Convicted Felon Gets $7.45 Million Loan Guarantee from Obama Stimulus

Townhall.com:

The 2009 Obama stimulus package is a constant source of stories about incompetent bureaucrats in Washington wasting taxpayer money, with Solyndra being the most famous of them. The latest story involves a man, David Myers, getting a guaranteed $7.45 million loan from the United States Department of Agriculture. His company, Ways LLC is using the guaranteed loan to purchase a home health agency in Mississippi. What's the problem with this loan? Amongst other things, Myers was involved in a high profile case of corporate fraud. Bloomberg News had this to say about the man being trusted with millions in taxpayer money:

“Myers, 54, served nine months in prison for helping to falsify the telecommunications company’s books to meet earnings targets. The $11 billion accounting fraud wiped out more than 17,000 jobs and $184.6 billion in market value from WorldCom’s high on June 1999.”

Obama’s $760 billion stimulus program includes 515 loan guarantees for businesses, and places the USDA in charge of selecting qualified applicants. Ways LLC was one such business.
Surprisingly, there are no regulations or law preventing the government from doing business with David Myers:

“Myers pleaded guilty to fraud, conspiracy and false filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in September 2002. Federal law prohibits the USDA from making a grant or providing a loan or loan guarantee to corporations or executives who have been convicted of a felony within the preceding two years.”

The USDA, in its infinite wisdom, decided that it was worth gambling on David Myers’s business, seeing as to how he pled guilty ten years ago instead of two. The USDA, and every other over-empowered government agency, can afford to make these gambles, because they are not held personally accountable for their failures. In the end, it is the taxpayer who takes the hit.

RELATED: Obama to Couples: Why Don't You Forgo Wedding Gifts and Ask Your Guests to Donate to Me Instead?

Democrat’s Disingenuous Reaction To Romney’s Immigration Speech Reinforces How Effective It Was

Mediaite.com:

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s speech on Thursday to an audience at the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) conference in Orlando has prompted a series of curious and contradictory responses from Democrats and liberal critics of the former Massachusetts governor. But their reaction betrays the seriousness of Romney’s speech and the impact it could have on the presidential race if the proposals he advanced on Thursday are sustained and repeated throughout the campaign. Romney’s NALEO speech recaptured the initiative President Barack Obama seized in announcing his immigration directive last Friday. After just one week, Democrats are back on the defensive.

The liberal reaction to Romney’s speech was typified by Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz on CNN’s Starting Point on Friday.

“What did you make of his comments,” CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien asked the DNC chairwoman about Romney’s NALEO speech. 

“Well, not very much,” Wasserman Schultz responded. “Mitt Romney was about as vague as he could be.”
“There was no specific proposal,” she continued. “No clear path so that the 12 million undocumented immigrants would know, under a Romney presidency, what their future would hold. The only thing he has done is tell them that he keeps his promises.”

Wasserman Schultz proceeded to rehash the hard line stances that Romney struck for himself during the Republican primaries regarding illegal immigration – including his pledge to veto the DREAM Act. She then offered praise for President Obama’s White House directive to halt the deportation of the some 800,000 children of illegal immigrants. 

I watched Romney’s address to NALEO live. Immediately afterword, I noted how it was a substantive speech with a number of proposals he had not previously advanced regarding the rewarding of legal immigration as well as those second generation illegal immigrants that either earn an advanced degree or serve in the armed forces. It was all news to me. 

But I was then immediately confronted by the mirror image of my impressions as I watched MSNBC’s instant reaction panel. The speech they saw was void of specifics. They felt Romney was simultaneously pandering and disingenuous. His speech was not only thin proposals with no concrete plan as to how to enact them. What’s more, he was “trying too hard” to ingratiate himself to members of the Latino community, as one liberal commentator said.

You can’t win for losing, I suppose. 

That reaction has been echoed across the spectrum of liberal political commentary. To them, what was not completely old news in Romney’s speech was mere pap. Now, the DNC chairwoman doubles down on the progressive commentariat: ‘Nothing to see here.’ ‘Move along.’ ‘Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.’ ‘Oh, and also, remember that Mitt Romney and the Republicans are extreme?’ 

Wasserman Schultz’s flailing response to O’Brien’s question tells me at least one thing – my reaction was correct. There was a whole lot of substance in Romney’s speech. 

The former Bay State governor began by rehashing familiar economic themes – the singular concern on the minds of all voters, regardless of ethnic or cultural background. He vowed to overhaul the system that grants green cards on a first-come, first-serve basis. He promised to end caps on spouses and children of permanent residents. 

Romney praised portions of Obama’s executive order that allow children of illegal immigrants who serve in the military a path to citizenship – but he condemned the extra-legal way in which that provision was implemented. Indeed, the move itself is a Constitutional affront that the President expressly said was outside the bounds of executive power just last year. Such contradictions are the stuff of hard-hitting attack ads. 

What’s more, Romney made a compelling case against Obama from a Hispanic perspective – he noted that President Obama abandoned his pledge to get a Democratic-led immigration reform package through Congress when he had large and compliant majorities and a massive electoral mandate under his belt. 

Romney also reminded the audience that Hispanic unemployment remains persistently above the national average.
What’s more, Romney spoke to them in conciliatory way. He praised the promise that Obama represented in 2008 and telling them that it was not their judgment that failed them in the voting booths four years ago; it was Obama who failed in his charge. It was a pitch-perfect tone. It was the way that one should address a skeptical and betrayed group; with sincerity, genuine concern and compassion.

That speech was a good one. It was a powerful one. And it scared Democrats. If Romney’s speech was without substance – Democrats would attack those proposals. That they have not speaks to their power.

RELATED: Romney Gets Specific On Immigration Reform At Hispanic Leadership Conference

Adults Heckle NYC Schoolchildren Singing Patriotic Song

 TheBlaze.com:

We already told you about the New York City public school principal who banned “God Bless the USA” from a kindergarten graduation program. Now, the same schoolchildren who were forbidden from singing the song at P.S. 90 in Brooklyn were heckled by adults when they performed the song at a protest event held in a nearby park.


Parents, outraged by Principal Greta Hawkins’ decision to ban the song, organized the protest and invited Rep. Bob Turner (R-NY) to attend (he’s running against Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand). But the event, which was assembled to allow the children and families to make their opposition to Hawkins’ stance known, went terribly wrong when some adults chose to shout over the children in protest.


Video of the incident shows boys and girls waving flags and singing Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA.” As they performed, though, some angry adults began swarming and shouting. Turner confirmed that these events unfolded in an interview with Fox News Radio, calling the actions “really bad form.”


“You Republicans come go to a Republican area and do that, we don’t do that here,” proclaimed one of the counter protesters. “This is ridiculous, this is sad. This is so crazy. This is sad.”


As Fox’s Todd Starnes notes, one of the staffers told the protesters to stop intervening and to let the kids sing. To that request, one of them responded, claiming that the spectacle was “ridiculous” and that those orchestrating the event were going to “burn in hell.”


“The kids don’t even know what they’re singing. They got something you tell them to say. It’s ridiculous,” he said. “It’s sad, sad, sad. You all are going to burn in hell. You all burn in hell. Shame on you. Shame on you.”


In an attempt to drown the protesters out, the children began chanting “USA, USA, USA!“ One of the kids even told the most vocal of the detractors to ”get out of here.”

RELATED: Gay Activists Visiting White House Take Photos of Themselves Flipping Off Reagan Portrait

Why Kim Kardashian Is The 'World's Worst Role Model'

Dailymail.com:

She’s the woman who makes Paris Hilton seem shy, retiring and misunderstood. 

The proud owner of a bottom so generous and rounded that it makes J-Lo’s look like a sad, deflated balloon. 

A member of a family so unhinged and dysfunctional that, in comparison, the Osbournes seem well-adjusted, everyday folk. And a bride whose marriage was so short-lived that wedding guests were still digesting the cake when the divorce papers were filed. 

I am, of course, talking about Kim Kardashian, an American reality TV star who has found fame and made a considerable fortune despite having no discernable talent to speak of. 

She is the main star of Keeping up With The Kardashians, a fly-on-the-wall series about the exploits of her extended family, which has become a huge hit on both sides of the Atlantic. 

But now Kim has been singled out by a British headmistress as a splendid example of all that is wrong with Western society. 

Dr Helen Wright, the head of St Mary’s School, an exclusive girls’ boarding school in Wiltshire, made her claim after one men’s magazine branded Miss Kardashian ‘the hottest woman in the world’. 

A fuming Dr Wright said: ‘The hottest woman in the world? Really? Is this what we want our young people to aim for? Is this what success should mean to them?’ 

She also accused Kim of making her fortune from ‘meanness, scandal and boundary-less living’. 

Harsh words indeed, but for those Britons who have never succumbed to the guilty TV pleasure that is Keeping Up With The Kardashians, Kim remains something of a mystery. 

So here, for the uninitiated, is everything you need to know about the woman who won’t be getting a Christmas card from Dr Wright. 

IT’S A FAMILY AFFAIR 

Kim, 31, is the middle daughter of Kris Jenner and the late Robert Kardashian, who was famous for being OJ Simpson’s defence lawyer. 

She is sister to Kourtney and Khloe and, yes, it is a family rule that all female names must start with a ‘K’ and, wherever possible, be mis-spelt. Krazy. They also have a brother called Rob but no one is interested in him. 

Her mother Kris is now married to Bruce Jenner, a former athlete who won a gold medal for the decathlon at the 1976 Olympics. Kris and Bruce have two teenage daughters called Kendall and Kylie (again, note the Ks.) 

The whole family can be seen on Keeping Up With The Kardashians on the E! channel. Now in its fifth year, the action is centred on the family’s naff Los Angeles mansion, which is filled with oversized plants and undersized, yappy dogs. 

It is here that the Kardashians all live, laugh, fight and compare plastic surgery together. 

YOU NAME IT, SHE’LL ENDORSE IT 

Keeping Up with The Kardashians first aired when Kim was 26. Prior to that, she had achieved . . . absolutely nothing. 

Never having worked a day in her life, she was just another rich, indulged trust-fund princess who spent her days shopping at malls and her nights falling out of clubs. 

Her big break came when she was offered the reality show after being seen about town with her equally talented friend Paris Hilton. Oh, and a sex tape of her appeared on the internet (of which more of later.) 

Once the programme took off, so did Kim’s career. Of course, like all independent businesswomen, she marked her success by stripping for Playboy. 

After that she endorsed everything from cupcakes and lollipops to jewellery and jeans. Small parts in a variety of B-list movies proved that she had the acting skills of a wooden spoon. Attempts at becoming a pop star quickly faltered following the release of her one and only single, Jam. 

An unimpressed critic from America’s Daily News called the song: ‘A dead-brained piece of generic dance music, without a single distinguishing feature performed by the worst singer in the reality TV universe.’ Ouch. 

THE suspiciously BOOTYLICIOUS BODY 

 Just 5ft 2in tall, Kim is known for her Jessica-Rabbit-style curves and dresses chosen to show them off at every opportunity. 

She has a generously proportioned chest, but it is her quite extraordinary shelf-like derrière that is the real talking point. 

Way out of proportion to the rest of her body and so deep you could stack books on it, it’s no wonder Kim has been accused of having bum implants. She swears it’s God-given and even consented to having her rear X-rayed on television to prove there was no artificial padding. 

Kim also insists that she has had no facial work done meaning that — with a nose that has grown smaller and slimmer over the years, while her lips get fuller and poutier — she is, quite simply, a biological miracle. 

THE NANO-MARRIAGE 

Just six months after meeting 6ft 9in tall basketball star Kris Humphries, Kim was engaged to him. 

 He proposed with a giant 20.5 carat ring and, as good fortune would have it, TV cameras were there to capture the whole romantic scene. 

Naturally, their lavish wedding ceremony - for which Kim wore a £15,000 Vera Wang dress - was screened on TV. The couple then flogged their wedding photos to People magazine for £1 million. 

 Just 72 days later the marriage was all over, with Kim citing ‘irreconcilable differences.’ 

Some cruel cynics (including the groom) suggested that it was nothing more than a publicity stunt dreamed up by Miss Kardashian to boost her profile and TV ratings. 

However, in an episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians, a broken-hearted Kim sobbed as she explained how upset she was by the split. She was even upset enough to repeat the tear-stained performance for a further three takes. 

THE OTHER ALSO-RANS 

Aged 19, Kim eloped to Las Vegas to marry record producer Damon Thomas and the marriage lasted a whole three years - a lifetime by her standards. 

When asked recently to describe his former wife, Damon did so in the following affectionate terms: ‘She is a lying, cheating, plastic-surgery-loving fame-whore.’ How sweet. 

Kim then hooked up with Jennifer Lopez’s former husband, dancer Cris Judd, before dating a rapper called Ray J and American footballers Reggie Bush and Miles Austin. 

Before the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it marriage to Kris Humphries, there was a fling with Gabriel Aubrey, Halle Berry’s male model ex, but for the past three months she has been dating American rap star Kanye West, who has even hinted that he is stupid enough to become husband number three. 

SEX, LIES AND DIET PILLS 

HER second, flash-in-the-pan marriage wasn’t the only furore Kim has found herself at the centre of. 

In 2007, some cad leaked a sex tape of the unknown Kim and her then boyfriend, American rapper Ray J. 

Four years earlier, Kim’s pal Paris Hilton had also been the unfortunate victim of a leaked sex tape - something that led to her landing her own reality TV show. 

By an extraordinary coincidence, the deal for Keeping Up With The Kardashians was signed a few weeks after Kim’s tape appeared online. 

When a video company copied the tape from the internet and released it as a film, an outraged Kim decided to take legal action, demanding it be pulled from sale. In the end, she dropped the action and settled for £3 million. 

Now it’s Kim’s turn to be sued. A group of New York women have launched a £3 million lawsuit against her and her sister, Kourtney, for endorsing diet pills.

Neil Cavuto Rips MSNBC And Lawrence O'Donnell for Questioning Ann Romney’s Therapeutic Horse Riding

Glad somebody finally slapped down the racist, creepy, condescending a-hole that is Lawrence O'Donnell:

“I told myself I wouldn’t butt in,” Neil Cavuto told the audience today, before addressing those from “a network with MS in their name” over their mockery of Ann Romney‘s horseback riding. Romney uses horses for treating her multiple sclerosis– an illness Cavuto too has, which led him to explain the legitimacy of this treatment and chide the “condescending, sanctimonious twits” who refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of MS as a disease and the need to deal with its shortcomings.  


“Because I have MS, my comments might be taken with a grain of pity salt and more than a hint of sympathy bias. Well, guilty as charged,” Cavuto admitted candidly, explaining that this was why he tried to avoid commenting, but “I’ve had enough of condescending commentators on another news channel,” and was concerned that their comments “risk being accepted by an audience that might not know the facts that well.” Explaining that several medical sources find some good in using horseback riding to treat problems with walking in those with MS, he reiterated that “this is a legitimate therapy”– not one he uses, he joked, “because I’m generally bigger than the horses and I don’t want to hurt them.” 

“It seems odd to me a network with the very letters MS in its name wouldn’t resist making fun of someone who has to live with MS every day,” Cavuto continued, “Ann Romney doesn’t need their pity, just their accuracy.” “These guys taking pot shots at Ann Romney are horses’ asses,” he continued, also calling them “condescending, sanctimonious twits who are allegedly healthy,” and their mocking “pure, unadulterated horse… stuff.”

RELATED: Lawrence O'Donnell Mocks Ann Romney for Riding Horses to Combat Multiple Sclerosis

House Oversight Committee Votes 23-17 To Hold A.G. Eric Holder In Contempt Of Congress

Mediaite.com:

The House Oversight Committee has voted to find U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress after refusing to surrender documents relating to the Fast and Furious gun walking scandal. The contempt charge will now head to the full House of Representatives for a vote.

President Barack Obama invoked executive privilege on Tuesday night to withhold documents relating to Fast and Furious. 

The poorly administered operation cost the lives of an unknown number of Mexican civilians as well as the life of American border agent Brian Terry. 

Democrats have accused Congressional Republicans of playing politics with the Fast and Furious case. Some Congressional Democrats, including House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), have said that the charge of contempt against Holder is motivated by the political need to tarnish the Obama White House ahead of the presidential election in November.

RELATED: Pelosi Slams Contempt Hearings: ‘I Could Have Arrested Karl Rove On Any Given Day’

Herman Cain: "President Obama Wants To Rewrite The Bible"

DailyCaller.com:

Former GOP presidential nominee Herman Cain said Friday that President Obama “wants to rewrite the Bible according to Obama.”


“This president wants to redefine marriage,” Cain said in a speech at the Freedom and Faith Conference in Washington, D.C. “He wants to rewrite the Bible according to Obama. I have an announcement for the President of the United States: ‘Mr. President, God gets all the votes and you can’t rewrite the Bible.’


During the speech, Cain also slammed the president for wanting to “rewrite the dictionary.”


“He wants to define fair and fairness,” Cain said. “Last time I checked, fair meant everybody gets treated the same — not the government pick and choose whose going to get favors from the government. So he wants rewrite the dictionary and change the definition of fair to fit what he wants to do.”


Retelling a story about a black critic of his who told him that it was “shameless” that a “black man would criticize our black president,” Cain said: “Contrary to some people’s belief, some black people can think for themselves — and that it includes me.”


Cain also warned the audience that “we’re going to be living in an absolute nightmare” if President Obama is re-elected. But he reassured the audience that in order to defeat Obama, conservatives “don’t have to convert all of the stupid people, just some of them.”

RELATED: NYC 5th-Grade Student Makes Controversial Case for Gay Marriage

Mitt Romney: Actually, We're Absolutely Vetting Marco Rubio

Townhall.com:

Remember all of this?  Yeah, never mind:

"There was a story that originated today apparently at ABC based upon reports of supposedly outside unnamed advisers of mine," Romney said in Holland, Michigan. "I can't imagine who such people are. But I can tell you this: they know nothing about the vice presidential selection or evaluation process. There are only two people in this country who know who are being vetted and who are not: And that's Beth myers and myself. And I know Beth well. She doesn't talk to anybody. The story was entirely false. Marco Rubio is being thoroughly vetted as part of our process."

But wait, ABC's Jonathan Karl stands by his initial report:

First, I stand by my reporting. As of 9 a.m. this morning, Marco Rubio had not been asked by the Romney campaign to turn over any documents related to the vice presidential search. He had not been asked to fill out any questionnaires. If Romney was “thoroughly vetting” Rubio, he was doing it without Rubio’s knowledge. Now, however, Marco Rubio is the one candidate who the world knows definitively is being vetted. Why? It’s possible that Romney simply had not gotten around to asking Rubio for vetting materials, but his search process has been under way for more than two months.

But there’s also this: immediately after our report aired, conservatives started complaining directly to the Romney campaign that they were making a mistake by not considering Rubio. I am told by several Republican sources that Romney came under intense pressure today from top Republicans who argued it was crazy to take Rubio out of consideration so early. Some argued for Rubio’s appeal as the party’s most effective and charismatic conservative voice. Some argued it is dumb politics to not consider the party’s top Hispanic conservative. It seems Romney, at least now, agrees.

RELATED: Romney, don't snub Rubio

MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Keeps WaWa-Gate Story Alive By Pretending It Doesn’t Exist

Mediaite.com:

On Tuesday, MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell addressed the controversy surrounding the airing of a misleadingly edited clip of Mitt Romney by not addressing it. Mitchell played the entirety of the clip in question while being careful not to address the scandal that erupted after she aired a cut off version of that same clip yesterday. While Mitchell may view this as sufficient, it is not. Some have celebrated Mitchell’s holding firm in the face of criticism, but this is a misguided reaction. What’s more, this episode will not fade in relevance nearly as soon as it could have if Mitchell had simply apologized up front.


“Score a victory for the mainstream press over right-wing pressure,” writes Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher on Tuesday about Mitchell’s non-apology. “Let that be a lesson to mainstream journalists who jump to kill the right-wing noise whenever they don’t think a report is sufficiently biased in their guy’s favor. Sometimes, noise is just noise.”


On Monday, Mitchell aired a clip of Romney on the stump that was taken out of context — with the intention, some have alleged, of damaging the GOP candidate. The clip was edited to suggest Romney was flabbergasted by the “amazing” touch screen ordering system in the convenience store chain WaWa. What MSNBC cut off was Romney’s same-breath praise of the innovative ability of the private sector to create the no-longer-novel touch screens — that was what was “amazing.”


The blogosphere came alive with outrage. It was a conservative blogger who identified the misleading edit and the story quickly spread across the internet like wildfire.


What was most misleading, however, is the gleeful interpretation that Mitchell and Washington Post columnist Chris Cillizza offered — that this gaffe was Romney’s “grocery store moment.” They found this out-of-context quote equivalent to a 1992 campaign stop that President George H. W. Bush made to a local grocery store where he was confused by their price scanning technology. That incident was used by his opposition to paint Bush as old, out-of-touch and befuddled by even the most mundane aspects of American life.


Christopher notes that even that event was exaggerated; Bush was not “amazed” by the scanners, but the incident fit a narrative that the Clinton campaign was actively attempting to establish – that Bush was out of his depth in the Presidency and a hostage to events. Fair or no, politics is a blood sport and politicizing that incident was within bounds.


Just as Romney’s quote, out of context, would be fair game for President Barack Obama‘s campaign to use and/or misuse as they see fit. They have done as much before; the Obama reelection team made great hay of Romney’s “I like to fire people who provide services to me” quote, negating to include that the quote was within the context of a critique of the mandates within the health care reform law.


In late April, When Fox News Channel’s Steve Doocy mischaracterized a statement made by Obama on the campaign trail about not being born with a “silver spoon in his mouth” and twisted it into an attack on Romney, he and his network were called out on it. Doocy issued an apology, albeit a passing one, the following day.


While partisans who find Fox News programming revolting and offensive may have derived a certain amount of glee from Doocy’s backtracking, few would argue that the story survived his apology. It died a near instant death.


While Mitchell digging in her heals may satisfy liberal partisan instincts to find fights around every corner, this is a losing battle in the end. The trivial episode will haunt the credibility of Mitchell and her network, where a quick apology – even a disingenuous one – would have killed the story.


Even liberal commentators can see the forest for the trees on this one. Liberal broadcaster David Shuster tweeted at Mitchell on Tuesday, wondering why she did not address the issue on everyone’s mind, “Andrea, what the hell?”


The correct response to this controversy could not be more obvious. Why Mitchell avoided quick and painless apology eludes even her former MSNBC colleague.


When news networks, eager to drive the narrative, overreach and stretch the truth, an apology is always the correct course. Even if the individual doing the apology chafes at the reasoning behind it. MSNBC, and Mitchell herself, should have followed suit — the story would have died on the vine.


Now, the anger in the blogosphere will only grow and it has yet to be determined when the anger surrounding this offense will subside. I would be willing to bet that won’t be nearly as soon as if Mitchell had just swallowed her pride and said that one simple, little word. 

RELATED: Memo to NBC: What the hell is wrong with you?

George Will: The Party that Produced Four Bush Nominations in 20 years is Hardly “Extreme”

Jeb Bush seems like a smart guy and that makes it even harder to believe that he'd fall so easily for the MSM line of supposed extremism dominating the GOP:

Let’s play a game that we used to play in school, and lay out a series of data points to see if anyone can guess what they have in common.  Ready?  Here we go:

• Bush, Bush, Dole, Bush, Bush, McCain, Romney

What’s the answer?  As George Will insisted yesterday on ABC’s This Week, it sure isn’t extremism, despite what Jeb Bush thinks:

“Well, let’s look at the facts,” Will said. “Since Ronald Reagan, the Republican Party has given its presidential nomination four times to the Bush family. Other times, to Bob Dole, John McCain and Mitt Romney — where’s the extremist in that lot? Now, Jeb Bush’s father is celebrated today for a statesman ship that consisted of breaking the promise to the American people of not raising taxes. He had a budget deal in 1990, Austan [Goolsbee] because this goes back to something you said earlier. In the budget deal it was said for every $2 of — every dollar of tax increase, would be $2 of spending cuts. The tax increases went into effect and spending increased.”

Will added that it is popular for observers to romanticize politicians like Reagan, along with conservative commentator William Buckley and 1964 presidential nominee Barry Goldwater, after the fact.

“We’re going through this — we go through this all the time,” he continued. “About 20 years after a conservative leaves the scene or dies, he becomes acceptable. They said, ‘If only people were more like Ronald Reagan, that wonderful libertarian curmudgeon Barry Goldwater and that fine fellow Bill Buckley.’ I worked for Bill Buckley, voted for Barry Goldwater, knew Ronald Reagan and no one talked about him on the left that way at the time.”

For that matter, take a look at the main contenders in the Republican primary this year, once the voting started.  The race came down to Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum.  All of these men had good qualities and shortcomings, but none of them are known for their extremist bent, no matter what the hyperventilating media might have said at the time. All four represented the same mainstreams in Republican politics that existed when Reagan was President, and have ever since.


It seems especially churlish to hear this kind of complaint coming from former Governor Jeb Bush after watching his father and brother rack up more than half of the GOP’s presidential nominations in the last 30 years.  Will does a nice job with Bush’s hanging curve and knocks it out of the park.

RELATED: Jeb Bush urges Romney: change the tone on immigration

Woah: Google Report Indicates U.S. Censorship Requests Skyrocketed

Townhall.com:

Data released by Google suggests that U.S. government censorship is on the rise – big time. From July to December 2011, Google’s Transparency Report indicates that U.S. agencies requested 6192 items be removed from Google services. That’s a 718 percent increase from the 757 items requested to be removed in the prior six-month period. Google fully or partially complied with 42 percent of the removal requests, according to the report.
 
Commenting on the report, Dorothy Chou, a senior policy analyst at Google writes:

"Unfortunately, what we’ve seen over the past couple years has been troubling, and today is no different. When we started releasing this data in 2010, we also added annotations with some of the more interesting stories behind the numbers. We noticed that government agencies from different countries would sometimes ask us to remove political content that our users had posted on our services. We hoped this was an aberration. But now we know it’s not.

This is the fifth data set that we’ve released. And just like every other time before, we’ve been asked to take down political speech. It’s alarming not only because free expression is at risk, but because some of these requests come from countries you might not suspect—Western democracies not typically associated with censorship.

For example, in the second half of last year, Spanish regulators asked us to remove 270 search results that linked to blogs and articles in newspapers referencing individuals and public figures, including mayors and public prosecutors. In Poland, we received a request from a public institution to remove links to a site that criticized it. We didn’t comply with either of these requests."

RELATED: Google Getting More Requests From Democracies to Censor

Jon Stewart Mocks ‘Rich’ Romney While Outpacing Him in Wealth

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

DailyCaller.com:

Comedy Central host Jon Stewart regularly bashes American multimillionaires for their wealth while ignoring the awkward fact that he’s one of them.

Though Stewart distances himself from the “one-percenters” and bellows over their extravagance, his bank accounts bear all the marks of the “multi, multi, multi, multi millionaires” he mocks. The 49-year-old Stewart, born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz, makes more than 300 times the median American salary, owns three luxury homes and sometimes doesn’t pay his taxes.

In January Stewart exploded on-air over Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s income level. “That’s almost — that’s almost $57,000 a day!” he gushed.

But Stewart’s own income level brings him and his wife Tracey approximately $41,000 a day. The celebrity income-handicapping website Celebrity Net Worth lists his annual salary as $15 million and estimates his net worth at $80 million.

While $80 million doesn’t yet put Stewart into the same wealth bracket as Romney, he is already on pace to be richer than the former Massachusetts governor when he reaches his age.

At his current earning rate, The Daily Show host’s net worth will be $320 million by the time he turns 65 — Romney’s current age. And that total doesn’t include increases in property value or other assets Stewart might accumulate.

And then there are the houses. When Arizona Sen. John McCain ran for president in 2008, he was criticized for not knowing how many houses he owned. (The answer: seven.) Stewart is well on his way to McCain country, with three opulent mansions whose combined value is $12.8 million.

He doesn’t technically own those homes: Using a trick mastered by countless one-percenters, the properties were purchased by private trusts. Stewart’s trusts are named after his pets.

The super-wealthy often make big-ticket purchases through trusts in order to protect their other assets from lawsuits, diminish estate tax liability, and avoid public scrutiny.

The satirist started his real estate empire in 2005 when The Stanley Monkey Trust — named after his cat Stanley and one of his pit bull terriers, Monkey — purchased a two-story Manhattan penthouse for $5.8 million.

That deluxe apartment in the sky spans 6,000-square-feet and has 40 windows, a 600-foot terrace, and a 1,200-foot private roof, the New York Observer reported in 2005.

Of course, Stewart would probably dismiss the irony here and use his classic "I'm just a comedian" excuse whenever the finger is pointed at his blatant hypocrisy, but hey it's all the same when liberals are confronted with facts.

RELATED: Late Night: Jon Stewart clarifies his support for 'socialism'

Barack Obama's Former Law Professor, Robert Mangabeira, Says He 'Must Be Defeated'

HotAir.com:

The president’s bad couples of weeks just grew immeasurably worse. At a time when he is attempting to reboot his floundering campaign and defend an immigration policy that many are viewing as a power grab nakedly designed to buy Hispanic votes, one of his former law school professors has come out strongly opposed to his reelection. 

In a video posted on May 22, Harvard Law School professor Robert Mangabeira Unger is unwavering in his criticism. “President Obama must be defeated in the coming election,” he states, adding that such a loss is necessary in order for “the voice of democratic prophecy to speak once again in American life.” 

But the good professor doesn’t stop there. He goes on to opine that if Mitt Romney wins, “there will be a cost … in judicial and administrative appointments” but observes that “the risk of military adventurism” would be no worse under a Republican than under Obama. 

He then recites a list of grievances against the president’s policies that include selling out to “moneyed interests” while leaving “workers and homeowners to their own devices.” 

His remarks also include this contrarian prescription: 

Give the bond markets what they want, bail out the reckless so long as they are also rich, use fiscal and monetary stimulus to make up for the absence of any consequential broadening of economic and educational opportunity, sweeten the pill of disempowerment with a touch of tax fairness, even though the effect of any such tax reform is sure to be modest. This is less a project than it is an abdication. 

The White House has not yet offered a response to Unger’s statement.

RELATED: We’ve Reached the Penultimate Jimmy Carter Moment of the Obama Presidency

Politiks As Usual: In The News 6/18/12

Rodney King Dead At 47

Romney Knocks 'Stopgap' Immigration Order, Won't Say Whether He'd Overturn It

  

African-Americans Increasingly Turn To Home-schooling

  

Surprise: More Illegal Immigrants Means More Competition For Jobs

  

The Scandal of Our Age

  

Obama Celebrates Anti-Police Riot Started at Mafia-Owned Bar for Transvestites

  

Obama’s Preemptive Strike for the Hispanic Vote

  

‘Game of Thrones’ Severed Bush Head a Giggle for Media

  

Glenn Beck to Launch Anti-'Glee' Show, Says He's 'Working with a Rapper'

  

Pro-Bailout Parties Take Majority in Greek Elections

  

Associated Press, 1987: 'Why Do Grown Men And Women Shout At President Reagan?'

Father's Day - A Good Time For Dads To Reflect, Change

China Apologizes to Woman Who Was Forced to Undergo Late-term Abortion