The Empire State has a long list of sad-sack governors, ranging from the current one, the previous one, the one before that (who served three too many terms, and Nelson Rockefeller, who jacked up spending and passed draconian drug laws before eventually expiring in the arms of a woman not his wife (who was unironically named Happy). Kristin Davis, who ran the escort service that provided former Gov. Eliot Spitzer with call girls and served time (while Spitzer remained free to purchase all the black socks he wanted), is running for governor on what some have called a “pot and pussy platform.” She wants to legalize marijuana and prostitution and collect tax revenue from them; she wants to open casinos in the state’s great vacation areas; she wants to legalize gay marriage and address a legal system that nets the poor and unconnected and leaves the big fish to swim free. Besides running prostitutes, what qualifications does she possess for the top job in Albany (as if that isn’t enough)? She was valedictorian of her high school and worked at a hedge fund, which pretty much makes her more qualified than Andrew Cuomo and whoever the Republican candidate is. But judge for yourself in this, the best campaign video so far this year (in a non-Basil Marceaux category ). Note: No Reason.tv T-shirts were harmed in the filming of this video! And that product placement was news to me when I saw it.

More here:
Big Government

CLICK TO ENLARGE 16 seconds into the video below, Marxist “Community Organizer” Carlos Garcia of the Marxist community organization “Puente” openly talks about people planning to get arrested while protesting in Arizona. Does this sort of thing ever happen at a Tea Party? I can’t think of one Tea Party protest, anywhere, that has involved the premeditated tactic of breaking the law and getting arrested. Yet it is the Tea Parties that are a smeared by socialists as a violent threat to national security? And make no mistake, this is an operation of America’s Progressive socialist Left. From Counterpunch Magazine: Puente has made use of volunteers from across the US, utilizing national support to help with local organizing, and initiating direct action with the support of out of town allies like the Ruckus Society, Catalyst Project, and various chapters of Students for a democratic Society (SDS) . They have issued calls to action including a Human Rights Summer (modeled after the civil rights movements’ Freedom Summer) and “30 Days for Human Rights,” a month of actions culminating today, the day SB 1070 will become law. Just after midnight, as the law took effect, the first protest of the day began, as nearly 80 people blocked the intersection at the entrance to the town of Guadelupe, a small (one square mile) Native American and Hispanic community just outside of Phoenix. Ever heard of Tea Partiers blocking intersections??? No you haven’t, because premeditated breaking of the law with the goal of getting arrested is strictly the purview of the Progressive socialist Party. Let’s condemn these tactics, and call for the Progressive democratic Party to repudiate and expel these dangerous radical elements from their ranks. Previous examples of premeditated law breaking by the Progressive socialist movement include: America’s Progressive-Anarchist Tea Party Non-Violent Rioting In Toronto: A Brief Round-Up The Progressive Jihad Against Israel Is President Obama Using Executive Powers To Organize Angry Anti-Capitalist Protests On The Streets Of America? NPA-SEIU Terrorizes Child, Breaks Laws – What Did President Obama Know And When Did He Know It? President Obama Deeply Connected To Organizers Of Recent Angry Street Mob Actions

Read the original:
Big Government

Chris Matthews strayed from the socialist talking points today. But don’t worry, it only happened for a little while. Two hours, in fact, before he was back to his old self, lashing out irrationally at conservatives. We’re not sure where Matthews’ original bout of intellectual honesty came from, but we’re pretty sure that some sort of JournoListy Intervention occurred to get him back on message. For those of you who don’t know (and according to the latest ratings, that’s most of you), Matthews does a 5pm “Hardball” on MSNBC that repeats at 7pm. Today, during the 5pm hour, Matthews had as his guests hardcore leftists Joan Walsh of Salon.com and former Governor Howard Dean. The issue at hand was Shirley Sherrod’s promise to sue Andrew Breitbart. Well, that wasn’t the real issue at hand. The idea was to beat holy hell out of Breitbart, but things didn’t exactly go according to the JournoListy Playbook. Believe it or not, Matthews defended Breitbart . In the early part of the 5pm segment with Walsh and Dean, there appears to be some confusion over whether or not Matthews was aware of the fact that Breitbart posted two excerpts of Sherrod’s speech as opposed to the whole 35-plus minutes. But later in the segment — and this is important — after this discrepancy is cleared up and the full excerpt in question has been aired for Matthews and the “Hardball” audience (this, according to Newsbusters ), a fully informed Matthews still defends Breitbart making the crucial and oft-ignored point that… Well, there you go. Quoting Ms. Sherrod “I opened my eyes. I realized it wasn’t about black and white. It was, but it was about other things, about poverty.” So, Joan, that part, that part in there about redemptive revelation was actually in the initial tape. Watch this part of the exchange below, and remember that this occurs after Matthews has seen the full excerpt in question. Whatever confusion there might have been earlier, is completely cleared up by this time: —– Well, obviously this couldn’t have sat well with the left-wing Journolistas who are now in full Destroy Breitbart mode and therefore in no mood for independent thinkers not fully on board with today’s talking points. So rather than accept the fact that a fully informed Matthews was still intellectually honest enough to make the point that the rest of the MSM is willfully ignoring — that Ms. Sherrod’s redemptive revelation was not cut from the excerpted video — something inexplicable happened between the 5pm and 7pm broadcast, and it’s not crazy to speculate that this something was probably a whole lot of angry phone calls, a flood of scathing emails, and a producer meeting or two that included any and all variations of the word apostate. An international story that’s grabbed thousands of headlines over the last week, and Matthews did a 180… between shows? Someone got to him. The MSNBC Thought Police? The JournoList Thought Police? (Did I just repeat myself?) What else could it have been? Something happened. Something so effectively transforming that it spun Matthews completely around enough that sometime before the 7pm “Hardball” rerun was set to air, he magically decided he wanted a redo. And so for what might have been the first time in the show’s history, Matthews re-taped an entirely new program for the 7pm hour — a program that would allow him to make up for his short but near fatal bout of intellectual honesty and put him safely back in line and on the record with his left-wing pals. See for yourself… Remember, the video above represents Matthews’ 5pm opinion of the Sherrod excerpt Breitbart posted. The video below represents Matthews’ 7pm opinion of that very same excerpt: —– What a difference a couple of hours makes! And oh, yes, Joan Walsh was much, much happier with this Chris Matthews. And so was Mediaite . I’m sure a big teddy bear bouquet from Media Matters is already on the way. As you can see from the 7pm clip, Governor Dean wasn’t able to return for the magic redo, so another hardcore left-winger, Politico “reporter” Ken Vogel, was brought in to complete the left-wing echo chamber. My favorite part of Vogel’s reportering analysis is his having to finally face the unhappy fact that Ms. Sherrod’s redemptive moment was indeed included in the Breitbart excerpt. Grief-stricken that this fact is now out there for the world to see, Mr. Vogel enters the first stage of grief — denial — and writes this inconvenient fact off as a mistake, as though Breitbart would’ve removed the moment of redemption if only he had seen it . Well, the one person who removed that moment of redemption was Vogel himself when he declined to mention its existence in this Politico piece (co-authored with Keach Hagey) from the 22nd: Breitbart posted a video misleadingly edited to make it appear that a black Agriculture Department employee named Shirley Sherrod was boasting of discriminating against a white farmer. Big Government’s Mike Flynn addressed this wildly incorrect statement later that very same day: At the very end of one of the video excerpt’s, Ms. Sherrod begins to explain how she later realized her initial discrimination of the white farmer was wrong. In Andrew’s article about the speech he noted Eventually, her basic humanity informs that this white man is poor and needs help. If we were trying to show that Ms. Sherrod was “boasting” of discrimination and were prone to editing the tape as evidence, wouldn’t we have cut that part out? And yet this “journalist” has yet to correct the record. Or should I call him a “ JournoListo “?

Read more:
Big Government

Analysis from Ann Althouse today.  Read the whole thing : Don’t we constantly extract quotes and clips from larger contexts? I do blog posts by that method all the time. I find the juiciest line and quote it often deliberately out of context or with intent to misdirect for humorous or shocking effect. It’s the reader’s responsibility to figure out what to do with it. I’m not ashamed to operate that way. For one thing, I give links, so you have a path to the larger context. And, more important, by depriving you of a pat, self-contained package, I’m forcing you to read critically and keep going. There’s always more to the story. When we purport to put something “in context,” it’s the whole context, We’re choosing the frame of information that serves our interests, interests that may include but are rarely limited to the pure understanding of the truth. Traditional newspapers may have led their readers to think that they’d processed all the information and digested it into a simple-to-read article, and they often abused their readers’ trust. The web doesn’t work like that. The web activates its readers, and I think that’s for the good… …Breitbart identifies Sherrod as USDA Georgia Director of Rural Development, speaking a the NAACP Freedom Fund dinner in Georgia, giving a “meandering speech to what appears to be an all-black audience.” He misstates (and later corrects) that she’s talking about how she treats white people today, in her current job. That’s an atrocious, blatant error, which, as we all found out, is easily refuted by watching the video of the full speech. (I should say, more accurately, the speech minus the gap that “an NAACP spokesman” said occurred “when the tape was switched in the recording.” Really? They use tapes to record? Tapes that are inadequate to hold a speech of less than an hour? My pocket digital cameras have better video capacity that than. I’m skeptical.)… …We learned much more about Shirley Sherrod, but we don’t know everything. The context frame was widened, to her full speech, her life story as she chose to tell it. But there are gaps even in that (even aside from the tape-switch gap). I want to know more, and I don’t think we know the whole story about why she was fired. The official story is pretty embarrassing for the administration, and I don’t quite believe it. They jumped because of the Breitbart post? What are they hiding? I suspect that they don’t want us delving into the inner workings of the USDA, and they don’t want us listening to all the various things Shirley Sherrod has said and will say. Why wasn’t she on any of the Sunday talk shows? Full article here .

See the original post:
Big Government

AFP July 22: Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) faces questions from the news media at the U.S. Capitol. WASHINGTON – A House investigative panel on Thursday announced multiple ethics charges against Rep. Charles Rangel, the powerful New York Democrat who has been fending off accusations related to his business dealings and fund-raising, among other issues. The case will go to trial before a separate ethics committee, and Rangel said Thursday he looks forward to the opportunity to explain himself to his constituents after two years of allegations. Rangel was chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee until he stepped down in March following criticism from the House ethics committee in a separate case. The announcement Thursday did not specify which alleged violations would be considered during this trial. Sources familiar with the allegations, who were not authorized to discuss them publicly, told the Associated Press the charges against the 40-year Democrat were related to: –Rangel’s use of official stationery to raise money for the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at City College of New York. –His use of four rent-subsidized apartment units in New York City. The city’s rent stabilization program is supposed to apply to one’s primary residence. One had been used as a campaign office, raising a separate question of whether the rent break was an improper gift. –Rangel’s failure to report income as required on his annual financial disclosure forms. The committee had investigated his failure to report income from the lawmaker’s rental unit at the Punta Cana Yacht Club in the Dominican Republic. Rangel also belatedly disclosed hundreds of thousands of dollars in investment assets. The timing of the announcement ensures that a public airing of Rangel’s ethical woes will stretch into the fall campaign, and Republicans are certain to make it an issue as they try to capture majority control of the House. Speaker Nancy Pelosi had once promised to “drain the swamp” of ethical misdeeds by lawmakers in arguing that Democrats should be in charge. Responding to the charges, Rangel said in a statement, “I was notified today, two years after I requested an investigation, that the Ethics Committee will refer the allegations reviewed by an investigations subcommittee to a subcommittee that will review the facts. I am pleased that, at long last, sunshine will pierce the cloud of serious allegations that have been raised against me in the media.” Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly said, “The action today would indicate that the independent, bipartisan ethics committee process is moving forward.” Rangel led the tax-writing Ways and Means panel until he stepped aside last March after the ethics committee criticized him in a separate case — finding that he should have known corporate money was paying for his trips to two Caribbean conferences. Officials said that in the current case, the committee and Rangel’s attorney tried unsuccessfully to negotiate a settlement. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private discussions. A settlement would have required Rangel to agree that he violated ethics rules. Rangel had hoped to regain his chairmanship, but the allegations make that virtually impossible this year. He announced a bid for a 21st term recently, days before his 80th birthday. One of his Sept. 14 primary opponents is Adam Clayton Powell IV, son of the former congressman whom Rangel defeated in 1970. While the case will generate unfavorable headlines for Rangel, it may have little effect in his congressional district, New York’s famed Harlem, where the congressman has been a political leader for decades and is known by older constituents as a Korean War hero. The Associated Press contributed to this report July 22: Rep. Charlie Rangel answers questions from the media on Capitol Hill in Washington. Related Video Rep. Rangel Charged With Multiple Ethics Violations Democrat charged with ethics violations

Continued here:
FOXNews.com

More rough tactics were on display last night in Washington DC as a hotheaded campaign workerfor the Alexi Giannoulias campaign for Senator of Illinois confronted a man with a video camera at a fundraising event. The event took place on the rooftop of an apartment building in Washington DC which is a public space for residents of the building and their guests.  The unidentified camera man has stated that he was, in fact, the guest of a friend of his who lives in the building.  Even if one stipulates that the campaign had the right to the section of the roof that was set aside for the event, the way in which the situation was handled certainly calls into question the judgement and temperment of the people candidate Giannoulias surrounds himself with. As seen earlier this week in the outrageous response by Rep. Bob Etheridge to two college students with cameras who asked him if he supported “The Obama Agenda”, socialists seem more and more reactionary when they see a person with a video camera near by.  In the words of a seasoned DC insider:  ”The heat is on.” In light of these recent events, the National Republican Senate Committee has issued guidelines to their candidates and their staffs in how best to handle these situations. As a general matter, so long as a videographer is on public property and is not actively disrupting an event, he or she is within his or her rights to continue filming. While other individuals, including campaign staffers, are free to engage in polite conversation with a videographer, they are not free to beeither verbally abusive to or make physical contact with a videographer. Doing so potentially exposesboth the individuals engaged in such contact and the campaign to liability for assault and battery Memo on Videographers – Will the democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee issue similar guidelines? As Mike Flynn stated on Monday, the Long Hot Summer has begun and candidates and incumbents will be scrutinized closer than ever by the watchful eye of citizen journalists.  It is curious that the party that invented “Video Tracking” and gave us the “Macaca Moment” is now expressing sanctimonious outrage, hostility and aggression toward seemingly innocuous citizens with video cameras.

Read this article:
Big Government

The next time someone asks you to explain “the politics of personal destruction,” use this example: Video surfaces of a United States Congressman attacking a college student, grabbing him by the wrist, neck, and body, and assaulting another student’s camera.  The U.S. Representative refuses to immediately release the first student despite the student’s repeated pleas.  You are an official of that Congressman’s political party.  How do you respond?  You attack the publisher of the website who released the video.  Behold , from Politico’s Ben Smith: A national democratic Party official e-mailed around a set of talking points about an hour ago, under the subject heading, “Etheridge Gotcha Video Background.” socialists are seeking to raise questions about the video, which first appeared on Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government , because of what’s widely viewed as the media’s mishandling of the ACORN story, which emerged without context from edited videos. In particular, party officials say the video was likely taken by a tracker for the Republican Party, which would explain the effort taken to conceal his identity. From the talking points: Push hard w/ blogs the lack of credibility inherent to anything Breitbart does/posts, given its role in the debunked ACORN videos: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/opinion/21pubed.html?src=twrhttp://mediamatters.org/research/201006010001 http://gawker.com/5508190/okeefe-and-breitbart-acorn-videos-severely-edited Considering Congressman Etheridge has already apologized and said there was no excuse for his behavior, it’s seems like this may have been a battle the socialists should have sat out.  Too late now.

View original post here:
Big Government

U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge (D-Lillington) released the following statement on the viral video which appeared on the internet today: “I have seen the video posted on several blogs. I deeply and profoundly regret my reaction and I apologize to all involved. Throughout my many years of service to the people of North Carolina, I have always tried to treat people from all viewpoints with respect. No matter how intrusive and partisan our politics can become, this does not justify a poor response. I have and I will always work to promote a civil public discourse.” Rep. Bob Etheridge (NC-02)

More here:
Big Government

Maybe it is my Catholic upbringing, but I’ve always been cursed with a bit too much empathy. It is often difficult to witness people bearing the full weight of the consequences of their decisions, even when it is richly deserved. (And, in the case of House socialists few have ever been more deserving of reaping everything they’ve sown.) We’re human, after all, and witnessing people on the cusp of realizing that they’ve lost everything can be difficult. Last week, socialist Congressman Bod Etheridge (D-NC2) attended a fundraiser headlined by Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He was asked by some students on the street whether he supported the “Obama Agenda.” He didn’t take it well. Expect more of this. A hard, progressive left captured the socialist majority in Congress and forced them to enact a fantasy grab-bag of legislation that is increasingly unpopular with the American public. We’re on the cusp of a deeper recession, millions of unemployed Americans have no prospect for work, taxes are about to spike higher and we’ve maxed out the national credit card. The socialists were given a chance to run government and they’ve only succeeded in running it into the ground. So, yeah, socialists who are up for reelection this November are a bit testy. Fortunately, Rep. Etheridge isn’t one of those gerry-mandered political welfare queens. According to the Cook Report, his district is an R+2 district.  He has a credible opponent. Check her out here . Let’s recap what we saw on this video. A sitting Congressman–a presumed living extension of James Madison and other founding fathers–was asked on a public street whether he supported the President’s agenda. His response was to hit away a video camera and assault a student. The age of Pericles this ain’t. It is going to be a long, hot summer. But, you’ve been given a target. Act accordingly.

Read more:
Big Government

From the cheap seats, it sure does look like the President of the United States is using the powers of the Executive to coordinate with Andy Stern to organize a series of protests entitled “Showdown In America.” Earlier, we posted about the links between Andy Stern’s SEIU and a group called National People’s Action (NPA) . NPA, together with SEIU and the AFL-CIO, is organizing a series of angry marches against Wall Street and capitalism. NPA is a very dangerous and radical group that isn’t shy about its radical philosophy. From their song book: Who’s on your hit list NPA? Who’s on your hit list for today? Take no prisoner, take no names. Kick ‘em in the ass when they play their games. A slumlord never seems to learn he brushes us off with no concern. Until we show up at his door and catch him with the neighborhood whore. He’s the middleman; he puts nothing back, dealing with HUD, taking kickbacks. Don’t think that we won’t spread the word, we’ll fry your ass, rest assured. NPA wrote the dreaded Community Reinvestment Act which community organizers like Barack Obama used to shake down banks. It turns out that President Obama is even closer to the group than the two degrees of separation represented by the most frequent White House visitor, and Obama administration Debt Commission advisor, Andy Stern. President Obama is very close with NPA board member, John McKnight. Mr. McKnight also sits on the board of the Gamaliel foundation where President Obama worked as a community organizer. Mr. McKnight also wrote President Obama’s letter of recommendation for Harvard Law School. In the video below, Mr. McKnight glowingly refers to President Obama as one of his students whom he helped discover. NPA, which is organizing angry mobs to protest against capitalism, is very tight with the Prez, and the Prez is very tight with them. The fix is in. Change is coming.

View original post here:
Big Government