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After a fierce controversy over what many perceived as an effort to indoctrinate students, the White House says it will rewrite the government recommendation that teachers nationwide assign students a paper on how to "help the president." According to the Washington Times, Obama aides acknowledged the White House helped the U.S. Education Department craft recommended activities to be assigned to students after they watched Obama's address: Among the activities the government initially suggested for prekindergarten to sixth-grade students: that they "write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president." Another task recommended for students immediately after...

President Obama, You have repeatedly trashed doctors in the US. And you claim that they are taking people's feet off, and removing tonsils simply because they want to make more money. They are greedy. You make these claims and sound so confident as if you have irrefutable proof. So let us see your proof. Tell congress to investigate the matter, they love investigations. America doesn't need any more of your demagoguery on this matter. If you are going to prosecute doctors who are committing a clear case of malpractice, then do so. If not, then put an end to these...

Before recent events, I intended to write about the GOP's message problem with the headline: "Shoot the Messenger." Sunday's fatal shooting of abortion doctor George Tiller makes my title inappropriate, but the idea remains relevant. The adage, of course, is "Don't shoot the messenger," meaning we shouldn't necessarily blame the person who delivers bad news. For the Republican Party these days, however, the problem isn't so much the message. It's the messenger. By grotesque coincidence, Tiller's murderer furthers the point. It has long been a problem for the GOP that some of the party's cherished positions are embraced most enthusiastically...

Do you have a spare tire? Some bulges? Do your thighs rub together? Do you have a big gut? Well, be prepared to be ostracized. They already did a number on smokers. It used to be you could smoke almost anywhere, from the supermarket to your workplace. And then they started passing laws until you now have to go to smoke areas which are usually outside and away from everywhere else. Even though OSHA had to admit that second-hand smoke in the workplace cannot affect people except under extreme conditions. “Field studies of environmental tobacco smoke indicate that under normal...

Last night, for the first time, I watched the movie, The Fugitive, from start to finish. The film is about a surgeon, falsely accused and convicted of murdering his wife, who escapes during a prison transfer, and is pursued by a US marshall. For Chicagoans, the film is one of the great movie portrayals of the city. But I now believe the classic moment in the movie comes in the 82nd minute. Harrison Ford, playing the falsely accused doctor, Richard Kimble, tries to lose himself from his pursuers by joining in the St. Patrick's Day Parade. This parade always draws...

In a world growing more dangerous by the week in this dark spring of 2009, Washington may be the most dangerous city in the world. The city is safe enough for its residents - it is the rest of the country and world that is endangered by what Washington is capable of doing. On a bipartisan, bicameral, bigovernmental (executive and legislative branches) basis, rarely has so much policymaking, world-economy-transforming power been in harness to such unsteady political and policy instincts. Whatever one thinks of the American International Group Inc.'s bonus actions, last week's performance by Washington's political class should give...

Why, since President Obama promised to “restore science to its rightful place” in Washington, do some things feel not quite right? First there was Steven Chu, the physicist and new energy secretary, warning The Los Angeles Times that climate change could make water so scarce by century’s end that “there’s no more agriculture in California” and no way to keep the state’s cities going, either. Then there was the hearing in the Senate to confirm another physicist, John Holdren, to be the president’s science adviser. Dr. Holdren was asked about some of his gloomy neo-Malthusian warnings in the past, like...

Obama outlined, in the vaguest terms possible, countless billions or trillions of new federal spending. How would he pay for it? By "closing corporate loopholes"--like what? The idea that Obama's orgy of spending can be funded by "closing corporate loopholes" is frankly childish. By increasing taxes on the top 5% of taxpayers, i.e., precisely those who are grossly over-taxed already. The top 5% already pay 60% of all federal income taxes. And by "eliminating programs that no longer work." Really? Which ones? No one seriously imagines that Obama--let alone the Democratic Congress!--has any intention of eliminating any significant government programs.

New York Times VideoIn Sadr City, Hashem Hadi Obaid translates sermons by preachers loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, the anti-American cleric, into sign language.Iraq's most anti-western demagogue is determined to bring the message to those who can't hear it. In Sadr City, Hashem Hadi Obaid translates sermons by preachers loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, the anti-American cleric, into sign language.

Today House Democrats appealed to ignorance, in their usual fashion, by summoning executives from the five biggest oil companies to berate them for high gasoline prices. This is fundamentally stupid in at least two respects. First, these same Democrats purport to be worried about "global warming" and committed to taking strong measures to combat it. Needless to say, the simplest way to reduce carbon consumption, if you really believe that carbon consumption will cause an environmental disaster, is to increase the price of energy. This is why some honest global warming advocates have argued for huge increases in the gasoline...

Juan Williams, a Fox commentator whose book addresses the 'phony leaders and dead end groups that "promote a Culture of Failure and are undermining Black America,” tells Newsmax that Wright’s sermons reflect “the victim mindset that is so self-defeating in the black community and one that is played on by weak black leadership that chooses to have black people identified as victims rather than inspiring them as people who have overcome. In posing as victims, they say the most prejudiced and vicious things, not only about whites but about America. They call it theology. In fact, it’s nothing but bigotry.”...

Most of the horrors of the 20th century — of which there were many — would not have been possible without demagoguery or misleading propaganda. Most people have too much of a sense of decency and too much common sense to have gone along with those horrors unless someone found a way to turn off their thinking and turn on their emotions. That is how Jim Jones led hundreds of people to their deaths at Jonestown. On a much larger scale, that is how Lenin created a regime of mass murder in Russia, how Hitler did the same thing in...

In his 1932 campaign, Franklin D. Roosevelt had talked about helping someone he called “the forgotten man.” He was thinking of the poorest man, or as he put it—invoking the time of the pharaohs—“the man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.” The phrase came from an essay (and later a book) written decades before, called The Forgotten Man. Written by a famous Yale professor named William Graham Sumner, this essay defined “the forgotten man” differently. Sumner employed an algebra to explain what he meant: A and B want to help X, he wrote. This is the charitable impulse. The...

National Republicans are condemning state Auditor Claire McCaskill's comment to a group of city Democratic elected officials this week that "George Bush let people die on rooftops in New Orleans because they were poor and because they were black."

Judy Ettenhofer: Gore's 'Truth' needs to be acted upon now By Judy Ettenhofer, June 21, 2006 When "Fahrenheit 9/11," the Michael Moore screen diatribe against our current president, arrived in Madison theaters shortly before the 2004 presidential election, people sympathetic to its message couldn't get enough of it. They flocked to screenings and breathlessly implored their friends to see the movie that bolstered all their reasons for hating George W. Bush. It is my profound hope that the same kind of passionate evangelism occurs as a result of a much, much more crucial film that arrived at Westgate and Eastgate...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush and congressional Republicans are aiming the political spotlight this week on efforts to ban gay marriage, with events at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue - all for a constitutional amendment with scant chance of passage but wide appeal among social conservatives. "Ages of experience have taught us that the commitment of a husband and wife to love and to serve one another promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society," Bush said in his weekly radio address. "Government, by recognizing and protecting marriage, serves the interests of all." The president was to make...

by Mark Finkelstein May 11, 2006 Maybe the ABC show should change its name to 'Demagogue Morning America'. Earlier this week, Charlie Gibson trotted out windfall-profit taxes and limits on executive compensation as 'solutions' to high gas prices. This morning, Kate Snow took the demagoguery up-close-and-personal, flashing a $20 bill in the faces of modest-income Americans to elict predictable responses about the tax cut they would be receiving under a Republican-backed plan. Snow set the tone by announcing that the proposed extension of the tax cuts "would cost the federal government $70 billion." Of course tax cuts don't cost the...

The government should consider a tax on oil companies if they make excessive profits amid rising gasoline prices, a leading Republican senator said Sunday. Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said a windfall profits tax, along with measures to stem concentration of market power among a few select oil companies, could offer eventual relief to consumers hurting at the gas pump. "I believe that we have allowed too many companies to get together to reduce competition," Specter said. "They get together, reduce the supply of oil, and that drives up prices," he said. "In the short...

Bush marks Earth Day with focus on alternative fuels SACRAMENTO, California (Reuters) - President George W. Bush marked Earth Day on Saturday by highlighting technology that could reduce U.S. dependence on oil, while Democrats used a spike in gas prices to criticize White House energy policy. With oil prices hitting a record high this week and gas at the pump topping $3 a gallon in some places, Democrats hoping to win control of the U.S. Congress in November elections seized on the issue to make a populist argument against big oil companies and Republicans' ties to them. Critics are also...

Congressional leaders yesterday planned to ask President Bush to order investigations into possible price gouging by oil companies as crude oil prices hit new highs on world markets and average gasoline prices in the nation's capital blew through the $3-a-gallon mark. House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) are preparing to send a letter to the president Monday asking him to direct the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department to investigate alleged price gouging and instruct the Environmental Protection Agency to issue waivers that might make it easier for oil refiners to produce adequate...

Why Does Hillary Clinton Fear Condoleezza Rice? by Walter Williams (March 8, 2006) Capitalism Magazine Presidential aspirant Hillary Clinton used Rev. Al Sharpton's Martin Luther King Jr. birthday celebration to, as Professor Shelby Steele explains, "whistle for the black vote by pandering to the black sense of grievance." In response to a question from the audience: "I need you to tell us what distinguishes Democrats from Republicans right now," Sen. Clinton answered, "When you look at the way the House of Representatives has been run, it has been run like a plantation, and you know what I'm talking about . ....

"I support the poor but not the war on poverty." by JohnLongIsland + Mia T, 8.25.05 If you want to attend ex-President Clinton's upcoming conference on solving global poverty, you better not be poor yourself. The web site for the so-called "Clinton Global Initiative" - set for Sept. 15-17 in Manhattan - is hawking tickets for $15,000 a-piece. For that princely sum, "participants will play a role in deciding on the programs that the Initiative will fund throughout the year." "This nonpartisan conference will bring together a diverse and select group of current and former heads of state, business leaders,...

Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) on the floor of the House just moments ago regarding President Bush's efforts to reform Social Security: "Are we really going to allow the frail 80-year old woman, whom work is no longer an option, to starve sitting out on the curb?"

Below is excerpt of interest => whole article worth read, though: Exploitation of tragedy is a sport played not only by environmentalists. Insurer Munich Re used the event to renew its call to fight global warming, which the insurance industry has recently begun blaming for natural disasters. Concerned about large payouts for natural disaster claims, insurance companies are very eager to establish global warming as contributing to those disasters, so they can sue deep-pocket businesses supposedly responsible for that global warming.

the left's over-the-top "over the top" by Mia T, 11.29.04 It's time for the 2004 awards for over-the-top rhetoric. Cameron Diaz said that if you think rape should be legal, you should not vote on November 2.... Comedian John Leguizamo said that Hispanics who pulled the lever for Bush would be like roaches voting for Raid. According to Sen. John Edwards, "I'd say if you live in the United States of America and you vote for George Bush, you've lost your mind." So, according to these... sages, on Election Day 44 percent of Hispanics revealed themselves as roaches who...

POST-ELECTION MORALITY PLAY:THE LEFT CONTINUES TO DEMONSTRATE ITS UNFITNESS IN REAL TIME by Mia T, 11.09.04 HAROLD ICKES: on winning the presidency by terrorizing white women  (viewing movie requires Flash Player 7, available HERE) http://virtualclintonlibrary.blogspot.com http://hillarytalks.blogspot.comhttp://virtualhillary.blogspot.comhttp://www.hillarytalks.ushttp://www.hillarytalks.orgfiendsofhillary.blogspot.comfiendsofhillary.usfiendsofhillary.orgfraudsofhillary.com missus clinton's REAL virtual office update "If you look at white women, and I think that was the key to this election, Kerry won 45% based on the exit polls--but they're generally in agreement--Kerry won 45%, Bush won 55% of white women. By contrast, Bush won only 45% of white women in 2000, so he upped is percentages by 10 points. In 1996,...

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. - Sen. John Edwards, visiting the state that narrowly put President Bush in the White House in 2000 after a disputed recount and voting irregularities, issued a warning Saturday to Floridians about Republicans. "We know they're going to be up to their old tricks, right, trying to keep people from voting," Edwards told supporters gathered at a community block party. "We're going to make sure that people get to vote. We're going to make sure those votes count, and here in Florida, democracy is going to decide who the next president of the United States is going...

An Edwards Outrage After the second presidential debate, in which John Kerry used the word "plan" 24 times, I said on television that Kerry has a plan for everything except curing psoriasis. I should have known there is no parodying Kerry's pandering. It turned out days later that the Kerry campaign has a plan -- nay, a promise -- to cure paralysis. What is the plan? Vote for Kerry. This is John Edwards on Monday at a rally in Newton, Iowa: "If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when...

An Edwards Outrage After the second presidential debate, in which John Kerry used the word "plan" 24 times, I said on television that Kerry has a plan for everything except curing psoriasis. I should have known there is no parodying Kerry's pandering. It turned out days later that the Kerry campaign has a plan -- nay, a promise -- to cure paralysis. What is the plan? Vote for Kerry. This is John Edwards on Monday at a rally in Newton, Iowa: "If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when...

Looking for the following Edwards audio or video: 'We will stop juvenile diabetes, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and other debilitating diseases... When John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going get up out of that wheelchair and walk again.' John Edwards Newton High School gym Newton, Iowa...   THE MAN FROM HOPE: been there, done that (viewing movie requires Flash Player 7, available HERE)special thanx to moola man for the movie conceptjohnkerryisdangerousforamerica.blogspot.com  COPYRIGHT MIA T 2004

Edwards Stem Cell Vision: 'We will stop juvenile diabetes, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and other debilitating diseases... When John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going get up out of that wheelchair and walk again.' Edwards made the unprecedented campaign promises during 30-minute speech at Newton High School gym in Newton, Iowa...

Jim McDermott believes in conspiracies. You may remember Baghdad Jim. The Seattle area Congressman went to Baghdad two years ago in a show of support for Saddam Hussein. While there, he denounced U.S. foreign policy and UN sanctions. His constituents must be so proud. When Saddam was captured last December, McDermott argued that U.S. troops knew of Saddam's whereabouts for a long time, but delayed capturing him in order to achieve a public relations coup on behalf of President Bush. Jim McDermott also participates in conspiracies -- at least according to the courts. A federal judge found McDermott guilty in...

FRANKFORT -- Larry Belcher, a retired teacher from Bullitt County, was at the Capitol last week and made a stop in the House chamber where he served two terms as a state representative and hopes to return. Belcher was not merely being nostalgic. He was part of a backdrop, one of about 30 Democratic legislators and candidates standing behind Speaker Jody Richards in the House chamber as Richards lambasted the state health insurance plan being implemented by Gov. Ernie Fletcher's administration. The plan will entail some significant cost increases for 229,000 school and state government employees, retirees and dependents. The...

It wasn't President Bush who misled America. It was partisan Democrats, who risked national morale during war to advance their partisan interest....

America’s corroded politics, benighted democracy, scandalous history and pliant media, have created a monster. Todd Gitlin on Fahrenheit 9/11 and Michael Moore, “the master demagogue an age of demagoguery made”. André Gide, when asked in 1905 whom he considered the greatest French poet of the 19th century, is said to have replied: “Victor Hugo, hélas!” Who is the most compelling, useful filmmaker of the 21st century (so far)? Michael Moore, alas– But now a pause for a moment of conscience. Let intellect have its due. Moore cuts plenty of corners, so how good can that be? Compelling? Useful? Moore specializes...

Friends, I've been thinking about this for several months. I've never heard anyone attempt to put into perspective the numbers of war dead the US has suffered in Iraq. In light of the unfortunate election results in Spain, I think it behooves us to get this argument out in the public arena, so here it is! We have, as of 15 March 04, lost 560 soldiers in Iraq. That number is tragic, to be sure. It is unfortunate that we have lost so many lives in this cause. However, in order to put things in perspective, consider that one state,...

The State continually fails and destroys, yet it persists. You say, “Of course it persists – it has the guns.” True, but it’s not like we’re standing around with our hands up, nor is that what the State wants us to do. Its destructive interventions notwithstanding, it wants us to create as much wealth as possible so it will have an ample source of plunder. How it goes about the plundering process is critical to its success. The golden rule is: the victims must approve of it. Let’s look at how this works with its two greatest sources of loot,...

State Cons The State continually fails and destroys, yet it persists. You say, “Of course it persists – it has the guns.” True, but it’s not like we’re standing around with our hands up, nor is that what the State wants us to do. Its destructive interventions notwithstanding, it wants us to create as much wealth as possible so it will have an ample source of plunder. How it goes about the plundering process is critical to its success. The golden rule is: the victims must approve of it. Let’s look at how this works with its two greatest sources...

...Now the CNN of the Arab world has fired its general manager, Mohammed Jassem Ali-Ali. Ali-Ali had set up and run the network since its inception in 1996. He had previously worked for Qatar television; Al-Jazeera is based in Qatar, but repeatedly aired exclusive footage provided by Iraqi officials during the war. The firing came after the London Sunday Times reported that Iraqi intelligence agents had successfully penetrated the network and converted it into an "instrument" of the Iraqi regime. Al-Jazeera spokesmen denied any connection between the reports and Ali-Ali’s removal...

Politics: The president had hardly put down his pen after signing the tax cut Wednesday when class warfare broke out again. As usual, the demagoguery doesn't comport with reality.According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a hard-left Washington think tank, many families whose yearly incomes are between $10,500 and $26,625 — a number that's nearly 12 million — won't be getting the additional $400 per-child tax credit that was part of the tax cut.While we're not challenging the findings, we object to the misleading nature of the argument. A significant fact is being left out.The Tax Foundation tells...

Dividend Voodoo By Warren Buffett Tuesday, May 20, 2003; Page A19 The annual Forbes 400 lists prove that -- with occasional blips -- the rich do indeed get richer. Nonetheless, the Senate voted last week to supply major aid to the rich in their pursuit of even greater wealth. The Senate decided that the dividends an individual receives should be 50 percent free of tax in 2003, 100 percent tax-free in 2004 through 2006 and then again fully taxable in 2007. The mental flexibility the Senate demonstrated in crafting these zigzags is breathtaking. What it has put in motion, though,...

A US-led War is being waged upon the Iraqi people for power lust and corporate greed. This was according to the audience and those on the podium at an anti-war rally held near the Washington Monument on Saturday Apr. 5. (GWU) Students Against the War in Iraq [SAWI] /Campus Anti-war Network [CAN] also backed simultaneous rallies in Chicago and Oakland

Did anyone see CBS's "The Early Show" this morning (about 8:15 a.m. CST) when to my horror Harry Smith interviewed Tom Dashcle and asked him: Smith: (words to the effect) "Senator Dashcle, what is your response to people who have criticized you for what you said about President Bush and the war on Iraq?" Dashcle: mumbles something about how his opponents want to squelch his right of free speech and then says: "It's time to put that behind us and MOVE ON." !!!!!Did anyone else see this? Were you as disgusted and outraged as I was? Harry Smith is just...

With the midterm election less than two months away, the Democrats have turned on their demagoging spigot full force — same old accusations with some new assaults on the economy, the president and vice president. It is amazing that they can keep straight faces as they mouth these “party-line” untruths and distortions and that anyone believes them. Though the Democrats have been wailing for the last three or four national elections that the “Republicans are going to cancel Medicare and destroy Social Security,” neither has happened and neither will. (To try to do so would be political suicide.) They have...

Let the A.B.G. Campaign Begin Gore's an insecure Mondale. By Mickey Kaus Updated Wednesday, August 7, 2002, at 12:07 AM PT ABG-BNH: The LAT's Ron Brownstein writes: "Gore's populism was aimed largely at working-class voters, but he didn't run as well with those voters in 2000 as Clinton did in 1996, when he entirely avoided populist themes. Meanwhile, Gore ran better than Clinton among voters earning $100,000 a year or more--some of the affluent voters who critics thought were alienated by the populism." Brownstein says this shows that "Gore's populism didn't have as much of an effect as either its...

<p>March 28, 2002 -- WASHINGTON - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton scored an "F" in her first year in Congress by voting for more new government spending than any of her 99 colleagues, an anti-tax group reports.</p> <p>Clinton set a record, getting a 3 percent rating for her 2001 voting record, the lowest score ever for a freshman and lower than any other senator, according to the National Taxpayers Union.</p>

For a few moments on March 1, those who believe in black helicopters and swear that the U.S. never really landed on the moon may have felt some vindication. "Shadow Government Is at Work in Secret," read the Washington Post’s front-page headline.In fact, the article by Barton Gellman and Susan Schmidt merely told the story of how 100 federal bureaucrats are hiding in secret bunkers, in case Washington is annihilated by a terrorist attack. It was a big story, but it was not a new story. It had been reported, with some detail, months ago—a fact the Post reporters missed.Nor...