Obama White House opening up a new front on their War with the American Press
Filed under: Culture of Corruption, Our Dear Leader, Politics
It’s time for Fox News to get over itself. Really, you just aren’t that special.
The Obama White House, in what must be part of their effort to be “the most transparent administration ever”, has now attacked the Associated Press. It seems that the AP committed the sin of noticing, and reporting, that the numbers Team Lightbringer has used for “jobs created or saved” have been inflated.
The Obama administration on Thursday slammed a report from The Associated Press alleging the government had overstated by thousands the number of jobs it has created or saved with federal contracts under President Obama’s $787 billion recovery program.
…
The review found some counts were more than 10 times as high as the actual number of jobs; some jobs were credited to stimulus spending when, in fact, none were produced.Within minutes of the publication of AP’s story, the White House released a statement at 12:15 a.m. Thursday that it said was the “real facts” about how jobs were counted in the stimulus data distributed two weeks ago.
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A Colorado company said it created 4,231 jobs with the help of Obama’s economic recovery plan. The real number: fewer than 1,000.A child care center in Florida said it saved 129 jobs with the help of stimulus money. Instead, it gave pay raises to its existing employees.
Elsewhere in the U.S., some jobs credited to the stimulus program were counted two, three, four or even more times.
The discrepancy raises questions about the reliability of a key benchmark the administration uses to gauge the success of the stimulus.
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The AP’s review identified nearly 600 contracts claiming stimulus money for more than 2,700 jobs that appear to have similar duplicated counts.
What we are seeing here is the sadly typical Team Obama aversion to actual facts. They much prefer their own view of the world, where reality had best not rear it’s head.
Remember that this is the same Administration that fired Inspector Generals for doing their job, i.e. finding waste and corruption in government. We are seeing a clear pattern of abuse by the Obama White House.
The rise of Libertarianism
The Cato Institute takes a look at the Gallup poll Bill Kristol used for this claim.
The Gallup poll released Monday shows the public’s conservatism at a high-water mark. Some 40 percent of Americans call themselves conservative, compared with 36 percent who self-describe as moderates and 20 percent as liberals.
Cato’s David Boaz notes:
The word “libertarian” isn’t well known, so pollsters don’t find many people claiming to be libertarian. And usually they don’t ask. But a large portion of Americans hold generally libertarian views — views that might be described as fiscally conservative and socially liberal, or as Gov. William Weld told the 1992 Republican National Convention, “I want the government out of your pocketbook and out of your bedroom.” They don’t fit the red-blue paradigm, and they have their doubts about both conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats. They’re potentially a swing vote in elections. Background on the libertarian vote here.
And note here: If you tell people that “libertarian” means “fiscally conservative and socially liberal,” 44 percent will accept the label.
As many self-described centrists (i.e. closet Libertarians :->) will tell you, the world is more than just black and white, or red or blue. There are people who are capable of independent thought and disagree with portions of what the two big political parties are trying to sell them.
Today’s Coffee Tip
I found this interesting post on cleaning your coffee grinder.
If you aren’t drinking freshly ground coffee, you should be.
Ok, here is the tip from weeklyroast.com’s coffee blog, uncooked white rice.
A really great way to clean out your grinder is to use uncooked, white rice. If you use a blade grinder (and we highly recommend upgrading to a burr grinder!), fill it with white rice up to the blades. If you use a burr grinder, put about 2-3 teaspoons worth of white rice and set the burr grinder to a fine grind (espresso) setting and start grinding.
After you’ve finished grinding, you’ll notice immediately that large clumps of previously ground coffee are now clinging to the powdered, ground white rice and after dumping the grounds out, you should see spots you could never clean before coffee-ground free. The inside of the grinder should also be a lot cleaner than before as most of the old, rancid coffee oils also attached themselves to the white rice (they’re attracted to the starch in the rice – that’s why this technique works so well).
Repeat this process until the ground rice no longer has any black particles in it.
I was cleaning out my grinder fairly regularly, but this clearly did pick up some coffee particles that my regular cleaning didn’t get.
Monday Book Pick: March to the Sea
Filed under: Baen Books, Monday Book Pick, Science Fiction
March to the Sea by John Ringo and David Weber
Second in the Empire of Man series. Prince Roger continues his education as he and the Bronze Barbarians continue their trek across a harsh alien wilderness filled with hordes of aliens, hostile and otherwise, but mostly hostile.
Friday B-Movie Pick: Transylvania 6-5000
Next in the Holloween rampup.
A deliciously campy example of the B-Movie staring Jeff Goldblum, Ed Begley, Jr. Michel Richards and Geena Davis. This 1985 comedy/horror spoof tells the tail of two tabloid reporters (and not very good ones) sent to Transylvania in order to find stories that the National Star and Dan Rather would turn down.
Barnes and Noble enters the e-book reader market
Barnes and Noble has announced the Nook, their e-book reader.
This is in direct competition to Amazon’s Kindle. It’s a very similar bit of technology, the major difference being that the B&N Nook will allow users to “share” e-books with other Nook users. It works this way. You purchase an ebook from B&N on your Nook. You like it. You think your buddy, who also has a Nook, would like it. So you can “loan” that book to said buddy. It will be available to be read on his Nook for two weeks. My bet is that this will generate a lot a ebook sales.
Now, some may argue that Amazon already owns the mind share for e-book readers, having crushed the Sony E-Reader in the market. The Kindle took off because Amazon was already seen as a major e-retailer of books and they had the ability to buy books immediately on the Kindle using mobile Internet technology. Sony wasn’t known as a book seller and they had no such “instant buy” option. The Nook has a similar broadband connection to the Kindle and B&N is seen as a major retailer of books by the public. The fact that B&N has a much larger ebook library than Amazon doesn’t hurt either.
There are two major flaws I can see with the Nook. First, the whole DRM thing. Second is that it only supports three formats, EPUB, eReader and PDF. A few more, including unencrypted Mobipocket, would be nice.
Amazon has responded, quietly, with the announcement that they will release free “Kindle software” for the PC platform, so people can read Amazon’s DRM crippled ebooks on their desktop or notebook computers. MAC and LINUX users are not supported in this release. Amazon is also selling refurbish (i.e. used) first gen Kindles for $150.
Originally published at Urbin Technology.
White House Press Pool says NO to Obama bully tactics
Filed under: Culture of Corruption, Free Speech, Our Dear Leader, Politics
Kudos to the White House Press Pool for standing up on their hind legs and saying “NO” to the Obama Administration’s attempts to subvert the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
Team Lightbringer tried to ban the Fox News reporter from participating in a standard Press Pool event. The other television news organizations in the pool (CNN/ABC/NBC/CBS) refused to be a part of this and would not proceed unless the entire Press Pool was part of the interview.
Allahpundit points out the disgusting level of hypocrisy shown by the Obama White House:
Decide for yourself what the most disgraceful aspect of this is. Was it the fact that Gibbs told Jake Tapper explicitly on Monday that the White House wouldn’t try to dictate to the press pool who should and shouldn’t be included — before doing precisely that? Was it Anita Dunn going out of her way to say she respects Major Garrett as a fair reporter — before the administration decided he didn’t deserve a crack here at Feinberg? Or was it the repeated insistence by Dunn and Axelrod that of course the administration will make its officials available to Fox — before pulling the plug today?
A free and unfettered press is a key element of a functional constitutional republic. A fact that too many so-called “liberals” are sadly all to willing to ignore as long as their political enemies are the ones be oppressed.
It is also very disturbing to see the President of the United States to be more concerned with his “War” on those in the news media who dare to not march in lockstep with his agenda than the war Islamofascists have declared on America.
Responding to their master’s voice
Filed under: Free Speech, Media Bias, Our Dear Leader, Politics
A talking head at MSNBC parrots the Team Lightbringer party line and states flat out that she is quoting an email from the Obama White House.
So much for that objective media thing.
ACORN: The Gift that keeps on Giving, this time in Philadelphia
Yet another ACORN sting video! This time from Philadelphia, PA.
Remember that our current President, Barack H. Obama has ties to ACORN that go back to his early days operating in the bed of corruption that is Chicago politics. His connection with ACORN, which is involved in yet another vote fraud scheme, this time in Troy, NY, has continued up to this day.
It will be interesting to see how the leftist weasels over at Media Matters try to spin this one.
Obama is channeling Nixon now.
Filed under: Free Speech, Global War on Islamofascism, Media Bias, Our Dear Leader, Politics
At first our Dear Leader was emulating the worst President of the past 50 years, the overtly racist Jimmy Carter.
Now he is taking a page out of former President Richard M. Nixon’s book of really bad things to do, and starting an “Enemies List” of American journalists.
This action raises this important question, “What does Barack Hussein Obama and his administration have against the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America?”
Let’s review the First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
It is widely excepted that the free speech and press clause is focused on “Political” topics. The American people have to be able to freely report on and discuss their government and the effects on them, in order to maintain a free society.
Team Lightbringer doesn’t seem to be on board with this concept. The Obama White House, through it’s official spokesmen, have publicly attacked members of the American News Media, and public figures, who have published stories that the Obama administration doesn’t like.
What happened to the classic liberals who stated, “I do not agree with what you are saying, but I’ll defend your right to say it”? They seemed to have been replaced with thin skinned leftists who viciously attack anyone who dares to disagree with their agenda.
Jack Tapper, of ABC News seems to be the only member of the White House press corps with a functional set of testicles and an understanding of the US Constitution.
Tapper: It’s escaped none of our notice that the White House has decided in the last few weeks to declare one of our sister organizations “not a news organization” and to tell the rest of us not to treat them like a news organization. Can you explain why it’s appropriate for the White House to decide that a news organization is not one –
(Crosstalk)
Gibbs: Jake, we render, we render an opinion based on some of their coverage and the fairness that, the fairness of that coverage.
Tapper: But that’s a pretty sweeping declaration that they are “not a news organization.” How are they any different from, say –
Gibbs: ABC –
Tapper: ABC. MSNBC. Univision. I mean how are they any different?
What is this White House afraid of? A news organization that points out that Obama has admitted Communists and supporters of pedophilia working for him? Aren’t those actual facts that the American people should be aware of? Doesn’t the American people have a right to know just which health insurance officials are in those secret meetings with Joe Biden?
Just to add to the stench of Obama’s “Enemies List” is the flat out hypocrisy of Team Lightbringer. The White House talking Head Gibby specifically singled out two of Fox News’ opinion format hosts, Beck and Hannity, as the reason for the Obama White House War on Fox News (which they are spending more time and effort than the war against Islamofascism being fought in Afghanistan) at the same time they are bringing in MSNBC’s hate mongers Olbermann & Maddow, who are clearly lapdogs of the Obama Administration, in for private briefings.