Conservatives Monitoring The Liberal Left
Posts tagged Told You So
Parties Nearly Tied for Congress in 2010
Oct 7th
Posted by Michael in 2010 Elections
Given in a polite, understated, terribly-sorry-to-bother-you sort of way:
Parties Nearly Tied for Congress in 2010
PRINCETON, NJ — Roughly a year before the 2010 midterm elections, Gallup finds the Republican and Democratic Parties nearly tied in the congressional ballot preferences of registered voters. Forty-six percent of registered voters say they would vote for the Democrat and 44% say the Republican when asked which party’s candidate they would support for Congress, if the election were held today.
The interesting part of this article is in what it lacks: to wit, any good news for Democrats. Gallup pointed out the registered/likely voter differential, the fact that historical trends are arguing for serious Republican gains next year if this keeps up, and even that the public despises the job that Congress is doing (which also is notably lacking in good news for Democrats, although it tries to give a little). No doubt there will be people out there that will try to explain why all of this shows how horrible things are for the GOP right now; which is fine. We all need more comedy in our lives.
Moe Lane
Crossposted to Moe Lane.
Obama Ties to ACORN Date Back Nearly 20 Years
Sep 22nd
By JOHN FUND
Only one of the five television networks that interviewed President Obama for their Sunday shows bothered to ask him about Acorn, the left-wing community organizing group whose federal funding was cut off last week by an overwhelming vote in Congress.
“Frankly, it’s not something I’ve followed closely,” Mr. Obama claimed, adding he wasn’t even aware the group had been the recipient of significant federal funding. “This is not the biggest issue facing the country. It’s not something I’m paying a lot of attention to,” he said.
Mr. Obama added that an investigation of Acorn was appropriate after an amateur hidden-camera investigation had found Acorn offices willing to abet prostitution, but he carefully declined to say whether he would approve a federal cutoff of funds to the group.
Mr. Obama took great pains to act as if he barely knew about Acorn. In fact, his association goes back almost 20 years. In 1991, he took time off from his law firm to run a voter-registration drive for Project Vote, an Acorn partner that was soon fully absorbed under the Acorn umbrella. The drive registered 135,000 voters and was considered a major factor in the upset victory of Democrat Carol Moseley Braun over incumbent Democratic Senator Alan Dixon in the 1992 Democratic Senate primary.
Mr. Obama’s success made him a hot commodity on the community organizing circuit. He became a top trainer at Acorn’s Chicago conferences. In 1995, he became Acorn’s attorney, participating in a landmark case to force the state of Illinois to implement the federal Motor Voter Law. That law’s loose voter registration requirements would later be exploited by Acorn employees in an effort to flood voter rolls with fake names.
In 1996, Mr. Obama filled out a questionnaire listing key supporters for his campaign for the Illinois Senate. He put Acorn first (it was not an alphabetical list). In the U.S. Senate, Mr. Obama became the leading critic of Voter ID laws, whose overturn was a top Acorn priority. In 2007, in a speech to Acorn’s leaders prior to their political arm’s endorsement of his presidential campaign, Mr. Obama was effusive: “I’ve been fighting alongside of Acorn on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote in Illinois, Acorn was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work.”
But the Obama campaign didn’t appear eager to discuss the candidate’s ties to Acorn. Its press operation vividly denied Mr. Obama had been an Acorn trainer until the New York Times uncovered records demonstrating that he had been. The Obama campaign also gave Citizens Consulting, Inc., an Acorn subsidiary, $832,000 for get-out-the-vote activities in key primary states. In filings with the Federal Election Commission, the Obama campaign listed the payments as “staging, sound, lighting,” only correcting the filings after the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review revealed their true nature.
Given his longstanding ties with Acorn, President Obama’s protestations of ignorance or disinterest in the group’s latest scandal seem preposterous. Here’s hoping White House reporters will press the president to clarify just how much he really knows about Acorn and when he knew it.
Original Article Here: Wall Street Journal
Daily Presidential Tracking Poll September 21, 2009
Sep 21st
Posted by Michael in Barrack Obama

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that 30% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-eight percent (38%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -8 (see trends).
Among voters without health insurance, 58% favor passage of the health care plan working its way through Congress. Thirty-five percent (35%) are opposed. Most uninsured Democrats favor the plan while most uninsured Republicans do not.
The President recently said he is open to considering the idea of giving tax breaks to struggling newspapers. Thirty-seven percent (37%) of American adults say it would be better to provide some federal subsidies rather than let the newspapers go out of business. However, only 17% favor a government bailout of the newspaper industry.
In fact, just 25% even favor the creation of a White House commission to help find ways for struggling news organizations survive.
The Presidential Approval Index is calculated by subtracting the number who Strongly Disapprove from the number who Strongly Approve. It is updated daily at 9:30 a.m. Eastern (sign up for free daily e-mail update). Updates also available on Twitter and Facebook.
Overall, 49% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President’s performance. Fifty (50%) now disapprove. A Month-by-Month Review of the President’s ratings shows that the Presidential Approval Index served as a leading indicator by declining months before the President’s overall job approval ratings fell.
Members of Congress have now slipped below corporate CEOs to become the least favorably viewed profession. Twenty-five percent (25%) have a favorable opinion of the legislators while 27% say that about the business leaders.
Later today, Rasmussen Reports will release data measuring public reaction to the President’s decision to halt deployment of an anti-missile system in Eastern Europe. Also, an update on which of the President’s priorities is considered most important. Premium Members can get an advance look at the data.

Rasmussen Reports has recently released polling on the upcoming Senate races in North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Colorado, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. We are also polling regularly on the 2009 Governor’s races in New Jersey and Virginia and have taken a look at the 2010 Colorado Governor’s race along with the Texas GOP Primary battle.
Check out our review of last week’s key polls to see “What They Told Us.”
It is important to remember that the Rasmussen Reports job approval ratings are based upon a sample of likely voters. Some other firms base their approval ratings on samples of all adults. President Obama’s numbers are always several points higher in a poll of adults rather than likely voters. That’s because some of the President’s most enthusiastic supporters, such as young adults, are less likely to turn out to vote.
(More Below)
Scott Rasmussen has recently had three analysis columns published in the Wall Street Journal. The most recent was on health care. Earlier columns were on the President’s approval ratings and how Obama won the White House by campaigning like Ronald Reagan. If you’d like Scott Rasmussen to speak at your meeting, retreat, or conference, contact Premiere Speakers Bureau. You can also learn about Scott’s favorite place on earth or his time working with hockey legend Gordie Howe.
Rasmussen Reports has been a pioneer in the use of automated polling techniques. While some of our competitors diss the approach and prefer their own operator-assisted technology, Pollster.com founder Mark Blumenthal noted that “independent analyses from the National Council on Public Polls, the American Association for Public Opinion Research, the Pew Research Center, the Wall Street Journal and FiveThirtyEight.com have all shown that the horse-race numbers produced by automated telephone surveys did at least as well as those from conventional live-interviewer surveys in predicting election outcomes.”
Additionally, an analysis by Pollster.com partner Charles Franklin “found that despite identically sized three-day samples, the Rasmussen daily tracking poll is less variable than Gallup.” During Election 2008, the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll was the least volatile of all those tracking the race. That stability is one reason that Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com said that the Rasmussen tracking poll “would probably be the one I’d want with me on a desert island.”
A Fordham University professor rated the national pollsters on their record in Election 2008. We also have provided a summary of our results for your review. In 2008, Obama won 53%-46% and our final poll showed Obama winning 52% to 46%. While we were pleased with the final result, Rasmussen Reports was especially pleased with the stability of our results. On every single day for the last six weeks of the campaign, our daily tracking showed Obama with a stable and solid lead attracting more than 50% of the vote.
In 2004 George W. Bush received 50.7% of the vote while John Kerry earned 48.3%. Rasmussen Reports was the only firm to project both candidates’ totals within half a percentage point by projecting that Bush would win 50.2% to 48.5%. (see our 2004 results).
Daily tracking results are collected via telephone surveys of 500 likely voters per night and reported on a three-day rolling average basis. The margin of sampling error—for the full sample of 1,500 Likely Voters–is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Results are also compiled on a full-week basis and crosstabs for full-week results are available for Premium Members.
Like all polling firms, Rasmussen Reports weights its data to reflect the population at large (see methodology). Among other targets, Rasmussen Reports weights data by political party affiliation using a dynamic weighting process. While partisan affiliation is generally quite stable over time, there are a fair number of people who waver between allegiance to a particular party or independent status. Over the past five years, the number of Democrats in the country has increased while the number of Republicans has decreased.
Our baseline targets are established based upon separate survey interviews with a sample of adults nationwide completed during the preceding three months (a total of 45,000 interviews) and targets are updated monthly. Currently, the baseline targets for the adult population are 37.7% Democrats, 32.7% Republicans, and 29.6% unaffiliated. Likely voter samples typically show a slightly smaller advantage for the Democrats.
A review of last week’s key polls is posted each Saturday morning. Other stats on Obama are updated daily on the Rasmussen Reports Obama By the Numbers page. We also invite you to review other recent demographic highlights from the tracking polls.
Justice Department Inspector General Launches Internal ACORN Probe
Sep 21st

Justice Department’s inspector general has agreed to investigate whether ACORN has applied for or received any DOJ grant money, in the wake of bipartisan criticism of the community activist group’s operation.
And seven other inspectors general are being asked by two congressional members to take a look at their funding mechanisms.
Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, issued a statement Monday praising the Justice Department inspector general’s decision to look into whether ACORN sought or received any grant money or whether the department conducted any reviews of ACORN’s use of such money.
The inspector general agreed to probe the matter at Smith’s request.
“As the primary federal law enforcement agency, the Justice Department has a responsibility to ensure that no organization receiving federal funds ignores our nation’s laws,” he said. “I am pleased that Inspector General (Glenn) Fine has agreed to investigate whether the Justice Department provided federal funds to ACORN through its grant program.”
Smith said ACORN has “fostered a culture of corruption.” Smith has also called for the FBI to launch an investigation.
Calls for closer scrutiny of ACORN have come from many corners of Washington. The pressure builds in the wake of controversy over a series of hidden-camera videotapes showing the organization’s employees offering advice to undercover filmmakers posing as a pimp and prostitute. ACORN has pledged to investigate its offices and workers.
The videotapes, filmed by 25-year-old James O’Keefe and 20-year-old Hannah Giles, led to both the House and Senate voting to defund ACORN last week. Many Democrats joined Republicans in voting for the measures.
Now, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., both the ranking members of their chambers’ government oversight panels, are asking other agencies to do the same.
The federal agencies and departments asked to “review grants, contracts, entitlements and other forms of assistance to ACORN and its affiliates” included the Housing and Urban Development, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Treasury Department, U.S. Election Assistance Commission, Labor Department, Small Business Administration and Corporation for National and Community Service.
“As long as taxpayers are subsidizing ACORN and its affiliates, we need to use every measure possible to ensure that those dollars are being spent and managed appropriately,” Issa said in a written statement. “The way in which ACORN and its affiliates have structured their organization raises significant questions regarding their intent and use of federal dollars. Clearly just taking them at their word is not sufficient enough oversight.”
Meanwhile on Sunday, ACORN’s top officer Bertha Lewis dodged repeated calls to come before Congress and testify about the embattled group’s finances and ties to other organizations.
Issa had pressed Lewis to prove her commitment to reforming the community activist group by showing more transparency.
But Lewis insisted her organization is taking proper precautions to prevent misconduct.
“Any organization is not entirely perfect,” Lewis said on “FOX News Sunday.” “I was outraged by (the videos). Everyone should be, and I can understand how the Congress was also.”
She said any employee “too stupid” not to adhere to professional standards will be terminated.
News Source: Fox News
Obama plays dumb on ACORN
Sep 20th
Obama plays dumb on ACORN



Channeling clueless Charlie Gibson and Nancy Pelosi, President Obama is playing dumb about ACORN. Here’s what he said on ABC’s This Week this morning:
Read More @ michellemalkin.com
Acorn Falls, the Web Rises
Sep 19th
By TOBIN HARSHAW
“Work formerly done by reporters and producers is now routinely performed by political operatives and amateur ideologues of one stripe or another, whose goal is not to educate the public but to win. This is a trend not likely to change.”
So writes a very worried Mark Bowden (he of “Blackhawk Down”) in the latest issue of The Atlantic. And there’s more:
The Internet is now replacing Everyman with every man. Anyone with a keyboard or cell phone can report, analyze, and pull a chair up to the national debate. If freedom of the press belongs to those who own one, today that is everyone. The city with one eye (glass or no) has been replaced by the city with a million eyes. This is wonderful on many levels, and is why the tyrants of the world are struggling, with only partial success, to control the new medium. But while the Internet may be the ultimate democratic tool, it is also demolishing the business model that long sustained newspapers and TV’s network-news organizations.
Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be yet another post lamenting the imperiled future of newspapers. Rather, let’s take a look at something that the Bowden piece predated yet seemingly foresaw:
XXYes, the video starts with employees of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or Acorn, giving advice on gaining child-tax credits for employing underage Salvadoran prostitutes. And then it gets worse. (Writing off condoms!)
A novice filmmaker embarrassed an influential housing group — did he humiliate the mainstream media as well?
Well, with Congress having voted to shut off Acorn’s money spigot, I guess we can score one for Bowden’s “every man.”
As those paying attention now know, the Baltimore video (and the Washington one, the Brooklyn one, the San Diego one and the San Bernardino, Calif., one) were the work of James O’Keefe III, a 25-year-old amateur filmmaker, and (playing the lady of the night) Hannah Giles, a 20-year-old conservative activist. (Thorough background piece on them here.) And, while it’s clear that the duo didn’t get any expert wardrobe advice, did they really do the whole thing themselves?
Doubters like to point out that the videos were first aired at BigGovernment.com, the latest brainchild of the conservative Internet entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart, who also founded BigHollywood.com, a site devoted to exposing the inanities of entertainment celebrities and other forms of shooting fish in a barrel. And while it was apparently Breitbart’s brilliant idea to stagger the release of the videos over a period of days, there doesn’t seem to be other evidence that a conservative cabal was involved.
Still, Bertha Lewis, Acorn’s chief, certainly thinks it was a vast right-wing conspiracy (involving Fox News as well, natch) and that the secret recording broke the law, reports Politico:
“It is clear that the videos are doctored, edited, and in no way the result of the fabricated story being portrayed by conservative activist ‘filmmaker’ O’Keefe and his partner in crime,’ ACORN chief organizer Bertha Lewis said in a statement over the weekend. “And, in fact, a crime it was—our lawyers believe a felony—and we will be taking legal action against Fox and their co-conspirators.”
Ken Blackwell and Ken Klukowski at Politico aren’t holding their breaths until the suit gets filed:
ACORN’s unavoidable problem, however, is that suing Fox News would give Fox — or any other media organization — the ultimate Christmas present: a legally enforceable way to compel ACORN to give up all its secrets.
The process by which a party to a lawsuit can force the opposing party to disclose information is called discovery, which can take the form of depositions, written questions, or demands for the production of documents. Under federal rules, a defendant can get court orders for discovery for any information relevant to its defense, except for privileged information such as attorney-client discussions.
If ACORN sues, it would have to sue alleging some variation of defamation or fraud. The problem is that for either allegation, truth is an absolute defense. Nothing could be more relevant to Fox establishing its defense of truth in the lawsuit than having access to ACORN’s office memos, emails, phone records, and bank statements. All of these would have a reasonable chance of providing evidence as to whether ACORN workers had knowledge of any of the topics seen on the videotapes.
In short, it would blow the doors off ACORN’s vault of secrets. Fox would learn which organizations collaborate with ACORN, how they spend taxpayer money and what ACORN’s leaders say to each other behind closed doors. It would be a treasure trove for a media organization.
And should Lewis’s legal threat turn out to be hollow, it won’t be the first time she has had to eat crow: her first statement after the Baltimore video was that “this recent scam, which was attempted in San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia to name a few places, had failed for months before the results we’ve all recently seen.” Whoops. And while I would have preferred to link my readers to the Acorn Web site’s version of that Lewis quote rather than BigGovernment’s screen grab, in the aftermath of the Brooklyn and San Diego videos it seems to have inexplicably disappeared.
So, it all seems pretty simple: Acorn is caught dead to rights by a couple of amateurs, doubles down with an uninformed statement and ends up bleeding on the Capitol floor. Or is it?
Bertha Lewis feels that this has less to do with the videos themselves than with a long-term war against her organization:
We’re disappointed that the House took the rare and politically convenient step of attempting to eliminate federal funding for a single organization, one that has been the target of a multi-year political assault stemming variously from the Bush White House, Fox News, and other conservative quarters.
Fortunately, ACORN derives most of its income from its members and other supporters, so the decision will have little impact on overall operations. The only real victims of today’s vote are the families who have benefited from ACORN’s important work.
Salon’s Joe Conason thinks the whole episode can become an educational exercise in just how valuable Acorn is:
Like so many conservative attacks, the crusade against ACORN has been highly exaggerated and even falsified to create a demonic image that bears little resemblance to the real organization. Working in the nation’s poorest places, and hiring the people who live there, ACORN is not immune to the pathologies that can afflict institutions in those communities. As a large nonprofit handling many millions of dollars, it has suffered from mismanagement at the top as well — although there is nothing unique in that, either.
Yet ACORN’s troubles should be considered in the context of a history of honorable service to the dispossessed and impoverished. No doubt it was fun to dupe a few morons into providing tax advice to a “pimp and ho,” but what ACORN actually does, every day, is help struggling families with the Earned Income Tax Credit (whose benefits were expanded by both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton). And while the idea of getting housing assistance for a brothel was clever, what ACORN really does, every day, is help those same working families avoid foreclosure and stay in their homes.
Perhaps the congressional investigation now demanded by some Republican politicians would be a useful exercise, if conducted impartially. A fair investigation might begin to dispel some of the wild mythology promoted by right-wing media outlets.
A. Serwer of Tapped thinks that it all comes down to conservatives disliking anyone who helps the poor:
Let’s not forget that the “pimp and ho” scandal isn’t the root of the right’s animosity towards ACORN, their work on behalf of low-income people is. The video may have exposed ACORN’s difficulty in enforcing professional standards in the workplace, and denying them federal funding until they fix those problems may be justifiable–but it’s noteworthy that institutions advocating on behalf of more powerful interests haven’t faced a similar fate.
The right however, has looked at the ACORN scandal as a kind of vindication of all their paranoid fantasies of what ACORN was responsible for–namely that ACORN really was trying to “steal” the 2008 election through voter fraud and that it caused the sub-prime crisis by advocating against housing policies that discriminate against people of color–are true. They seem to believe that because ACORN employees acted improperly, that means outlawing housing discrimination based on race caused the economic meltdown and voter fraud is a real problem.
Neither of those things are true, but they do point to the real reason the right hates ACORN, and it’s not because of their past issues with embezzlement, or misbehaving employees. It’s because they try to look out for the interests of people the right likes to blame for the nation’s problems.
And Amanda Terkel at Think Progress seems to think the left can gain points by pointing out Sen. David Vitter’s apparent hypocrisy:
Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) is the self-proclaimed “most outspoken critic of ACORN.” Following the release of incriminating videos showing ACORN workers giving advice to undercover conservative activists inquiring about how to start a brothel and not get caught, Vitter and other Republicans called for investigations and audits of the organization. On Monday, he put out a press release bragging about all his anti-ACORN work over the years and commending the administration for condemning the group.
Yet despite all his anti-ACORN activism, Vitter missed the vote that cut off federal funding for the group. A spokesman said that there was “a scheduling error” that caused the senator to miss his flight back to Washington in time for the roll call, but he still “called colleagues and urged them to support the amendment.”
Vitter’s outrage over the latest ACORN scandal seems extraordinarily hypocritical, in light of what he went through in 2007: “A woman accused of running a Washington prostitution ring placed five phone calls to David Vitter while he was a House member, including two while roll call votes were under way, according to telephone and congressional records.”
Other liberals are not so sanguine. “Democrats have been really out of it,” reads a post at Prairie Weahter. “ACORN is being painted as the moral equivalent of Bernard Madoff or worse — moral equivalent of Abu Ghraib, according to a Washington Times columnist. So far, I’d say the right has won this one.”
So does the editorial board of The Los Angeles Times:
Given all the scrutiny, one would have expected ACORN to be doing everything in its power to make sure its activities were squeaky clean. Yet since the initial video was released last week showing ACORN workers in Baltimore who appeared to be aiding and abetting criminal activity, activist filmmaker James O’Keefe has released two more showing similar behavior at ACORN offices in Washington and Brooklyn. The response from ACORN? Fire the workers involved and blame Fox News.
“We are the boogeyman for the right-wing and its echo chambers,” reads a self-serving statement released Saturday by ACORN’s chief organizer, Bertha Lewis. She claimed the videos were “doctored” and threatened legal action against Fox. What she didn’t do is apologize for the appalling and possibly illegal behavior of ACORN employees, acknowledge that the organization has serious internal problems and vow to correct them, or do what she should have done as soon as the scandal was revealed: resign.
O’Keefe’s hidden-camera methods are distasteful, and the extent to which his videos were edited is unknown. Their content is nonetheless devastating to ACORN — so much so that, on Monday, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to withhold federal housing funds from the group. That’s a shame because ACORN does worthwhile work in poor communities, helping people avoid foreclosure, giving them tax help and, yes, registering them to vote. If ACORN is to survive and retain a shred of credibility, it needs to stop deflecting blame and clean house.
Less surprisingly, so does The Wall Street Journal, which looks to find more villains than just those clueless Acorn workers in Baltimore:
Yesterday the House voted 345-75 to ban all federal funding for the scandal-plagued advocacy group Acorn. Coming on the heels of the Census Bureau’s dissociation with Acorn last week and the Senate’s Monday vote denying it housing funds, this is a welcome decision.
But the fact that there were 75 “no” votes is shocking, even for this Congress. Along with far-left backbenchers, they included Charles Rangel, Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, and Henry Waxman, who heads the Energy and Commerce Committee. Both are key leaders in the ObamaCare effort.
One of Acorn’s leading Congressional enablers has been Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts. Last year Mr. Frank appeared in a promotional video for “Acorn’s Grassroots Democracy Campaign,” and this year he led the effort to repeal a year-old legal provision barring groups from receiving housing subsidies while under indictment for voter fraud. This he called “a violation of the basic principles of due process.” Mr. Frank was absent yesterday when the House voted to defund Acorn, although he had been on the House floor for another vote just half an hour earlier.
The House vote came a day after the release of the latest video by freelance investigators James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, who crisscrossed the country posing as a pimp and prostitute. Employees in at least five different Acorn offices offered them help in setting up a child-prostitution business. If that isn’t enough to persuade 75 Democrats to stop supporting Acorn with taxpayer money, one can only conclude that the only way they’d defund the outfit is if it endorsed the war in Iraq or Afghanistan.
And while conservatives are no doubt pleased by those editorials, they are also using the controversy to score some points on the East Coast establishment press. Or, in the case of BigHollywood’s Greg Gutfeld, just having a bit of fun gloating:
So when two scrappy DC journalists bring down a President, it’s turned into “All the President’s Men,” winning accolades and Oscars. When an unemployed single mother of three takes the fight to an energy giant, it becomes a blockbuster vehicle for Julia Robert’s cleavage. And when a former Vice President exposes man’s inhumanity toward Mother Earth – “An Inconvenient Truth” crowns him the most majestic whistle blower ever.
But when two amateur journalists (in their early twenties, poorly dressed as sex workers, with under two grand in their budget) casually take down a sleazy behomoth that leeches off American taxpayers, you’d think Hollywood and the media would be all over this. I mean, what Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe did to Acorn – leading to the House approving to cut off all their funding – is the whistle blowing film to end ALL whistle blowing films. These two kids did what Michael Moore could never come close to accomplishing: uncovering lurid incompetence, affecting policy, and saving Americans millions of dollars.
Whether big-time media outlets will care much about the criticisms of right-leaning bloggers remains to be seen — after all, The Times and most other papers would never allow reporters to misrepresent themselves in the way O’Keefe and Giles did. Yet one suspects that one jab in particular hits the MSM where it hurts:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| The Audacity of Hos | ||||
| www.thedailyshow.com | ||||
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Yep, the Big Boys are scooped by a couple of novices and then ridiculed by a fake journalist — Mark Bowden, your day of reckoning may be closer than you think …
HOUSE VOTES TO DEFUND ACORN
Sep 17th

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Andrew Breitbart’s crew has the BREAKING and continuing updated coverage at BigGoverment.com and Drudge has it as top story as of 2:51 pm on Thursday Sept 17th. Nancy Polosi is claiming “There Will Be Blood” for this resolution. Vote: 345 to 75. Complete results here.
Half Hollow Hills School District and President Obama’s Address to Students
Sep 7th
Posted by Michael in Barrack Obama

President Obama’s Address to Students
Posted 09/04/2009 12:56PM
September 4, 2009
We are looking forward to the first day of school, Tuesday, September 8th, with great anticipation.
President Barack Obama has asked to address the nation’s school children at 12 Noon on Tuesday. While we believe that President Obama’s request to speak directly to children truly is an historic event, we will not be showing it live in school. We feel that this is an event best shared in a family setting. If you wish to view the speech, you may do so by visiting the website: www.whitehouse.gov/live/ or viewing it on C-SPAN Cable Television Channel 77.
In addition, C-SPAN and/or www.whitehouse.gov/mediaresources/ will provide archived and on-demand viewing options. As a possible resource for discussion with your children, we are providing you with the materials that each school received. Please go to this link for these resources:
http://www.ed.gov/index.jhtml
Goal setting is an important aspect of planning and preparation. We are certain that, at the beginning of the school year, you will be talking with your children about their personal goals. President Obama’s speech provides an opportune moment to address academic goals, family goals and community goals, and we encourage you to use it as a springboard for family discussions. The speeches and documents of famous historical figures are often used to develop important conceptual understandings, and teachers may choose to use the President’s address in the context of their teaching at some time in the future.
Thank you for your continuing support.
Sincerely,
Sheldon Karnilow, Ed.D.
Superintendent of Schools
Poll: Republicans make gains, but still trail Democrats
Sep 6th
Posted by Michael in Conservative Advocacy
The article below is from CNN, not a friend to conservatives by a long shot. For CNN to admit gains by the GOP, the ‘conservative movement of 2009′ is working, and gaining momentum. Part of this success is the disillusionment of the left. They have demonized everything on the right in order to shut us down. They just don’t get it. This is not so much a battle of left versus right, but a battle for the mortal soul of America. Although it is being billed as a republican/conservative/libertarian movement, in reality it is an ‘average citizen’ versus the liberal elite politician class, and all of their benefactors who feed off of hard working Americans type of battle. Document as much of the revolution as you can. When the dust settles, we will have an accurate record assembled from you, the foot soldier of this fight, the American Patriot. The CNN article follows below.
Michael (Admin) @ townhallmob.com
By Paul Steinhauser
CNN Deputy Political Director
WASHINGTON (CNN) — Despite the drop in President Obama’s approval ratings, Republican policies are still not as popular as Democratic policies, according to a new national poll.
Fifty-two percent of people in CNN poll believe Barack Obama’s policies will move country in right direction.
A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday morning indicates the GOP has gained some ground in polls in recent months, but Democrats still hold the advantage on key issues such as the economy and health care.
Fifty-two percent of people questioned say the president’s policies will move the country in the right direction. An equal percentage feel the same way about the policies of the Democrats in Congress.
What do Americans think of Republican policies? Forty-three percent say the GOP’s policies will move the country in the right direction. Nearly half of those polled said congressional Republicans would move the country in the wrong direction.
But the percentage of people who think Obama will move the country in the right direction has dropped 11 points since May, while congressional Democrats have seen a 5 point dip. Congressional Republicans have seen a 4 point rise over the same period.
Polls in recent weeks have shown Obama’s approval rating in the mid-to-low 50s — a significant drop from early summer, when most polls had his rating at 60 percent or higher.
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“Barack Obama’s drop in the polls has not made the Republican Party more popular than the Democrats,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. Still, he adds, “The GOP may be in a more competitive position — a comparison with poll results from May suggests that the gap between the parties has been closing.”
The survey suggests that, by 13 points, Americans think the Democrats rather than the Republicans would do a better job handling the economy and Medicare. The Democrats have a 9 point advantage on health care and an 8 point edge on Afghanistan. The two parties are tied on the question of how they’d handle taxes and the federal budget deficit. The GOP holds a clear advantage on just one issue — terrorism.
According to the poll, six in 10 say that the GOP has not done enough to cooperate with Obama. A bare majority says the president has done enough to cooperate with Republicans, a significant drop the April result for the same question.
“Two-thirds of all Americans are angry at the way the government in Washington is working, and the Democrats get the brunt of that anger,” adds Holland. “But the amount of anger has not quite reached the level that polls found in 1994, when voters turned the Democrats out of power in Congress and elected a GOP majority for the first time since the 1950s.”
The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll was conducted August 28-31, with 1,010 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey’s sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points for the overall survey, and plus or minus 4.5 percentage points for the breakdowns by party.
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Obama ‘green jobs’ adviser quits amid controversy
Sep 6th
Posted by Michael in Barrack Obama

By WILL LESTER
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Barack Obama’s adviser Van Jones has resigned amid controversy over past inflammatory statements, the White House said early Sunday.
Jones, an administration official specializing in environmentally friendly “green jobs” with the White House Council on Environmental Quality was linked to efforts suggesting a government role in the 2001 terror attacks and to derogatory comments about Republicans.
The resignation comes asObama is working to regain his footing in the contentious health care debate.
Jones issued an apology on Thursday for his past statements. When asked the next day whether Obama still had confidence in him, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said only that Jones “continues to work in the administration.”
The matter surfaced after news reports of a derogatory comment Jones made in the past about Republicans, and separately, of Jones’ name appearing on a petition connected to the events surrounding the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. That 2004 petition had asked for congressional hearings and other investigations into whether high-level government officials had allowed the attacks to occur.
“On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me,” Jones said in his resignation statement. “They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide.”
Jones said he has been “inundated with calls from across the political spectrum urging me to stay and fight.”
But he said he cannot in good conscience ask his colleagues to spend time and energy defending or explaining his past.
Jones flatly said in an earlier statement that he did not agree with the petition’s stand on the 9/11 attacks and that “it certainly does not reflect my views, now or ever.”
As for his other comments he made before joining Obama’s team, Jones said, “If I have offended anyone with statements I made in the past, I apologize.”
Despite his apologies, Republicans demanded Jones quit.
Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana said in a statement, “His extremist views and coarse rhetoric have no place in this administration or the public debate.”Missouri Sen. Christopher Bonds said Congress should investigate Jones’s fitness the job.
Fox News Channel host Glenn Beck repeatedly denounced Jones after a group the adviser co-founded, ColorofChange.org, led an advertising boycott against Beck’s show to protest his claim that Obama is a racist.
James Rucker, the organization’s executive director, has said Jones had nothing to do with ColorofChange.org now and didn’t even know about the campaign before it started.
Jones, well-known in the environmental movement, was a civil-rights activist in California before shifting his attention to environmental and energy issues. He is known for laying out a broad vision of a green economy.
Nancy Sutley chair of the council, said in a statement released early Sunday that she accepts Jones resignation and thanked him for his service.
“Over the last six months, he had been a strong voice for creating jobs that improve energy efficiency and utilize renewable resources,” she said. “We appreciate his hard work and wish him the best moving forward.”
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Associated Press writer Philip Elliott contributed to this report.
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