in Romney’s time (and Obama’s) is broken and going broke. Social Security now spends more than it takes in, having gone red seven years before predicted just a decade ago. For every dollar a person going on Medicare today put into the system, they will end up utilizing three dollars for services and treatment. College tuitions are making education without federal loans prohibitive for most Americans, feeding the vicious cycle of: the higher the tuition, the more money the system demands from the government which then enables colleges to get away with higher tuition, as there’s plenty of borrowed money to pay them. Entitlements are metastasizing throughout the American body; we are shifting from a nation of citizens to a nation of wards of the State.

Anyone with a calculator, some common sense and the most rudimentary understanding of human nature and the demoralizing effects of dependency could see that the welfare state model was doomed from the outset. Unfortunately for today’s liberals who grew up believing that there was no problem too great for the central government to solve by writing a check, they are in the uncomfortable position of watching their delusions finally start to crumble under the weight of actuarial inevitabilities. So they stubbornly circle the wagons and fight to protect their sacred redistributionist model by pointing out that the great threat to their utopian vision is unfeeling rich Republicans, not impartial mathematics.

It is an election year and as such the Democrats, desperate to maintain their slipping hold on power, will pull out all the stops to paint Romney as an elitist member of the 1% and therefore unqualified or unable to make sound policy decisions re: social programs because he just doesn’t feel the pain. They will, of course, never admit that seven of the ten wealthiest members of Congress are Democrats as are 40% of the top fifty. They certainly will never call into account their wealthy standard bearers, and even their President’s obsequious man-crush on a multi-billionaire from Omaha who always seems to benefit from his policies be they bail-outs or cancellation of Keystone XL. That would obliterate their false narrative that the Democratic party is the people’s party and that the perpetuation of the failed welfare state is tantamount to compassionate governance that only a Barack Obama can provide. Romney’s calculator tells him a different story—a story no less true simply because the man relating the tale happens to be in the 1% club … even if half of the members are Democrats.

Politico loves Stephen Colbert because Stephen Colbert loves Barack Obama and is waging war against the Right and free speech. America, however, is, to be kind, indifferent to Colbert. 1.44 million viewers and only half that among the 18-49 group, does not make you King of anything.

But Colbert knows how to play the game and understands that if he wants these kinds of hollow accolades and the opportunity to push his left-wing agenda and to have history revised in his favor, he must appeal to the right people, and the right people are not THE people; the right people are the left-wing elites who infest our corrupt media.

In the face of ratings dwarfed by Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, with ratings lower than those of most every primetime show on Fox News; lower than those of “Pawn Stars,” “WWE Wrestling,” reruns of “The Family Guy,” and “Hoarders,” here is your corrupt and wildly out of touch media at work:

Colbert now stands alone as the 2012 election’s must-watch court jester. And watching they are — and the comparisons with Stewart are inevitable.

“The satire is fantastic and very unambiguous,” said Sirius XM’s Julie Mason. “I am starting to get alarmed by how many people think Jon Stewart is a newsman. He is a nonfiction entertainer. I do love Colbert more than Jon Stewart.”

Erin McPike, a political reporter for RealClearPolitics, said, “I can’t think of another comedian who has the pulse of politics quite like Colbert. It does look like Stewart has become Colbert’s sidekick — sort of a role reversal from how things used to be, which makes it funnier in my opinion.”

“I’d say Colbert is definitely the edgier of the pair these days,” said The Atlantic’s Garance Franke-Ruta.

Politico actually writes that Colbert is the 2012 election cycle’s “must-watch.” And yet the propagandist behind this piece, Patrick Gavin, never bothers to mention that no one watches him. Hilariously, Gavin reports that Colbert’s ratings are “steady.”

This is worse than being bubbled, though, this is all about a political agenda. Even MSNBC’s Chuck Todd has stated openly that Colbert is all about taking down conservatives (a fact Gavin omits when describing Todd’s concerns), but what Obama’s MSM Palace Guards really like is Colbert’s ferocious, fascistic attacks on unlimited political speech.

Super PACs aren’t just the enemy of whomever they’re targeting in the political world, super PACs are the MSM’s number-one rival for the relaying of information to the masses. In order for the media to control the narrative they must have the airwaves and cable channels all to themselves.

The irony here is that there is no bigger group of super PACs in this country than Colbert’s own Comedy Central and the mainstream media. Each is backed by gajillionaires and are all part of a multi-national corporation. Oh, and they all have left-wing political agendas. So of course Colbert and his trained MSM seals want unlimited political speech in the form of super PACs toxified and eliminated, for there’s nothing that threatens the left more than free and open debate.

Controlling the narrative is how you elect Democrats and that’s where the MSM’s clown-monkey Stephen Colbert found his free speech-stifling niche.

No one watches Colbert, but he’s not looking for an audience, he’s looking for accolades from the elite and the influence opportunities they offer him to push the country towards undermining free speech and getting Barack Obama reelected.

What Colbert is doing to kill free speech is a massive con. The only bigger con is the one currently in play by the MSM to pretend that Colbert has some sort of populist appeal.

But the numbers don’t lie, and Colbert’s real appeal (outside of the predominantly white and leftist Politico newsroom) is statistically something romantically close to ZERO. He’s also the first so-called satirist I’ve ever come across who wants to limit free speech.

Well, other than his mentor Jon Stewart.

Lenny Bruce would be so proud.

Jonathan Martin, right

Politico’s Jonathan Martin isn’t a big fan of everyday people, especially those who don’t vote for Obama. If you want to understand who this man really is, you need only click here. To protect then-candidate Barack Obama and get the heat off of him after making his infamous and revealing ”spread the wealth” comment, Martin needed to change the narrative quick, so he investigated and published dirt on a PRIVATE CITIZEN. What followed was a narrative-changing (to benefit Obama) MSM attack against a guy who was minding his own business when Obama approached him.

“Cracker” has a long pejorative history, much of it linked to slavery, as in he who “cracks” the whip, while other uses of the word always refer to the more lowly born.

Frederick Law Olmsted, a prominent landscape architect from Connecticut, visited the South as a journalist in the 1850s and wrote that “some crackers owned a good many Negroes, and were by no means so poor as their appearance indicated.”

Martin may just as well have slandered the people of the region by referring to them as “White Trash.” That is, in effect, how the word can be interpreted today. One can only imagine the outrage had a less than liberal outlet and journalist maligned an entire race or class, as Martin did. There’s also this from a letter to the Earl of Dartmouth.

“I should explain to your Lordship what is meant by Crackers; a name they have got from being great boasters; they are a lawless set of rascalls on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia, who often change their places of abode.”

Major military bases in the region include the Pensacola Naval Air Station, Eglin Air Force Base, Tyndall Air Force Base and Hurlburt Field. Pensacola is the home to U.S Naval aviation, extremely sophisticated, training pilots from all over the world. Perhaps getting in a dig at the military was sort of a bonus for Martin and MSNBC.

In fact, along with being known for its beaches and resorts, in some ways, the Panhandle represents the heart of the American middle class, working men and women involved in manufacturing, farming, milling, and other blue collar industries.

Historically, the economy of the Panhandle depended mainly on farming, forestry and lumbering, paper mills, import/export shipping at Pensacola and to a lesser extent at Panama City, shipbuilding, and commercial fishing. After World War II, the economy was boosted by the numerous military bases established in the region, as well as the growth of tourism and the hospitality industry. Major employers in the second half of the twentieth century included Monsanto and Westinghouse plants at Pensacola, the St. Joe Paper Company in Port St. Joe, and Gulf Power, a major electric utility company.

While true that some Panhandle residents may affectionately refer to themselves as “Florida Crackers,” as with many pejoratives of this type, they are general relegated for use to within the group, unless one’s goal is to malign. Check out any contemporary American rapper to confirm that. As I doubt Martin thinks of himself as much of a “cracker,” it’s safe to assume his intent was far from affectionate.

In the past, many famous and well-respected journalists had no formal training but honed their craft on the job, in many cases beginning their careers as copy boys/copy girls. Walter Cronkite, once cited as the most trusted man in America, was a college dropout who had a series of newspaper jobs reporting news and sports. Eric Sevareid, Chet Huntley, and David Brinkley started their careers as broadcast journalists but never had journalism degrees. Dan Rather did receive a degree in journalism, and we can see how well that turned out once he decided to switch to advocacy journalism instead of the traditional who, what, when, where and how protocol of traditional journalism.

Advocacy journalism intentionally and transparently adopts a non-objective viewpoint for either a political or social agenda and has morphed today into nothing less than media bias and propaganda. Today the mainstream media is predominantly composed of liberal democrats, and this bias has been quite evident since the 2008 presidential race. There is also a marked difference between opinion and reportage journalism.

I have a hard time claiming to be a member of the fourth estate, although I have been writing for newspapers since 1998 as an op-ed columnist. During that time, however, I have covered news events and press conferences and submitted non-opinion articles. I never attended Journalism College, nor have I even taken one writing course. I had to drop out of college to support my mother who had had a stroke. Mark Steyn, who is a brilliant writer, never attended college at all but can write reams around many inhabiting the elitist realm of the New York Times.

Although I have little regard for Stephen Colbert as a comedian or a pundit, I must give him kudos for calling George Stephanopoulos a political operative on ABC’s “This Week.” Real journalist David Brinkley was the first host of this political news program, followed by Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts. Stephanopoulos earned his political science degree at Columbia University and he has been a Democrat political lion ever since, apparently making him a desirable spokesman for the party’s agenda.

I’ll never forget the weekend before the 1992 presidential election when George H.W. Bush was rising in the polls against William Jefferson Clinton. He appeared on CNN’s Larry King show, another Democrat stooge, and when King supposedly took calls from the public, which call came in first? Why, it was from Clinton’s chief political adviser, George Stephanopoulos.  Imagine the odds of that happening. He had called to remind Bush that Independent Counsel Lawrence E. Walsh had that day re-indicted Weinberger on one count of “false statements.” Walsh went even further, specifically implicating Bush in the scandal, though the accusation was irrelevant, but this put the nail in the coffin for Bush’s reemerging campaign.

MSNBC, a cable station claiming to be “a leader in breaking news, video and original journalism,” is anything but. It is stocked with partisan Democrat anchors and, in one instance, Morning Joe Scarborough, a former Republican RINO.  Al Sharpton? Chris Matthews? Rachel Maddow? Lawrence O’Donnell?  These are journalists?

Even as an opinion writer, I made sure I bolstered my opinion with fact and I polished my craft at the New York Sun under the tutelage of Seth Lipsky, one of the best of the old school journalists. If one of my columns presented negative material on a subject, I was told to contact that person for confirmation or denial of the piece or it wouldn’t be published.

Watching MSNBC is a chore and an exercise in frustration waiting for the other side of the story. It simply will not be presented. Instead we are treated with angry scowls and insulting language thrown at Republicans. Let’s not forget those thrills up and down Matthews’ leg.

On the other hand, CNBC has the excellent Larry Kudlow, who never fails to have opposing sides present their cogent arguments, leaving it up to the audience to decide. Fox News used to be fair and balanced until they threw Glenn Beck under the bus and brought on Karl Rove as a contributor in spite of the fact that this “genius” was a truly bad adviser for President Bush.

For anyone looking for true journalistic integrity, the only sources left are the Breitbart sites. When I was recruited to write for Big Journalism by my former Sun editor Michael Walsh, I was mandated to shore up my column with videos, documents, photos and other credible data. The truth is truly out there–here–regardless of which side is vindicated.

Like most readers, I was led by the conservative press and Matt Drudge to believe that the White House had hidden an elaborate, Halloween party with Hollywood stars from the public. The WH felt it wouldn’t be wise to show this extravagance during a recession, the right and left media told us, but the real story was left to be told by Dana Loesch of BigJournalism.com.

Seems the party was funded by the celebrities for the military and their families. So why the secrecy? Maybe it was a trap set for conservatives to rage about–only to look like fools for bashing a good deed. Who knows?

The media today is filled with “gotcha journalists” bent on reelecting the one they helped elect in 2008.  I think I’ll stick to just being called a writer. The word journalist has a distinct smell to it.

Today, Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic has followed suit with an article rehashing the tired allegation that Republicans are using so-called “dog whistle” tactics–“the use of coded, ambiguous language to appeal to the prejudices of certain subsets of voters”–i.e. white voters (Democrats’ use of race to appeal to the prejudices and fears of black voters is rarely subject to scrutiny.)

Jeffrey Goldberg (Photo: Bloomberg News)

Goldberg says that the Obama’s Republican opponents have alleged the following (original links, including one to Media Matters–itself the subject of serious charges of antisemitism–included):

Black people have lost the desire to perform a day’s work. Black people rely on food stamps provided to them by white taxpayers. Black people, including Barack and Michelle Obama, believe that the U.S. owes them something because they are black. Black children should work as janitors in their high schools as a way to keep them from becoming pimps. And the pathologies afflicting black Americans are caused partly by the Democratic Party, which has created in them a dependency on government not dissimilar to the forced dependency of slaves on their owners.

I’ll go even further, and admit that I personally heard a presidential candidate give a speech–in a church, no less–in which he blasted the black community, and black men in particular, for the phenomenon of single-parent households; who noted that black children with absent fathers have a greater chance of becoming criminals; who scolded black parents, “don’t just sit in the house and watch ‘Sports Center’ all weekend long”; and who told blacks to “read a book once in awhile.”

That candidate was Barack Obama.

There is a double standard here–one that goes beyond the obvious partisanship, or the reasonable allowances one might make for a member of a group to speak more boldly than an outsider might about its problems. Williams and Goldberg are not willing to examine their own prejudices here–namely, that “certain subsets of voters” are eager to express hatred towards blacks by supporting the candidate who best expresses it.

Moreover, the phenomenon of liberals scolding conservatives–and each other–for pointing out uncomfortable truths about cultural decay in the black community is an old one. It happened to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the sociologist and (later) liberal senator from New York who had the temerity to speculate about the plight of the black family. Moynihan was called a racist–and the decline of black families continued, regardless.

It might surprise Williams and Goldberg, but Republicans who advocate self-reliance among black Americans actually believe they are fighting racism. The essence of anti-black racism is the belief that blacks are inherently inferior. And in conservative eyes, many of the failed policies of the social welfare state accept black inferiority as given. Therefore, Republicans believe, to oppose these policies is actually to oppose racism.

Goldberg alleges: “This presidential election will be one of the most race-soaked in recent history.” If so, that will not be due to the Republican candidates, but to the media, which has poured racial gasoline on the political tinder, the better to protect their favored president from scrutiny.

Just this morning, on MSNBC, Jonathan Martin of Politico described the Florida panhandle, where Republicans vote in today’s primary, as “cracker counties.”

To media liberals, that’s not racism; that’s just telling it like it is.