Love My Country, Loathe My Government: new york times

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Thursday, May 14, 2020

May, 2020, Part 7, Political Class Insanity: More Free POress Failures, Arrogance in the Chicago Mayor's Office, and Bad Priorities In California

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

1) We have often pointed out that a strong, aggressive, fair, and unbiased free press is critical to defending our rights and freedoms and uncovering scandals and misdeeds by politicians and government officials. We have also often pointed out how the journalism field and news industry in this country have failed to uphold those lofty and important pillars of freedom.

News reporting and journalism in this country today is a disgrace, amoral, and totally biased to preconceived notions, wants and TV ratings. And the American public has grown more and more tired of journalists and news people being out of integrity for a long time now. According to Gallup, 58% of those surveyed now have very little or no trust in the journalism industry today. That pessimism level was only 28% back in the late 1970s and has trended steadily worse since then.

Nowhere has this failure of the press to be unbiased, fair, and aggressive been more pronounced than in the recent Tara Reade situation. Ms. Reade was a member of Senator Joe Biden’s staff long ago. She has recently accused him of sexual molestation and digitally penetrating her during an encounter many years ago.

When similar accusations were made when Brett Kavanaugh was being considered for the Supreme Court, news outlets, news papers, and news pundits jumped on the accusations immediately and basically concluded that Kavanaugh was guilty of nasty sexual acts without any real proof, facts, or credible evidence, all of which melted away after a very bitter and biased investigation by Congressional Democrats. But the fact remains that the journalism industry in this country jumped on the first inkling of sexual accusation and went hard after Kavanaugh.

But now Ms. Reade comes forth with actually more proof of evidence that Biden is guilty than the Kavanaugh accusers ever had, and the news media, in all forms, somehow choke on their word processing programs:

It took the New York Times and Washington Post almost three weeks to even acknowledge that the accusations were being made.
CNN took over three weeks to even acknowledge Ms. Reade’s existence on their website and coverage after that was weak and flaccid.
And worst of all, National Public Radio (NPR), a left leaning, liberal organization took almost a full month to acknowledge the Reade situation, a fact that NP management recently admitted.
NPR reporter Asma Khalid, was assigned the Reade story back in March.
Despite the accusations, Khalid did not speak to Reade initially, claiming that she needed to do some research.Her editor at NPR, Kelly McBride, admits that the research process could have been finished inside of one week.
Khalid took nearly three weeks to do the “research.”
Compare that to the Kavanaugh situation where Khalid issued a report ONE DAY after the Kavanaugh accusations broke, i.e. she didn't take three weeks of research and then another week to put the story together.
Not only did it take so long to actually put the Reade NPR story together, Khalid omitted an interview she did with one of Reade’s friends that could have substantiated the claims that Reade has made.

Again, freedom, liberty and democracy relies on a strong and unbiased news industry to process the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Unfortunately, the biases that exist today across all major news outlets not only distorts or ignores the truth, it undermines our freedoms since now nothing is real, nothing is the truth when all news reporting is done for personal, political, or business gain, truth be damned.

2) Let’s go back out to Chicago. The Mayor of Chicago is Lori Lightfoot. She has placed the city under some pretty stringent stay at home rules. But she acted like a typical “do as I say, not as I do” politician when a few weeks ago she had a beauty salon open up, which violated her own rules, to get a haircut. Her response after getting called out for the violation was that she needed to look good since she was in the public eye. Never mind that she violated her own rules and put other Chicago citizens in danger.

But her hypocrisy has continued since that bad optic beauty salon visit:

She recently wanted “defiant churches” that she will take action against them if they hold church services in violation of her edicts, the edicts she ignored.
She had previously warned churches against holding services via what she called “educational outreach.”
Now, she is getting more aggressive and threatening unspecified action if she continues to be ignored: “We’re going to be communicating over and over again over the course of this week. I understand that people are getting anxious. But defying common sense and public health guidance only puts their congregations at physical risk. We’re going to continue to have that discussion but, if necessary, we are going to take action to make sure there is compliance to the stay-at-home orders.”
Cristian Ionescu, the pastor at Elim Romanian, called his church’s first in-person service in two months an “extraordinary success” and claimed that his church took extreme measures to protect church participants.
He went on to say that political leaders should have worked with the churches in the city and state to protect the First Amendment and the congregants rather than dictate terms and conditions for gatherings: “They should cooperate with us, not dictate to us. I take offense that they think they care more about our people than us.”
Joe Wyrostek, pastor of Metro Praise International Church had the same view: “I just feel like we were put at the back of the bus. We were not in any of the discussions. We have to stand up for ourselves at some point. We’ve lost trust in what they’re doing. We have to peacefully resist and see where it goes.”

It is certainly easy to lose trust in elected officials when they violate their own rules to get their hair looking nice. The purpose and skill of a politician is leading and peacefully coming to a consensus that addresses any many issues and concerns as possible across all parties. Dictating what one should do and not do is not leadership, it is authoritarian.

3) One last piece of local political class insanity to finish up today. We have often pointed out how screwed up the state of California is, from huge unfunded budget liability holes to failing schools to crumbling roads to a dysfunctional housing market to an enormous homeless problem to higher and higher taxes.

Thus, given these critical issues. One would hope that local and state opticians were hard at work, focused on these issues that probably touch every single resident of the state and not in a good way.

But you hope would be crushed when you find out what one state politician’s priorities are:

Evan Low is a California state assemblyman.
In February, he introduced legislation that would make it illegal for retail stores with 500 or more employees to have separate boys and girls sections for clothing and toys in their stores.
Of course, such requirements would increase store merchandising costs which would either reduce the stores’ profits or much more likely result in higher prices for consumers and shoppers in those stores.
Higher prices for absolutely no reason.
The basis for this proposed law is that the 9 year old daughter of a member of Low’s staff told Low that she did not like it when boys and girls clothes and toys were separate sections.
As a result, the desires of a nine year old, California may soon require private stores to merchandise their stores according to the whims of a 9 year old.

So rather than work on the budget holes, the homeless problem or probably dozens of other, much more pressing and important issues, this politician is taking advice from a 9 year old on an issue that really is not an issue. I am sure that if you took a poll of Californians about what are the top 50 issues their families face, the separate retail merchandising of boys and girls products does not crack the top 100. And yet this politician is wasting taxpayer wealth and resources on this nonsense.

Nonsense in California, nonsense in newsrooms and nonsense in Chicago, no wonder things are screwed up when politicians and news people have such lousy priorities and moral standards.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Monday, May 27, 2019

May, 2019, Part 12, Political Class Insanity: Finally Fixing Welfare, Americans Are Pervasively Ignorant, and Liberals Destroying Cities

It is another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

Let’s get started:

1) Unfortunately, most of what we talk about in this blog is the ineptness, the greed, the stupidity and the ineffectiveness of the American political class. Thus, it is sometimes very refreshing when we get to talk about anything good that an American politician is doing.

Consider some recent actions from President Trump, simple actions that actually enforce existing laws and protect American taxpayers (two amazingly simple concepts!):

Trump is attempting to clean up our current welfare system by getting non-citizens, i.e. those types of people that do not contribute to the funding of the welfare system, off of the the welfare rolls.
He has instructed the Federal government to enforce a Clinton era law that requires sponsors of immigrants to pay back the government for welfare benefits that are received by the person that is being sponsored.
This process was established under the “Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996,” a piece of legislation that was sponsored by two Democratic Senators, Patrick Leahy and Patty Murray.
Up until this action, the law has largely been ignored, according to the reporting by the Daily Caller, which meant that the American taxpayer was stuck paying for unnecessary welfare benefits to non-citizen immigrants for over twenty years.
According to an administration official: “This executive action will dramatically curb ‘welfare tourism’ and protect U.S. benefits for U.S. families. It will also ensure that immigrant sponsors cannot continue the practice of bringing in large numbers of welfare-dependent immigrants: because they will be financially liable.”
Trump is also looking to enforce another existing law, one that was sponsored by Democrat Joe Biden back in 1996, the “Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996.”
This law requires Federal government agencies to consider the sponsor’s income when determining whether or not a non-citizen is eligible for welfare benefits.
Since this action would be bundling the sponsor’s and immigrant’s income together, some immigrants may no longer meet the eligibility criteria for American taxpayer funded welfare payments.

I include the fact that it was Democrats that originally sponsored these taxpayer friendly and common sense piece of legislation. I am sure that some Democrat will call out Trump for being racist and against immigrants while in fact he is just looking out for the welfare of taxpayer Americans, something that many Washington politicians never do.

2) Ilhan Omar is a freshman Congresswoman from Minnesota. She hates the Jewish people and the state of Israel, based on her many public rantings against both, she has made any number of stupid and inane comments about any number of different subjects since elected, she has disrespected those Americans who were killed and maimed by the 9-11 attacks, she thinks that America is to blame for the humanity catastrophe in Venezuela, and she has shown herself to be lacking in respecting the opinions of others in this country.

This last trait was recently demonstrated again: In a recent interview, she stated that “ignorance really is pervasive in many parts of, of this country. And as someone who was raised by educators, I really like to inform people about things that they might be ignorant to, willingly or unwillingly.” In other words, if you do not agree with her views, you are pervasively ignorant.

Rather than work towards solutions that make the most sense, that take into the account the feelings, expertise, and viewpoints of everyone, she assumes that those that have a different view than her is ignorant and needs to be taught “the right way” to think. Not quite the best way to win friends and influence people. But given her disdain for many things that are American, hopefully she will eventually just go away and take her hate for Israel, freedom of speech, and the 9-11 victims with her.

3) Many times we have recently written how states and cities that have been overwhelmingly operated by Democrats have been spiraling out of control and not in a good way. Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, have been beset by a plunge in living standards. Increasing homelessness, drug addiction, and crises of public urination, defecation, and drug use have turned once beautiful cities into cesspools of filth and disease.

But most of the source material for these posts has not been from the mainstream media outlets. They seem to have been ignoring the reality of these decaying cities, possibly not wanting to disparage their political liberal friends that have caused these problems.

But finally, a paragon of liberal news reporting, the New York Times, in a recent article by Farhad Manjoo, on May 22, 2019, was finally a breath of fresh air from a news establishment not usually conducive to reporting failures by liberal politicians:

Despite one of the longest economic recoveries ever, the politicians in California, despite being the home of Silicon Valley and Hollywood, two of the richest areas of the country, have turned the state of California into the “most poverty stricken state in the union.”
About 20% of the state’s population is living in poverty.
Out migration from the state has been surging since 2010 as people look to avoid the high taxes and growing poverty.
Mr. Manjoo, who is from California, points out that “Across my home state, traffic and transportation is a developing-world nightmare. Child care and education seem impossible for all but the wealthiest. The problems of affordable housing and homelessness have surpassed all superlatives — what was a crisis is now an emergency that feels like a dystopian showcase of American inequality.”
While one out of every 11,600 San Francisco residents is a BILLIONAIRE, and many, many people are millionaires, the city’s streets are filled with garbage, used drug syringes, and feces.
Anecdotes of homeless veterans eating out of billionaire trash cans, wealthy residents crowdfunding efforts to keep a homeless shelter out of their elite neighborhood, a teacher with cancer forced to pay the salary of the person substituting for her classes, etc. abound.
And Mr. Manjoo knows where the root causes of all these problems lies: “At every level of government, our representatives, nearly all of them Democrats, prove inadequate and unresponsive to the challenges at hand. Witness last week’s embarrassment, when California lawmakers used a sketchy parliamentary maneuver to knife Senate Bill 50, an ambitious effort to undo restrictive local zoning rules and increase the supply of housing. It was another chapter in a dismal saga of Nimbyist urban mismanagement that is crushing American cities. Not-in-my-backyardism is a bipartisan sentiment, but because the largest American cities are populated and run by Democrats — many in states under complete Democratic control — this sort of nakedly exclusionary urban restrictionism is a particular shame of the left.”

Now, Mr. Manjoo eventually does go off the rails by insisting that urban people have more rights than those that do not live in urban areas but that does not diminish the reality that he points out: long established political hacks, in this case Democratic hacks that have operated these cities for decades, have turned them into poverty stricken areas where the middle class has left, the rich refuse to help out those in need, and those in need continue to grow in terms of homelessness, drug addiction, and poverty.

Just another day of failure for the American political class: finally a recognition by a liberal media outlet that the liberal politicians in this country have failed miserably when they were in control and a freshman Congress person who thinks that the rest of us are just pervasively ignorant. At at least one small piece of good political class insanity: a President actually enforcing some common sense, taxpayer protecting laws. More insanity next month.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

Thursday, November 15, 2018

How The American Journalism Profession Is Destroying The First Amendment and Our Democracy, Part 2

One of the once great things about this country was the First Amendment and the freedom of press guaranteed by it. A free press helps offset the nefarious political ambitions and freedom encroachments of politicians by keeping their actions in the sunlight of visibility, disclosure, and scrutiny, i.e. it helps keeps politicians honest.

Unfortunately, we for the most part do not have an unbiased, free press anymore in this country but not in the way you think. Most people, when they think that the free press has been suppressed, consider many of the actions of Presidents like Obama, who was one of the worst Presidents when it came to undermining the free press guarantee of the First Amendment:

He went after and prosecuted more whistleblowers than every other President combined.
He spied on journalists who he thought was an enemy of his views and efforts without proper cause or warrants.
His administration fought tooth and nail, more than any other President, to block legitimate and legal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
His administration even tried to illegally charge a legitimate news gathering organization, the Associated Press, an outrageous sum of money for a FOIA request.

All of these acts undermined freedom of the press in the traditional way. But unfortunately, freedom of the press has been undermined over recent years not by politicians but by the press industry and journalists themselves. For the most part, and especially at the national level, news organizations have gone from reporting the facts, realities, and news in an unbiased way to shaping those facts, realities, and news in a very biased way.

When journalists lose their integrity and ethics, the bedrock of their industry and profession, they undermine the First Amendment as much as some shady politician who is trying to get by with shady and unethical behavior. How far have journalists fallen down the integrity scale in Americans’ minds? In a recent Gallup poll:

Only 20% of those polled said they had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in television news.
45% said they had very little or no confidence in television news.
Newspapers do not do much better with 23% saying they had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in newspapers while 40% saying they very little or no confidence in newspapers.
Ironically they both did better than Congress whose ratings were the most abysmal among all major American institutions.

Note: The first half of the discussion on this theme can be accessed at:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2018/11/how-american-journalism-profession-is.html

1) Let’s start off today’s discussion with a recent poll that was written up by Warner Todd Huston on November 14, 2018 for the Godfather Politics website:

The poll found that a whopping 72% of American blame the mainstream news media for many of the problems in this country since the media is “dividing Americans” and “spreading hate.”
The poll was done by the respected polling outfit, Zogby Analytics.
According to Zogby: “[respondents] felt the mainstream media spreads hate and misunderstanding, also felt that President Trump is responsible for the spread of hate and misunderstanding, but more voters overall, and in most sub-groups, blame the media slightly more!”
And: “Overall, 72 percent said “the mainstream media has played a major role in dividing Americans along racial, gender and political lines. This has led to a spread of hate and misunderstanding among some people.”
The overwhelming Republicans in the poll sample felt that the media was most to blame but even a majority of Democrats in the poll agreed that the mainstream media was most to blame.
President Trump also caught flak for contributing to spreading hate and dividing Americans but the mainstream media was the clear winner in this question.

Thus, the First Amendment, which envisioned a free press providing clear, fair, and balanced news reporting has been undermined by at least the perception of almost three out of every four Americans that instead of being fair and vital to our democracy, they are guilty of dividing us and spreading hate.

2) The mainstream media has had a mortal and dedicated hatred for Trump even before he was elected. They definitely lean liberal and no doubt most wanted Hillary elected as President. Since they did not get what they wanted, they have gone after Trump for just about every affront they could imagine to the concept of the “free press.”

But as we have pointed out so many times in this blog, these same members of the media stood aside and let Obama get away with so many lies and so many transgressions against the First Amendment, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and the rule of law. Two of those posts can be accessed below:

Shredding the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Rule of law: http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/10/part-2-obama-presidency-end-of-error.html

Lies: http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/10/part-1-obama-presidency-end-of-error.html

Which leads us to a fascinating article in the New York Times on December 30, 2016 by James Risen. Not only does the article provide a fascinating point of view on how the mainstream media is so biased but it was printed in the New York Times, one of the most biased, skewed, Trump hating journalistic endeavor out there:

The title of the article was, “If Donald Trump Targets Journalists, Thank Obama.”
Mr. Risen correctly points out that Obama and his administration went out and prosecuted nine government whistle blowers during its eight years, three times the number that all previous Presidents COMBINED had gone after.
Obama reached back to the Espionage Act, a leftover relic from the first world war 100 years ago, not to go after real spies, the original purpose of the law, but to get government employees who dared to talk to the press.
In addition, according to Mr. Risen, “Under Mr. Obama, the Justice Department and the F.B.I. have spied on reporters by monitoring their phone records, labeled one journalist an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal case for simply doing reporting and issued subpoenas to other reporters to try to force them to reveal their sources and testify in criminal cases.”
Mr. Risen himself got caught up in the Obama headhunting when Obama era officials tried to force him to reveal a confidential source.
According to Leonard Downie, a former executive editor at the Washington Post and now a journalism teacher at Arizona State University (i.e. this guy has some credibility as a journalism professional) in a 2013 report from the Committee to Protect Journalists, Obama’s pressure on journalists was “the most aggressive I’ve seen since the Nixon administration, when I was one of the editors involved in The Washington Post’s investigation of Watergate.”
According to Trevor Timm who is the executive director of the nonprofit Freedom of the Press Foundation: “Obama has laid all the groundwork Trump needs for an unprecedented crackdown on the press.”
And it gets worse: Dana Priest, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The Washington Post, stated: “Obama’s attorney general repeatedly allowed the F.B.I. to use intrusive measures against reporters more often than any time in recent memory. The moral obstacles have been cleared for Trump’s attorney general to go even further, to forget that it’s a free press that has distinguished us from other countries, and to try to silence dissent by silencing an institution whose job is to give voice to dissent.”
While historically finding and stopping leaks had been a low priority of previous Presidencies, that changed with Obama according to Mr. Risen: “The Obama administration quickly ratcheted up the pressure, and made combating leaks a top priority for federal law enforcement. Large-scale leaks, by Chelsea Manning and later by Edward J. Snowden, prompted the administration to adopt a zealous, prosecutorial approach toward all leaking.”
According to Lucy Dalglish, the dean at the journalism school at the University of Maryland, after meeting with Obama officials to discuss news reporting and government sources: “You got the impression from the tone of the government officials that they wanted to take a zero-tolerance approach to leaks.”
Ms. Dalglish has stated that if Trump is as bad as Obama when it comes to stifling the First Amendment it is because “Obama handed him a road map.”

And yet when Obama was abusing the journalism industry and profession, those in high, visible, and public positions within the mainstream media gave Obama a pass. When Trump does the same thing, even at a fraction of the intensity and hate that Obama did the same thing, these same “journalists” go ballistic. This is what I call hypocrisy and just another reason why they or any hypocrite, cannot be trusted to have a unbiased and objective reporting of the news.

The journalists in this country have been entrusted with a very important component of our democracy and sadly, they flub that responsibility just about every day of their working lives.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Wednesday, September 19, 2018

September, 2018, Part 8, Political Class Insanity: A Wasteful Jobs Program, Fake News From the New York Times, CNN In Free Fall and Plastic Straw Nonsense

Let’s get started:

1) More times than I would care to mention we have reviewed hundreds of times when politicians and the government functions they oversee have wasted taxpayer dollars on stupid projects or on an inefficient and ineffective implementation of a project or both. Today we have another effort that was both expensive and stupid:

An inspector general report recently reported that a Federal jobs program spent $90 million to place women in jobs.
Which on the surface this does not seem too stupid until you realize that the $90 million placed a grand total of 55 women in jobs, about $1.6 million per successful job placement.
But it gets worse since these were not even American women, they were Afghan women.
According to the inspector general: “The United States Agency for International Development program promised to ’empower 75,000 women’ but so far has shown little progress. It is unclear whether the agency can deliver the opportunities it promised the women of Afghanistan.”
In 2017, the multi-year program was supposed to help 420 women find new or better work, enroll 1,968 in an internship program and have 900 graduate.
And despite these rosy predictions only 55 women in a foreign country at $1.6 million per person got a job. This is probably the worst wasting of taxpayer money that we have seen in quite a while.

2) Not only are American politicians not often in integrity, the journalism ethics in this country are usually not much better and thus, the birth of the “fake news” phrase. The New York Time recently proved this point:

A recent headline and associated first paragraph in the Times strongly implied that Trump’s U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley had wasted taxpayer money on $52,701 in her official, government residence.
If true, this would be a tremendous waste of money and an embarrassment to Haley and her boss, Donald Trump.
And it turned out that it was true, i.e. the curtains actually did cost $52,701, but were ordered during the Obama administration, Haley and Trump had nothing to do with it.
But the way the article was written it gave the distinct, fake news impression that the Trump administration was wasting taxpayer money on very, very expensive curtains.
Somewhere towards the end of the article they clarified that it was an Obama era expense but by that time other left leaning news organizations had picked up only the lead paragraph and went nuts trying to prove how wasteful the Trump administration is.
But the Times got caught on this purposefully misleading “news reporting” and had to eat crow and issue the following retraction and embarrassing correction: “An earlier version of this article and headline created an unfair impression about who was responsible for the purchase in question. While Nikki R. Haley is the current ambassador to the United Nations, the decision on leasing the ambassador’s residence and purchasing the curtains was made during the Obama administration, according to current and former officials. The article should not have focused on Ms. Haley, nor should a picture of her have been used. The article and headline have now been edited to reflect those concerns, and the picture has been removed.”

No surprise that the American public holds both the mainstream news media and those they report on in such low regard.

3) But fake news is not limited to just print journalism. It is no secret that CNN was all in trying to get Hillary Clinton elected President despite claiming that it was an unbiased news source. In fact, it was nicknamed the Clinton News Network for its obvious disdain for Trump and love for Clinton.

Fortunately, many Americans have figured out the CNN is nothing more than a shill for Clinton, the Democrats and liberals in this country:

According to the latest analysis from AdWeek, CNN has lost an amazing 41% market share in daytime ratings in the past year.
In addition, it has lost an amazing 36% of its prime time market share.
According to AdWeek: “CNN ranked No. 6 across basic cable in total prime time viewers, and No. 5 in total day this past week. Despite the top 10 finishes, the network was -36 percent in prime time viewers, and -41 percent in total day viewers vs. the same week last year.”
They are now a very distance third in cable news,way behind MSNBC and Fox News.

Pretty sad when you think you are a major news source but sometimes you may actually have fewer viewers than “Cupcake Wars” on the Food Channel.

4) One last piece of insanity for this month. We have previously reported on how many liberal cities and even states, i.e. California, have banned or are planning to ban plastic straws from life. In fact, in some places like California you can go to jail for giving someone a plastic straw in a restaurant if they did not ask for one.

Which is pretty silly since in one major California town that is on the straw bandwagon, San Francisco, it is not illegal to defecate, urinate or shoot up drugs in the city streets but it is illegal to hand out a plastic straw in certain situations. To review our past discussion this issue enter “plastic straw” in the search box above.

But consider how stupid this effort is and how much of a waste it is for state and local politicians to fret about such nonsense:

We have previously discussed the reality that the U.S. does not even rate in the top ten plastic polluters in the world.
Now, a recent article in Reason magazine stated that 8 million metric tons of plastic make its way into the oceans of the world every year.
But the U.S. is responsible for only 1% of that waste.
Which means that California is responsible for only a fraction of 1% of the plastic waste going into the oceans every year.
Which means that plastic straws in California are only a fraction of the fraction of the 1% of the plastic waste going into the oceans every year.
Which means that plastic straws in San Francisco is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of 1% of the plastic waste going into the oceans every year.
Which ultimately means that if San Francisco eliminated the use of plastic straws in the city it would make absolutely no difference to the oceans.

Given this reality, would it not be better for San Francisco politicians, and California politicians, focus their energy and attention on their failing schools, their crumbling infrastructure, their street defecation and urination problems, their homeless problems, and a whole lot of other real problems rather than working on a problem that even if successfully solved would have no impact on their citizens or the world? Political insanity at its apex.

That will do it for this month’s political class insanity, more sure to follow next month.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Sunday, April 22, 2018

April, 2018, Part 3,Political Class Insanity: The Failure Of Government In Education and the Failure Of The New York Times To Be Unbiased

Let's get started:

1) We have often talked about one of the biggest recent failings of the Federal government and Washington political class, the failure that is known as Common Core. Common Core was an attempt by Washington to impose a standardized educational system across the entire country with the objective of improving the education of our kids in this country. It is no secret that we severely under educate our kids despite spending untold amounts of money to attain such a failure.

Places that have implemented many of the components of the Common Core curriculum have seen education results get worse, not better. Massachusetts, which once had the best track record in educating kids relative to the other 49 states, has fallen to seventh best after implementing Common Core tenets. The state of Maryland saw its educational attainment levels DROP after implementing Common Core principles:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/10/will-center-hold-october-2014-part-2.html

So it is refreshing when a Washington bureaucrat actually agrees, finally, that Common Core has failed miserably:

The Heritage Foundation's Daily Signal website recently ran an article that was an interview with Betsy DeVos, the current Secretary of Education,.
DeVos recently spoke exclusively to The Daily Signal’s Rob Bluey after her Department of Education released what’s known as the “nation’s report card” which again showed the failure of the Federal Government to improve education in this country.
DeVos talked about how the the National Assessment of Educational Progress report showed that that there had been only minimal gains in education effectiveness.
She said that if anything, our education processes are worse than than they were 35 years ago when Reagan first focused on our educational deficiencies.
Despite Common Core and spending probably trillions of dollars on education, the latest results show that only 37% of our fourth graders and only 36% of eighth graders are proficient in reading.
Only 40% of fourth graders and 34% of eighth graders are proficient in math.
According to DeVos: “We have invested billions and billions and billions of dollars to try to focus on the lowest-performing schools, and the lowest-income students. And yet the results for those students continue to, in most cases, decline.”

Pretty depressing stuff. Trillions of Federal dollars spent with nothing in return. But DeVos did show a positive sign, pointing to the state of Florida and what could happen when Washington bureaucrats and politicians get out of the education business and let the more local forms of government decide how to educate their local kids:

Twenty years ago, the state of Florida was one of the worst, if not the worst state, in educating its kids.
It then set about putting in place local educational reforms that it felt served its kids better.
Today, Florida kids have the fourth best state ratings when it comes to fourth grade math and reading and fifth best state ratings when it comes to eighth grade reading and eighth best state ratings when it comes to eighth grade math.

It can be done, it just cannot be done by the overarching and overreaching Federal Government. Or as DeVos says: “The last thing we want to see is another mandate from the federal level.”

Well said, and probably true in many other areas, not just education.

2) It is not just the American political class that is broken, our freedom of the press is threatened by a news and journalism industry in this country that for the most part has lost any sense of impartiality. News outlets now have well deserved reputations for favoring one side of the political spectrum vs. others. Fox News favors the right side, just about every other national news outlet favors the left side, e.g. CNN, MSNBC, New York Times, Washington Post, etc.

A quick bias example was pointed out in a recent blog post we did. The New York Times pretended that they had done a comprehensive analysis which showed that Barack Obama had lied less than twenty times during his eight years as President while Donald Trump had lied over 800 times in his first year in office.

We easily showed this was total garbage, easily doing a quick Internet search which came up with a single YouTube video that showed Obama himself lying three dozen times on a single Obama Care issue. We then found a second video that showed Obama himself lying another three dozen times about another facet of Obama Care. Thus, within two minutes our “research” showed that Obama had lied at least six dozen times on only two different topics while the “extensive” New York Times research turned up only a handful of lies:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2017/12/december-2017-part-5-political-class.html

Now, according to sa recent NewsMax article, we have another blatant bias of the New York Times:

On a regular basis, the New York Times publishes a top selling book list, something it has been dong for a very long time.
Author Jerome Corsi current has a new book out that is a runaway bestseller, “Killing The Deep State: The Fight To Save President Trump."
The book debuted as number 10 in the market in the non-fiction hardcover category as reported by Nielsen BookScan, a premier national book sales tracking process.
Despite this hot selling book’s national numbers, the New York Times has decided to not even list the book in its book tracking process despite selling more copies than other books that the Times did list.
For example, according to Nielsen, Corsi’s book should have held the number four spot on the Times bestselling list.
It has sold more copies than ten other books that the Times did list.
The number four spot on the Times is held by "I'll Be Gone in the Dark," by Michelle McNamara, even though it sold hundreds of copies less than "Deep State" did according to Nielsen tracking.
In fact, Corsi’s book has sold more than twice as many copies than many of the top 15 books on the Times list and was in the top ten on Amazon’s best seller list earlier this month.
Corsi had the following reaction: "They don't want any book that will support President Trump, who they detest, to be on The New York Times bestseller list. Even if the book legitimately outsells most of the other books. It's completely disgraceful and dishonest. But again, The New York Times is disgraceful and dishonest these days."

So given that the New York Times is so blatantly left wing in these few instances, how can anyone trust that the serious news they report is not biases, slanted, ignoring facts and realities, and generally not honest? And this trait makes them just as big a threat to our freedoms and liberties as the dishonest and useless politicians that are in office today.

Failure of the Department of Education and the failure of the New York Times, two very serious problems that face our country today. More insanity to follow.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

Friday, December 29, 2017

The Horrors and Destruction that Donald Trump Has Imposed On America...Just Kidding!

Before we start today’s discussion, let’s review my voting history:

I have never voted for a Republican for President in my life.
Thus, I did not vote for Trump.
I have rarely voted for a Republican for national office in my life.

A year ago, many liberals, Democrats, and millenials were besides themselves with grief and fear because their pre-ordained queen, Hillary Clinton, was not elected President. Instead, Donald Trump was elected, an individual that these same people despised, hated, and feared, an individual they felt would endanger and possibly destroy the country and our democracy. For the past year they fretted, worried and lashed out at anything or anyone that even remotely smelled of Donald Trump.

Given that Trump has been in office for a year and we are at the end of that calendar year, I thought, that as someone who did not vote for him, it would be a good idea to review the horror, trauma, and terrible things that Trump has subjected the country to in just one short year:

Oversaw two consecutive quarters of annualized economic growth over 3% in his first year, Obama had no more than two quarters over 3% in eight years.
Generated repeated historic highs in all major stock market indices over the past year, likely enriching any American with individual stock holdings, mutual fund holdings, or a 401k or IRA account.
Provided tax reduction legislation that will reduce the Federal income tax burden of well over a 100 million American taxpayers.
Eliminated about 1,500 unnecessary government regulations to spur investment and business growth and save the economy an estimated $89 billion in excessive regulation costs.
The national unemployment rate is at its lowest level since 2007, lower than at any time during Obama’s eight years.
The national Hispanic unemployment rate is at its lowest level ever since the government started to measure it.
The unemployment rate in the manufacturing sector is at its lowest rate in years.
The weekly applications for unemployment benefits are almost at historical lows.
Median household income is at a 7 year high.
Existing home sales are at their highest level since January, 2006.
Home prices rose a strong 6.2% in the past year.
Confidence among U.S. homebuilders reached its highest level in December since July, 1999 according to data from the National Association of Home Builders.
Consumer confidence is at its highest level since 2000, with the consumer confidence index at 125.6.
Home mortgage applications are at a seven year high.
Improving economic conditions resulted in a Christmas buying/spending season that was higher than it has been in almost ten years, rising almost 5% or $33 billion over 2016.
AT&T announced that it would pass along their company income tax savings from Trump’s tax cut legislation to their employees in the form of a $1,000 bonus to each of its 200,000 nonmanagement employees in addition to investing $1 billion in the U.S. market in 2018.
Comcast announced that it would pass along their company income tax savings from Trump’s tax cut legislation to their employees in the form of a $1,000 bonus to its frontline and non-executive employees and invest over $50 billion in the U.S. market in the next five years to improve and expand their broadband, theme park, television and film business divisions.
Fifth Third bank announced that it would pass along their company income tax savings from Trump’s tax cut in the form of raising the minimum wage of its 3,000 hourly employees to $15 an hour in addition to paying a one time bonus of $1,000 to all of its 13,500 employees: “We want to invest in our most important asset – our people,” said CEO Greg Carmichael of Fifth Third Bank. He also said that the tax cut provided an opportunity to “reevaluate its compensation structure and share some of those benefits with its talented and dedicated workforce.”
Wells Fargo announced that it would pass along their company income tax savings from Trump’s tax cut in the form of raising the minimum wage of their hourly employees to $15 an hour and spend $400 million on donations to community and non-profit organizations in 2018,
Boeing announce that it would take its income tax savings from Trump’s tax cut by investing $300 million in the company’s employees and facilities and charitable donations “Each of these investments benefits Boeing’s most important strength – our employees – and reflects the real-time impact and economic benefit of the reforms,” said Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg. “The reforms enable us to better compete on the world stage and give us a stronger foundation for the investment in innovation, facilities and skills that will support our long-term growth.”
Bob Parsons, the billionaire owner of YAM Worldwide, announced he will be passing tax savings from the Trump tax cut in the form of giving almost 600 of his employees with more than six months tenure a $2,000 bonus and those with less than six months bonus $1,000 bonus on top of currently planned bonuses: "The passage of the tax credit is a catalyst for explosive economic growth. On a massive scale, the lowered federal tax burden on businesses will increase investment, entrepreneurship and corporate philanthropy.I’ve always believed in sharing good news and have decided to celebrate the tax plan by giving back to my staff.”
Other companies, including FedEx and CVS Health, have announced that they will also pass along their income tax savings from Trump’s tax cut in the form of employee compensation and just these two companies predicted their tax savings would enable them to together hire 4,000 more employees.
Is currently reviewing and fixing all international trade regulations to ensure America gets a fair deal with other countries.
Convinced China to begin the importation of U.S. grown beef.
Implemented policies that have significantly reduced illegal immigration to the lowest level in 17 years.
Convinced major companies like Exxon, Bayer, Apple, SoftBank, Toyota, etc. to domestically invest $78 billion.
Renegotiated the F-35 fighter program contracts to save the American taxpayer $700 million.
Reduced the White House staff budget by $22 million.
Has ordered the head executive of each branch of government to come up with a plan to trim excessive bureaucracy and costs within their branch and to restructure their branch to improve its efficiency.
Has kept average gasoline prices at their lowest levels in 12 years.
Got the Keystone pipeline approved.
Convinced NATO allies to pull their fair share of common defense expense, resulting in those allies increasing their defense spending by 4.3%.
Allowed the Veterans Administration, a corrupt and ineffective and inefficient government agency, to more easily fire poorly performing employees.
Allowed veterans to receive health care from non-government entities to improve the turnaround time for healthcare treatment of veterans.
Gave NASA better and more definitive direction and strategies including giving it its first reauthorization in seven years, requiring it to create a plan with cost estimates to get a manned flight to Mars by 2023, requiring it to prioritize its own launch equipment over that of foreign countries, and analyze and prepare a report on the danger of an asteroid hit on Earth.
Passed legislation that will result in the first overhaul of the nation’s weather forecasting system since the 1990s with $170 million authorized to improve weather and storm prediction, tracking, planning and disaster recovery.
Passed legislation to impose a dozen different types of sanctions on Russia for its action in the Ukraine and Crimea.
Passed the “Forever GI” legislation that expanded opportunities and relaxed restrictions on the funding available for former service people to get education benefits.
Put a focus on combating the criminal enterprise known as MS-13 gangs, an illegal immigrant driven crime syndicate that has a presence in all 50 states.
Pulled the country out of the ill defined, unbalanced, and unnecessary/useless Paris climate accord.
Created a government commission to focus on combating child trafficking.
Created a government commission to focus on combating rampant voter fraud.
Created a government commission to focus on combating the country’s opioid addiction crisis.
Created an office to support the victims of violence from illegal immigrant criminals.
Recorded the second highest monthly government budget surplus in history in April, 2017.
Signed An Executive Order To Promote Energy Independence and Economic Growth.
Donated an entire paycheck to veterans’ causes and support.
Recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Helped break the back of ISIS, the most horrible terrorist organization of all time, even getting recognition from the pro-liberal, anti-Trump New York Times: “...And for now, the Trump administration’s approach to the Middle East has been moderately successful, and indeed close to what I would have hoped for from a normal Republican president following a realist-internationalist course.”
Launched a multi pronged diplomatic and economic strategy to address the growing and dangerous problem of a nuclear armed North Korea, a problem that Obama ignored for eight years with his lame “Strategic Patience” strategy.
Reduced the United States financial commitment to the United Nations budget in order to force this bloated, inefficient, and ineffective organization to clean up its act and not continue to waste American taxpayer wealth.
Attained an approval rating exactly equal to Obama’s rating at the same time in their first terms, as reported by Matt Drudge “Rasmussen Poll shows Trump at 46% APPROVE this morning, with 53% DISAPPROVE...What about Obama at same exact date first year in presidency?? 46% APPROVE, 53% disapprove.”
And possibly Trump’s biggest accomplishment, he prevented a crime syndicate (aka the Clinton Foundation) queen and a defender, abettor, and condoner of a sexual predator and possible rapist (Bill Clinton) from becoming President.

[Note: a lot of these accomplishments were compiled by the Political Insider website with other sources adding to their original list.]

So for those of you that feared the end of the world with Trump’s election, here is a list of 53 accomplishments he has imposed on the country. Let’s be honest Trump haters, he has done a pretty good job in just the first twelve months of his term.

Given your gross error in judgement relative to Trump, let me ask that you to do us all a favor by implementing the following changes in your behavior and attitude:

Chill out, tamp down your TDS affliction. No matter how much you hate Trump on a sexist, personal basis, get over it. He is the legally and duly elected President, he will be around for a while so refocus your hatred on more constructive issues and matters. You will live a lot longer if you take your TDS hatred out of your heart and soul and devote it to something positive.
I would really appreciate it if some of you would apologize to the millions of Trump voters you have disrespected in some of the grossest terms possible over the past year. You have called millions of voters racists, ignorant, stupid, Nazis, KKK members, and other horrible names simply because you disagreed with their voting choice. No American should be called such disgusting names simply because they exercised their Constitutional rights to the best of their abilities. Plus, slandering over 60 million Americans is no way to unite the country and get it focused on the real issues facing us all.
More personally, I would like, no I am demanding, a personal apology from some of you for your slanderous and disgusting name calling because in doing so, you insulted and disrespected my sister, my family members, my friends, and my co-workers who simply voted their conscience. I will defend their right to vote anyway they wanted and will no longer put up with your childish and vicious venom and bile directed at them, very important people in my life
And finally, I challenge some of you to read the following blog post, a post that shows quite clearly that it was hateful people like you and your silence over the past eight years that actually caused Trump to be elected. Thus, the people you hate for voting for Trump are actually looking back at you in the mirror:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/03/how-american-liberals-and-washington.html

If you were silent in the dozens of instances listed in this post then you were responsible for the very thing you hate: a Trump Presidency. Or put another way, a so far successful and productive Trump Presidency.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

Love My Country, Loathe My Government

Thursday, May 14, 2020

May, 2020, Part 7, Political Class Insanity: More Free POress Failures, Arrogance in the Chicago Mayor's Office, and Bad Priorities In California

Monday, May 27, 2019

May, 2019, Part 12, Political Class Insanity: Finally Fixing Welfare, Americans Are Pervasively Ignorant, and Liberals Destroying Cities

Thursday, November 15, 2018

How The American Journalism Profession Is Destroying The First Amendment and Our Democracy, Part 2

Wednesday, September 19, 2018

September, 2018, Part 8, Political Class Insanity: A Wasteful Jobs Program, Fake News From the New York Times, CNN In Free Fall and Plastic Straw Nonsense

Sunday, April 22, 2018

April, 2018, Part 3,Political Class Insanity: The Failure Of Government In Education and the Failure Of The New York Times To Be Unbiased

Friday, December 29, 2017

The Horrors and Destruction that Donald Trump Has Imposed On America...Just Kidding!

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