NOM president Brian Brown is seeing a rise in “anti-Christian” bigotry, which is just a rise in LGBTQ rights
Salon.com
With all of the discussion of ObamaCare’s failures, incompetencies, and flat-out lies, there has been a lot of head-scratching over accountability. No one has lost their job at HHS, for instance, for the faceplant of Healthcare.gov, not even the contractor responsible, which still has ongoing work on the project. In part, this is because no one in the administration wants to admit that anything’s seriously amiss, even though HHS will miss their enrollment target of 7 million by a wide margin — and that goal was exceedingly modest in the first place, after years of Democratic insistence that 40 million or more uninsured needed to get coverage.
There are structural reasons for the lack of accountability, too. Since ObamaCare is a multi-jurisdictional effort, no one agency in the government has oversight on the entire, sprawling mess. The Inspectors General of HHS and Treasury can only look within their own structures, which allows for stovepiping and structural disconnects for accountability. Rep. Peter Roskam wants to take a page from TARP and create a new oversight agency, and explained it today to Larry Kudlow on CNBC:
The concept is a very simple one – follow the money and give an independent oversight agent, that is a Special Inspector General, the capacity to go across all of these jurisdictional lines. Because here’s the limitations right now: the Health and Human Services Inspector General can only ask HHS questions; Treasury can only ask Treasury questions. And there’s dozens of agencies that are involved in Obamacare and no one single entity has the capacity to ask all of the questions. This will be a money saver. …
It all begs the question, which is, who watching this whole scene? And the answer is nobody is watching the whole scene in totality…the reality, Larry, is that the Administration has so wedded itself to Obamacare, a signature piece of legislation for the president, that they don’t have that dispassionate interest in trying to get to the bottom of things. They are really interested in covering up and patching through, and coming up with a whole hodgepodge approach. And the net result is – it’s individual citizens and individual businesses that are really suffering. …
I think Obamacare is a house of cards that is collapsing as it is being built. The trouble is that, as it is being built and as it is collapsing at the same time, it’s injuring people and it’s having an adverse impact on the economy. You cannot get straight answers from this Administration, which is why you need an independent oversight organization, or a Special Inspector General, that has the breadth and capacity to get and cut through all the nonsense and go from one department to the other department to put all of the pieces together to find out what’s what.
Roskam offered legislation nearly two weeks ago, titled Special Inspector General for Monitoring the Affordable Care Act (SIGMA), to duplicate the kind of accountability that TARP eventually had. That’s not to say that the TARP’s IG managed to eliminate the waste and incompetence that went into that program, but Neil Barofsky did offer plenty of sunlight on just how badly the TARP-related pieces of Obamanomics performed.
Roskam reminded National Review readers of the kind of accountability IGs can provide when truly independent:
Recent special inspectors general have been remarkably successful. Beginning in 2004, the Special Inspectors General for Iraq (SIGIR) and Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) have produced $ 645 million and $ 480 million in direct taxpayer savings, respectively. And since 2008, the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) has used the broad investigative powers provided by Congress to rack up 122 convictions, 75 suspensions and debarments of federal contractors and employees, and $ 533 million in direct taxpayer savings. At $ 700 billion, the jurisdiction of SIGTARP was the largest to date, but that program pales in comparison to the $ 1.8 trillion in costs under Obamacare.
Don’t expect the White House to welcome SIGMA with open arms. Then-Senator Obama was certainly enthusiastic about SIGTARP, but that was before accountability applied to him and his team. House Republicans should demand this from Senate Democrats — and then demand a public explanation when they oppose it.
Related Posts:
It looks like someone’s got their knickers in a twist over being called out for their scandal mongering over at Fox. Bill-O was trolling for more attention from Jon Stewart during his Talking Points Memo this Wednesday night. He must be a glutton for punishment.
Here’s how Fox covered the segment over at their blog: O’Reilly to Jon Stewart: ‘Are You Hearing Me Out There in Left-Wing Fantasy Land?’:
Bill O’Reilly today responded to Jon Stewart’s coverage of O’Reilly’s interview with President Barack Obama.
“The Factor” host said Stewart echoed Obama’s sentiments that the issues discussed in the interview have been thoroughly investigated. O’Reilly disagreed.
O"Reilly Attacks Stewart as "Living in Fantasy Land" for Calling Out Fox"s Scandal Mongering
The NAACP’s North Carolina President Rev. William Barber II ignited a firestorm when, in an extensive profile in a South Carolina paper, he attacked Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) as a being a puppet and a tool of the “extreme right wing.” Scott did not respond in kind, but Republican officials demanded that Barber and the NAACP disavow those comments. Far from distancing themselves from Barber or his statement, the NAACP issued a statement defending the North Carolina-based chapter official and standing by his comments.“A ventriloquist can always find a good dummy,” Barber said of Scott, one of just two African-Americans in the U.S. Senate.
“Dr. King emphasized love and justice rather than extremism,” a statement issued to Fox News read. “Unless we stand for justice we cannot claim allegiance to or pay homage to Dr. King.”“In a state such as South Carolina, politicians, whether they be black or white, should not be echoing the position of the far right,” the statement concluded.
RELATED: Sen. Tim Scott Responds to NAACP Official Who Called Him a Ventriloquist’s ‘Dummy’
Politik Ditto
The NAACP’s North Carolina President Rev. William Barber II ignited a firestorm when, in an extensive profile in a South Carolina paper, he attacked Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) as a being a puppet and a tool of the “extreme right wing.” Scott did not respond in kind, but Republican officials demanded that Barber and the NAACP disavow those comments. Far from distancing themselves from Barber or his statement, the NAACP issued a statement defending the North Carolina-based chapter official and standing by his comments.“A ventriloquist can always find a good dummy,” Barber said of Scott, one of just two African-Americans in the U.S. Senate.
“Dr. King emphasized love and justice rather than extremism,” a statement issued to Fox News read. “Unless we stand for justice we cannot claim allegiance to or pay homage to Dr. King.”“In a state such as South Carolina, politicians, whether they be black or white, should not be echoing the position of the far right,” the statement concluded.
RELATED: Sen. Tim Scott Responds to NAACP Official Who Called Him a Ventriloquist’s ‘Dummy’
Politik Ditto
Quit Calling Things "Guilty Pleasures"
http://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-89EKCgBk8MZdE.gif
(Newser) – If you want to feel guilty, fine. If you want to feel pleasure, more power to you. But if you want to toss around the phrase “guilty pleasure,” then Jennifer Szalai requests that you resist the urge. In a New Yorker essay about how much she hates the term, Szalai traces its popular emergence back to the culture wars of the 1990s and argues that it “exudes a false note, a mix of self-consciousness and self-congratulation.” Would you be telling the world about your “guilty pleasures” if you genuinely felt guilty about them?
The message you’re sending is more like this: “You’re most comfortable in the élite precincts of high art, but you’re not so much of a snob that you can’t be at one with the people,” writes Szalai. “So you confess your remorse whenever you deign to watch Scandal, implying that the rest of your time is spent reading Proust.” Enough already. “Forget the pretense and get over yourself.” Click for the full column.
It’s been a disastrous couple of weeks for President Barack Obama. His signature legislation, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, is a slow-motion train wreck. His poll numbers have tanked.Now, things have gotten so bad for Obama that even former president Jimmy Carter has called President Obama incompetent in the family-friendly pages of Parade magazine.
“He’s done the best he could under the circumstances,” Carter said of Obama in an interviewed published on Thursday. “His major accomplishment was Obamacare, and the implementation of it now is questionable at best.”
Carter presided over what was, until the current recession, the longest period of economic stagnation since the Great Depression. There was runaway inflation, high unemployment and an ongoing energy crisis. There was a hostage crisis in Iran involving the capture and imprisonment of 52 Americans for 444 days.
In the summer of 1979, Carter gave one of the least effective speeches any president in the history of the American presidency. The deeply unpopular “Crisis of Confidence” speech became widely known as Carter’s “malaise” speech.
Carter lost his 1980 reelection bid to Ronald Reagan by an electoral vote total of 489 to 49. He won only six states, along with the District of Columbia.
The 39th president’s Parade interview touched on several subjects in addition to Obamacare including his grandson’s role in a hidden camera video of Mitt Romney, the Middle East, the Trayvon Martin case and the recent tribulations of fellow Georgian Paula Deen.
Carter’s wife Rosalynn was also present at the interview and contributed to it.
When asked “how he hopes history will remember him,” Carter joined the rest of America in preferring to skip over his presidency. “I’d like to be judged primarily by our work at the Carter Center for the last 32 years,” he told the magazine. “I don’t mean to exclude the White House. But in my more self-satisfied moments, I think about our unwavering promotion of peace and human rights.”
—————————–
SOURCE: http://dailycaller.com/2013/11/02/epic-fail-now-jimmy-carter-is-calling-obama-an-incompetent-loser/#ixzz2jWIKl8TG
UK Ministry of Defense staff have landed themselves a £271,000 bill after making incessant phone calls to the national Directory Enquiries service, according to new figures. That equates to some 186 times a day.
A new Freedom of Information request has revealed that ministry staff made 158,640 requests to ‘118’ numbers – which put callers in touch with directory services – since the last parliamentary election in 2010. This means that on average, MoD staff would have to be calling the service about 186 times a day.
Staff from the UK’s Department of Work and Pensions called the same Directory Enquiries service 97,265 times over the same period, at a cost of £72,387 to taxpayers, according to figures obtained by Sky News.
“Calls to Directory Enquiries from the majority of the 260,000 MoD fixed phone lines are banned, but some staff working in isolated locations, who do not have access to a military phone network or the Internet, are able to call directory enquiries to obtain contact details,” an MoD spokesperson said.
“Calls…from fixed phone lines have fallen by over 75 per cent in the last four years and we are working to further reduce the number of calls made.”
The news comes amid cuts in defense spending of 8 percent, with the army planning to cut 20,000 jobs and the air force 10,000. On Saturday, the Daily Telegraph cited military sources as saying that an “overzealous” austerity drive was also leaving the armed forces without vital equipment.
In August, it was revealed that MoD staff spent about £40,000 calling the UK’s speaking clock – a recorded message that gives the exact time to the second – 158,640 times in the previous two years. The MoD introduced a ban on ringing the service last year.
UK Ministry of Defense staff have landed themselves a £271,000 bill after making incessant phone calls to the national Directory Enquiries service, according to new figures. That equates to some 186 times a day.
A new Freedom of Information request has revealed that ministry staff made 158,640 requests to ‘118’ numbers – which put callers in touch with directory services – since the last parliamentary election in 2010. This means that on average, MoD staff would have to be calling the service about 186 times a day.
Staff from the UK’s Department of Work and Pensions called the same Directory Enquiries service 97,265 times over the same period, at a cost of £72,387 to taxpayers, according to figures obtained by Sky News.
“Calls to Directory Enquiries from the majority of the 260,000 MoD fixed phone lines are banned, but some staff working in isolated locations, who do not have access to a military phone network or the Internet, are able to call directory enquiries to obtain contact details,” an MoD spokesperson said.
“Calls…from fixed phone lines have fallen by over 75 per cent in the last four years and we are working to further reduce the number of calls made.”
The news comes amid cuts in defense spending of 8 percent, with the army planning to cut 20,000 jobs and the air force 10,000. On Saturday, the Daily Telegraph cited military sources as saying that an “overzealous” austerity drive was also leaving the armed forces without vital equipment.
In August, it was revealed that MoD staff spent about £40,000 calling the UK’s speaking clock – a recorded message that gives the exact time to the second – 158,640 times in the previous two years. The MoD introduced a ban on ringing the service last year.
In the last week or so, Lee Daniels’ The Butler — based on the true story of an African-American White House butler who waits on eight different presidents during his 34-year tenure — has received a flurry of mixed-to-positive reviews. In them, there’s a particular comparison that keeps cropping up between The Butler and another mega-famous film. Daniels’s movie, No. 1 in the box office this past weekend, has been called “a White House Forrest Gump,” “Lee Daniels’ Forrest Gump,” and “a more serious-minded Forrest Gump” (
Given its vast, multi-decade narrative and its one-man-sees-American-history-happen-up-close structure, it’s understandable that so many critics would be quick to see the similarities. But to label The Butler a version of Forrest Gump isn’t quite fair, and ignores one of the most important virtues of Lee Daniels’s film. Lee Daniels’ The Butler paints an imperfect but far more multi-dimensional portrait of the black Civil Rights movement, presenting it as a necessary struggle for justice that both united and drove apart families, friends, and lovers, even when they were on the same side. Forrest Gump cast the Civil Rights movement as a prop, at best, and a threat, at worst.
In 2000, Jennifer Hyland Wang, then a doctoral candidate at the University of Wisconsin, wrote for Cinema Journal about how Forrest Gump earned its reputation as a “conservative” film: In the past, writers like Modern Fiction Studies‘ Thomas Byers had called it “aggressively conservative,” and it had appeared in National Review’s 1995 list of the 100 best conservative movies. In the process, she compiled an inventory of the ways in which Forrest Gump‘s plot reflects negative attitudes toward social change and seems to re-imagine the turbulence of the 1960s as mostly progressives’ fault.
Blaming the Radicals
In Forrest Gump, proponents of social change are often punished or portrayed in a negative light. Forrest’s childhood sweetheart Jenny, for instance, protests the war, joins in with the sexual revolution, and becomes linked to the Black Panther Party in her young adulthood. She then gets beat up onscreen by her boyfriend, a fellow radical, at the Black Panther headquarters in Washington; the Panthers simply stand by and watch until Forrest interrupts them and saves Jenny. Jenny later dies of a mysterious virus often assumed to be AIDS. As Wang puts it,
By evoking the threat of bodily harm to those women who did participate in political movements, the film limits the attractiveness of political change and vilifies the activism of the period. Progressive political movements, Forrest Gump asserts, did not help women make their mark but left their marks on America’s women. … The racial and sexual threat a ‘political’ African-American man embodies is grounded in the Black Panther’s stance against the traditional American values that Forrest Gump eventually champions. By visualizing the danger of black autonomy to a white woman and by giving voice to the threats of Black Nationalism, Forrest Gump emphasizes the need to keep these bodies under white America’s control.
In other words: Forrest Gump makes the Black Panthers look pretty bad.
The Butler, on the other hand, offers a more nuanced portrayal of the Black Panthers and their evolution. The Panther headquarters in The Butler is depicted as having rules written on the walls that encourage justice and respect (“always pay full price for goods”). White House butler Cecil Gaines’s son Louis and his girlfriend Carol join the Panthers, and explain to Cecil and his wife over dinner that, yes, the movement does have radical political motives, but it also seeks to improve the community by providing childcare for low-income black families and free lunches to black children. (Cecil responds by promptly throwing them both out of the house.)
Later, however, the Panthers are asked to pledge that they’ll kill in the name of their cause. Carol says she will; Louis, morally conflicted, says he won’t. They break up.
The Virtue of Progress
In Forrest Gump, Forrest’s loyalty, obedience, and innocence make him the undisputed hero and moral compass of the film. According to Wang, “Gump argues that eventually these conservative values,” — the ones often coded as “white,” she points out — “not the alternative ‘liberal’ ones explored in the 1960s, will survive the test of time.” Thus, “Forrest Gump reestablishes the role of the white patriarch as the source of political and cultural renewal.”
Lee Daniels’s new film takes the opposite stance by crediting change-minded thinkers with America’s political and cultural renewal. The last time any president is shown to be at odds over whether to pursue progress for black people in America is during the Eisenhower administration; in 1961, an emotional John F. Kennedy admits to Cecil that “these kids,” the Freedom Riders, have changed his brother Bobby’s heart and “they’ve changed mine, too.” From then on, the presidents are mostly shown to be in favor of creating racial equality and improving the lot of African-Americans in the United States. And at the end of the film, Nancy Reagan praises Cecil for his dogged and ultimately successful campaign to ensure that the White House’s “black help” earn salaries equal to their white colleagues’.
Civil Rights as a Sideshow vs. Civil Rights as a Backdrop
Wang points out that Forrest Gump only engages with the real-life race-related events of the 1960s through two striking images: the 1963 desegregation of the University of Alabama and the activities of the Black Panther party. Other images of racism, specifically of white supremacy, are just fuzzy, muted background:
Although the figure of George Wallace is visually apparent in the archival footage, his vocal defiance of the court’s integration order is almost completely deleted. Instead of focusing on Wallace’s speech, the camera concentrates on Forrest’s inability to comprehend what the controversy is all about. The racial hatred of white supremacy is thus muted by our hero’s inability to understand racism and the politics of desegregation. In contrast, the audience is allowed to hear much of the unidentified Black Panther’s threat of racial war. In the context of 1990s America, with the fiery images of the L.A. uprising still vivid in our social memory, the film’s emphasis on the threat of black violence and the birth of these politics in the 1960s reiterates Gump‘s conservative racial politics. …
Erasing both the tenacity of white racism and the courage of black resistance, the film deletes from the official history of the nation the Freedom Summers, the voting registration drives, the Birmingham bus boycotts, the March on Washington, the Watts riots, and the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King.
The Butler takes a similar (and, yes, at times heavy-handed) highlights-reel approach to the events of the 1960s. But it looks at the timeline of the Civil Rights movement from both a broader perspective — with scenes devoted to the sit-ins near Fisk University, the Freedom Riders, violence at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan, and the life and the assassination of MLK — and a more deeply embedded one.
‘The Butler’ takes a similar (and, yes, at times heavy-handed) highlights-reel approach to the events of the 1960s. But it looks at the timeline of the Civil Rights movement from both a broader perspective and a more deeply embedded one.
Fisk University students are shown hurling insults and physically harming one another to prepare for the treatment they will receive (and do receive) from whites when they stage lunch-counter sit-ins. Activist James Lawson coaches them through the process; some of them cry, others lash out. And issues that splintered the progressive black community — such as participation in the Vietnam War — are given some harrowing screen time, too: A personal conversation with Martin Luther King, Jr., about the special capability of the “house Negro” to quietly build up African-American credibility in the eyes of whites, finally convinces Louis that his father’s role as a butler for a series of white presidents is activism in its own way. Later, upon hearing the news that his beloved younger brother Charlie plans to fight in the Vietnam War, Louis objects, begs him not to go, then grimly warns Charlie that he won’t attend his funeral for ideological reasons.
Racism Isn’t Over
Wang goes on to explain that Forrest Gump also portrays racism as simply a weird, inconvenient quirk of the 1960s:
The dynamics of Gump‘s racial representations are clearly delineated in a comparison between an archival clip of George Wallace’s defense of segregation and a scene depicting Black Nationalism. A parallel is thus drawn between Wallace and an unidentified Black Panther — both angry men preaching the inevitability of racial conflict. In juxtaposing these historical moments, Forrest Gump situates racial conflict in the sixties as a result of extremist political groups. Racism then can be safely articulated as neither a product of nor a concern of contemporary mainstream America. Like Forrest, white mainstream America is encouraged to “not see” race and racism except as a product of a specific historical moment.
As the film moves into the 1970s and 1980s, race virtually, as she puts it, “disappear[s] from the hero’s — and thus the film’s — view.”
Again, The Butler does Forrest Gump one better: It makes a point to show that the struggle to end racism is a battle yet to be won. The final half-hour of The Butler shows Louis Gaines running for public office in the 1980s; he speaks in a televised interview about how to improve the lot of African-Americans. Later, Louis and Cecil protest South African apartheid together.
And just before Cecil leaves the White House for the last time, there’s a subtly ominous moment: Ronald Reagan — who’s just stated that should Congress pass a bill to impose sanctions against South Africa, he’ll veto it — admits to Cecil privately that he’s worried he’ll end up on the wrong side of history.
So let’s be careful with the comparison between Forrest Gump and The Butler. Both have their flaws, but the former is an admirable, compassionate film that includes depictions of the Civil Rights movement, while the latter is a film that includes admirable, compassionate depictions of the Civil Rights movement.
     |
By WALTER R. MEARS | 8/14/13 6:53 PM EDT
Jack Germond was a master political reporter, the consummate storyteller of candidates, campaigns and elections, a man who delighted in what he could convey with the printed word. Print was his medium, and he was forever amused, sometimes annoyed, that his fame and his public image flowed from television rather than from the thousands of reports he delivered to his newspapers.
He loved his calling as a print reporter. He did TV talk and commentary for the money, and he never found the same satisfaction as when he was ripping a piece out of his typewriter and sending it on to the presses.
He joked about the image that grew from his role as the portly curmudgeon on his weekly TV panels – he was, by his own book title, the fat man in the middle seat. TV was a way to make money. He once said he’d only do it as long as there were tuitions to pay. Political reporting was a way to make history real for readers, and that was the role he treasured.
(Also on POLITICO: Germond, a legend, dies at 85)
As a political reporter for The Associated Press, I worked with – and competed against – Jack for 40-plus years. He and his eventual column partner, Jules Witcover, were my closest friends on the campaign road. We shared meals, too many drinks, and the day’s lore. The stories themselves were another matter. Until the work was done, we were competitors, never more satisfied than when one of us beat the others to a piece of information or a story angle.
Long afterward, we agreed that we had shared a golden era in campaign reporting. It was a time before cell phones – we jingled with coins for the payphones. There was no Internet so, obviously, no Tweeting. We carried portable typewriters (blue-cased Olivettis were the tool of the trade) and dictated our reports to our news desks or filed them by Western Union.
While the tools were simpler, the politics were not. The twists, turnabouts and hidden meanings that today’s reporters try to decipher were there in our day, too. But there was a difference, as Jack would testify. We were suspicious and often cynical, but we did not regard politicians as suspects. As Jack observed, most of them were honest even though they were not as open as we wanted. When we determined that they were being straight, we respected it. When they were deceptive or dishonest, we said so, in print.
(Also on POLITICO: Journalists honor Germond on Twitter)
Jack Germond led the way in political reporting because he covered the field starting at the bottom. While other reporters were interviewing big names and often learning little, Jack was talking with precinct chairmen, county committee members, the people who built the political structures on which national figures stood. He had little use for press briefings longer on rhetoric than on information. When Sen. Everett Dirksen was Republican leader, he had weekly sessions in the Senate press gallery, answering questions but seldom saying anything of import. Jack dismissed the senator and the dutiful reporters in a phrase: Dirksen was casting imitation pearls before real swine.
For Jack, contacts were the key. He lived on the telephone. “What do you hear?” was always his question. He did what it took to establish a tie that could be useful. At a legendary lunch in Montgomery, Ala., Jack dined with former Gov. George C. Wallace, the wild card presidential candidate of the time. Along with fine-tuned politics, Jack loved fine food and wine. Wallace’s taste ran to ketchup; he doused every meal with the stuff. So when the luncheon steaks arrived, Wallace poured on the ketchup. Germond paused, probably shrugged, and did the same thing. Ever after, Wallace took Germond’s calls and answered his questions.
Jack Germond was one of a kind. His talent was immeasurable, his company was a delight, his friendship a treasure. To have seen and shared them was among the great privileges of my career.
As Jack and I agreed when we looked back together, it was a hell of a way to make a living.
Walter R. Mears is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter with the Associated Press. He reported on national politics from 1960 to 2001, when he retired after the presidential inauguration. Mears is regarded as one of the most influential political reporters of his time.
Speaking at the Netroots Nation conference in San Jose, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Edward Snowden “did violate the law in terms of releasing those documents,” prompting loud boos and heckling from the crowd.
