Politico’s Fake Tea Party-Slamming South Carolina Poll

-By Warner Todd Huston

It almost seems that on a daily basis the onetime political news website Politico is edging toward a Daily Kos-like experience and on Jan 14 we see yet another step in Politico’s journey toward left-wing extremes with a fake poll that claims that no one in South Carolina likes the Tea Party movement. Did I mention it was a “Facebook poll”?

The headline ways it all, really: Facebook/POLITICO poll: South Carolina users cool to tea party. If the fact that this “poll” is just some posting on a Facebook page doesn’t make you laugh at its validity, the hilarity continues as Politico goes on to treat this silliness as real news.

“Almost two-thirds of adult Facebook users in South Carolina say they aren’t fans of the tea party, according to a Facebook poll conducted today with POLITICO,” the “news” website begins.

Come on. Does anyone imagine that Politico reached “almost two-thirds” of the Facebook uses in South Carolina? Does anyone even imagine that Politico reached even a representative number of Facebook users in South Carolina? Was there any scientific method at all to this or was it just some posting that a handful of South Carolinians saw on Facebook? Bet you can guess.
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Politico’s Fake Tea Party-Slamming South Carolina Poll”


Dana Loesch Replies to the Illinois Policy Institute’s Disinvite

-By Warner Todd Huston

Today on her radio show, Dana Loesch told her audience about being disinvited to an event hosted by the Illinois Policy Institute over the weekend.

I detailed this story here: Appearance by Andrew Breitbart Employee Canceled By Illinois Policy Institute


Appearance by Andrew Breitbart Employee Canceled By Illinois Policy Institute

-By Warner Todd Huston

Last Friday, The Illinois Policy Institute disinvited Dana Loesch, the editor of Andrew Breitbart’s Big Journalism site, from a breakfast event that was to be held over the weekend on Saturday.

The Illinois Policy Institute was holding the event in conjunction with the Independent Women’s Forum and Smart Girl Politics and was to be a “discussion on women, liberty, and America’s future.”

Loesch was disinvited due to a small controversy over what she said Friday on her Saint Louis-based radio show on KFTK 97.1 FM. Loesch took umbrage over those criticizing U.S. Marines that were filmed urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

Loesch was incensed at those complaining about the conduct of our soldiers and went into one of her patented rants about how she didn’t care if our solders urinated on the corpses of our enemies. “I’d drop trou and do it too,” she said of the incident.

Loesch went on to say, “Do I have a problem with that as a citizen of the United States? No I don’t.”

During the rest of that Friday many progressive sites (like Politico) went after Loesch for her comments.

Loesch herself has said that the left’s attack on her is all unfair. “There is a difference in advocating for the Marines to break the law, which I didn’t do, and defending them from overly-dramatic hysteria,” she said.

Sadly, this faux controversy gave the Illinois Policy Institute cold feet for the weekend breakfast meeting and they told her she was no longer welcome at the event. Worse, the group never even made a public comment on the disinvitation. They just, in the dead of night, disinvited her.
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Appearance by Andrew Breitbart Employee Canceled By Illinois Policy Institute”


Romney ‘Shoe Shine’ Photo a Hoax, Left-Wingers Push Story Anyway

-By Warner Todd Huston

If you want to see a perfect example of how the left-wing media plans to smear and destroy Mitt Romney should he win the GOP nomination, no better example can be found than the hoax over a photo that lefties every where are trying to sell as evidence of Romney’s “privileged” life. Lefties say the photo in question shows Romney “getting his shoes shined” before getting on a private jet during his campaign travel. That is not what the photo shows, of course, but let’s not let the truth get in the way of a good left-wing mudslinging, OK?

The meme began from a photo by Getty showing Romney sitting in a chair on the tarmac with his foot up and a red-jacketed worker attending to the candidate’s footwear. The left immediately assumed that Romney was getting his shoes shined before getting on a “corporate” jet. This story was made up out of whole cloth because in reality what the picture shows is Romney getting his shoes wanded by an explosive sniffing device wielded by a TSA agent before being allowed to board the plane.

The photo seems to have appeared early on the blog of the MSNBC smear show The Ed Schultz Show with the headline, “Romney Creates Another Job.” The caption set the tone for the left-wing onslaught to come saying, “Mitt Romney created another job with his presence alone… a job giving shoe shines on the tarmac in front of a corporate jet.”
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Romney ‘Shoe Shine’ Photo a Hoax, Left-Wingers Push Story Anyway”


Occupy Wall Street Stealing From The Poor to Give to Themselves!

-By Warner Todd Huston

It is more common everyday. A man buys a house, the market collapses and suddenly his house is worth less than the mortgage, then he loses his job until, as a single father, he finds himself in foreclosure with no place to raise his two preteen daughters. It’s a case made for the Occupy Wall Street movement to swoop in and right wrongs, right? Maybe not because the OWSers in New York stole this poor guy’s home away from him in order to give it to one of their own members. Confused? Read on.

A Brooklyn man living in an apartment with his two daughters was alerted to the fact that his in-foreclosure-home had been broken into and occupied by Occupiers, as in Occupy Wall Street activists. When he rushed to his home he found a group of strangers that had broken into his home claiming to have “reclaimed” the house and given it to another family.

“They’re trying to take a house and say the bank is robbing the people because the mortgage is too high — so contact the owner!” fumed Wise Ahadzi, 28, who owns the home at 702 Vermont St. in East New York.

Apparently Ahadzi had bought the house in 2007 for the princely sum of $424,500 but during the housing bubble of 2009 the house ended up being worth only half that. Then, when he lost his job and got behind on the mortgage, the bank foreclosed on the property.

Enter — illegally, mind you — Occupy Wall Streeters who discovered the home in foreclosure and decided that they’d steal it away from “the bank” with the ostensible goal of helping the needy.
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Occupy Wall Street Stealing From The Poor to Give to Themselves!”


Every Year Boondoggles Pile Up in California

-By Warner Todd Huston

The left-wing idea that it’s good for government to always wildly increase spending is dying a quick death these days. But this good sense has not made it to every state in the union yet — two disastrous states in particular; California and Illinois.

These two states have not learned the lesson about the ruinous government spending that is causing the country to teeter on the brink of bankruptcy.

Apparently, Illinois and California are vying for worst-state status. Moody’s Investment service, for instance, has rated Illinois the worst, but Standard & Poor’s says its California. But California has one thing that makes its fragile economic situation worse than Illinois. California’s penchant for economically ruinous ballot measures that create boondoggle programs that the taxpayers are forced to pay for is not rivaled by the common corruption endured by the citizens of Illinois.

The worst boondoggle currently forced on the people of California is the high-speed rail project that is already running billions over initial cost estimates even before the first foot of track is laid.
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Every Year Boondoggles Pile Up in California”


New Rock Band, Madison Rising Shows Our Country Finally Heading Into The Right Direction?

News from the band Madison Rising…

Could a pro-American and openly conservative rock band charting in the top 100 on both iTunes and Amazon.com be a sign that our country is starting to move in the right direction? Maybe so, given the fact that Madison Rising, a phenomenal new band lead by a Navy veteran Dave Bray is climbing rock charts while promoting the principles of liberty, independence, smaller government and personal responsibility.

It used to be that younger people only listened to music about sex, drugs, rock n roll and rebellion. But Madison Rising is showing us that this demographic will in fact listen to music with a message if that music is good and worth listening to. By singing about topics such as media bias, taking action to create a better future for ourselves, the damage alleged “peace” protestors do, and actually supporting our military, the band gets everyone thinking instead of simply accepting what they hear or see from liberal media.

By sticking to their core principals, Madison Rising is well on their way to becoming a successful rock band like so many of their predecessors. The group recorded its debut album with a multi Grammy winning producer Ron Saint Germain (who worked with artists such as Creed, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Muse) and is receiving incredibly strong support from their fan base like so many other popular bands that seem to come out of nowhere to suddenly become a house hold name. The big difference is that Madison Rising is doing this while spreading a positive message and getting people to think about issues that matter while the other artists continue to focus on negativity, vulgarity, entitlements and self-congratulatory posturing, achieving nothing except continuing to add to what is wrong with popular culture today.
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New Rock Band, Madison Rising Shows Our Country Finally Heading Into The Right Direction?”


Are You a Conservative? Welcome to the Majority!

-By Warner Todd Huston

There has been a lot of lament by the far left in America that the Tea Party has somehow driven the Republican Party to conservative extremes. This, however, is untrue. The truth is, the American public has been trending toward conservative views for more than a decade before the Tea Party even came about.

According to Gallup, for the last three years more Americans have self-proclaimed themselves as conservatives than have claimed the moniker of moderate.

Political ideology in the U.S. held steady in 2011, with 40% of Americans continuing to describe their views as conservative, 35% as moderate, and 21% as liberal. This marks the third straight year that conservatives have outnumbered moderates, after more than a decade in which moderates mainly tied or outnumbered conservatives.

But think about this for a minute. This means that fully 75% of America is more conservative than the Democrat Party, a party that decades ago stopped being a party of centrism becoming instead a European-like, liberal party.

Gallup’s several decades of polling finds that “moderates” have been in slow decline since 1992 with Americans calling themselves “liberal” now only measuring at 21 percent. With this we see a nation that is not just center-right as many political pundits have for years claimed, but is actually trending conservative.
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Are You a Conservative? Welcome to the Majority!”


Obama Chic: Now Selling Campaign Gear for the One Percent

-By Warner Todd Huston

Obama? Why, he’s the middle class warrior, isn’t he? He’s the veritable man of the people, darn it. He has beer summits and he chows down on burgers and fries just like us reg’lar folks. Gone are the arugula days, the million-dollar vacations and secret Hollywood star-studded Halloween parties…. one out of three ain’t bad, anyway. On the other hand, perhaps all those claims of Obama’s middle class appeal are a bit of a show. If Obama’s new high-end, très chic campaign gear is any indication, he’s driving right for the vaunted One Percent.

With such famous haute couture designers as Vera Wang and Diane Von Furstenberg, team Obama is offering designer tote bags at $85, t-shirts with the hefty rice tag of $55, and a “Thakoon-designed silk scarf” that will set you back $95. With all that you’ve hardly got the sort of gear you might wear to a beer summit.

It’s all part of the Democrat Party’s “Runway To Win” campaign to raise cash for the cause.

As to the Republicans, t-shirts on Mitt Romney’s website cost no higher than $30, Newt’s t-shirts are only $20 — or you can get an embroidered polo for $40 — and Ron Paul charges even less offering his Ts for the low, low, dime-store prices of $17 and $18.
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Obama Chic: Now Selling Campaign Gear for the One Percent”


VIDEO: The Story of Broke Response, Why Annie Leonard is Wrong… AGAIN!

Extremist “progressive” Annie Leonard recently perpetrated another video attempting to “explain” why capitalism and the United States is evil. Well, LearnLiberty.org couldn’t let her lies and left-wing propaganda go by unaddressed. So, they made this excellent video…

Prof. Art Carden responds to “The Story of Broke”, a recent video by the creators of “The Story of Stuff.” In “The Story of Broke,” Annie Leonard claims that the government isn’t actually broke. Rather, the government just wastes resources on the wrong things like subsidies to the dinosaur economy and war. She claims that the government should change its ways, and instead, subsidize firms that will bring us the future we really want.

Art Carden agrees with Leonard that war and subsidies are wasteful, but is skeptical of notion that there is one unified vision for the future. To Carden, everyone has a different vision for the future. Our path to the future, he argues, is determined by the interactions of billions of unique individuals pursuing their own objectives.

Additionally, Carden questions Leonard’s distinction between bad subsidies and good subsidies. Every subsidy, deemed good or bad, must be allocated through the political process. Lobbyists and special interests exert a large degree of influence on political decisions, and they use this power to direct subsidies in their own favor at everyone else’s expense.

Carden concludes that government spending won’t buy a brighter future. A brighter future will emerge when people are allowed to spend money on things they care about. Put another way, positive change will come from billions of people cooperating freely and voluntarily with one another, not from pushing trillions of dollars through a broken political process.


Obama Excuses Over 500,000 Union Members From Obamacare

-By Warner Todd Huston

Remember back in the days of the debate over Obamacare when unions were the biggest voices screaming in support of the legislation? Many labor union bosses said that nationalized healthcare was exactly what they wanted. Further they said it was what was good for the country. Yet now we learn that Obama has given waivers to some 550,000 union members so that they don;t have to suffer under Obamacare.

Paul Connor reports that a classic Friday evening document dump from the White House shows that unions employing up to 543,812 members have received waivers fro the Obama administration.

Fridays are often the one day of the week when government agencies satisfy transparency rules and release documents that show what they’ve been up to. They release them on Friday in the early evening because they understand that reporters are already headed home for the weekend and TV news departments have already programed their evening newscasts. These agencies also understand that news agencies don’t often cover heavy news on weekends. Further, by the time Monday rolls around the document will be “old news” and many of them will simply escape attention.
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Obama Excuses Over 500,000 Union Members From Obamacare”


The Most Superficial Political Analysis Ever: The Candidates Ranked by Their T-Shirt Designs

-By Warner Todd Huston

For months, now, we have all been involved up to our ears in policy debates, discussions of the candidate’s records, and general mud slinging in this Republican primary season. There’s more to come, too. So, let’s take time out to be completely shallow, shall we?

Let’s judge the six remaining candidates by the most substantive measure we can muster: their t-shirt designs.

That’s enough yackity yak… on with the contest.

The Winner And Runner Up

Newt Gingrich wins the shirt wars, for sure. His campaign t-shirt has to rank as the best of the remaining six candidate’s designs. It sits just right on the shirt, it holds together well as a logo, and it is quickly recognizable from a distance. My only qualm is that the color red is a bit darker than I’d have picked. But none of this should be a surprise, right? Who knows branding and salesmanship better than Newt Gingrich?

Mitt Romney comes in second in this t-shirt contest. His has a fairly good logo, but the design is unbalanced by the line, “Believe in America.” It is it is just too long and makes the logo look less important than it should be. Worse the design is wrecked by the stupid website on the front. The website should be on the back, not the front.

The Boring

Ron Paul just fails in t-shirt design. Befitting his aged status as the cranky old uncle of the GOP, Ron Paul’s shirt stands as a boring one. Not much style to it, for sure. All the little type on the shirt doesn’t help, either. No one wants to get that close to a Paul supporter to read all that.

The Rick Perry shirt is a big miss and is the most boring one of the bunch. It looks like he just took the design off his political yard sign circa 1998 and slapped it on a t-shirt. It’s like his team didn’t put any thought at all into this thing. Ugh. At least it is fully visible at a distance, though, unlike Paul’s.

The Total Fail

Jon Huntsman has had the hardest time trying to convince everyone that he is a real Republican and his t-shirt design sure as heck isn’t helping him. Look at that thing! First of all who can tell that those white stripes are supposed to represent the letter “H”? But even worse, this looks like the bad design of a European soccer team shirt, not that of an American political candidate! Finally, it is not easily recognizable from a distance at all. It just looks like a bunch of white bars. This thing is horrible.

So, there you have it. If we were going to elect based on a t-short design, the Newtster is the winnah!

(Note: Santorum does not have a store on his campaign website. I can only assume that he is still having his campaign sweatervests produced.)
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The Most Superficial Political Analysis Ever: The Candidates Ranked by Their T-Shirt Designs”


Kelly Truth Squad is ON the Radio (And Yours Truly is the Cohost??)

-By Warner Todd Huston

I’d like to announce my first official radio gig. Last week I started as the co-host of the Kelly Truth Squad on Chicago’s local station, WCEV AM 1450.

Our first show aired on Sunday, Jan. 8 (I didn’t write about it before because I wasn’t 100% sure that was the actual start date). You can hear the podcast here: The Kelly Truth Squad Radio.

The show is a two hour extravaganza made up of two segments. The first is an hour of discussion on national and local politics. The second is a showcase program of local charities and events Chicagoans need to know about.

The show is Mr. Kelly’s, certainly, but I am really enjoying being the “color” guy, the second banana. Kelly is such an outsized personality and it is fun to listen to him on the radio.

Now, some of you may be wondering just what the heck I’m doing? Warner with Kelly? Yep. I have to admit, being with Kelly, a political gadfly in Chicago to say the least, is great fun.

So, please check back at the podcast page every week to listen to what the William J. Kelly Truth Squad is up to, won’t you? If you are within the station’s signal, please do listen on the air On Sunday’s at 5AM, at AM 1450 on your dial.


NPR: Again Falsely Blaming Giffords’ Shooting on Uncivil Political Rhetoric

-By Warner Todd Huston

I suppose we couldn’t get past the one-year anniversary of the crime against Democrat Representative Gabrielle Giffords without some Old Media outlet blaming the supposed “heated” political rhetoric of the day for her shooting. On Sunday we saw NPR doing just that. The fact is, no matter how many times they say it, politics and the “heated rhetoric” thereof had absolutely nothing at all to do with Giffords’ shooting. The linking of the crime to politics is just not legitimate.

On this one-year anniversary, NPR’s Linton Weeks was all about the improvement of our “civil discourse,” and full of lament that it just isn’t happening. Perhaps it is a noble sentiment, but he marred that nobility by beginning his piece with a false allusion once again tying the Giffords shooting to the “political atmosphere” of the day.

“When a gunman opened fire on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords,” Linton wrote, “some people were quick to blame the episode on the overheated political climate.”

With that false allusion we also know what NPR meant to do. It meant to blame conservatives for Giffords’ shooting.

He went on to say:
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NPR: Again Falsely Blaming Giffords’ Shooting on Uncivil Political Rhetoric”


RATE Coalition: We Are on Track to Have the Highest Corporate Tax Rate in the World

A group called Reform America’s Taxes Equitably (RATE) has a new video:

Reducing the corporate tax rate would be a boost for American competitiveness, investment and job creation,” the video concludes. “To get America back on track and bring jobs back where they belong, Congress must act and Reform America’s Taxes Equitably … This is our economy fair and simple.

RATE’s goals are to reform the tax code, making it fairer and simpler and improving the prospects of growth and jobs in the U.S. economy by reducing the corporate income tax rate to make it more competitive with our nation’s major trading partners.

http://www.ratecoalition.com/
http://www.facebook.com/RATECoalition


Obama’s Electronic Medical Records Requirements Already Causing Job Loss

-By Warner Todd Huston

While the Old Media has been ecstatic over recent job numbers, claiming that some 200,000 jobs have been added to the economy, we should note that while Obama giveth Obama also taketh away. The media may be trying to claim the President has “created or saved” jobs (the latest weasel word is he’s created job opportunity) but his policies have also cost jobs. In particular his policies are costing jobs in the medical field.

Last week, layoffs were announced in Mississippi at the University of Mississippi Medical Center due in part to the 80 million dollars that it will cost to implement a new computer system named EPIC Systems, Obama’s newly mandated electronic medical records system.

Naturally, the system Obama is forcing on an entire nation of medical professionals and hospitals is the same system owned and operated by Judith Faulkner, one of his own big donors. Faulkner is also a big donor to the Democrat Party. Not surprisingly, besides affording her the lucrative, crony capitalist business deal, Obama also put Faulkner in a key role on the Health Information Technology Policy Committee, the committee responsible for implementing the President’s e-records policy. She has become known as Obama’s medical records czar.

As hospitals and doctors are forced to launch their own EPIC Systems portals, the costs are forcing hard choices for administrators. All to implement what many call a flawed system.
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Obama’s Electronic Medical Records Requirements Already Causing Job Loss”


Mia Love for Utah!

-By Warner Todd Huston

A new candidate is hitting the scene in Utah. Her name is Mia Love, an African American running for the fourth Congressional District.

Mia’s Bio

Mrs. Love was born into a family of Haitian immigrants, she has deeply rooted values, love for this country, and guiding conservative principles.

Mia’s personal and professional life experiences, and her commitment to changing the reckless culture in Washington, have driven her to run for Congress. If elected, Love will become the first Republican black woman to serve in the United States House of Representatives.
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Mia Love for Utah!”


No, Daily Caller, Rush Will Not Back a Candidate in the Primary

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Daily Caller posted an Op Ed calling on Rush Limbaugh to save the GOP by offering a clinching endorsement of one of the non-Romney candidates. The writer was full of reasons and praise for the most listened-to radio talker, but for all the importuning, Rush will never back a primary candidate. The truth is, there just isn’t anything in it for him.

The writer, Yates Walker, says that short of some action by Rush, Romney will be the GOP nominee. Romney’s big money and ubiquitous support among the ignoratti of the GOP elites will be too much for any candidate to overcome unless Rush plays the wild card, he says.

Walker fears that if Rush doesn’t speak, it will all be over.

If Rush doesn’t make a move, recent history will repeat itself. Romney’s multimillion-dollar ad buys and the mainstream media will destroy Rick Santorum before the end of January. Though he is an excellent conservative candidate and could beat Obama in 2012, Rick will be called “unelectable” by so many pundits over the next three weeks that it will become conventional wisdom. The conservative vote will split between Santorum, Gingrich, Perry and Huntsman. Ron Paul will take his customary 12-20%. And Romney’s quarter of the GOP vote will be good enough to win … unless Mr. Limbaugh decides to intervene.

Walker goes on to say that Rush has been “toying” with crushing Mitt for months and that Rush must be “chomping at the bit” to do so.
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No, Daily Caller, Rush Will Not Back a Candidate in the Primary”


Dear Voters, Vote For Romney, You Idiots. Love, the Establishment GOP

-By Warner Todd Huston

Apparently, Mitt Romney and his surrogates want you to know that you should not vote your conscience or your principles this primary election. You should vote for Mitt Romney, instead. That is the message from Romney surrogate State Senator Gary Lambert in New Hampshire, anyway.

“This is not about picking your favorite, it’s not about picking someone you like. It’s not about picking someone even with your own beliefs and principles. This is about picking a person that can beat Barack Obama, period,” Lambert said at the Nashua New Hampshire Republican City Committee meeting on Friday.

We shouldn’t be voting for candidates with whom we agree on the issues? We shouldn’t be picking our “favorite”? What about principle? What about important policy issues? Aw, fergit it all. Never mind Romney’s long liberal political record. Never mind his near daily flip flops on the issues. Never mind his disdain for Reagan and the Tea Party movement. Never mind his claim that he’ really a “progressive” politician. Just vote Mitt, you dolts!
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Dear Voters, Vote For Romney, You Idiots. Love, the Establishment GOP”


Reality TV Tax Hikes? ABC Pushes a Kim Kardashian Tax

-By Warner Todd Huston

Here’s a new way to try and hip-up the boring, ages-old, left-wing idea of tax hikes: link it to reality TV star Kim Kardashian. That is just what ABC News tried to do on the Wednesday, January 4 edition of ABC World News Tonight when the venerable news program helped advertise an effort by a small group headed by a former Democrat operative that wants to hike California’s income taxes. It is a two-pronged approach of hitching a big government, big spending, high tax agenda to the TV reality show star in order to drag younger people into the left’s class warfare game.

ABC highlighted a California Millionaires Tax policy recommendation from a group called Courage Campaign. The group is headed by Rick Jacobs who is the former head of Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign in California, a Huffington Post writer, and leader of this admittedly “progressive” group.

ABC reported that the “liberal group” (and kudos to ABC for actually identifying them as a liberal group for a change) is upset that Kim Kardashian, who made some $12 million in 2011, only paid one percent more than the average middle class wage in the Golden State.

Here is what the extremist high-tax group says on it’s website about this:
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Reality TV Tax Hikes? ABC Pushes a Kim Kardashian Tax”


Hmmmm, Typo Hypothesis Claims Santorum Actually Won in Iowa?

-By Warner Todd Huston

Did Mitt Romney accidentally get 20 extra votes because of a typo made in Appanoose County?

Ed True, a 28-year-old caucus goer in the town of Moulton, Iowa, says that he was at the caucus and on his notes Romney only got two votes in his precinct. Yet when he checked reported totals later it showed that Romney got 22 votes! He thinks it was a typo. Someone accidentally entered “22” when they meant to type only one “2.”

The Iowa GOP says that Mr. True is not a party official and it will stand by its numbers as the full, final counting is underway. The certified count won’t be official for a week or two.

Still, it really won’t matter a whole lot. Whether Santorum lost by eight votes or won by ten or twelve is not really that relevant. The result is so close that it is nearly the same in delegate counts and what not.
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Hmmmm, Typo Hypothesis Claims Santorum Actually Won in Iowa?”


Santorum/Romney/Paul: So What Did Iowa Prove?

-By Warner Todd Huston

The 2012 Iowa Caucuses are now over and in a nail biting ending the two highest vote getters were separated by only eight votes. So, what did this caucus prove? It proved that organization matters, personal contact matters, and finally big money spent on TV might not matter as much.

The biggest news was that Rick Santorum came from the back of the pack — his numbers had been so bad that he almost got excluded from some of the many debates — almost taking first place in Iowa. He was, in fact, leading for most of the night until that final count showed him in second place losing only by eight votes. This was fantastic showing was due to one thing: Santorum’s hard work at retail politics.

Santorum spent much of his campaign treasury and much time in Iowa. He visited all 99 counties in the state and was for weeks on Iowa radio and TV morning noon and night. He pressed a lot of flesh and kissed a lot of babies. Santorum invested his campaign and himself in Iowa in a last ditch effort to keep his campaign alive. If he hadn’t it is likely that today he would be announcing the end of his campaign for the White House.
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Santorum/Romney/Paul: So What Did Iowa Prove?”


RIP Hollywood’s Sword Master

-By Warner Todd Huston

We already have our first passing in Hollywood. You won’t likely know his name, but Bob Anderson, 89, passed away just into this new year on the second of January (1922-2012).

Like I said, the name may not mean anything to you but you’ve most assuredly seen his work. Anderson, you see, was Hollywood’s most famous sword master.

When you were watching Darth Vader lightsaber fighting with Obi Wan, you were watching Bob Anderson in the Vader costume. When you were watching the Princess Bride you were watching Anderson’s sword fighting choreography. When you were watching the Lord of the Rings you were seeing Bob’s work all over the screen.

Anderson coached Errol Flynn, Sean Connery, Viggo Mortenson, and Johnny Depp in the use of the sword and was Hollywood’s top swordsman.

Director of the movie Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson, said released a statement about Anderson’s passing.

“Bob was a brilliant swordsman and a gifted teacher; I will remember him as a wonderfully patient man, possessed of a terrific sense of humour. It was a privilege to have known him.”

Anderson wasn’t just a Hollywood fantasy expert, though. He represented Britain in fencing at the 1952 Olympics and at the 1950 and 1953 World Championships, so he had a real world swordsman’s experience.

Rest in Peace, Mr. Anderson.

I leave you with Anderson’s great choreography for the Princess Bride…


A Good, Pro-Life Hollywood Story

-By Warner Todd Huston

Here at the site we often take Hollywood to task for its outrageous liberalism, and rightfully so. Of course it’s our job to look for the worst cases to alert you all about the nagging left-wing bias. But occasionally there are stories that are good ones and it is incumbent upon us to report those, too. This is one of those stories.

More often than not when we have stories out of Hollywood about life issues it is invariably a pro-abortion tale and in the case of scientific studies, it is usually some denizen of Tinseltown coming out forcefully for unethical fetal stem cell research. The destruction of life is de rigueur out there, unfortunately.

But not this time.

You might say that this celebrity has boldly gone where no Hollywooder has gone before. You also might wince at my horrible attempt at humor when you find out that we are here today to celebrate the efforts of Eugene W. Roddenberry Jr., the son of Gene Roddenberry the creator of Star Trek.

You see, in October the son of the “Great Bird of the Galaxy” donated $5 million to stem cell research. But, unlike so many of the Hollywood persuasion, this gift is not earmarked for fetal stem cell research. It is instead going to a facility that specializes in adult stem cell research.
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A Good, Pro-Life Hollywood Story”


The Essential Lies Underneath Occupy Wall Street

-By Warner Todd Huston

The folks at Fox News made a fantastic video that helps elucidate the lies floated about how wonderful, how pro-America, and how peaceable the Occupy Wall Street “movement” has been. It is important to watch this video for the truth.

The whole nonsense that OWS is a “peaceful movement” is the bigger lie than all of them, too. By John Nolte’s count there have been upwards to 417 serious criminal actions perpetrated by OWSers.

Worse, the claim that OWS supporters make that theirs is essentially a true American movement is also a pile of steaming garbage. Every one of these protests are filled to the gills with communists, socialists, anarchists, and other anti-American “ists.” The people that are the most active simply are not interested in America, its ideals, and its processes. They are essentially un-American.

The way the Old Media has gone out of its way to come to the support of OWS is telling. The same media attempted to destroy the Tea Party Movement casting all sorts of aspersions upon it. Yet, OWS has been by many magnitudes more criminal, more destructive, more anti-American and the Old Media has gone out of its way to be nice to the OWSers.

This pretty much proves the Old Media’s bias against anything conservative, Republican, or center right.
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The Essential Lies Underneath Occupy Wall Street”


Israel Killed Fewer Civilians in Military Operations Than Others, Including the US

-By Warner Todd Huston

The last decade or so we’ve assigned a euphemism to the deaths of civilians in military operations; we’ve called it “collateral damage.” The fact is, though, that deaths of bystanders — purportedly innocent — are almost unavoidable in war operations. After all, war usually entails the indiscriminate firing of automatic weapons or the dropping of large bombs and this simply cannot be done in a surgical manner. But one nation has succeeded in a near total elimination of the deaths of innocents. That country is Israel.

Commendably, Israel has gone far out of its way to minimize civilian causalities over the last five years or so. Does this bust well-worn Palestinian propaganda? It should. In general the facts make the lie to nearly everything the Palestinians and their supporters say, but this particular point demolishes the propaganda.

Propagandists against Israel love to throw around claims that Israel is a violent, war-like nation and that she loves to invade her neighbors. But, once again, facts devastate this blather. In its short life Israel has been engaged in many military actions, to be sure, but few of them began with the Israelis as the aggressors. Most of Israel’s actions have been defensive in nature. The idea of defense as opposed to conquest is so inculcated in Israel that they’ve even put the word “defense” in the name of their military forces. Hence we have the Israeli Defense Force (IDF).

In 2006 after the Israeli disengagement in Gaza, the number of rockets fired into Israel by Muslims in Palestine increased a shocking 436 percent. Israel allowed this outrage to continue for a long time before finally replying and they did this for fear of causalities of non-combatant Palestinians.
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Israel Killed Fewer Civilians in Military Operations Than Others, Including the US”


How Ron Paul Might Win Iowa and STILL Get No Hawkeye Delegates

-By Warner Todd Huston

My friend Michael Bates has raised some interesting — if technical — points. He notes that Ron Paul could very will win Iowa but still come away with few or even no Iowa delegates. After looking over Bates’ points, I think he has it right. But one thing he said is really trenchant when he noted that journalists don’t bother to read the party rules of correlate past history to see if Paul’s win in Iowa would really mean anything at all.

But first, we should note that the winner of the Iowa Republican caucus rarely becomes president. Many others have noted that the Iowa caucuses don’t pick winners. In fact, over the last six GOP presidential contests, only one Iowa winner became president (George W. Bush). Two others won the caucuses in Iowa but did not win the White House (Bob Dole and Gerald Ford).

That aside, Bates makes some important points in the delegates process. He finds that Ron Paul might win a plurality in Iowa and still come away with no delegates. The most important point he makes is to remind us all that the Iowa Caucus is not a primary election. It is only a straw poll and what happens there is not binding. This is a point that the media almost never make.

As the popularity polls are telling us, Ron Paul is neck-and-neck with Mitt Romney with Santorum have a last minute surge. But this shows that Paul will not be running away with it all, here. This also means that his support will be spread all over the state in numbers that will not commandingly control too many districts. This leaves the door open for the other candidates to band together to prevent Paul delegates from getting any traction and just might result on Paul have few or even no delegates at the state convention.

As Bates has it:
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How Ron Paul Might Win Iowa and STILL Get No Hawkeye Delegates”


Wash. Post Plays Hate-The-Rich-Republicans With Graphic Chart

-By Warner Todd Huston

On Wednesday morning the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake posted an infographic that was a perfect example of how one can use a graphic chart to influence the public in subtle ways, ways that we of the center right better start employing in our own efforts if we want to win over the public.

Blake’s post, “Why People Hate Congress,” fits in well with President Obama’s class warfare rhetoric as employed in his campaign to set different economic classes against each other in a desperate and cynically populist bid to get reelected next year. There is little of substance to Blake’s post other than to fan the flames of the sort of hatred that he wants to see grow in order to aid Obama in 2012.

The Post’s Blake also ended up having to pull the graphic off his The Fix blog post because it simply did not illustrate what he claimed it did in his story — but that is another issue that we’ll deal with at the end of this report.

Blake begins his piece asking, “Want to know why Americans hate Congress?” He then goes on to claim it is in part because our elected representatives in Washington D.C. are members of the eeeevil rich.

The fact that members of Congress are getting richer (and 57 members come from the top 1 percent, according to USA Today) confirms what Americans suspect about the people who are running this country: that they don’t empathize with normal people.

Of course, with a dispassionate application of logic, having a few dollars more than the next guy does not ipso facto make the richer guy so out of touch that he cannot empathize with anyone in a lower salary range. Only those filled with hate make this assumption. Empathy has nothing to do with class, money, or politics. It has to do with one’s character.

Further there are plenty of members of Congress with the character to understand and have empathy with others. Then there are some that don’t. People are people, rich or poor.

It is also telling that even Blake admits that Congress has always been filled with “the rich.” The founders were not groveling in poverty, after all. It often takes a person that has achieved a certain place in society to become elected. I mean, should they be elected, how can anyone expect “the poor” or even the lower middle class to afford to fund homes both in D.C. and back in their district? Who can afford to leave their family and business if half the year off more to fly off the D.C. to attend to government business? And with the costs of elections and the Byzantine election laws these days causing many candidates to self fund, it will only be natural that “the rich” end up being our representatives in Congress.

But special attention has to be paid to the graphic Blake used to illustrate his story. And what a masterwork of subtlety it is. Blake claimed that the illustration made by a well-known hate-the-rich researcher from California showed in graphic form the distribution of wealth among both chambers of Congress. The graphic depicts the “top 1%” and the “next 9%” in the color red. Then it uses blue to show the “following 10%” and the “bottom 80%.” Notice what is going on? That’s right, this graphic uses the color red to depict the eeevil rich. And what is the color red in politics these days? None other than the color the Old Media has assigned to the Republican Party.
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Wash. Post Plays Hate-The-Rich-Republicans With Graphic Chart”