Now that the Super Bowl is over, there’s the usual selective outrage arguing that ‘this or that ad is racist.’ Last year, it was the Tibetans and GroupOn; this year, it is the Chinese and Pete Hoekstra’s bid for the U.S. Senate.The Democrats sense their opportunity to get the very unpopular Debbie Stabenow re-elected and turn Hoekstra’s ad into a Macaca moment.

Predictably the media is already in overdrive. “Ad Draws Protests for Portrayal of Asians,” was the headline for The New York Times article. Lawrence O’Donnell has even attacked the Asian-American girl who dared to appear in the ad, going so far as to compare her decision to play the part of a Chinese villager to a decision a friend of his made not to play Hitler’s daughter. Naturally, the squishy GOP consultants are upset, too, according to Politico. Talking Points Memo went into convulsions when discovering that the Asian girl wearing the yellow shirt was called “yellowgirl” in the html code on Hoekstra’s website.

But Hoekstra is defending himself.

Only to have Rep. Judy Chu of California call the ad “violent and hateful” and blame Bush for the economic downturn on CNN.

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Along with playing dumb on the rhetoric of Rep. Allen West in a recent speech (no one believes he was suggesting Democrats should actually leave America when he said they could take their message elsewhere), CNN’s Soledad O’Brien played fast and loose with food stamp usage increases under Bush versus Obama to put Rep. Allen West on the spot.

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. (more…)

Politico’s Jonathan Martin didn’t only malign residents of Florida’s Panhandle on MSNBC when he invoked the phrase “Cracker Counties” to refer to the region, he went on to equate the region with all of the Deep South, also mentioning Georgia and Alabama by name. We can also assume it would cover many of the military men and women residing in Florida’s Panhandle.

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. (more…)

Is WikiLeaks biased against the West and the US in particular? This news item would tend to indicate so.

According to Christian Science Monitor Moscow correspondent Fred Weir, Kremlin-funded media outlet Russia Today is set to hire WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, despite the fact that Assange remains under house arrest in Britain, awaiting a Supreme Court decision on his extradition to Sweden to face sexual assault allegations.

According to Weir [my emphasis]:

WikiLeaks founder and controversy magnet Julian Assange has been driven off the Internet, deprived of funding and placed under house arrest. Now he will get his chance to strike back, courtesy of the Kremlin.

Starting in March, Mr. Assange will host a 10-part series of interview programs with “key political players, thinkers and revolutionaries” on Russia Today (RT), a state-funded English-language satellite news network which claims to reach more than 85 million viewers in the US alone.

According to a statement on his website, the new Assange series will explore the “upheavals and revolutions” that are shaking the Middle East and expose how “the deterioration of the rule of law has demonstrated the bankruptcy of once leading political institutions and ideologies” in the West.

Assange said, in a statement published on his website:

Through this series I will explore the possibilities for our future in conversations with those who are shaping it… Are we heading towards utopia, or dystopia and how we can set our paths? This is an exciting opportunity to discuss the vision of my guests in a new style of show that examines their philosophies and struggles in a deeper and clearer way than has been done before.

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When John King opened the last CNN-hosted GOP debate with a question regarding Newt Gingrich’s ex-wife, Newt lit into him, putting King on the defensive early. In fact, King remained defensive during CNN’s post-debate report.

“This story did not come from our network,” King contended. “As you also know, it is the subject of conversation on the campaign. I get your point, I take –”

Since the debate, King hasn’t let the issue go. He’s been making media appearances –after the fact–to bolster what many believe was a poor decision. Frankly, it’s hard to envision any mainstream media moderator opening up a Democrat debate with that type of question. They’d be more likely to claim it shouldn’t be asked, as it was the candidate’s personal life, none of our business, and didn’t impact on their ability to govern. (more…)

Let’s commend Jon Chrisos, co-host of Good Day Maine on WPFO Fox 23 in Portland, ME, for posing a simple and direct challenge to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius:

Last night, the President gave his State of the Union speech. We all watched it here in Maine, very anxious to hear what he had to say. It was about seventy minutes, but a lot of people [were] surprised this morning that we didn’t hear much about health care reform. During the speech, the President really only mentioned “health care” or “health care insurance” three times. So, Secretary, my question for you is: if you and the President still believe in this Affordable Care Act, then why was it such a small part of the speech?

Sebelius’s response was less than convincing, or coherent:

…He didn’t focus his time last night on what has already been done, but really on where we need to go in the future–on American manufacturing, on skills for our workers for 21st-century jobs, on a new American energy policy…knowing that part of the middle-class opportunities now will come to fruition with affordable, available health care for all Americans.

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Today, on Fox News Channel’s The Five, liberal panelist Bob Beckel praised President Barack Obama’s efforts at job creation: “One good sign of the economy is there are more manufacturing jobs created in the last two years than the last eight,” he said.

Beckel did acknowledge that American manufacturing was still in a bad state, and lamented that the manufacturing sector “has been bleeding jobs because corporations are going to find cheap labor overseas.”

His conservative colleague, Republican strategist Andrea Tantaros, interjected: “So cut the corporate tax.” Fellow conservative Eric Bolling backed her up–”A hundred percent right, Andrea!”–and added that U.S. corporations pay the highest tax rates in the industrialized world, after Japan recently lowered its rate.

Beckel, on the defensive, retorted: “As much as Botswana?”

Tantaros and Bolling didn’t know what to say, and appeared to concede the point: “Botswana? Botswana is the bar? Botswana?” Tantaros protested. “That was a joke,” Beckel reassured her.

It must have been a joke–because, in fact, Botswana does have a far lower corporate tax rate than the U.S., which has helped propel Botswana to rapid and sustained economic growth. (more…)

Here’s a new way to try and hip-up the boring, ages-old, left-wing idea of tax hikes: link it to reality TV star Kim Kardashian. That is just what ABC News tried to do on the Wednesday, January 4th edition of ABC “World News Tonight” when the venerable news program helped advertise an effort by a small group headed by a former Democrat operative that wants to hike California’s income taxes. It is a two-pronged approach of hitching a big government, big spending, high tax agenda to the TV reality show star in order to drag younger people into the left’s class warfare game.

ABC highlighted a California Millionaires Tax policy recommendation from a group called Courage Campaign. The group is headed by Rick Jacobs who is the former head of Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign in California, a Huffington Post writer, and leader of this admittedly “progressive” group.

ABC reported that the “liberal group” (and kudos to ABC for actually identifying them as a liberal group for a change) is upset that Kim Kardashian, who made some $12 million in 2011, only paid one percent more than the average middle class wage in the Golden State.

Here is what the extremist high-tax group says on it’s website about this:

Kim Kardashian made more than $12 million in 2010, but she only paid 1% more in taxes than a middle-class Californian. That’s not OK, especially when budget cuts are decimating schools and critical programs for children, the elderly, and the disabled. It’s exactly why Courage Campaign and two dozen other organizations are putting the Millionaires Tax of 2012 on the ballot.

Wow, that tiny, little one percent suuuure seems small, right? But let’s look at the actual payment, shall we? Kardashian paid a tax rate of 10.3 percent and 10.3 percent of twelve million is $1,236,000! And those middle-class folks that paid one percent less at 9.3 percent? Well if the average income in California is $47.000, then they paid only $4,371. Why aren’t these middle-class louts paying their fair share? (That’s called sarcasm, by the way.)

Now, it’s not that I care at all for Kim and her brood — I never watch so-called reality TV and have never seen her show — but this is all really just class warfare. After all, let’s look at the tact here: Instead of actually talking about what Kardashian pays, this ABC flogged extremist group focuses on that “one percent” as if that makes her tax remittance tiny. They mislead the public by purposefully avoiding any mention of the amount she actually paid.

Seriously, the fact is we could out right confiscate the millions made by the Kardashinas of this country and it wouldn’t make a dent in the hole of trillions of dollars that Democrats have dug for us.

But there is one last thing to ask about this ABC report: I’m just wondering, but has ABC ever highlighted the tax policy idea of some small tea party group that made a video to sell its plan to the people? Why does this tiny, left-wing group in California rate any attention at all in a national news program?

Obviously the answer here is that ABC saw the possibility of exploiting Kardashian and enraging her young fan base in order to drive them to support a left-wing idea. It’s all about branding, you see. If the far left and ABC can leech off Kim Kardashian to sell their creaky old socialist policies, then that’s what they will do.

Earlier today, Keith Olbermann of Current TV tweeted that his “Countdown” program would not air tonight. No reason was given, and Olbermann himself seemed to have been taken by surprise, referring all questions to senior Current TV management:

Mediaite noted Olbermann’s tweet, and speculated that he might have run into more conflict of the sort that saw him leave MSNBC last year.

Later, however, Olbermann tweeted again to indicate that Countdown would air in its normal slot the following night “by popular demand”:

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Alan Colmes earlier today made a despicable remark about how the Santorum family grieved over their child, a remark for which he had to later apologize.

Colmes faced off with National Review editor Rich Lowry, who responded to a question on whether or not undecided voters will truly stick by Santorum when it’s time to cast a vote. Colmes answered, saying that his rising support will stop short once people “get a load of some of the crazy things he’s said and done, like taking his two-hour-old baby when it died right after child birth home and played with it so that his other children would know that the child was real.”

Lowry  cut off Colmes, calling the statement “a cheap shot.”

“To take something that is that personal and that hurtful as losing a child and mocking it like that … that is beneath you, Alan,” he said. “What you’re saying is contemptible.”

It was more than a cheap shot, it was using someone else’s tragedy to make a political point. The flippant way he described taking baby Gabriel home was an attempt to make light of a horrific time for the Santorum family.  They did not take the child home to ”play with him” but because they felt before they sent him to his eternal resting place he should become a “real human being” to his siblings.

He and his wife, Karen, have seven children – including, as Santorum puts it, “the one in Heaven.” Their fourth baby, Gabriel Michael, died in 1996, two hours after an emergency delivery in Karen Santorum’s 20th week of pregnancy. The couple took Gabriel’s body home to let their three other young children see and hold the baby before burying him, according to Karen Santorum’s book of the ordeal, “Letters to Gabriel.”

Santorum’s wife described the aftermath to Gabriel’s death in a heart breaking way.

Gabriel Michael Santorum was born at 12:45 AM on Friday, October 11, 1996. He was a beautiful boy. He did not give a cry or open his tiny eyes. We baptized him, bundled him, and held him ever so close. We sang to him, held his little hands and kissed him. Gabriel lived for two hours. In those two hours something simple but profound happened. Rick and I became parents to a newborn baby and welcomed him into our family. That was all….but it was everything. His life was so brief, yet his impact so great. In two hours we experienced a lifetime of emotions. Love, sorrow, regret, joy—-all were packed into that brief span. To have rejected that experience would have been to reject life itself.

I pray that Colmes never has to face the pain of losing a child to learn what he would do in the face of such a horrible tragedy. He has no right to make light of the pain of others.

Then again, this is the same Alan Colmes who accused Sarah Palin of causing her son’s Downs Syndrome. via Prenatal neglect Not only does that belay genetics at the time it was the most disgusting thing I have ever heard from a liberal commentator. But today Colmes topped himself.

Apparently even Colmes realized he went too far.  Santorum appeared on Hannity later in the day and said Colmes apologized.

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Apparently the folks at MSNBC have discovered the ’20s and the Klan after reading a blog post on the internet from a progressive blog. (Yes, that really is their source.) No wonder the top brass at NBC is furious.

Here’s the extract:

MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts, 11AM ET: “So you may not hear Mitt Romney say ‘Keep America American’ anymore. That’s because it was a central theme of the KKK in the 1920s, it was a rallying cry for the group’s campaign of violence and intimidation against blacks, gays and Jews.”

Predictably, Trig birther Andrew Sullivan hyperventilated, calling the slogan “McCarthyite,” from an “alleged moderate.” Never mind, for the moment, the McCarthyite tactic of race-baiting Romney. We are supposed to think that Romney is a Klansman–just as we were supposed to ignore the fact that the late, not so great, Senator Robert Byrd (D-W.V.) actually was a Klansman.

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In her exclusive interview with Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D, AZ), ABCs Diane Sawyer began with a retrospective of the terrible crime committed against the Congresswoman by a mentally disturbed, a-political gunman. But true to her left-wing agenda, Sawyer could not resist illicitly linking tea party activists, anti-Obamacare sentiment, and even Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to what was perpetrated against Rep. Giffords on that terrible day.

Yes, even though these calumnies against conservatives and Sarah Palin have been thoroughly discredited, Sawyer links them anyway to the shocking crime that took the lives of six people, injured others, and delivered a debilitating head wound to Representative Giffords.

It was only hours after the shooting occurred on January 8, 2011, that left-wing activists, purported journalists, and Democrat operatives alike began blaming the shooting of Rep. Giffords on “Tea Party hate” and the “violent rhetoric of the right.”

The false narrative was picked up by nearly every Old Media outlet and disgorged from their talking points sheets over and over again. It was days before everyone learned that the killer, one Jared Lee Loughner, had been stalking Giffords for several years before the tea party, Obamacare or Sarah Palin became national news.

In fact, killer Loughner was not interested in politics at all. He was just a sick-minded, lunatic that had a crazy infatuation with Rep. Giffords.

The media ultimately stopped bandying about its discredited theory that the shooting was spurred by conservatives, the tea party and Gov. Palin, but no apologies were ever uttered by the spinmeisters in the press.

At least we thought that the discredited theory that the Giffords shooting was the fault of conservatives had disappeared. Now, with Sawyer’s new interview, we are once again treated to scenes of tea partiers unhappy at townhall meetings in the days before the shooting. We also get a brief scene of Gov. Palin addressing a crowd. So, once more we are visited with the lie that conservatives are at fault for Giffords shooting. Sawyer didn’t say so directly, of course. She’s too slick for that. But by showing tea partiers, conservatives, and Palin and painting them as a hostile force against Giffords, Sawyer was obviously linking them to the crime. Sawyer slyly floated irate conservatives as the reason the “atmosphere” of the days before her shooting were so filled with portent of the dangers to come.

Only it’s all a lie. The tea party, the dislike the nation has for Obamacare (which is still extant, by the way), and the political activism of Governor Sarah Palin had precisely nothing to do with Giffords’ shooting. Giffords was in Jared Lee Loughner’s gunsights regardless of the political situation in the country in the days leading up to his crime.

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In response to this evening’s groundbreaking report on 60 Minutes, which targeted both Republicans and Democrats for insider trading in Congress, Politico has circled the wagons around Washington’s political elite.

The CBS story was based on original research by Hoover Institution fellow and Big Peace editor Peter Schweizer for his new book, Throw Them All Out: How Politicians and Their Friends Get Rich Off Insider Stock Tips, Land Deals, and Cronyism That Would Send the Rest of Us to Prison.

That, apparently, was enough to send Politico–and the clowns at Media Matters for America–into a panic.

While hyper-partisan Media Matters has vomited a torrent of non-sequiturs to defend House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi from charges of inside deals (she paid high wages to her non-union farm workers? really?), Politico has attempted to defend Washington’s political class as a whole.

First, says Politico’s John Bresnahan–before describing the 60 Minutes report in any detail–Schweizer is a conservative. Hence, by implication, he has an agenda (unlike Politico, of course).

Second, Bresnahan claims, Schweizer’s allegations are old charges–nothing to see here:

The allegations regarding Bachus, Hastert and Gregg [all Republicans!] covered by 60 Minutes are several years old and have received extensive media coverage already.

Curiously, Bresnahan does not link to previous reports by Politico on these individuals. (Perhaps they were at the bottom of the page somewhere, near the Solyndra scandal.)

Third, Bresnahan adds, Pelosi and House Speaker John Boehner (also criticized in Schweizer’s book and the 60 Minutes report) are innocent of wrongdoing, because… because… they say so:

“I have not made any decisions on day-to-day trading activities of my account and haven’t for years. I do not do it, haven’t done it and wouldn’t do it,” Boehner said during a Nov. 3 press conference when asked about the transactions by Steve Kroft.

Boehner’s office dismissed the 60 Minutes report as absurd…

“First of all, what you’re contending is not true,” Pelosi said. “Second of all, we are very proud of our record of what happened.”

Instead of following up original research by Schweizer–and by CBS, which did its own, independent investigations–Politico has stepped in to act as mouthpiece for the leaders of the Washington elite.

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From the start of the Occupy Freak Street movement the media compared the protests to the tea party.

Based on jealousy over the movement that captured the nation prior to the November 2010 elections and since, the media wanted desperately to have protests they could relate to and promote. The tea party certainly was not that, so protecting #OWS has been their mission.

The protestors are making it harder and harder for the media to do that.

Take the Occupy Oakland protestors who attacked a KGO TV cameraman who was there to “shoot” a murder scene at one of the protests (wait–a murder scene at supposedly peaceful protests?).

Cameraman (or photojournalist, if you wish) Randy Davis was attacked by about a dozen men and he suffered a mild concussion and bumps and bruises.

It has also been reported that the protesters formed a human shield around the victim, possibly keeping the person from getting the medical help needed to possibly save his life if the occasion had been that severe. Accomplices, anyone?

The rap sheet at Occupy Bizarre Street continues to grow. The media has put itself in a pickle. Do they ignore these protests because they have become too embarrassing, do they try to paint them as something they are not, or do they continue to make them seem mainstream–or all of the above? Certainly, that’s what they’ve been doing for most of the time during these protests. (more…)

The Wrap:

Andy Rooney, the cantankerous “60 Minutes” commentator known for delivering decades of provocative opinions in a plain-spoken style, has died at 92.

Rooney died in a New York City hospital of complications following a minor surgery.

“It’s a sad day at ‘60 Minutes’ and for everybody here at CBS News,” said Jeff Fager, chairman of CBS News and the executive producer of “60 Minutes.” “It’s hard to imagine not having Andy around. He loved his life and he lived it on his own terms. We will miss him very much.”

Rooney delivered his last commentary on “60 Minutes” on Oct. 2. He said he always thought of himself as a writer, and that he would continue not to sign autographs because he didn’t believe in them. It was his 1,097th essay for the show.

“What kind of idiot wants my name on a piece of paper?” he asked.

He worked for CBS for six decades, half of them on the air. Once he was given his “60 Minutes” slot in 1978, he used it to comment on topics from the pressing to the mundane with the same directness and wry humor. (A CBS roundup of his commentaries is here.)

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In a curious nod to James O’Keefe-style guerrilla filmmaking, Steve Kroft of CBS’s 60 Minutes turned up at Capitol Hill press conferences yesterday with surprise questions for both House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).

Kroft quizzed both about their stock transactions in their respective roles as Speaker.

Pelosi’s shocked response set the rumor mill going:

Boehner was more collected, calling for House members to follow existing rules on insider trading:

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In “The View’s” recent interview with Herman Cain, Joy Behar made the blockbuster revelation that “the Republican Party hasn’t been black friendly over the many centuries in this country.”

Janeane Garofalo

Dang, I had it backwards all these years.  Professor Behar has now debunked the nefarious GOP conspiracy to obscure the apparent true history of Jefferson Davis and the Democrat Party as valiant freedom fighters against Abraham Lincoln and the Republican enslavement of blacks and enactment of Jim Crow laws.  Now I’m breathlessly awaiting the two hour “View Special Report: Republican Racists Exposed.”

Joking aside, I can’t decide whether Behar is pathetically ignorant or maliciously deceitful.  Either way, it is shocking that a liberal “journalist” can appear on national television and, without harsh rebuke or universal media derision, whitewash the sordid history of Democrat oppression of blacks and slander the commensurate noble history of Republican efforts to support blacks.

Race-baiting has become cliche among the Left for at least three decades.  The uglier side of that cliche is the barely masked hatred the Left reserves especially for conservative black politicians – a hatred that often appears uncomfortably close to old-time Democrat racism.  Recently it has plunged some leftwingers into spittle flying, vein popping rage, while others, such as Janeane Garofalo, engage in incoherent psycho-babbling that Republicans love Herman Cain because they secretly hate black men.   The Left incessantly chants how Cain is a stupid, unlearned, unserious Uncle Tom.  While usually incoherent and witless, the Left’s message is consistent:  Blacks are not entitled to respect if they express opinions contrary to those permitted them by the Left.

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Yesterday CNN asked its viewers whether President Barack Obama should bypass Congress to enact his economic policies, using–and expanding–his executive powers to control vast swathes of our economic life.

Adopting Obama’s premise that our economic woes are all the fault of Republicans on Capitol Hill, agreeing with his view that more government intervention is necessary, and accepting his assurance that his new mortgage and student loan plans will actually work, CNN’s Carol Costello all but urged viewers to applaud Obama’s rule by decree:

What is clear? Unless Congress acts in a big way, the economy will continue to suffer. And Congress does not appear likely to do that. So President Obama is moving forward on his own. Monday, the home mortgage plan. Tomorrow a plan to help with student loans. The President’s intent: to show Americans he’s doing something, and of course to shame Congress into acting.

So the Talk Back question for you today: should the president bypass Congress if he thinks it will help the economy?

Note that Costello did not just ask viewers about specific policies that may or may not already be within Obama’s executive jurisdiction. She presented the general conclusion that the president should bypass Congress to “help” [sic] the economy–in the form of a question, to be sure, but with the answer already a foregone conclusion.

Predictably, three out of the four responses Costello later read supported the idea that Obama “should take whatever executive actions he can to get things happening for America,” that Obama should have “done this YEARS ago,” and that Obama “should definitely bypass Congress.”

Executive fiat is preferable, CNN has now suggested, to democratic deliberations that might limit the government’s or the president’s power over the economy. And it expects citizens to be able to “talk back” in such circumstances.

That is the dangerous fallacy that F.A. Hayek warned about in The Road to Serfdom (1944)–namely, the idea that we can increase the power of a central economic authority without losing our cherished political freedom.

In fact, Hayek warns, economic dictatorship leads directly to political dictatorship, whatever good intentions the advocates of central planning may have: (more…)

Presidential hopeful Herman Cain made an appearance on ABC’s The View this week and had to deflect staggering ignorance from host Joy Behar. Discussing Cain’s assertion that some blacks are “brainwashed” not to consider any conservative ideas, the very first sentence out of Behar’s mouth was “The Republican Party hasn’t been black friendly over the many centuries in this country.”

Sadly, the coffee klatch program is what passes for as “intelligent” conversation on TV these days. Behar’s blather is ignorant in a million ways and indicative of the historical illiteracy of the far left in this country.

First, of course, this county hasn’t even been a country for “many centuries.” We are only about 235 years old as a nation! Most people don’t claim two as “many,” but only as “a couple.”

Second, the Republican Party has also not been around for “many centuries in this country.” The party is only about 155 years old.

Third, when the party itself was started it was derisively called the “Black Republicans” by Behar’s beloved Democrats because it was so friendly to America’s blacks. The party was founded with a pro-black agenda, its primary goal being the abolition all blacks from slavery and assuring them civil rights. In fact, for many decades after the Civil War and on into the 1900s most black Americans were Republicans, not Democrats. The very first blacks elected to Congress ran as Republicans. Blacks being Democrats is a relatively new development in our history.

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During the latest campaign appearance disguised as a presidential press conference, President Obama uttered one straight out lie that stands out above the rest of them. To help sell his “jobs bill,” Obama claimed to have met a Boston-based teacher named Robert Baroz and intimated that Baroz had no job despite his excellent teaching credentials. The problem is, neither claim is true. Obama simply lied. So, where is the national Old Media to pin Obama to the wall over this out right lie?

During his presser, Obama introduced teacher Baroz into the national discussion of his “jobs bill.” Obama claimed to have met Mr. Baroz and lamented that Baroz was out of work.

I had a chance to meet a young man named Robert Baroz. He’s got two decades of teaching experience. He’s got a master’s degree. He’s got an outstanding track record of helping his students make huge gains in reading and writing. In the last few years, he’s received three pink slips because of budget cuts. Why wouldn’t we want to pass a bill that puts somebody like Robert back in the classroom teaching our kids?

The problem with this little tale of woe? Firstly President Obama did not meet teacher Baroz. Robert Baroz did attend a Rose Garden press conference last September with a few other teachers, but the closest he ever got to the president was Baroz’ front row seat during the event. The two never came face to face, never shook hands, never actually met. Baroz saw Obama up at the lectern and Obama may have noticed Baroz sitting in the audience. That hardly makes for a meeting.

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