Going into discussions about the Republican-proposed America in Retreat Budget Act, I wonder about updates on facts and visuals.
Back in 2009, we had these informative charts, below — are there good updates on them, now?
How Trillion Dollar Deficits Were Created:
Graphic from the New York Times, June 10, 2006 accompanying an article by David Leonhardt
George W. Bush’s Legacy in a Pie Chart:
Sources of our Federal Deficits, 2009 – Matthew Yglesias, ThinkProgress
Got updates?
Leave a Comment » | 
Barack Obama, Economics, Federalism, Government, Politics, President Obama, Taxes | Tagged: Bush Budget, Economics, Federal Budget, Federal Deficits, Government, Obama Budget, Politics, Taxes | 
Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Donald Trump demonstrated his ability to spread hoax information at the CPAC Conference recently — a group who love to hear hoaxes and spread them, as much as fourth-grade boys love to hear and spread jokes about flatulence.
But can he take it? [Note the hoax insinuations below are underlined.] Could Donald Trump withstand the kind of attack* he made on President Obama?
I mean, he claims President Obama may not have attended Columbia because Trump hasn’t personally interviewed anyone who knew him there — despite years of stories in alumni magazines, major media interviews with the people who knew Obama there, etc., etc.
Gratuitous picture that makes trump look funny or evil, with gratuitously misleading caption: “Donald Trump wants people to stop asking why no one, in America, can remember his high school and college days.” Alternative caption: “Donald Trump, two of his closest friends and an unnamed woman discuss politics and government policy.”
Does Trump have room to talk? His Wikipedia bio claims he attended Fordham University for a brief period (got kicked out, maybe?), but didn’t graduate. It claims he got an undergraduate degree from the Wharton School in Pennsylvania.
A search found no one from Wharton who remembers Donald Trump as a student there. Jon Huntsman, the founder of Huntsman Container and Huntsman Chemical, the guy who invented the “clamshell box” for McDonalds, is one of the most famous and wealthy Wharton grads (and also the father of Jon Huntsman, Jr., the recently resigned Obama Ambassador to China). He never saw Trump on campus at Wharton. James DePriest, the outstanding conductor now with the Oregon Symphony (and fun to watch, trust me) — he never ran into Trump on campus when he attended Wharton. There’s no record of Trump having had a roommate there. Alan Rachins, the famous actor who graduated from Wharton — not only never took a class with Trump, but said he never heard of Trump attending classes at the time.
Who is Donald Trump? Where did he come from? How come no one remembers him?
But the fog gets inkier.
Trump was not only a football standout in high school, he was a social standout, winning awards for his community involvement (although, no one at the high school in his hometown remembers his attending classes there).
But during the time he claims to have attended Fordham, no one remembers him. No social standout. No football hero. Was he ever really at Fordham?
And what about his odd religious beliefs? There are jokes about his worship of money — but what sort of religion would lead a man to claim that the 2008 economic collapse was “an Act of God?” Yes, he really believes that. His “god” appears to have a grudge against the United States and its economy. Even in his greatest economic ventures, he pays homage to Muslim
Hindureligious landmarks. What is his secret agenda on religion?Where did Donald Trump come from? Why does no one in his hometown high school remember him? Why did he drop out of sight at the time he claims to have attended Fordham University? Did he buy his way into a listing as an alumnus of Wharton, after so many Wharton grads don’t remember seeing him there? Who can trust a guy who worships (if he does worship at all) a “god” who strikes down the U.S. economy?
Who is Donald Trump? Why did no one at CPAC check his questionable credentials before giving Trump a national platform? Why is CPAC mum about this entire affair? Why did Fox News conspire to obscure the message and candidacy of Ron Paul, with their new darling, Donald Trump?
Worse for Trump, most of the things in this screed are factually accurate. Those who live by the inaccurate spin can die by it, too.
Scarier: Which conservative sites will have the guts to question** Trump’s secret credentials?
Read more here, at Oh, For Goodness Sake (and here at “Donald Trump Pants On Fire”), and here, at PolitiFact.
_____________________________
* That is, “completely hoaxed up.”
** Oh, yeah — that should have read, “gullibility to fall for.” When will the blog owner correct that glaring error?***
*** Not until Trump apologizes to President Obama.
8 Comments | History, History Revisionism, Hoaxes, Political Smear, Politics, President Obama | Tagged: CPAC, CPAC gullibility, Donald Trump, Gullibility, History, History Revisionism, Hoaxes, Political Smear, Politics, President Obama | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
You can tell by the dates I’m not following this closely — it’s a Sarah Palin thing, after all, and we all hope it will go away.
Baking doughnuts before dawn at the Spudnut Shop, Richland Washington, Tri-City Herald photo by Kai-Huei Yau
Palin wasn’t content to just screw up the history of the phrase “Sputnik moment,” as noted earlier. Oh, no, she had to go deeper in dumb, and talk about Spudnut shops. If you’re not from Salt Lake City where the Spudnut HQ sign adorned Interstate 15 for many years, you may never have heard of Spudnuts, doughnuts made with potato dough.
If you’re wondering what in the world Spudnuts have to do with Sputnik, you’ve got more sense than Sarah Palin.
After screwing up the history, like a blind squirrel, Palin blundered on to talk about a vestige Spudnut shop in Richland, Washington. She found something we all applaud, a good doughnut shop. On one hand fans of the doughnut are happy to know of one of a tiny handful of such shops left. Plus, it’s great to boost a small shop in a small Washington town.
On the other hand, doughnuts, even Spudnuts, don’t come close to the movement to improve American education inspired by the Soviet launch of Sputnik. From just getting history horribly in error, Palin came close to ridiculing American business with her idea of meeting the challenges like space exploration, with doughnuts and coffee. Doughnuts and coffee will not lift student test scores, nor are they the answer to lifting our economy today and keeping the U.S. competitive and on top, in the future.
Others covered the topic better than I.
Yes, that is what we need to get the economy back on track.
A bakery.
Not more expertise in math and science, engineering, technology, and developing enterprises that will allow us to compete with the rest of the world. A bakery, full of Real Americans.
Do you realize how this sounds? This is like if I were to say, “Hey, I think we need to take a course to familiarize ourselves with what actually caused the Soviet Union to collapse!” and you were to respond, “Anything can be solved with Hard Work, donuts, and the American Way!” It’s as if I were to say, “Let’s study geometry!” and you were to respond, “Let’s study Gia Spumanti, the red-blooded American protagonist of ‘A Shore Thing.'” “Those two sound similar, but are in no way comparable,” I would point out. And that’s what this is. It’s the kind of bizarre semi-sequitur that has always been a hallmark of your speaking style.
Stromberg got serious for a moment, and makes the case against Palin’s claims:
But in claiming that the Soviets incurred their consequential debts long before Reagan was president, Palin ends up arguing that the Gipper wasn’t nearly that responsible for the USSR spending itself to death. If a reverence for Reagan’s anti-Soviet spending inspired her narrative in the first place, then this is incoherent. If she’s just making this all up, then she’s really also claiming that the Reagan-brought-down-the-USSR narrative is overstated.
Palin appears to be lazily checking a lot of Fox News boxes. She wants to criticize Obama’s State of the Union address, so she grabs hold of the Sputnik line. She wants to make a point about debt, so she invents a history in which the USSR had a debt crisis decades before this inference could have made much sense. Even better — her argument sounds like an implicit vindication of Reagan, but that really just makes it either self-contradictory or hostile to Reagan’s legacy.
Even worse, it seems that Palin planned her rhetorical disaster, as she goes on to discuss the “Spudnut Shop,” a bakery in Washington State that’s succeeding without government support. Yet more evidence that her judgment in both what she says and who she has vetting it is pathetic. It’s not even cleverly manipulative. It’s just dreck.
Zeno provides the horrifying evidence that Palin’s stupid is leaking out, and may be contagious. Zeno caught Brian Sussman at the formerly-august KSFO talking to a woman who would fail the Sputnik issue even by Texas standards. In Texas, in 11th grade U.S. history, students need to know a half-dozen dates, turning points in U.S. history. 1957 is one of those dates, for the launch of Sputnik. Oy, what does it say when a San Francisco radio station is dumber than Texas’s weak and skewed social studies standards?
More:
10 Comments | 1957, Business, History, Politics, President Obama, Science, Soviet Union, Space exploration, Space Race, Sputnik | Tagged: Business, Doughnuts, Education, History, Politics, President Obama, Sarah Palin, Science, Space exploration, Spudnuts, Sputnik, State of the Union | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Eugene Robinson stuck to the facts, and noted that by a careful count, 62 percent of Americans oppose the Republican vote to repeal the new health care law:
What actually happened, though, is that the Republican majority managed to win the votes of just three Democrats – all of them Blue Dogs who have been consistent opponents of the reform package anyway. In terms of actual defectors, meaning Democrats who changed sides on the issue, there were none. This is momentum?
The unimpressive vote came at a moment when “the will of the people” on health care is coming into sharper focus. Most polls that offer a simple binary choice – do you like the “Obamacare” law or not – show that the reforms remain narrowly unpopular. Yet a significant fraction of those who are unhappy complain not that the reform law went too far but that it didn’t go far enough. I think of these people as the “public option” crowd.
- Washington Post header for Eugene Robinson’s columns .
The numbers:
A recent Associated Press poll found that 41 percent of those surveyed opposed the reform law and 40 percent supported it. But when asked what Congress should do, 43 percent said the law should be modified so that it does more to change the health-care system. Another 19 percent said it should be left as it is.
More troubling for the GOP, the AP poll found that just 26 percent of respondents wanted Congress to repeal the reform law completely. A recent Washington Post poll found support for outright repeal at 18 percent; a Marist poll pegged it at 30 percent.
In other words, what House Republicans just voted to do may be the will of the Tea Party, but it’s not “the will of the people.”
[My math: 43% +19%=62%.]
The facts:
The CBO, which “scores” the impact of proposed legislation, calculated that the health-reform law will reduce federal deficits by at least $143 billion through 2019. Confronted with the fact that repeal would deepen the nation’s fiscal woes, Republicans simply claimed the CBO estimate to be rubbish. Who cares what the CBO says, anyway?
Er, um, Republicans care, at least when it’s convenient. Delving into the CBO’s analysis, they unearthed a finding that they proclaimed as definitive: The reform law would eliminate 650,000 jobs. Hence “Job-Killing” in the repeal bill’s title.
One problem, though: The CBO analysis contains no such figure. It’s an extrapolation of a rough estimate of an anticipated effect that no reasonable person would describe as “job-killing.” What the budget office actually said is that there are people who would like to withdraw from the workforce – sometimes because of a chronic medical condition – but who feel compelled to continue working so they can keep their health insurance. Once the reforms take effect, these individuals will have new options. That’s where the “lost” jobs supposedly come from.
So, in other words, Republicans voted to keep people slaves to jobs that provide health care benefits. The party of Abraham Lincoln has fallen so far not even Abraham Lincoln at his most charitable moment would recognize it any longer.
6 Comments | Health care, Legislation, Politics, Polling and Public Opinion, President Obama, U.S. House of Representatives | Tagged: Eugene Robinson, Health care, Legislation, ObamaCare, Politics, Polls, U.S. House of Representatives | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
President Obama awarded Staff Sergeant Salvatore Giunta, U.S. Army, the Medal of Honor for conspicuous gallantry for his courageous actions against an armed enemy in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan in October 2007. November 16, 2010. The ceremony inspires. Notice at the end of the ceremony as the president turned to past Medal of Honor winners invited in for the moment.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
Leave a Comment » | Afghanistan, Heroes, Medal of Honor, President Obama | Tagged: Afghanistan, Congressional Medal of Honor, Heroes, President Obama, Salvatore Giunta, veterans | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Barack Obama, photo collage by Charis Tsevis, copyright 2008
Gail Collins, in the New York Times:
Good work, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Unlike your hapless predecessor, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, you’ve had legislation shooting off to the White House like angry birds in that video game. Unemployment compensation! Gay rights! Food safety! Judicial appointments! Arms control! Health care for 9/11 responders!
But let’s admit it. Nothing would have gotten done if Obama hadn’t swallowed that loathsome compromise on tax cuts for the wealthy.
If he’d taken the high road, Congress would be in a holiday war. The long-term unemployed would be staggering into the new year without benefits. The rest of the world would look upon the United States as a country so dysfunctional that it can’t even ratify a treaty to help keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists. The people who worked at ground zero would still be uncertain about their future, and our gay and lesbian soldiers would still be living in fear.
It’s depressing to think that there was no way to win that would not have involved giving away billions of dollars to people who don’t need it. But it’s kind of cheery to think we have a president who actually does know what he’s doing.
Merry Christmas! Ho! Ho! Ho!
What a difference a few weeks makes.
9 Comments | 2010 Elections, Politics, President Obama, U.S. Congress | Tagged: 2010, Lame Duck Congress, Politics, President Obama | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
President Obama scheduled a speech to school kids for September 14. Here’s the press release:
The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
August 25, 2010
President Obama to Deliver Back to School Speech September 14
WASHINGTON, D.C. – As students begin their school year, President Barack Obama will deliver his second annual Back-to-School Speech at 1:00 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, September 14 at Julia R. Masterman Laboratory and Demonstration School in Philadelphia, PA, a 2010 National Blue Ribbon School. The President’s Back-to-School Speech is an opportunity to speak directly to students across the country. Last year, President Obama encouraged students to study hard, stay in school, and take responsibility for their education.
“Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide,” President Obama said to students last year (http://www.whitehouse.gov/mediaresources/PreparedSchoolRemarks) .
President Obama’s Back-to-School Speech will be live streamed on WhiteHouse.gov.
For more information about watching the speech, visit www.whitehouse.gov/back-to-school . This event is by invitation only, and additional media coverage details will be released soon.
Richard Connelly at the Houston Post blogs wrote about the impact of last year’s speech, and the furtorpor over this year’s speech. It’s worth a read and a think:
Let’s examine what we learned from the brainwashing last year:
1. A year later, subtle changes can be sensed in the youngsters whose parents so carelessly let them listen to the speech. Instead of sports and girls, boys are talking about Chairman Mao — until their parents walk in the room. Then it’s all xBox and whatever the hell kids are talking about these days, or so they’d have you think.2. Talk radio and Fox learned a lesson from their hilarious overreaction to last year’s speech. Now, they take a deep breath and ask themselves when a new controversy comes up “Is this just Republican BS? Like that education speech, and death panels, and whatever else they throw up against the wall?” Then they run with it, of course, but still — now they sometimes take a breath beforehand.
3. The piercing intelligence of members of the Oklahoma state legislature was conclusively proven. Oklahoma State Senator Steve Russell said this: “As far as I am concerned, this is not civics education — it gives the appearance of creating a cult of personality. This is something you’d expect to see in North Korea or in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.” Has any statement in all of human history proven to be more correct? Besides “Steve Russell is a hack,” we mean.
Connelly has more. Click over there.
4 Comments | Education, Political Smear, Politics, President Obama | Tagged: Brainwashing, Education, Politics, President Obama, Rampant stupidity | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
According to the Associated Press, General Motors turned a profit of $1.33 billion last quarter. “Billion,” with a b.
Tea Partiers and Republicans have made a run on liquor stores to stock up on gin for the afternoon. News is turning against them.
First, they argued that the Obama administration was crazy to try to save GM. Couldn’t be done, won’t work. Cutting 3 million workers loose in Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Ohio and Texas would help depress the market for migrant fruit pickers in those states, the Republicans argued implicitly — and that would help reduce immigration troubles, which bug Republicans chiefly because it’s a sign of good economic times for working people.
Second, they argued that Obama had effectively nationalized GM and Chrysler. Nationalized companies rarely turn profits (except for tin-pot dictators). The simple reporting of a profit by the company reiterates the point that the GM rescue was not “socialism,” and was no nationalizing of the company. Obama starts to look like a hero, Tea Party dreams start to look like wet tea leaves.
Third, it means Tea Party self-enrollees may actually have to buy American. They had hoped to kill off the U.S. auto industry, so no one would complain when they drove Mercedes, Lexus, and the Kia they bought for their nephew. Now, with Cadillacs, Chryslers and Lincolns still being made, they have no excuse.
Fourth, it means there are three million voters in the American midwest who owe their jobs to Obama. While at least of million of those people may be convinced to buy the Tea Party Home Lobotomy Kit and vote against Democrats in the fall, the odds of even half of that group being suckered in are slight.
Fifth, and most important, GM’s showing a profit pulls the cloak from the platform of the Tea Partiers, and all that’s left is a naked guy with skinny legs and a sore need for a tanning bed and exercise. The Tea Party works on being against stuff. If they had to actually come up with a workable program for anything, they’d quickly be exposed.
So, that gut at the end of the bar finishing the fifth of gin and mumbling a lot? He’s a Tea Partier, praying for Chrysler to crash. Tell the bartender he is picking up your tab.
Tip of the old scrub brush to Jim Stanley.
5 Comments | 2010 Elections, Economics, History, Politics, President Obama | Tagged: 2010 Election, Economics, General Motors, History, Politics, President Obama, Tea Party | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Some e-mail is more entertaining than others.
Linda Chavez-Thompson, the firebrand candidate for Texas Lieutenant Governor who has incumbent David Dewhurst so rattled he can’t debate her, was scheduled to introduce President Obama at an appearance in Austin today.
Democratic candidate for Lieutenant Gov. Linda Chavez-Thompson, on the view screen, addressing the Texas Democratic Convention in June - photo by Ed Darrell
Chavez-Thompson might be expected to shake his hand first, but she said no. Let her explain it:
Friends,
As you may already know, President Obama came to Texas today. And no, I didn’t shake his hand.
I walked up straight to him, stared him in the eye, and greeted him with a warm abrazo (hug). Because that’s the way you greet a fellow laborer.
And yes, I consider Barack Obama a laborer. As I told the crowd while introducing the President at the DNC event:
“He’s taken on the economy. He’s taken on health care. He’s taken on Wall Street. And he doesn’t back down.
What he does do, and Texans respect this, is extend his hand across the aisle in a spirit of bi-partisanship. After all, the challenges Americans and Texas families face don ‘t come with a Party label on them.
But when his offer is not reciprocated, he does what any Texan would do. He does the work himself, because at the end of the day the work still has to get done.
There’s nothing brave about ignoring problems. We had eight years of that. Bravery is going out in the hot sun and doing the hard work it takes to make things grow.
And that’s coming from the daughter of a cotton sharecropper, so I know what I’m talking about.”
For too long Rick Perry and David Dewhurst have been ignoring the problems in Texas. Today Texas has the highest share of minimum wage jobs in the country, and even the Texas Association Business has warned that we will not be able to compete for the higher paying jobs because too many students are walking out of high school without a diploma.
I’m traveling across Texas to hold Rick Perry and David Dewhurst accountable. And believe me, this isn’t about politics — it’s a responsibility we all owe to our children and grandchildren.
I’ve never been afraid to go out into the hot sun and do the hard work it takes, but I need your help. Your contribution of $25, $35, $50, or whatever you can afford will help me spread the word and let Texans know what’s really at stake this election.
As I told the President when I welcomed him to Texas, I wasn’t just speaking for myself, but “for the millions of Texans who voices are too seldom heard.”
Un abrazo a ti también,
Linda Chavez-Thompson
You might do well to send her campaign $5.00, or $500 if you can afford it.
Linda Chavez-Thompson wowed the 2010 Texas Democratic Convention in Corpus Christi - photo by Ed Darrell
Leave a Comment » | 2010 Elections, Politics, President Obama, Texas | Tagged: 2010 Elections, Lieutenant Governor, Linda Chavez-Thompson, Politics, President Obama, Texas | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
The Tea Party hopes you never learn about this.
Friday, August 06, 2010
The U.S. Senate has passed S. 632 — the Firearms Excise Tax Improvement Act — co-sponsored by Senators Max Baucus (D-MT) and Mike Crapo (R-ID).
* * * * *
The bill now goes to the President for his signature.
[You may do better trying to track it under the number of the bill that really passed, H.R. 5552.]
Did your local newspaper cover the story?
13 Comments | Legislation, Politics, President Obama, Second Amendment | Tagged: Gun Excise Taxes, Legislation, National Rifle Association, Politics, President Obama, Second Amendment, Tea Party | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Vodpod videos no longer available.
How was your time at the Jamboree? Did you have time to miss Obama?
If you had time to miss him, you weren’t there.
Here’s Obama’s video address to the Scouts:
Earlier at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub:
1 Comment | Boy Scouts of America, Citizenship, History, Hoaxes, Political Smear, Politics, President Obama | Tagged: Boy Scouts of America, Colbert Report, History, Hoaxes, Politics, President Obama | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Mad, as in insane, not mad as in angry.
A sign of insanity is failing to get angry at appropriate times.
Some person using the handle “globalpeace” posted this in response to another knee-jerk whine about Obama (see comment #2):
You didn’t get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.
You didn’t get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate energy policy.
You didn’t get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed.
You didn’t get mad when the Patriot Act got passed.
You didn’t get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.
You didn’t get mad when we spent over 600 billion(and counting) on said illegal war.
You didn’t get mad when over 10 billion dollars just disappeared in Iraq.
You didn’t get mad when you saw the Abu Grahib photos.
You didn’t get mad when you found out we were torturing people.
You didn’t get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.
You didn’t get mad when we didn’t catch Bin Laden.
You didn’t get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.
You didn’t get mad when we let a major US city drown.
You didn’t get mad when the deficit hit the trillion dollar mark.
You finally got mad when.. when… wait for it… when the government decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick. Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, are all ok with you but helping other Americans… well [expletive deleted] that. That about right? You know it is.
Not getting angry at appropriate times can indeed be a sign of madness.
13 Comments | Barack Obama, History, Politics, President Obama, Whom the gods destroy they first make mad | Tagged: Compassion, History, Politics, President Obama | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
When President Barack Obama met with a group of outstanding Boy Scouts in the Oval Office a few weeks ago to discuss policies affecting Scouting, and especially policies affecting children, teen agers and young adults in the U.S., very few conservative sites thought it important to cover. Let’s be more precise: No conservative Obama critics, nor much of anyone else, bothered to cover it. I’d love to see links even of local media in the Scouts’ hometowns that printed a story or photo.
To the credit of the White House, neither did the press promote the meeting as a political point. Scouting prefers not to be a political football, and Scouting policy asks that Scouts avoid even looking like politicking while in uniform. (Scouts are encouraged to participate in the political process, including through the three citizenship merit badges, which encourage Scouts to communicate their concerns about policy to elected representatives, while working for the merit badge and in the future as participating citizens.)
2010 is a grand year for Scouting. It’s the centennial of Scouting’s coming to the United States. There’s a special Scout Jamboree, being held at Fort A. P. Hill in Virginia (the last time the Jamboree will be held on federal property — that’s another story for another time). It’s always fun when presidents come to the Jamboree and speak, but it’s not always possible.
But today, news comes that President Obama will send a video speech to the Scouts at the Jamboree, as has been done sometimes in the past. Many of us are disappointed that President Obama will not appear in person; but some of us who have experience scheduling such things know that elected officials cannot make every appearance they would like to. Presidential schedules in the modern world are particularly difficult; for an appearance at Fort A. P. Hill security must be imposed (even on a Scouting event), aircraft landing sites need to be arranged and secured . . . dealing with more than 30,000 Scouts becomes an onerous task.
Still, we’re disappointed.
Adding to that disappointment, comes now a group of harpy Obama critics, no friends of Scouting that I can determine, but anxious to claim this scheduling decision as some sort of snub to Scouting, and to the American flag.
Media Matters has the facts, and puts the scheduling stuff into perspective, “Overhyped conservative nonsense of the Day: Obama hates the Boy Scouts.” Update: Blue Wave News has it in perspective. Wonkette’s satire, unfortunately, goes awry, but her heart and brain are in the right places.
The snub is by those critics who attempt to turn Scouting into a political football. The insults are all from them.
Shame on them, collectively and individually:
Update: We’re going to have to add on a wing to accommodate the Wall of Shame:
Hmmmm.
I’ll wager none of those authors bothers to volunteer for Scouting. I’d be surprised (and disappointed) to discover any were Scouts. Scouting wouldn’t revoke their citizenship merit badges, but they’ve forgotten them, if they ever earned them.
Scouting faces severe hurdles these days, some of them I would say were placed by poobahs at the top of Scouting; these guys listed above are not helping.
Here are some tests to see which of these blogs and pundit outlets is friendly to Scouting: Which of them covered the award, this morning of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award to Tuskegee Airman Charles McGee? Which of them covered the dedication of the U.S. Postal Service’s stamp honoring the Scouting Centennial, today? As of this moment, I can find no media coverage of these things at all, even by local media.
Why do these pundits cover Scouting only when it gives them a chance to make an unfair shot at a politician they don’t like? Seriously, who is doing disservice to Scouting, and the nation?
Good news about Scouting’s 100th Year, and the Jamboree:
102 Comments | Accuracy, Barack Obama, Boy Scouts of America, Ethics, History, Journalism, Patriotism, Political Smear, Politics, President Obama, Presidents | Tagged: Accuracy, Boy Scouts of America, Ethics, History, Journalism, Politics, President Obama | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Neal Boortz, the Georgia-based radio broadcaster, goes beyond irresponsible journalism. After we caught Boortz spreading false tales about Hilary Clinton last year, I proceeded to ignore him.
Traffic links pointed to Boortz this morning — now we find he’s spreading a hoax about Obama’s cabinet’s qualifications, months after the guy who started the false story caught his error and retracted it. [July 4, 2011 – If that link doesn’t work, try this link to Boortz’s archive.]
That’s not just irresponsible and sloppy: Boortz clearly has a grudge and will tell any falsehood to push his agenda of hatred.
Birds of a feather: Texas deficit champion Rick Perry, who refused to talk about his $18 billion deficit in Texas, with Neil Boortz, who spread a hoax about Hillary Clinton in 2008, and now spreads old hoaxes about President Obama.
Boortz posts this at his site, probably as a warning for what his philosophy of reporting is:
“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that justifies it.”
Frederic Bastiat
Just before Thanksgiving last year, a J. P. Morgan official wrote a humorous piece of conjecture for his weekly newsletter — a week when most of the markets in the U.S. were closed, and so there was little news. Michael Cembalest, the chief investment officer for J. P. Morgan, without serious research wrote a piece wondering about what he saw as a lack of private sector experience in Obama’s cabinet in those positions in Cembalest’s view that are concerned most with job creation.
The spin meisters at American Enterprise Institute abused Cembalest’s rank conjectures as a “research report,” created a hoax saying Obama’s cabinet is the least qualified in history, and the thing went viral among otherwise ungainfully-employed bloggers (a lot like Neil Boortz).
Cembalest retracted his piece when he saw, in horror, what had happened (but not before I was too rough on him in poking much-deserved holes in the AEI claim).
Cembalest called me before the end of that week, noting that he’d retracted the piece.
Nearly eight months later, full of vituperation but bereft of information, today Neil Boortz resurrected the hoax story on his blog (on his radio program, too? I’ll wager Boortz is double dipping with his false-tale telling . . .).
Here’s a series of falsehoods Boortz told:
Last year J.P. Morgan thought it might be interesting to look into the private sector experience of Obama’s Cabinet. America, after all, was in the middle of an economic disaster and the thought was that the president might actually look to some people with a record of success in the private sector for advice. So a study is done comparing Obama’s Cabinet to the cabinets of presidents going back to 1900. secretaries of State, Commerce, Treasury, Agriculture, Interior, Labor, Transportation, Energy and Housing and Urban Development were included. The J.P Morgan study looked at the percentages of cabinet members with prior private sector experience, and the results were amazing.
The presidential cabinet with the highest percentage of private sector experience was that of Dwight Eisenhower at around 58%. The lowest — until Obama — was Kennedy at about 28%. The average ran between 35% and 40% … until, as I said, Obama. Care to guess what percentage of Obama’s cabinet has prior private sector experience? Try 7%.
Here’s a start at the truth — try 11 times the experience Boortz credits:
All totaled, Obama’s cabinet is one of the certifiably most brainy, most successful and most decorated of any president at any time. His cabinet brings extensive and extremely successful private sector experience coupled with outstanding and considerable successful experience in government and elective politics.
AEI’s claim that the cabinet lacks private sector experience is astoundingly in error, with 77% of the 22 members showing private sector experience — according to the [standards of the] bizarre chart [from AEI], putting Obama’s cabinet in the premiere levels of private sector experience. The chart looks more and more like a hoax that AEI fell sucker to — and so did others.
Boortz is eight months late, and the whole truth short. Shame on him.
Not just false stuff — old, moldy false stuff. Atlantans, and all Americans, deserve better reporting, even from hack commentators.
_____________
Coda: Sage advice, but . . .
Boortz includes this warning on his website:
ALWAYS REMEMBER
Don’t believe anything you read on this web page, or, for that matter, anything you hear on The Neal Boortz Show, unless it is consistent with what you already know to be true, or unless you have taken the time to research the matter to prove its accuracy to your satisfaction. This is known as “doing your homework.”
Great advice — but no excuse for sloppy reporting. He should follow his own rule. On this piece, Boortz didn’t do his homework in any fashion. He’s turning in somebody else’s crap, without reading it in advance, it appears.
26 Comments | Accuracy, Business, Business Ethics, Capitalism, Government, History, Hoaxes, Journalism, Political conventions, Political Smear, Politics, President Obama, Presidents | Tagged: Accuracy, Bad Journalism, Business, Capitalism, Government, History, Hoaxes, Neil Boortz, News, Obama's Cabinet, Political Smear, Politics, President Obama, Private Sector Experience, Unpatriotic Attacks | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
President Barack Obama shakes hands with a young Cub Scout, during a meeting with representatives from the Boy Scouts, in the Oval Office, July 12, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
I suspect this was a press release from BSA, which I found at the Cracker Barrel, a blog for Scouting Magazine:
BSA representatives meet with Obama to discuss top concerns for nation’s youth
A group of Boy Scouts of America youth members and executive leaders met with President Barack Obama today to discuss top priorities for the organization’s next century of service.
During the White House meeting, the president and the BSA delegation shared their mutual goals for addressing key concerns for our nation’s youth: healthy living, service to the community, and environmental stewardship.
Obama has shown his support for each of these issues by introducing three relevant programs: Let’s Move!, United We Serve, and America’s Great Outdoors.
As has been the case with every U.S. president since William Howard Taft, Obama serves as the Honorary President of the BSA and helps recognize the achievements of more than 50,000 Eagle Scouts each year by signing their Eagle Scout cards.
Obama’s three initiatives match several concerns not just for the BSA but also for the entire country, said Chief Scout Executive Bob Mazzuca.
“Health, community service, and preserving our environment are priorities for all Americans,” Mazzuca said. “Our first 100 years in Scouting taught us the importance of these issues to America’s youth; our next century of Scouting will focus on creating programs to expand our efforts in these areas.”
To show its commitment to these issues and in honor of the BSA’s 100th Anniversary, the organization presented Obama and the first lady, Michelle Obama, with two camperships for Scouts in their home councils. These scholarships will help two Scouts attend summer camp: one each from the Aloha Area and Chicago Area councils.
While at summer camp, these two deserving Scouts will see first-hand how much fun it is to stay active in the outdoors and learn how preserving our environment is critical in today’s world.
The camperships were presented by the youth members of the BSA’s delegation. This group was made up of young people who represent several of the BSA’s programs. Eagle Scout Brad Lichota, national Order of the Arrow chief, led the youth members.
Others were Cub Scout Raphael Cash from Bowie, Md.; Venturer Shannon Hoff from Falls Church, Va.; Sea Scout M. Robert Marks Jr. from Pittsburgh, Pa.; and Boy Scout Arnold Mears from Parkville, Md.
The photo came from the White House‘s website, separate from the press release.
2 Comments | Barack Obama, Boy Scouts of America, Citizenship, National Parks, National Wilderness Area, Outdoor Recreation, President Obama, Presidents | Tagged: America's Great Outdoors, Bob Mazzuca, Boy Scouts, Boy Scouts of America, Citizenship, President Obama, Scout Centennial, White House | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
You are currently browsing the archives for the President Obama category.
Ed Darrell on Texas's Colorado River
Come on in, the water's fine. Come often: Cleanliness is next to godliness.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
