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Sneaking In Amnesty

For illegal immigrants, the good times are back. Workplace raids have been halved, and easily fudged paperwork audits are up. Make no mistake, this is a politically ... More »
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Gitmo North

Sen. Durbin calls a plan to transfer 100 Guantanamo detainees to northwest Illinois "a dream come true." It would paint a bull's-eye on America's heartland in time for the 2012 Iowa caucuses. It seems the question of where to put the Guantanamo detainees is being settled ... More »
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Please No

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It’s Come To This

Gibbs: Can you imagine if, five years ago, protesters had compared our government to Hitler?

You know what? I think I can.

Two possible explanations: (1) Gibbsy was trying to say something else and it came out very wrong; (2) Gibbsy was in a deep, deep coma for much of the past decade. Either way, maybe “White House press secretary” isn’t the optimal line of work for him. I’m stammering at the moment myself from sheer frustration at deciding where to begin to answer him, but thankfully MKH has pulled the necessary links together to do the job. Just follow the link up top. Meanwhile, dare we ask: Did anyone in the press corps challenge him when he dropped that nugget? Tapper? Bueller?

Let's help Gibbs out with this in particular:

Imagine just a few years ago had somebody walked around with images of Hitler.

Let's see if we can imagine that, Bob. Click here, and just keep scrolling.



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Smackdown

The “inherited deficits” fallacy

Keith Hennessey takes apart a Peter Orszag speech, and in the process, the Obama administration’s entire effort to blame Obama’s predecessor for their wild, profligate spending in the middle of a terrible recession.  Speaking at NYU yesterday, the OMB director once again excused Barack Obama for inflating the 2009 defoicit to $1.4 trillion and projecting another $1.4 trillion by claiming that Bush made them do it

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Toss It Now


Obama administration: Toss wiretap lawsuit...

Attorney General Eric Holder says a lawsuit in San Francisco over warrantless wiretapping threatens to expose ongoing intelligence work and must be thrown out.

In making the argument, the Obama administration agreed with the Bush administration's position on the case but insists it came to the decision differently. A civil liberties group criticized the move Friday as a retreat from promises President Barack Obama made as a candidate.


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Mass Layoffs Still Huge In September

Housing sales drop “unexpectedly”

Two economic indicators over the past week indicate that the recovery may have trouble getting off the ground.  Today, the Commerce Department reported a sharp drop in sales of new homes after a few months of tepid increases fueled by a tax break.  The previous month’s figures also got revised downward by 12,000 sales, or almost 3%

The biggest mystery is why this result is labeled “unexpected.”  First, defaults rose last month, making the sale of new homes less attractive as foreclosures skew the market.  More importantly, though, the expiration of the tax break should have made this outcome rather predictable.  Just as with Cash for Clunkers, the tax credit did nothing but accelerate sales to people who could already afford to buy.  As pointed out yesterday, the temporary prop for housing prices only delayed the inevitable reconciliation between actual value and market value, and stole sales from the future.

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“Air Raiding Villages And Bombing Civilians” Now A Democratic Platform?

Schumer: Stability in Afghanistan too expensive

Chuck Schumer appeared on MS-NBC this morning to endorse an unusual strategy in Afghanistan — the very “air raiding villages and bombing civilians” that Barack Obama derided as a candidate. The clip from Morning Joe is lengthy, but the portion that caught The Hill’s attention takes place in the first couple of minutes. Schumer seems to have missed a couple of strategy sessions in coming up with this idea

Actually, Joe Scarborough makes a much better point just after Schumer. It will take at least a decade, and probably several decades, to bring stability and infrastructure to Afghanistan. Forget about Schumer’s argument for the moment; does the American people have the stamina to see that mission through to its end, even for ten years, let alone 20, 30, 40, or more? If not, does it make sense to get out now and leave Pakistan to fend off the radicals as they move their flags across the frontier to avoid the Pakistani army and set up terrorist shop in Helmand while our credibility suffers in the region?



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What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Everything

Could See This Coming!

We ended that post with the by now familiar bleat . . . “What could possibly go wrong?” Now, with a tip of the hat to Rich “Mullings” Galen, we learn exactly what can possibly go wrong

At Treasury, President Obama’s pay czar, Kenneth Feinberg, announced sharp cuts in pay for 175 top executives at seven big banks and automakers that received hundreds of billions of dollars in federal bailout money during the financial crisis. The new structures reduced the cash salary paid to some executives by 90 percent and tied more compensation to long-term stock awards….

At the Federal Reserve, Chairman Ben S. Bernanke proposed a broader but less proscribed plan to restrict pay at banks. The aim is to prevent them from rewarding employees for actions that could endanger the firms’ long-term financial health. Unlike Feinberg’s more limited plan, the Fed’s guidance would cover all banks it regulates — even those that never received a bailout — as well as U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies.

But hey, it’s not like the federal government is, like, you know, taking over the private sector; they’re not actually setting wages for all banks — they merely get the final say on what those wages will be

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Integrity

Broadcast nets rejects Obama admin’s attempt to block Fox

The collected Washington bureau chiefs of the major broadcast networks rejected a White House attempt to keep Fox News from participating in pool reports.  Rather than cut Fox out of the pool, the broadcast bureau chiefs unanimously told the Obama administration that none of them would accept any interviews from administration officials.  That forced the White House into retreat

We certainly give these broadcast networks plenty of criticism.  Let’s take a moment to recognize their integrity.  Jake Tapper stood up to Robert Gibbs earlier this week, and we wondered where the rest of the reporters at the White House were.  They certainly showed up today.

Meanwhile, how bad is this for the White House?  They now have all of the broadcast networks on record defending their competitor as a news organization.  That reinforces reporting Fox News will do in the future, to the detriment of White House efforts to marginalize them.  Plus, obviously, they look completely foolish in having to back down from their threat.



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“She’s Dramatically Better Than The Democrat.”

Audio: Gingrich makes the case for Scozzafava

" . . . it’s true that Scozzafava is moderately conservative by the standards of New York Republicans — but measured against congressional Republicans, she’s way left. Newt polishes her credentials a bit here but does admit that she’s not the candidate he would have nominated. In which case … why’s he sticking with her? She’s embarrassing herself on a daily basis and Hoffman stands a decent chance to win if he can get some wind from big-name conservatives in his sails. Why puff Scozzafava up instead of making the switch? Even if she’s “dramatically better than the Democrat,” is she dramatically better than Hoffman? It’s a three-way race now, Newt. Embrace the possibilities.

Gingrich on endorsing Scozzafava: I know I’m right

Police: Scozzofava call not justified

So what did John say that frightened Scozzofava so much?  He asked her about her position on Card Check (she supports it), abortion (she supports it), and whether she would vote for a health care bill that raised taxes and covered abortions.  No wonder Scozzofava panicked!



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But Voter Intimidation Requires No Intervention, Right?

Politicization of the DoJ, squared

How patronizing can the federal government get?  Try to follow the reasoning in the latest intervention by the Department of Justice in electoral law, which negates a community’s right to opt for non-partisan races in its local elections

Bear in mind that this DoJ also dropped charges against the New Black Panther Party activists that intimidated voters in Philadelphia after the DoJ had already won the cases.  Now, somehow, stripping off party affiliations in local elections — which most American communities do — represents a bigger threat to electoral integrity than thugs threatening people outside a polling booth?  This DoJ has a curious sense of priorities when it comes to protecting voters.

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Is Fox News Un-American?

Jacob Weisberg: See no liberal bias, hear no liberal bias

The creator of Slate’s Bushisms, the author of a book called “The Bush Tragedy,” and a lifelong liberal writer is calling Fox News “unAmerican” for having—wait for it—a conservative bias. He is also accusing Fox of forcing MSNBC and CNN to swing to the left instead of maintaining their world-renowned objectivity in news reporting. (Yes indeed, that was sarcasm.)

Meanwhile, ABC presented what was essentially an infomercial on Obamacare earlier this year. A CNN reporter went off on the people she was supposed to be objectively interviewing, and ultimately lost her job—probably because she’s not supposed to be so overt in her liberal bias. But that’s objective journalism. (Say, did ABC present the other side of the healthcare debate in its informercial? I’m thinking not.)

That’s amazing… Fox is not only responsible for tilting itself right, but it is also responsible for the leftward tilt of the other cable news networks. But that’s not the biggest load of bull in the piece.


I have three words in response: William Randolph Hearst.

Weisberg is absolutely entitled to his own opinion. But he is not entitled to his own facts, and he is making those facts up out of whole cloth. There was no objective press in the 1930s, and the myth of the unbiased media is a new one, from less than fifty years ago, and I think it was spread by the media people themselves. The phrase “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America” was uttered by Lyndon Johnson after an editorial by the CBS anchor about Vietnam in 1968. Somehow, that doesn’t strike me as a century of unbiased media. The media was anti-Vietnam, anti-Richard Nixon (well, so was I, but that’s beside the point), pro-Democrat, anti-Republican, and absolutely not objective. It has had the illusion of objectivity for decades, and that illusion is courtesy of its own teachings in journalism schools, where, somehow, the professors manage to insist that the mainstream media outlets are all paragons of objectivity and unbiased reporting. The fact that everything skews liberal and Democrat is pooh-poohed as the ravings of the “vast, right-wing conspiracy”—the one that caused the Clinton impeachment.

Apparently, editing Slate and creating the “Bushism of the Day” column—which ran even after George W. Bush was no longer in office—is considered legitimate news. But having opinion shows that run counter to the mainstream media’s wishes? Well. That’s just plain un-American.
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