US Senate

by

News/Politics 5-7-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

Open Thread

1. Oh look, the Senate is actually doing it’s job again. With Harry Reid no longer in charge, they actually have a budget for the first time since 2009. 

From HotAir  “Republicans promised to restore order to a dysfunctional Congress in the midterm elections. Yesterday, they delivered on that campaign promise, passing the first regular-order budget framework since 2009. It didn’t come easy, though:

The 51-48 vote capped weeks of work by Republican leaders in the House and Senate, who shepherded the blueprint through a messy debate over defense spending that at times threatened to split their conferences. …

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had ripped Democrats for years over their failure to pass a budget, and said Tuesday’s vote shows his GOP majority is getting the Senate working again.

“No budget will ever be perfect, but this is a budget that sensibly addresses the concerns of many different members. It reflects honest compromise from many different members with many different priorities,” the Kentucky Republican said on the Senate floor.

_____________________________________

2. About those charges against the Baltimore police officers…..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rqKoemmkR0g

_____________________________________

3. The corruption of bi-partisanship. 

From TheAtlantic  “People say they want more bipartisanship. In poll after poll after poll, they decry the polarized atmosphere in Washington and say they want their leaders to work together.

To which the people of New York and New Jersey might reply: seriously?

It’s indictment-and-arrest season in the tri-state region. Monday morning, New York State Senate Leader Dean Skelos, a Republican, and his son Adam were arrested on federal charges of extortion, fraud, and soliciting bribes. It’s been just three months since State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Democrat, washimself arrested on federal corruption charges. Meanwhile, across the Hudson River in New Jersey, Bridget Anne Kelly and Bill Baroni, two former top allies of Governor Chris Christie, pleaded not guilty to nine counts apiece including wire fraud and conspiracy in the George Washington Bridge Scandal. On Friday, David Wildstein, a Christie appointee, pleaded guilty to two conspiracy charges in the same scandal.

What New York and New Jersey share, besides oft-imitated accents and embarrassing reputations for political corruption, is bipartisan governance. It wasn’t that long ago—before the bridge scandal, credit downgrades, and collapse of Atlantic City—that Christie seemed like a model of a Republican who could work with Democrats and achieve his priorities. Christie forged an alliance with Jersey Democratic boss George Norcross and his protege Steve Sweeney, the Democratic president of the State Senate. Christie even managed to gain many Democratic endorsements in his 2013 run for reelection. In fact, prosecutors say it was his aides’ overzealous attempt to squeeze an endorsement from the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee that led to the bridge closure that now threatens to undo his career.

Something similar was going on in Albany. Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, became extremely close with Silver and Skelos, even though Skelos was a Republican. In his January State of the State address—the day before Silver’s arrest, it turned out—he described his relationship with the two as “the three amigos.” The alliance drove some other New York Democrats nuts. Even though Cuomo had delivered two major progressive priorities in passing gun control and legalizing gay marriage, he governed far too close to the center for liberals’ taste on economic issues. But that allowed Cuomo to run the state government smoothly and implement his agenda.”

Careful what you wish for.

_____________________________________

4. More on that “safe space” nonsense. 

From USAToday  “Christina Hoff Sommers has been speaking on college campuses for two decades challenging students to embrace what she calls “equity feminism” over “gender feminism.” In her view, the former is focused on legal equality between men and women, the latter on disempowering women by portraying them as perpetual victims of the patriarchy.

This heretical view now requires campus security.

Prior to a mid-April lecture at Georgetown University, the American Enterprise Institutescholar was deemed a “rape apologist” by campus feminists for challenging statistics that she says overstate the rate of rape on campus. “The postings were so frantic that Georgetown sent undercover security into the audience,” Sommers told me.

An Oberlin College lecture a few days later met the same fate. The Oberlin Reviewpublished an open letter, “In Response to Christina Sommers’ Talk: A Love Letter to Ourselves” two days before Sommers’ visit. Usually people wait to offer a “response” until after an event has occurred, but not so in our Brave New World. The students wrote that Sommers’ presence on campus was “harmful,” and lamented that “her talk is happening, so let’s pull together in the face of this violence.”

In case you missed that: A differing viewpoint is an act of violence.

A sign outside the lecture read “Rape Culture Hall of Fame” with the names of past and present members of the libertarian and Republican student group that invited Sommers. The Oberlin Review reported that “activists organized a safe space … (that) was attended by approximately 35 students and one dog” as Sommers spoke.”The irony is (the complaining students) postings were so extreme that the administration provided me with security,” Sommers said.”

And now you know why Rush refers to them as Femi-Nazis. 

_____________________________________

by

News/Politics 11-6-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. The voters have spoken and he doesn’t like what they said.

From TheAP  “For anyone expecting postelection contrition at the White House or vows to change course after a disastrous election for Democrats, President Barack Obama had one message Wednesday: Think again.

A day after Democrats lost control of the Senate and suffered big losses in House and governors’ races across the country, Obama struck a defiant tone. He defended his policies, stood by his staff and showed few signs of changing an approach to dealing with congressional Republicans that has generated little more than gridlock in recent years.

Rather than accept the election results as a repudiation of his own administration, the president said voters were disenchanted with Washington as a whole. And rather than offering dour assessments of his party’s electoral thrashing, as he did after the 2010 midterms, the president insisted repeatedly that he was optimistic about the country’s future.”

______________________________________________

2. And speaking of defiant….

From TheCharlotteObserver  “Two weeks after he lost his right to vote, former Charlotte mayor and convicted felon Patrick Cannon apparently cast a ballot.

That vote, which was officially challenged Tuesday night, would violate Cannon’s bond and could put him back before a judge, said Greg Forrest, chief of the U.S. Probation Office in Charlotte.

It may even mean the 47-year-old Democrat goes to prison sooner.

“Let’s cut to the chase: He shouldn’t have done that, and we’re going to talk to him tomorrow (Wednesday),” Forrest told the Observer.”

Lock him up and add a new charge.

______________________________________________

3. 5 Democrat myths have been exposed as false.

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “As Democratic losses mounted in Senate races across the country on election night, some liberal commentators clung to the idea that dissatisfied voters were sending a generally anti-incumbent message, and not specifically repudiating Democratic officeholders. But the facts of the election just don’t support that story.

Voters replaced Democratic senators with Republicans in Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, North Carolina, Montana, South Dakota, West Virginia and likely in Alaska, and appear on track to do so in a runoff next month in Louisiana. At the same time, voters kept Republicans in GOP seats in heavily contested races in Georgia, Kansas and Kentucky. That is at least 10, and as many as a dozen, tough races, without a single Republican seat changing hands. Tuesday’s voting was a wave alright — a very anti-Democratic wave.

In addition to demolishing the claim of bipartisan anti-incumbent sentiment, voters also exposed as myths five other ideas dear to the hearts of Democrats in the last few months:

1) The election wouldn’t be a referendum on President Obama.”

“4) Women would save Democrats.”

______________________________________________

4. How do you know they’re missing if you never looked for them?

From JudicialWatch  “Judicial Watch announced today that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) admitted to the court that it failed to search any of the IRS standard computer systems for the “missing” emails of Lois Lerner and other IRS officials. The admission appears in an IRS legal brief opposing the Judicial Watch request that a federal court judge allow discovery into how “lost and/or destroyed” IRS records relating to the targeting of conservative groups may be retrieved. The IRS is fighting Judicial Watch’s efforts to force testimony and document production about the IRS’ loss of records in Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation about the IRS targeting of Tea Party and other opponents of President Obama(Judicial Watch v. IRS (No. 1:13-cv-1559)).  The lawsuit is before U.S. District Court Judge Emmett G. Sullivan.

In its September 17 Motion for Limited Discovery, Judicial Watch argues that, despite two orders, the IRS had consistently failed to provide information detailing how “the missing emails could be retrieved from other sources and produced to Judicial Watch.” On October 17, IRS attorneys asked the court to deny the Judicial Watch request, even while admitting that additional Congressional requests “could result in additional documents being located ….”

In its October 27 Reply in Support of Motion for Limited Discovery, Judicial Watch argued that declarations submitted by the IRS in response to the Judge Sullivan’s orders “fail to answer important questions about the missing emails:”

[I]t has become apparent that the IRS did not undertake any significant efforts to obtain the emails from alternative sources following the discovery that the emails were missing. The emails are potentially responsive to Plaintiff’s FOIA requests, and the IRS’s failure to search for them in other recordkeeping systems raises material questions of fact about whether the agency has conducted a reasonable search.

Judicial Watch lawyers reviewed the IRS court filings and concluded that the agency “did not undertake any significant efforts to obtain the emails.””

______________________________________________

5. As Democrats now call for bi-partisanship (which they never get around to when they run things), here’s something for the Republicans to keep on mind.

From WeaselZippers  “Last night, the talking points were already under way from Democrats on how now we must all work together, the time for partisanship is past.

No no, my dear Democrats. Given this election is a very specific and direct rejection of the policies that you and President Obama have espoused(in his own words), now is the time to work nonstop and eliminate those same policies in accordance with the will of the people.

Republicans, Conservatives. Please do remember as you are urged to act in a ‘bipartisan way’, what you have been called.”

“Enemy, paranoid, greedy, Bible-thumping, gun-toting, fear-mongering, racist, sexist, bigot, birther, redneck, homophobic, xenophobic, global-warming denialists, anti-science, Neanderthal, barbarian, terrorist, hobbits, member of the Flat Earth Society, Nazi, bully, Yosemite Sam hillbilly, beer-toting, pot belly, church going, small-minded, whack-job, Evangelical, gun nuts, wing nut, knuckle-dragger, clueless, Teabaggers, narrow-minded, evil, redneck freaks, judgmental, backwards, sick, anti-intellectualist, slut-shaming, slimebuckets, forced-birther, neocons, Zionist, neo-Confederate, wild nasty hard-right fringe, extremist, sewer rats, wacko birds, bitter clingers, misogynist, you suck, Obamaphobic, chirper, white nativist, crazies,”

And that’s not even a third of the list.

Don’t fall for it. Don’t let Lucy do it to you again Charlie Brown.

______________________________________________

by

News/Politics 2-6-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. The hits from the CBO just keep on comin’.

From TheWeeklyStandard  “Remember back when the Democrats tried to sell Obamacare to a skeptical citizenry as health care “reform” that would cost “only” $848 billion—far less than a trillion—over a decade?  Indeed, that was the alleged 10-year gross cost of Obamacare’s coverage provisions, according to the Congressional Budget Office (see Table 3), when Harry Reid, Mark Pryor, Kay Hagan, Mary Landrieu, Al Franken, Mark Udall, Jeanne Shaheen, Mark Begich, Mark Warner, and the rest of the Democrats rammed President Obama’s signature legislation through the Senate on Christmas Eve without a single Republican vote.  That 12-digit price-tag was widely cited by the New York Times and other sympathetic outlets, who treated it as gospel, even as conservatives observed that it was clearly a sham number.

 Well, now the CBO is out with a new report on Obamacare’s costs, and—sure enough—its 10-year price-tag now eclipses $2 trillion.  To be more exact, the CBO now projects (see Table B-1) that the 10-year gross cost of Obamacare’s coverage provisions will be a cool $2,004,000,000,000.00.

________________________________________

2. What?!

Shockingly it appears that giving people free stuff creates a disincentive for people to work.

Huh. That’s not what the President says.

From CNSNews  “The subsidies that help low-income people buy expensive health  insurance are a ‘disincentive for people to work,” Douglas Elmendorf,  director of the Congressional Budget Office, told Congress on Wednesday.

“What  the Affordable Care Act does, is to provide subsidies focused on lower-  and lower-middle-income people to buy health insurance. And in order to  encourage a sufficient number of people to buy an expensive product  like health  insurance, the subsidies are fairly large in dollar terms.  Those subsidies are then withdrawn over time — withdrawn from people as  their income rises.

“And by providing heavily subsidized health  insurance to people with very low income, and then withdrawing those  subsidies as income rises, the (Affordable Care) Act creates a  disincentive for people to work, relative to what would have been the  case in the absence of that Act,” Elmendorf told the House Budget  Committee.

He added that the subsidies “make those lower-income people better off…but they do have less of an incentive to work.”

________________________________________

3. Meanwhile enrollees are continuing to hit snags at the doctor’s office.

From TheLATimes  “A month into the most sweeping changes to healthcare in half a century, people are having trouble finding doctors at all, getting faulty information on which ones are covered and receiving little help from insurers swamped by new business.

Experts have warned for months that the logjam was inevitable. But the extent of the problems is taking by surprise many patients — and even doctors — as frustrations mount.”

“To hold down premiums under the healthcare law, major insurers have sharply cut the number of doctors and hospitals available to patients in the state’s new health insurance market.

Now those limited options are becoming clearer, and California officials say they are receiving more consumer complaints about access to medical providers. State lawmakers are also moving swiftly to ease some of the problems that have arisen.”

________________________________________

4. Another unhappy customer.

From TheNYPost  “ObamaCare was supposed to help me. That’s all I could think as I sat in the House of Representatives last Tuesday night as the guest of my congresswoman, only a few hundred feet away from President Obama as he gave his State of the Union address. Four years ago, I’d have been there cheering for ObamaCare’s passage. But the real ObamaCare has made my life a nightmare.”

“My plan was canceled last fall. According to the regulators behind ObamaCare, it was a subpar plan that should no longer be sold to consumers. Another 16,000 Tennesseans on the same plan were similarly dumped. Many, like me, liked their plans and wanted to keep them.

This wasn’t my insurer’s fault at all. CoverTN actually fought for me to keep my health care. After I received my cancellation notice, the folks at CoverTN requested that the federal government give them a waiver, which would let them grandfather my plan into ObamaCare. Their request was rejected.”

“For me, the impact of ObamaCare is a health plan that is both unaffordable and uncaring. For a law named “The Affordable Care Act,” this is both backward and perverse.”

$6,000 more a year, less benefits, less choices, and she lost her doctor. Also note that the “evil” insurance company went to bat for her to keep her lower priced plan, yet it was the govt that denied her.

________________________________________

5. Just a reminder to voters in states with Democrat Senators up for re-election. It’s time to make them pay at the polls. Vote them out.

From RollCall  “Every vulnerable Senate Democrat up for re-election in 2014 voted with President Barack Obama at least 90 percent of the time in 2013, according to CQ Roll Call’s latest vote studies, released Monday.

Arkansas Democrat Mark Pryor broke with the president most often, opposing him in 10 percent of all 2013 votes where the administration stated a preferred outcome. Sens. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, Mary Landrieu, D-La. and Kay Hagan, D-N.C., voted for Obama’s position 97, 97, and 96 percent of the time, respectively. Of those four, only Begich serves with a Republican who has bucked the GOP to back Obama with any frequency. (See our Jan. 21 story.)

Support for Obama’s initiatives from incumbent Democrats who are favored but not safe was just as high if not higher than from vulnerable members: Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Mark Warner of Virginia supported the president in 99 and 97 percent of votes.

On the flip side, Republican senators who are wary of primary challengers from the right opposed Obama so often that the president’s support from GOP senators in 2013 — 40 percent — was the lowest of his five years in office. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., opposed Obama 67 percent of the time. Sens. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., Thad Cochran, R-Miss., Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, opposed the Obama position on 66, 50, 48 and 66 percent of votes respectively.”

_________________________________________

6. The President and his minions tried to keep their harassment of Tea Party groups hidden from the public.

From CNSNews  “Mich.). In a hearing on the IRS-Tea Party scandal on Wednesday, Chairman Camp questioned IRS Commissioner John Koskinen about the Treasury Department apparently crafting rules to limit the ability of conservative and Tea Party groups to get 501(c)4 exemptions to engage in public debate.”

“In his questioning of Koskinen, Camp also noted that e-mails showed that IRS officials in Cinncinati, Ohio first started flagging Tea Party applications in February 2010 because of “media attention” and apparently not because there was any confusion over the application rules for a 501(c)3 or (c)4 group.

In an e-mail from Feb. 25, 2010 from Cincinnati IRS official Jack Koester to his boss, Screening Group Manager John Shafer, Koester says, “John, Here is the case number for the ‘Tea Party’ application for 501c(4) exemption that we discussed this morning. Recent media attaention to this type of organization indicates to me that this is a ‘high profile case’.”  Then part of the e-mail is blacked out, redacted.”

________________________________________

7. The CBO is also warning that the plummeting workforce participation rate will have an adverse effect on the economy for a long time. This is Obama’s economic legacy. Like the rest, a failure of leadership.

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “When Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf appeared before the House Budget Committee on Wednesday, there were plenty of lawmakers, Republican and Democrat, who wanted to make points about Obamacare. Republicans stressed the CBO’s finding that Obamacare will create such a sharp disincentive to work that Americans will stop working to the tune of 2.5 million full-time jobs. Democrats tried to cast doubt on the number or, alternately, to suggest that Americans leaving the work force because they no longer need a job to secure health coverage would be a good thing.

The points had been pretty much exhausted by the time Republican Rep. Diane Black got her turn to address Elmendorf. Her question was straightforward: “What effect [will] the reduced labor force participation have on the economy?”

“Elmendorf’s answer was simple, short, and devastating. “It is the central factor in slowing economic growth,” he said. “After we get out of this current downturn, but later in this decade and beyond, the principal reason why we think the economic growth will be less than it was for most of my lifetime will be a slower rate of growth by the labor force.”

He used it for political gain to fraudulently lower his unemployment numbers, but the economy will suffer long term because of it.

_____________________________________

by

News/Politics 1-22-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. ObamaCare?…  Affordable Care Act?…….

Nope, doesn’t ring a bell…..

From NationalReview  “At this point, the real action of 2014 will be in the red state Senate races in Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, North Carolina, West Virginia, South Dakota, and Montana. Unsurprisingly, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee isn’t so eager to talk about Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act — at least on their home page.

The only reference to “health” on the DSCC home page right now is a John Walsh tweet that “#MT can’t afford ppl like @SteveDaines who don’t believe in a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions” and a generic “war on women” blog post that claims “We must do everything in our power to protect women’s rights and women’s health.”

The words “Affordable Care Act” and “Obamacare” do not currently appear on the home page of the DSCC web site, nor do the words “exchange” or “insurance” or any other reference to the president’s signature domestic legislation, impacting families, workers, and businesses right now.”

As if we’d let them get off that easy. 🙄

________________________________________

2. This is what Democrats consider success. This is also why having your state running one of these debacles is a bad idea. Thankfully I live in a state that refused.

________________________________________

3. Four minutes. That’s how long it took to hack HealthCare.gov.

From TheDailyCaller  “David Kennedy, the hacking expert that shook the country this week with his congressional testimony about the security failures of HealthCare.gov, explained Sunday how he was able to penetrate the site.

“There’s a technique called, what we call ‘passive reconnaissance,’” Kennedy explained to “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace, “which allows us to query and look at how the website operates and performs.”

“And these type of attacks that I’m mentioning here, and the 70,000 [personal records Kennedy found] that you’re referencing, is very easy to do,” Kennedy continued. “It’s a rudimentary type attack that doesn’t actually attack the website itself. It extracts information from it without actually having to go into the system.”

_________________________________________

4. The walk back.

From TheWeeklyStandard  “New York governor Andrew Cuomo came under fire for criticizing pro-life and pro-Second Amendment citizens of his state — and saying “that is not who New Yorkers are.”

“Now his office is backtracking and insisting that the governor said “‘it is fine’ to be anti-gun control, and anti-choice – as he respects both positions.

The video at the link demonstrates otherwise, in his own words.

________________________________________

5. Here’s a fun one.

From Time  “See how your preferences in dogs, Internet browsers, and 10 other items predict your partisan leanings.”

I’m 87% conservative.

________________________________________

by

News/Politics 7-16-13

What’s interesting out there today?

The Zimmerman acquittal continues to lead. It’s playing out much the way you would expect. The baiters gotta bait, the biased media has to show their bias, and the truth isn’t really a concern. The mob rules.

From the head of the NAACP, via TheOrlandoSentinel

“In remarks to reporters after his speech, Jealous, a father of two, said the George Zimmerman acquittal brought him to tears.

“When I heard that….the first thing I did was walk over to my son’s crib and lift him up, and I listened to him breathe,” Jealous recalled.

“And then I began to cry,” he said. “No one can explain to me how, if this young boy [Trayvon Martin] was white, somebody wouldn’t be in prison right now.””

He then goes on to call it a modern day lynching. Somebody’s being lynched, but it’s not who he thinks it is.

Next up, don’t anger the mob. And with a CONTENT WARNING!!! for language. From TheDailyCaller

“Christian Hartsock, a conservative journalist and filmmaker, says he was  assaulted and beaten down to the ground by a mob with repeated strikes to the  face while reporting at a Trayvon Martin rally in downtown Oakland Sunday  night.

“I have interviews and I have footage of [Trayvon protestors] chanting ‘no  justice, no peace—%$&# &%$ pigs in your sleep,’” Hartsock told The Daily Caller.  “One of them was an elementary schooler chanting with his mom.”

Of course elected officials like Holder and Rangel are getting in on the act. From Mediaite

“Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) told MSNBC’s Martin Bashir on Monday that the outcome of the trial of George Zimmerman would have been different had the defendant been black and not Hispanic. If that were the case, Rangel said, the question would be whether the arresting officers would have “beat him to death” before putting him in handcuffs on the spot.”

Like I said, baiters gotta bait. Here’s more from the head of the CBC. From HuffPo

“Congressional Black Caucus chair Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio) issued harsh words over the verdict in the George Zimmerman case, arguing that a “young black boy” was put on trial rather than the man who killed him.

“Mr. Zimmerman was found not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, he was not found innocent. All of the facts I think that I know, that I’m aware of, is that there was a young man walking in his neighborhood, walking to his house unarmed, and someone decided that he looked suspicious,” Fudge said during an appearance on MSNBC.”

Wait, what?

Just a quick check of the definition shows that she’s misinformed.

in·no·cent
(n-snt)

2.

a. Not guilty of a specific crime or offense; legally blameless: was innocent of all charges.
b. Within, allowed by, or sanctioned by the law; lawful.
____________________________________________________

Now that we’re done with the drama queens and assorted agenda driven fanatics, let’s try a little truth, which none of the above are even mentioning since it doesn’t fit their agendas. The jury is beginning to speak. From CNN

“One of the jurors who acquitted George Zimmerman of killing Florida teen Trayvon Martin said she believed Martin threw the first punch in their confrontation and that Zimmerman probably feared for his life before shooting Martin. The juror spoke to CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” on Monday.

The juror also said she believed Zimmerman’s “heart was in the right place” the night he killed Martin, but didn’t use “good judgment” in confronting him.”

It was always self-defense. He’s not the monster they’ve made him out to be. Neither was Trayvon, but denying that his actions didn’t contribute to his death is dishonest.

____________________________________________________

And in other news…….  A trial that should be receiving way more airtime, yet oddly isn’t. Gee, I wonder why?…. 🙄

Nope, no bias here, move along…. From HotAir

“These tweets from Karen Townsend and Elizabeth Scalia reminded me that we have at least one trial in progress in the United States that the media has failed to sensationalize. It has issues of terrorism, betrayal, mass murder, and religious extremism within it, so why do we hear so little about … Nidal Hasan?”

“That prompted me to do a little research into the Fort Hood shooting court-martial to see how much coverage it has received so far.  The answer is … not much.  The pre-trial voir dire has entered its second week, but the only news outlet interested at this point is the Associated Press.  The three updates today I did manage to find all came from the AP:”

Shhhhhhh… It’s a secret……

____________________________________________________

Which brings me to this next one. Isn’t it time to stop with the charades and insistence of neutrality and just have them state the obvious and confirm what we already know? From TheGuardian/UK

“Are mainstream journalists dedicated to journalism? This may seem like a strange question, especially since I’m a journalist myself, though independent and not tied to a corporate news organisation.

We are bombarded with details that claim to inform us about the world. From war and peace to politics and global affairs, reporters produce content that is consumed by the vast majority of the population. There are claims of holding power to account, questioning how governments, officials and businesses make decisions that affect us all. In reality, corporate and political interests too often influence what we see and hear.

Of course, profound failures regularly occur – not least during the global financial crisis, when most business reporters were far too close to bankers causing the lying and deceit. Or in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war, when too few in the media questioned the bogus rationale by the Bush administration and its allies about Saddam Hussein’s supposed WMD threat. More recently, many in the Washington media elite rallied around Barack Obama and his defence of mass surveillance after the explosive revelations of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

But the media has singularly failed in holding itself to account. We, as journalists, should disclose for whom we vote and any other political affiliations that may affect our reporting. It’s the least we can do to restore trust in an industry that regularly receives low marks by its readers. A 2011 study by Edelman Public Relations found only 33% of the Australian public trusted the press, compared to an average of 49% globally. A 2013 study by Transparency International finds Australians rank political parties and the media as the most corrupt institutions in the state.”

____________________________________________________

Yes Please! 🙂

From TheWashingtonExaminer

“The New York Times polling analyst Nate Silver believes that Republicans may have a shot at retaking the Senate.

“A race-by-race analysis of the Senate, in fact, suggests that Republicans might now be close to even-money to win control of the chamber after next year’s elections,” Silver writes on his “Five Thirty Eight” blog. “Our best guess, after assigning probabilities of the likelihood of a G.O.P. pickup in each state, is that Republicans will end up with somewhere between 50 and 51 Senate seats after 2014, putting them right on the threshold of a majority.””

____________________________________________________

If you’re a Republican, you resign in shame, if you’re a Democrat, sex scandals are resume’ enhancers. From HotAir

“Confession: It used to bug me when conservatives would dump on my hometown. I understood it wasn’t personal — red-state voters will obviously disdain a deep blue city. And there’s no disputing, whatever your feelings about NYC, that Bloomberg’s a cretin and the Yankees are evil. But still, you can’t listen to people dumping on the place where you grew up and not wince. It hits you where you live. Literally.

That’s how I felt. Until I saw this, and now, suddenly, I get it. I can finally watch “Cloverfield” and enjoy it without misgivings.”

“Strong support among black voters propels former Congressman Anthony Weiner to the top of the heap in the Democratic primary for New York City mayor and gives former Gov. Eliot Spitzer a 48 – 33 percent lead over Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer in the Democratic primary race for city comptroller, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today…”

Hey NY, you do realize that even California is laughing at you, right? I need a facepalm smiley.

____________________________________________________