Democrats in Chicago and Alabama in Trouble, Neither IDed as Democrats

-By Warner Todd Huston

One convicted on bribery, the other attacks cops at crime scene saying she wasn’t driving drunk

Now that the media has had it’s near orgasmic reaction to Obama’s inaugural, it’s apparently time for some more “name that party” fun for everyone. Today we have incidents widely separated by distance, but not separated at all in at least one way. We have in Alabama a pair of convictions on bribery and conspiracy of a state wide politician and a Jefferson County Minister and in Chicago we have a City Alderman arrested for drunken driving who decided to get all up in the faces of the arresting officers as they attempted to do their job. The coincidence between the two stories is that, you guessed it, none of the stories detailing these incidents could find room in them to identify these politicians as Democrats. I know, I know. You’re shocked, eh?

Our first case is that of Alabama Sen. E.B. McClain and his pal the very in-trouble Reverend Samuel Pettagrue, both convicted after only a scant 8 hours of deliberation by a jury of their peers. It was guilty on all 48 counts for the pair in a Birmingham court because “Pettagrue accepted nearly $760,000 in state grant money obtained by McClain to run a nonprofit foundation and then gave McClain more than $300,000 in kickbacks.”

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Union Hires Off-Duty Cops as Street Thugs?

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has been in a struggle with its sister union, the United Healthcare Workers (UHW), for quite some time over the eventual disbanding of the UHW and its absorption into the larger SEIU based in Washington D.C. Needless to say, the local folks of the UHW in California are not pleased to lose their local control of their own union affairs to the far off Washington offices of the SEIU.

The clash has been growing increasingly heated with UHW officials speaking out in dismay at the combined unions yearly convention in Puerto Rico last year after which both sides began to file lawsuits against each other for various offenses real and imagined. It’s a real donnybrook and this week the situation took one more step toward vitriol and turmoil.

Now it seems as if the SEIU has hired off-duty policemen to hang around outside the UHW’s Oakland offices photographing members coming and going and engaging in harassing comments and behavior.

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Include Me Out

-By Michael M. Bates

It’s numbing. The adulation, the elation, the mirth, the idolatry, the reveling in every possible facet of Obamaness. And that’s just the response of the mainstream media.

There was too much riveting coverage to fully absorb. You were no doubt stunned to learn, about every three minutes, that this year’s inauguration was historic. Stop the presses.

Unhappily, some stories didn’t receive as much attention as that revelation. One was Jill Biden confiding to Oprah Winfrey’s national audience that “Joe had the choice to be secretary of state or vice president.” Plugs quickly hollered “Shhh!” to his charming missus, but obviously she has as much trouble keeping her mouth shut as her husband. “OK,” she continued, “he did.”
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A Crisis Too Great to Waste

– By Jeff Lukens

So Barack Obama proposes massive government spending like we have never seen before as our way back to economic prosperity. Yet wasn’t it a mountain of unpayable debt that got us into this financial crisis in the first place? The rivers of red ink he proposes would make FDR and LBJ blush. This approach may have worked politically for FDR and LBJ, but neither time did it work economically for the country. It may work politically for Obama too, but deficit spending will not work economically today either.

Banana republics are known for this kind of governance. It is a recipe for a treasury default or hyperinflation that no industrialized county has seen since Germany’s Weimar Republic in the 1920s. And that debacle sewed the seeds for the despotism of the Third Reich.

Obama is a smart guy. He can’t possibly be naive enough to think more debt piled on the existing $10.6 trillion national debt is the solution to the economic mess we are in. Recessions are a natural part of the economic cycle and only market forces can correct them. One can only wonder about his true motives.
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YouTube banned videos: Censorship gone too far?

-By Luann Dawkins of the Birmingham Community Examiner

After numerous reports of videos being banned from YouTube, a Google Global Company, the need for answers became paramount.

Researching the videos that currently reside on YouTube took quite some time, they are seemingly endless. At first glance viewers would assume the prevalent theme is one of unity, especially on a site where anyone can join and add their own view. It becomes apparent very quickly, this is not the case, if that view is of a conservative nature. Granted, some remain with a definite bend to the right, but for a conservative looking through the glass that is You Tube, the majority of this glass house only contains left turning halls.

In the article Media mules pull Obama, a video was included by an admittedly conservative videographer named Zo. This video was obtained and used with permission from New Media Alliance Television (NMA TV). Several weeks ago, NMA TV sent out newsletters stating they had added a channel on their site for video’s banned from You Tube. Gary Schneider, President of New Media Alliance, Inc., and Heritage New Media Partners, Inc. says the problem is even larger than NMA TV, others not affiliated with his website have claimed YouTube is censoring items that adhere to the company’s guidelines for content, and have still been pulled. Google and YouTube, when questioned, give only automated responses, if any at all, citing copyright infringement, offensive content, abusive language etc, etc.

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NY Pol Indicted… But What’s That Party?

-By Warner Todd Huston

Today we have the corresponding opposite to prove the point of our favorite game, “Name That Party.” You see, today we have the case in point of the former Senate leader of New York’s legislature Joseph Bruno. Mr. Bruno has been indicted on those ever lovin’ federal corruption charges for “defrauding the people of New York from 1993 through at least 2006.”

He’s a rotten so-and-so, of course. Apparently the FBI has been after him for months and since before he retired from the state legislature. Now he faces an eight-count indictment issued by the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York.

So, from what party does this ner-do-well hail…

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Media Worried Obama Rules Them With Iron Fist

-By Warner Todd Huston

On January 22 the Associated Press posted an interesting little tidbit of news about how Team Obama is treating the press. Apparently, the Obama White House is trying to force news agencies to use Obama’s own, special, ostensibly “official” photographer’s photos taken at Obama press conferences instead of allowing news agencies to have their own photogs present to record the event. As a result of this attempt by Obama to control his image, the AP and Reuters are a bit miffed that Obama is trying to control the press with such an iron fisted move like this.

All I have to ask is: NOW they get worried that Obama is not too dedicated to freedom of the press? After Obama is fairly elected, NOW the Old Media is beginning to question The One on his treatment of them?

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Famous Obama ‘Hope’ Image Stolen?

-By Warner Todd Huston

So, where exactly did the communist graphics inspired artist Shepard Fairey get the image of Obama for his ubiquitous “Hope” poster featuring a confident, young Obama intently staring off into the distance for glorious leader’s future, anyway? Turns out the celebrated artist stole it from an Associated Press freelance photographer and never bothered to acknowledge where he got it in the first place. I guess the word “ethics” didn’t fit as easily on that iconic Fairey poster, eh?

At least one Old Media photographer was curious about the source photo that the poster was based on. Philadelphia Inquirer photog Tom Gralish wondered aloud on his phillynews.com blog about just where the heck that original photo came from? Apparently among the shooter set in the Old Media the question had become a nagging one and Gralish decided to put on his sleuthing cap to track down the original source. After a short time at the task he discovered the original, uncredited photo used by Fairey to make the wildly successful poster that made him bundles of cash.

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Coming Soon to TV Near You!

-By John Armor

Notice how the screen writers for TV like a pack of pigeons on a handful of popcorn kernels? One finds brief success. The others hurry to claim a part of it. A few years ago CSI succeeded. Suddenly the TVs were full of “dead people” shows (as we call them with guilty pleasure).

Now, another shift has occurred. In the new wave of “dead people” shows, the heroes and heroines are solving crimes with their minds, not microscopes and chemistry sets. These involve intuitive leaps while the camera is tight on the eyes of the star. Think of all those spaghetti westerns by Sergio Leone with interminable shots of Clint Eastwood’s brooding brow.
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Economics Shotgun Style

-By Dan Scott

Most of what we hear from the MSM and politicians is our current economic crisis is national in scope requiring a massive government spending spree to pump prime the economy. The proposed plan is national in scope and diverse in its approach to doling out the cash to various pet liberal causes. All of this is under the guise that we need to create or save 3 to 4 million jobs. So which is it? Create or save them? The premise of the claim is to save the jobs lost and create additional jobs to employ all the high school and college graduates who need them as well. That’s right, not only do we need to re-employ the over 2 million plus people who lost their jobs in the last 12 months, come May and June 2009 we have another 3 to 4 million young adults needing jobs on top of this number. Expect the unemployment rate to hit 10% by July. We are told government is the only entity that can do this.

Not to belabor my previous criticisms of the Democrat led plan, government policy was the cause of the current debacle and reversing failed government policy is the answer to the situation. Claiming that a massive deficit spending increase in liberal agenda items is economic stimulus is like claiming a drunk person should double down on the amount of alcohol consumed to make them sober. The liberal agenda is to the economy as drinking is to sobriety.
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Obama is the Heroin of the Masses

-By Warner Todd Huston

There used to be a saying in the vaunted counter-culture days of the 1960’s that went: “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” This bit of instant doggerel was used to justify all sorts of aberrant, self destructive behavior by the hippie generation like drug use, sexual promiscuity and a rampant anti-intellectualism. Thankfully, that foolish era has passed us… more or less. Unfortunately a new era has dawned turning the USA into an Obamanation that may end up reviving the worst of the 60’s era. The new phrase might be considered to have now become “Turn O, give in, bail out.”

Well, at the very least drug dealers in New York have signed on wholly to the new Obamanation and they have found the most suitable product to represent the new age. The Sullivan County Sheriff’s office have busted a drug ring selling “Obama heroin.”

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Chris Matthews Says Gov. Sarah Palin is Illiterate?

-By Warner Todd Huston

**Video Below Fold**

Good old Chris “Tingle” Matthews. We can always look to him to lower his own credibility just one more notch with each and every broadcast, can’t we? This time Ol’ Chris Tingle has debased himself by telling the four or five viewers he has that he thinks Governor Sarah Palin can’t read or write. Apparently Matthews doesn’t think that Palin has the capacity to write the book she is reportedly shopping around.

Even Politico can’t explain away Tingle’s ignorance here saying that “Matthews suggested Friday that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) may not have the reading or writing ability needed to complete the book she is reportedly shopping.”

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Live or Memorex? Canned Inaugural Music a Metaphor?

-By Warner Todd Huston

The dulcet tones of Cellist Yo-Yo Ma, violinist Izhak Perlman, pianist Gabriella Montero and clarinetist Anthony McGill floated out among the crowd to celebrate the ascension of The One on Tuesday. It was music to soothe the savage beast from some of the best known performers of American classical music. The assembled performers were there to entertain the masses to celebrate the coming. All eagerly strained to hear the delicate work of America’s musical masters.

Unfortunately it was a recording. The classical gas was a mere Milli Vanilli-a-rama.

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WaPo: Attempting to Make Bush Look Like Tech Moron

-By Warner Todd Huston

Our old friend Anne E. Kornblut, Washington Post Staff writer, is at it again with her latest outbreak of Bush Derangement Syndrome. This time she and the Washington Post have teamed up to try to paint the Bush White House as technological Neanderthals in theirs headlined “Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages.”

The headline alone tells readers that those poor, poor Obama staffers have come in expecting to get right to work only to find it a mess thanks to Bush’s failure to update the tech capacity of the White House. Only, that impression would be simply incorrect. Bush was restricted by certain laws and rules that prevented him from bringing White House operations into the I-Phone age.

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Chicago Area College Fighting Over Adopting Student’s Bill of Rights

-By Warner Todd Huston

In the midst of the Obama coronation in Washington this week, school board member Sheila Patterson of the Jackson Public School System in Jackson, Michigan told teachers in her district that if they don’t show Barack Obama’s inauguration in the class room they should just “go home.” Patterson further told teachers that if they didn’t show the ceremony they “don’t belong in this school district.” Patterson also tsked such teachers sternly alerting them that she was “very, very disappointed.”

The news report of this incident notes that 43 percent of the school district is comprised of minorities. I suppose that means that the 57 percent that isn’t minority either does not deserve to have their opinions known, or is presumed not to have wanted to see the ceremony. Either way, we have what shapes up to be a school board member throwing the race card at what she is trying to paint as racist teachers.

It was later discovered that many teachers wanted to show the ceremony on their class computers, but the Internet of the District was overloaded and many couldn’t get a connection. No word if Sheila Patterson will apologize for her racist outburst and her assumptions that whites hate Barack Obama and didn’t want to celebrate his big day.

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Why net neutrality regulation would undercut Universal Broadband progress

-By Scott Cleland

The start of robust broadband deployment in the U.S. was delayed for several years in the late 1990’s because of regulatory uncertainty over whether broadband investment could earn a competitive return.

Today’s release of the proposed economic stimulus package is extremely relevant to the question of investment in Universal Broadband; it says: “For every dollar invested in broadband, the economy sees a ten-fold return on that investment.”

Recent guidance from the Obama transition team spearheading the Universal Broadband effort is also encouraging. At the State of the Net Conference, Blair Levin said: “You don’t want to do anything that makes a competitive market more difficult.”
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Dear American Kids: You OWE!!

-By Vince Johnson

This is my second effort (To get a response from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation)

On December 12, 2008 I wrote the Peter G. Peterson Foundation suggesting that they consider a full page ad based on the “Uncle Sam” concept ad which is enclosed. As yet, they have not responded. After re-reading their Mission Statement, I felt they might be receptive to a second effort. Their Mission Statement is repeated below:
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Wounded Vets Upset at Bush Insult During Vets Inaugural Ball Concert?

-By Warner Todd Huston

**UPDATED with message from the band**

While performing at the inaugural ball honoring America’s military veterans, some wounded vets are reported to have walked out on funk Musician George Clinton over a perceived on stage insult to George W. Bush.

The Washington Times is reporting that during the Heroes Red, White and Blue Inaugural Ball a white towel with the word “[Expletive] GEORGE” spelled out on it was displayed by band members of George Clinton and the P. Funk All-Stars.

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Rush Limbaugh and Warner Todd Huston

-By Warner Todd Huston

Last year, Rush Limbaugh read one of my Op Eds and reacted to it. I’ve had Rush read about 5 or so of my pieces, but here is one that I have the audio on.

Feel free to visit the Publius Forum TalkShoe page to see my past podcasts. New podcasts appear approximately monthly, or whenever the mood strikes me to do one.

Why I Want Barack Obama To Fail As President

-By Warner Todd Huston

An extremely liberal co-worker of mine — he’s in the past said that the “rich” should be killed, for instance — asked me a serious question by which he felt he could gauge whether or not I was a “real” American in his eyes during the rise of the age of Obama. He wondered whether I wish success for Barack Obama as our president. After a few seconds of reflection I had to honestly give a qualified “no” in answer to his query. Naturally this fellow went off about how it was unAmerican to wish the president to fail and how it would damage the country. But, after he briefly calmed down, and brief calm is usually all we can expect from him, I gave him a fuller explanation.

I reminded him that it was a qualified no I gave him. Of course every American wants his president to be successful on every count that will benefit the country. No true American wants to see a monumental, destructive, Carteresque failure in the White House. My liberal co-worker is correct on that count. No one wants the next Buchanan, who, Nero-like, fiddled while Washington D.C. and the country burned. We want them all to be Reagans, Washingtons and Lincolns.

But, that is just it, isn’t it? We want them to do what is best for the country. That is what we mean by “success.” And, when you get right down to it, opinions vary of what “best” means. I do want Obama to be successful on what would be best for this country, absolutely. Unfortunately, there is little that he campaigned on that would be good for this country.

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‘What Else Should a Reporter BE’ But a Liberal?

-By Warner Todd Huston

WARNING… Video Below Fold

So what do you get when you mix a Canadian TV hostess with the venerable Helen Thomas? An admission of bias so strong that it could ward off a vampire. Just why the image of the undead first came to my mind is anybody’s guess, but there you have it.

On a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation morning TV interview show called “Sun Day,” Thomas was interviewed on how she felt about presidents past, present what was to be future with the Obama inauguration still then days away. She was also quizzed on her profession in which Thomas claimed only liberals should be engaged. And that isn’t all. She also said that conservatives are neither thinking nor caring people.

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Nation Tottering Close To Political Idolatry

-By Frederick Meekins

It is understandable that most would take an interest in the peaceful transitions of power that take place in the United States between one administration to the next as it is a skill less civilized countries have failed to master; however, what is taking place right now in relation to Barack Obama is downright frightening and almost idolatrous in its implications

About the most disgraceful piece of commemorative inaugural memorabilia I’ve seen is a flag with Obama’s visage emblazoned across it.

The flag is a symbol of the United States that ought to remain above the holders of the office sworn to protect it.

To defile it in this manner is an act as almost disgusting as burning it.
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Revoke National Holiday for Martin Luther King!

-By Don Boys, Ph.D.

I don’t have a major commitment to tell the world about Martin Luther King but about the King. So my time dealing with the MLK exposé is very limited; however, I do want to see his holiday revoked. And I do want to see Christian schools refuse to honor his day. Furthermore, I will never quote him without a disclaimer that I do not recommend his aims, actions, activities, associates, or his authorship.

It is incredible that major evangelical and fundamentalist churches and schools honor the memory of King. Following his death, Wheaton College, Westmont College, Fuller Theological Seminary, and Trinity Theological Seminary had memorial services for King! Many churches and schools honor his memory each year.

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Slate: Know Who Obama is ‘Just Like’? The Hero Pilot of Flight 1549!

-By Warner Todd Huston

Anne Applebaum said she was reaching for a metaphor to describe the dreamy Barack Obama when she started her Slate piece on January 19. Instead of reaching for a metaphor, however, she only got a handful of absurd hyperbole when she decided that Barack Obama was “just like” Captain C.B. “Sully” Sullenberger, the hero pilot that saved the lives of his entire planeload of people by landing it safely in the Hudson River last week. But, after she went wild with her “metaphor” about Obama, Applebaum ended her piece with some really solid warnings about government overreach.

Still, the first half of Applebaum’s column was so silly that its hard to know where to start discussing its over-the-top nature. But, lets begin at the top with her ill-fitting conflation of Capt. Sullenberger’s excellent job, an “anti-9/11” she absurdly claimed, and the terrorist attacks that brought down the World Trade Center in 2001. There is simply no logical way to relate the two incidents at all, but Applebaum makes a valiant and risible attempt to do so.

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The Left Does Not Want Compromise, Their Hate Too Strong

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Boston Globe had an interesting piece on January 19 that pretty much proved that the left is never, ever interested in working with others, only in conquering and destroying others. They aren’t interested in the ages old American system of compromise but only in the Marxian concept of destruction, absorption and recreation.

The occasion of this example was a piece on the foolish outreach to the American left made by evangelical leader Rick Warren. In “Effort to surmount polarizing debates backfires on pastor, the Globe unwittingly revealed the depths of the politics of personal destruction in which the left engages when they find opposing views.

Rick Warren has oft times courted criticism with his natural base on the right side of the aisle by engaging the left. But, Warren has been keen to advance beyond the right/left debate to get to the Jesus debate. He would rather see a discussion of the words of Jesus occur than to continue to indulge in the religious tinged right/left political debate of the day. Unfortunately for Warren, the left won’t allow any such outreach.

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Obama AG Nom Eric Holder Approves of Bookstore and Library Searches… Where’s Outrage?

-By Warner Todd Huston

Last Thursday, Barack Obama’s nominee for Attorney General, Eric Holder, admitted during his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing that he supported renewing the part of the Patriot Act that allows for the FBI to seek records from businesses, libraries and bookstores as the policing agency investigates suspects in this country. For years we’ve seen news agencies and opinionists rail against the expanded power of the FBI to search such records. But, now with Obama’s AG announcing in his confirmation hearing that he agrees that the FBI should have this power, all anti-Bush administration voices are silent on the matter that had them so exercised for 6 years.

Since 2002 the debate has raged about the efficacy and Constitutionality of the Patriot Act with the power of the FBI to search bookstore and library records coming in for special condemnation. Even as the Supreme Court of the United States has upheld the law, right to privacy groups, the media and anti-Bushies have pointed to this particular policy and cried Orwell or worse.

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The Right to Defend Sovereignty

-By Nancy Salvato

It is written in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” Each and every one of us has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. A seemingly simple idea, it’s the definition of when a life begins or should end, when the liberty of one being is to be considered encroaching on the liberty of another, and on the meaning of personal happiness on which we disagree.

I imagine one would be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn’t want a peaceful existence which would allow us to go about our lives unencumbered by external threats. Again, it’s the method our country uses to achieve a relatively peaceful existence and at what cost –on which we currently disagree. While all of these topics are worthy of discussion and study, the question of our nation’s sovereignty begs examination at this moment in time because our present way of life is the direct result of our nation’s sovereign status in the world and so for many of us, it is worth preserving.
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President Barack Obama’s Inauguration Speech

-By Israel Teitelbaum

If I were President Barack Obama’s speechwriter, I would begin this way.

Good afternoon fellow Americans:

Thank Heaven and thank you American People for this opportunity to serve our great nation, and help bring the change that is desperately needed by every man, woman and child in the USA. For far too long, government has reached well beyond the dictates of the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, and usurped the rights of moms, dads and children all across America, depriving them of their individual and religious liberty. Our state and local governments have interfered with parents’ right to raise their children to become contributing and law abiding citizens, who respect the rights of others and remain loyal to their family traditions. The results have been devastating to our families and communities.

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