I’m from Ozark country and it is against the law for any home south of Rolla to have a Twinkie-less pantry. Alright, so maybe not “against the law,” but I’ve yet to see a pantry without one. All my kin abided by this unspoken rule. Because of my history with the snack cake, I was dismayed, to say the least, when news hit that Hostess was trying to stave off bankruptcy. I was further dismayed that they sort of obfuscated the reason why.

From USA Today:

Hostess Brands is hoping to take a bite out of its high costs as it heads back into bankruptcy protection for the second time in less than a decade.

Hostess has enough cash to keep stores stocked with its Ding Dongs, Ho Hos and other snacks for now. But longer term, the 87-year-old company has a bigger problem: health-conscious Americans favor yogurt and energy bars over the dessert cakes and white bread they devoured 30 years ago.

Last year, 36% of Americans ate white bread in their homes, down from 54% in 2000, according to NPD Group. Meanwhile, about 54% ate wheat bread, up from 43% in 2000.

Consumption of healthy snacks is growing, too. About 32% of Americans ate yogurt at least once in two weeks in 2011, for instance, up from 18% in 2000.

I’m sorry, but I call BS.

You’re Hostess. It’s not difficult to sell creme-filled heaven snacks and America isn’t exactly eating healthier. If anything, America is eating leaner because the price of everything has increased eleventy-fold because the cost of energy is passed to us, the consumers. Now for the truth: this is what Hostess cited as the real reason behind their move against bankruptcy.

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What happens when you look at the facts involved with Issue 2 instead of basing your decision on the emotional hysteria coming from unions bent solely on preserving their power? You find out that the need for reform is real, and that Ohio NEEDS Issue 2.

That what the newspapers from Ohio’s three largest cities found out when the looked past the rhetoric, and focused on the facts. The Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Columbus Dispatch, and the Cincinnati Enquirer all agree. Ohioans should vote YES on Issue 2. And what they say pretty much mirrors what we have been telling you.

Some key quotes from The Plain Dealer:

Ohio law must not impede reform, and it won’t if it creates a level playing field for public-sector workers and their employers.

Right now, that field is tipped in favor of the unions. Recognizing that reality does not mean we oppose public-employee unions or that we do not appreciate what their members do and the sacrifices some already have made…

In schools, the emphasis has to be on the progress of children, not the comfort of adults. In city halls and county offices, the impact on those who pay the bills — and the sheer magnitude of those bills — must be paramount.

Rules that made sense in 1983 do not make sense anymore. Ohio needs a fresh start…

When they mark their ballots, Ohioans cannot worry about what is best for any political party or interest group — on either side of this debate. They need to consider what’s best for the future of their children, their communities, their state.

They need to pass Issue 2.

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Priceless.

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- While the Occupy movement continues to labor in the streets in a manner designed to help Obama and the Democrats, why isn’t the media bothering to report the significant role Big Labor is playing? That’s a rhetorical question, but you can vent in comments of you  like.

The most interesting part of this story, however, is that one of the AFL-CIO affiliates behind the campaign, the Working America group, is headed by a veteran of the Venceremos Brigades to Cuba, a progressive activist by the name of Karen Nussbaum. Equally significant, her husband works for the public relations firm that represented billionaire hedge fund operator George Soros.

- No bias at Time, nope. Plus, were Cain a Democrat and Time not part of the Left, they’d be called racist for making cracks about him.

Time magazine’s website made a cutesy list of the “The 10 Best (Topical) Halloween Costumes of 2011.” Number two on the list was the “GOP presidential candidates.” You could be Michele Bachmann and look “overly wide-eyed, like you just drank a coffeemaker.” Wear a nightcap with your Rick Perry costume for his “sleepiness on the campaign trail.” Herman Cain has a “gimmicky jobs plan” inside a pizza box.

- But the, with the New York Times all but calling Cain and “minstrel,” Bryant Gumbel mumbling on about plantations, and Andrea Mitchell playing the race card so badly, even NBC’s Chuck Todd disapproved, race is the third rail of politics for thee but not for me, as far as the Left in media is concerned. It’s the new tolerance, the media detests lynching, unless the black person is conservative, or has an “R” after their name.

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Read Project Mayhem, Part I and Project Mayhem, Part II

Recently, MSNBC’s Ed Schultz and White House reporter Tommy Christopher attacked Andrew Breitbart and myself for a “failed ambush” after I released Project Mayhem, Part II, which included video in which I broke the first rule of Project Mayhem, and asked Schultz how Ohio Senate Bill 5 allegedly takes away union rights to bargain on safety, which he and his panel contended, when it specifically does the opposite.

Recounting this in a subsequent broadcast, calling me part of a “goon squad,” Schultz explained that “after the show, one of Andrew Breitbart’s lackeys ambushed me.”

First of all, I did not “ambush” him; I asked him for a few moments of his time for an interview and he agreed. Perhaps I should from now on duck, cover and scream “Help!” every time some Greenpeace member asks me if I have a moment for the environment.

Apparently Schultz’s definition of the term “ambush” is any consensual interview in which specific questions are asked which don’t comfortably warrant platitudinal answers. (By this rationale, most questions towards President Obama regarding specific language in Obamacare are ripe for secret service intervention.)

Schultz continued: “It wasn’t a scheduled interview he just came up and started talking.”

Actually we did schedule it. I asked, “Hi Mr. Schultz, can I ask you a few questions for the people of Ohio?” He said, “Sure.” So I began. I assumed by “sure” he meant “right now is fine,” as opposed to “call my assistant, she knows my schedule this week better than I do.”

In the interview, I pointed out to him that “the bill under Section 4117.08 actually gives the right to unions to be bargain on safety which the Democrat bill of 1983 didn’t.” His response was “that’s not what the firefighters are telling me,” to which I said, “But the bill says so.”

… And it still does. As the author of the bill Shannon Jones advised Schultz in my earlier video, “Reading is fundamental.” In response to the video release, Schultz admitted that while the bill does in fact say so, it at the same time doesn’t say so:

“What Breitbart and the anti-union Republicans don’t want you to know about is Section 4117.14 of the bill … Right now if firefighters and lawmakers have a disagreement, they go to a neutral third party to reach an agreement. In Senate Bill 5, those rights are taken away and the lawmakers — the lawmakers — have the final say.”

Once again, Ed, reading is fundamental. Had Schultz actually read the article I wrote in which the video was embedded, he would have found that this “Breitbart lackey” who “[doesn't] want you to know about … Section 4117.14,” specifically mentioned Section 4117.14.

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(Read Project Mayhem, Part I here)

When he’s not busy encouraging Massachusetts voters to commit voter fraud to “keep these bastards out,” or condemning “tea party rhetoric” for not “rising to the president’s challenge on tone” while calling Laura Ingraham a “right-wing slut,” MSNBC’s Ed Schultz indulges his hobby of swooping into states like Wisconsin and Ohio, becoming an overnight expert on legislation he is only familiar with from having skimmed through SEIU-furnished Cliffs Notes, calling the legislation “racist” while cheerleading union rallies with applause-cuing platitudes, waving his arms in solidarity and then peacing out.

Schultz made a recent visit to Columbus, Ohio in which he had Congressman Tim Ryan (whom I had interviewed hours prior about Senate Bill 5’s alleged confiscation of safety equipment) and Senator Sherrod Brown on the show against a backdrop of union firefighters to whom, during commercial breaks, Schultz yelled that SB 5 “makes me believe Jimmy Hoffa even more that they are sons of bitches!” Throughout the broadcast Schultz and his guests parroted the manufactured mantra that the bill takes away safety equipment, perhaps almost enough times to make it true.

Admittedly breaking the SEIU’s first rule of Project Mayhem, I subsequently interviewed Schultz on camera and asked him to respond to the fact that the bill gives bargaining rights on safety equipment — which the Democrats’ earlier bill didn’t, citing the exact section number — to which he offered a Pulitzer Prize-warranting response: “That’s not what the firefighters are telling me.”

Well Ed, that may not be what the firefighters are telling you the bill says, but it is what the bill is telling me the bill says. When I later asked the author of SB 5, State Senator Shannon Jones, to respond to Schultz’s talking points, she clarified the provision in depth, noting to Schultz that “reading is fundamental.”

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Even after it was thoroughly debunked, Obama mentioned it anyway to drum up dollars at his ritzy $35,800 per plate Facebook fundraiser tonight.

Jake Tapper and Ed Henry live-Tweeted the speech.

An individual, via those in attendance, hollered at the health care story and the audience rebuked them. Two men booed the gotcha question posed by a gay soldier and they were so strongly rebuked for booing that the audience’s hisses and shushes overpowered the volume of the rude men’s outburst.

I’d say that the President “grossly misstated” the true nature of these incidents, but that would be inaccurate. It was a lie to willfully misstate that the actions of a couple of individuals were instead from the entire audience.

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Via Todd Herman, legitimate criticism? Considering how all last week this site covered what most news organizations would not: 500 union members stormed a business and held six hostages. Earlier that same week they were served a restraining order after they fought with cops and issued death threats.

The AFL-CIO.

Yes, that AFL-CIO whose head, on the same day that the above took place, sat VIP next to Michelle Obama at the jobs address.

Yet media insists that it’s the tea party who is angry and propelling the GOP with all their fist-shaking anger.

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Got your attention?

Good. Because it seems that unless a story has negative implications for the tea party no one (even Fox News) is going to make a stink about it.

On Thursday morning, over 500 members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (an AFL-CIO union) did something that should have been the top news story on every major news network in the country.

A union worker blocks a grain train in Longview, Wash., Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2011. Longshoremen blocked the train as part of an escalating dispute about labor at the EGT grain terminal at the Port of Longview.(AP Photo/Don Ryan)

Hundreds of Longshoremen stormed the Port of Longview early Thursday, overpowered and held security guards, damaged railroad cars, and dumped grain that is the center of a labor dispute, said Longview Police Chief Jim Duscha.

Let us change that around a little and conduct a thought experiment. What if the event were described like this?

Hundreds of Tea Party protesters stormed City Hall in Longview early Thursday, overpowered and held security guards, damaged office furniture, and dumped files out of the Hall’s archives, said Longview Police Chief Jim Duscha.

How would MSNBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, and even Fox News handle the story? Do you think there would be wall to wall coverage of this criminal activity being done by a battalion-sized crowd of tea partiers? How many talking heads and other assorted pundits would be weighing in about heated political rhetoric and how opponents of Obama’s presidency are directly or indirectly responsible for a “toxic climate” that resulted in this behavior?

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Brent Bozell and Sean Hannity delivers the MSNBC Hoffa/rhetoric defense media mashup.

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Earlier this morning 500 or so members of the AFL-CIO stormed a port in Washington, vandalized the facility, reportedly cut the brake lines of train cars, and held six guards hostage. Shockingly, no one was arrested. Earlier that week a judge issued a restraining order against this same group after they clashed with police while brandishing bats and issuing death threats. Nineteen people were arrested for misdemeanors.

While all of this was going on, the group’s head, Richard Trumka, was invited as a guest of the President to tonight’s jobs address.

A union worker blocks a grain train in Longview, Wash., Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2011. Longshoremen blocked the train as part of an escalating dispute about labor at the EGT grain terminal at the Port of Longview.(AP Photo/Don Ryan)

Rebel Pundit reminds us of when Illinois’ Jan Schakowsky called tea party-supporting congressmen “radical hostage takers.” I wonder if the congresswoman would like to amend her statement now?

If you thought that all of this would score major news coverage, you’d be wrong. Only a handful of outlets have written about it. As of this writing, I’ve not seen any television coverage and I have not seen a single mention of it on a Soros-funded blog.

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Barack Obama is nothing less than a hypocrite on his admonitions over public discourse and the latest example of this truth lies in his refusal to condemn the violence-tinged language of Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa not to mention his similar silence on the obscene rhetoric of many of the leading members of the Congressional Black Caucus.

While Obama has tsk tsked folks on the right like Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin and told the nation that we need to start “talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds,” he has turned a blind eye to his own vice president calling political opponents “terrorists,” members of Congress saying that Republicans and Tea Partiers can “go straight to hell,” and just this week walked on stage grinning like a Cheshire Cat immediately after Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa told a Detroit crowd that they intended to “take those sons a bitches out.” Tonight he hosts AFL-CIO head Richard Trumka in the box next to the First Lady, the same Trumka whose union members this morning stormed a port and took hostages. (MSM was careful to not report this until later today so as not to overshadow the President’s address.)

Obama loves to sound as if he’s somehow above old fashioned, boilerplate rhetoric or the mudslinging that is associated with down-and-dirty politics. He not only claims to avoid such rhetoric himself but acts the national scold and wags fingers at others that do indulge such tactics. Well, he does if it happens to be his political opponents indulging that sort of rhetoric, that is. When his side does it, the scold in chief is suddenly silent.

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In a recent article on the dissatisfaction of Big Labor once again see the Associated Press weaving bias and left-wing “definitions into what is otherwise an everyday news story.

Even while presenting straight “news” the AP can’t resist swinging all terms and discussions to the liberal side of the fence, a tactic that it employs to push every story to the left.

In an article headlined, “Labor Unions Adjust to New Reality Under Obama,” AP writer Sam Hannanel reports the dissatisfaction that Big Labor leaders are increasingly expressing about their Obammessiah. Even though he’s been the most union-friendly president in American history their grumbling is rising as they see Obama “failing” them.

The complaint is that Obama hasn’t done enough for unions — an astounding claim for what he has done for them in comparison to what past presidents have done.

One can almost understand Big Labor’s lament, truthfully. After all, Obama ran as a red-fisted, union-pushing, socialist extremist when he campaigned with unionistas throughout the 2008 campaign. They certainly expected Obama to act Chavez-like assuming the sort of dictatorial powers that one would need to push the union’s agenda.

While he has done more than any other president to implement Big Labor’s agenda he hasn’t been able to defeat the voter’s concerns that that agenda is detrimental to any hope of economic recovery and certain political realities have prevented el Presidente Obama’s grand reordering of things in the union’s favor.

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Yesterday a union boss introduced the President of the United States at a rally by telling him that the union workers present were Obama’s “army” before yelling that tea partiers are “sons of bitches” and vowing to “take them out.”

So far, only a handful of press has reported. The list below.

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Soros blogs were left scrambling late yesterday evening after spending all day carefully constructing a house of cards narrative designed to spin Jimmy Hoffa Jr.’s incendiary remarks into a positive light. Media Matters specifically accused Fox News of “editing” Hoffa’s remarks — apparently “editing” them in real time as they came out of his mouth — and further blamed conservatives such as myself for “buying into it.” (It’s also important to mention that MMfA is a union-funded blog defending a union in this story.)

Right-wing bloggers misled by dishonest Fox News video editing are attacking Teamsters President James Hoffa, Jr. for supposedly urging violence against Tea Party activists during a Labor Day speech. Conservatives are also attacking President Obama, who appeared at the event, for “sanctioning violence against fellow Americans” by failing to denounce Hoffa.

Media Matters and other progressives hammered away with their ridiculous “edited video” narrative, their only defense for the rest of the day:

Loesch’s comments in particular were already way over the top. But they became truly embarrassing at around 3 p.m., when the whole story collapsed after Fox finally got around to airing what Henry had called the “full quote” of Hoffa’s “take these son of a bitches out” comment …

Except later on, after Soros bloggers spent so much effort attempting to spin this as a “doctored” video, Hoffa doubled down on the remarks and made it very clear that he wasn’t talking about “voting.” TPM inadvertently wholly destroyed the careful narrative Media Matters spent literally all day fabricating:

Teamsters union president James Hoffa would say it all again if he could, he told TPM Monday.

Hoffa riled up Fox News and the right wingMonday with a Labor Day speech in Detroit in which he called Republican members of Congress “sons of bitches” and said union workers are ready to “go to war” with the tea party next year and “take out” Republicans at the ballot box.

Hoffa said he’d say the exact same words all over again.

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Headline:

White House Declines To Comment On Union Leader’s Anti-Tea Party Rhetoric At Labor Day Rally

But didn’t Obama already comment?

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In a write-up of Jimmy Hoffa Jr.’s vitriolic rhetoric in announcing President Obama (wherein he called tea partiers “sons of bitches” declaring the union audience a willing “army” for Obama that was willing to “take out” a portion of America) Zara Golden states:

Hoffa’s violent rhetoric is the sort that Sarah Palin was charged with in the days following Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford‘s shooting earlier this year, a sort of rhetoric that all sides should be weary of no matter who started it.

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Union thug Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. demonstrated why a union stereotype exists just moments ago when he introduced President Obama at an address in Detroit with a threat of violence:

Uh oh. Obama says he’s “proud” of Hoffa:

” … we got to keep an eye on the battle we face, the war on workers, and you see it everywhere, it is the tea party. There’s only one way to beat and win that war. The one thing about working people is that we like a good fight. And you know what? They got a war? They got a war with us? And there’s only gonna be one winner, it’s gonna be the  workers of Michigan, of America, we’re gonna win that war!

President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march! Let’s take these son of a bitches out and give America back to America where we belong!”

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The Hill has an interesting, if not a bit slanted, report about the faux grassroots efforts of unions and left-wing advocates to pretend they are somehow just like the tea party by attacking the town hall meetings of various GOP congressman across the country this Summer.

The Hill dutifully reports without complaint the union’s claims that they are organizing just like the tea partiers and forcing GOP congressmen to face “angry protests at home” this month in a “replication” of the tea party backlash that “bit” Democrats in 2009.

“Liberal groups have been planning these protests for months,” trumpets The Hill, “One organizer told The Hill in February that the campaign would ‘build to a crescendo’ in August.”

These protests have been organized by Obama’s supporters in government unions like the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the AFL-CIO as well as far left NGOs such as MoveOn.org, Campaign for America’s Future and others.

The report goes on to note that several congressmen have faced unruly audiences this August.

At least ten other House Republicans have been the targets of protests or angry questions at public events in the last two weeks. Many of the protests are the outcome of a months-long effort by labor unions and liberal advocacy groups to turn up public pressure on GOP lawmakers.

These groups have taken a page from the Tea-Party playbook and are trying to replicate the August of outrage that nearly sunk President Obama’s healthcare reform initiative in 2009.

“This is very similar to what the Tea Party did,” said Roger Hickey, co-director of Campaign for America’s Future, which has worked with labor unions and liberal groups to help organize a public backlash to the House GOP agenda.

Only these orchestrated attacks are nothing like what happened in 2009 as the tea party movement first started gaining steam.

The tea party events were not organized by unions, they did not have millions of dollars behind them, they had no national organizations, no formal groups to which to belong or by which to organize. The protests that Democrats faced in 2009 were real citizens gathering on their own hook not organized from the top like these faux protests are being raised today.

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Last night the story broke about an Ohio businessman who was shot for being non-union:

With around 25 employees, John King owns one of the largest non-union electrical contracting businesses in the Toledo, Ohio area. As a non-union contractor, his business happens to be doing well at a time when unions in the construction industry are suffering. This, it seems, has made the usual animosity unions have for him even greater, making him a prime target of union thugs. So much so, that one of them tried to kill him last week at his home.

John King didn’t plan on being an enemy of unions. In fact, he says all he’s ever wanted to do is work at something he loves doing and be successful at it—something that most normal Americans would call ‘The American Dream.’

[...]

Since he’s been in business, in addition to the legal battles and verbal abuse, King’s company has been vandalized and threatened on numerous occasions.

“Back then, it was nothing to have to regularly buy a new set of tires.” King said during a telephone interview on Tuesday. “The ice pick was the weapon of choice.”

Until Wednesday, the worst of the union attacks on King and his business came in the mid-eighties during the UAW strike at AP Parts. During a lull during the lengthy strike, King’s business was picketed by more than 50 IBEW picketers. This was at a time when he only had eight or nine employees. One of his employees, whose car was trashed by the union picketers, was also beaten up by IBEW thugs.

Unfortunately, the vandalism has never stopped. This year alone, he’s had to report three incidents of damage to police. This doesn’t include the incidents of stalking he and his men have to go through while they’re working.

In one incident earlier this year, rocks were thrown through the front windows of his shop, one of which had the word “kill” written on it.

Last Wednesday, however, the attacks on Mr. King became much more serious when he was awakened late in the evening at his home in Monroe County, Michigan and saw that the motion lights in his driveway had come on.  When he looked out his front window, he saw a figure near his SUV and went outside.

As soon as he got outside his front door, King yelled at the individual who was crouched down by King’s vehicle. As soon as King yelled, the suspect stood and, without hesitation, fired a shot at Mr. King.

Luckily for King, as he yelled, he also stumbled. If it weren’t for that, however, John King’s injuries might have been much, much worse. In fact, he might have been killed.

You would think that the same media who rushed to blame Sarah Palin for her crosshairs map and tea partiers for peacefully protesting would condemn these actions by progressives and criticize the Wisconsin protesters who’ve been threatening people repeatedly since protests began. You’d think they would criticize our President for telling his supporters to “bring a gun to a knife fight” — especially since they went whole hog in their attempt to tie Palin to Tucson. They haven’t.

In fact, they haven’t reported anything.

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