Rays of Sunlight in the Dark Clouds of America's Future - Boy Scouts and Ford Motors Light the Way!

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If you are like me you are desperately searching for ways to find glimmers of hope in the near future of our nation and the politicians and news media are not letting us do that but in spite of the nasty political climate and the partisanship and polarization used by the politicians and media to keep the spotlight on themselves for ratings and re-election purposes, there still may be hope.



You see, unbeknownst to those people inside the beltway in Washington, DC and the media hanging on their every word, there is a whole America outside the beltway that is too busy rebuilding our country to get caught up in the hysteria of politics. People have always been a lot smarter than the elitists in politics and the media.

There are still values and hopes that are maintained by the average American that are far stronger than our political leadership in Washington. There is still a force in the real heartland of America that says we will survive in spite of what the politicians and media tell us. Every day they go about the business of building up our nation rather than tearing it down.

For example, this week the Boy Scouts of America celebrate their 100th anniversary and 45,000 scouts will converge at their camp in Virginia for a week while 275,000 more people will come to the national celebration to enjoy the youth or our nation as they show off the citizenship, survival and physical attributes we will need in our future leaders.

Most baby boomers in America like myself were part of the Cub Scout and Boy Scout programs and have a lot of fond memories of what we learned and experienced. For instance in my case about a dozen fellow Scouts and I survived getting caught in a frigid blizzard in Iowa in below zero temperatures for the night. Without the survival training from scouts we would have been dead.

In high school the same group took it upon themselves to recruit friends and spend several years cleaning up an old abandoned lake making it into a beach, park and family campground area which to this day is a popular summer recreation area. We didn't need to be paid for doing this, nor did we expect someone else to do it for us. When we were through we turned it over to the town for all citizens to share. Those are the kind of citizenship lessons we learned from the Scouts.



Then there is the case of the most famous car maker in America and the world, Ford Motor Company. The oldest American car company to survive over a century Ford is 107years old this year and while still controlled by the Ford family it is run by CEO Alan Mulally, without a doubt one of the greatest business executives in American history.

In 2006, just before the worldwide economic meltdown, Mulally stunned the business world by leading Ford to mortgage most of their assets and raise over $24 billion in order to redesign the entire Ford business model and redesign the entire Ford fleet of autos and trucks for the future. As the world economy collapsed Ford was busy implementing a new business model and as major competitors like GM and Chrysler were falling into bankruptcy and had to be bailed out by Obama and the federal government Ford was the sole survivor to not ask for government help.

Today Ford stands alone in it's ability to compete with Japanese rivals like Honda and Toyota and is years ahead of GM and other competitors in modernizing the business, adopting to stricter environmental changes and offering new and redesigned cars and trucks for the future no thanks to the government.



As NBC market analyst Jim Cramer said in an article this morning:

"After looking at this Ford quarter--looking at the cash position, the capitalization structure--I can only marvel at witnessing the greatest single turnaround in American business history. What Alan Mulally has done is nothing short of miraculous.

While his two competitors, with the same cost burdens and the same unions, sputtered and died, Mulally turned his company into what will no doubt be the largest and most profitable auto company on earth. His "Profitable Growth for All" path, PGA for the cognoscenti, delivered $2.6 billion in profits, even as all we hear about is Great Recession, no employment growth, double-dip and uncertain times.

Who knows how much this man can make for shareholders if things get better? While the common is up nicely, the company's fixed-income securities are soaring because soon his financing arm will be minting money from low rates and big car sales.

Ford could have easily slipped under like the rest of them. But from the moment Mulally came on, after engineering the second-greatest turnaround at Boeing, he addressed the capital structure by raising money when it could be raised. He's brilliant about financing, too, as GM was so confident it didn't need to raise money. He saved the company."

Beyond saving Ford as the last independent car company in America Mulally is the premiere cheerleader for leading America out of the recession and back to the top as a world economic leader. If our politicians and news media would tell his story instead of feeding us a constant diet of doom and gloom it would be a much more hopeful and optimistic world.

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Campaign 2010 - Partisanship, Polarization, Prejudice and Politics in the News Media

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After the pathetic display of news media favoritism toward Barack Obama in our last election, what can we expect in the 2010 midterm election from the media? No doubt the four cardinal sins of the media will be prevalent, the partisanship, polarization, prejudice and politics we have come to expect from a media that can only see through rose colored glasses.

Expect more of the same except some of the liberal media will be inclined to attack the president and his cohorts in congress who got us into the morass we find ourselves as Obama completes his second year in office. As the public opinion of congress and Obama continue a freefall reaching levels never before seen as far as congress, with just 11% of the people having confidence in our elected officials, serious danger is on the horizon.



Encouraged by the ludicrous journalism from the mainstream and cable news media our politicians seem more than eager to jump into the mood set by the media where separating fact from fiction becomes more of a challenge every day. Rather than try to figure out who is telling the truth, the polls indicate the public thinks just about everyone in politics and the media lies, a sad commentary on two of our institutions, one elected to help people and the other that is supposed to be the watchdog for the people.



It's really no surprise this is happening, the White House set the tone early promising transparency, fairness and bi-partisanship but quickly forgetting the promise and returning to the politics of blaming Bush for all the problems, the Republicans for not agreeing with them on policy changes, and even the conservative media for questioning the big government, big spending and even bigger deficits that were a result of the Obama agenda.

In spite of the enormous majority the Democrats and Obama enjoyed, there were never quite enough votes to force his agenda down the throats of congress and he could not seem to get over being challenged every step of the way. But then what should a president expect from the minority party?



Just because his campaign was fortunate enough, thanks to the dominant media support, to hide his lack of experience as well as his choice of Washington insiders for staff though promising a new way of doing business, it was only a matter of time before the truth would become obvious.

So 18 months into his presidency Obama remains a partisan and polarizing force frustrated by lack of support and the inability to see his policies have much impact on the huge problems facing Americans. The two legislative initiatives, health care reform and financial regulation will have no impact on the nation before the election and probably minimal impact by the 2012 election as they are monster bills of over 2000 pages requiring years of drafting new regulations and neither will be fully implemented, if ever, until long after his presidency.



Thus the Democratic majority sense their own futures to be limited because of the struggling policies and agenda of the president. The success of the minority Republicans in blocking many of the priorities of the president and Democrats in the Senate in spite of their overwhelming majorities has led to bitterness and acrimony and heightened partisanship and polarization.

With the majority of the media solidly behind the president and the lingering effects of the economic and environmental disasters facing the nation, not to mention the inability to make headway in the twin wars, there is virtually no journalistic integrity leading into the elections.

Finally, the Supreme Court ruling striking down limits on campaign spending by special interests, and the huge campaign war chests already built up by the political parties and candidates, America will be drowning in a sea of negative advertising and distorted messages by the election in early November.

All signs point to huge GOP gains, perhaps even capturing control of the House and maybe even the Senate, which will lead to even more polarization after the election. This will not be a year the politicians can be proud of and may be one of the bitterest campaigns ever witnessed.

In most years the incumbents are relatively safe because of their far larger campaign funds but the Tea Party and the nasty mood of the public in not trusting politicians may alter the norm and bring about some major rebuilding of the House and Senate leadership, radical changes in committee chairmanships, and even some sweeping post election investigations should the Republicans gain control of either branch of the congress.

GOP women, thanks in some degree to Sarah Palin and the Tea Party, are poised for a historic election as there are 82 Republican women running for the House, 12 for the Senate and 10 for governorships. Look for the women to lead any Republican avalanche in the elections.

Adding to the GOP edge is the loss of independent support for the Democrats and the alienation of the Democratic base by the president meaning all the traditional special interests that support Democrats are frustrated by the lack of progress the president and congress have made on their behalf. Such a lukewarm attitude by the base means smaller Democratic turnouts on election day.



As for the public, they would be better off turning off the television, at least the network news and cable news programs, from September until after the election November 2. I cannot image finding much truth in the reporting nor much sanity in the campaign commercials. You might as well take the fall off from the Internet as well because the Internet search engines, social web sites and information sites will be inundated with campaign spam.

Whatever you do, do not take the media or politicians seriously as you will most likely be disappointed when their promises fail to materialize. That would be consistent with the election results in 2006 and 2008 so no sense getting all worked up for nothing.



Ignore the campaign shenanigans and enjoy the fall football because it might take your mind off the struggling economy. We do not need any more controversy in our lives, any more disappointment in our leaders, any more frustration in our stagnation and any more negativity in our heads.

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Secret Liberal Media Site Coordinates Attacks on Conservatives, Fox News and Sarah Palin

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Ever since the 2008 presidential campaign the Coltons Point Times has been pointing out the decided liberal, even left leaning liberal following favoring Barack Obama in the mainstream and cable news media. On numerous occasions we identified what appeared to be coordinated attacks by these media people on Sarah Palin, the Republicans and the conservative agenda.








More recently we have done a series of articles on the actions by MSNBC, the NBC news flagship, to demonize the Republicans and anyone who does not agree with their agenda. In particular Fox News and conservative commentators like Bill O'Rielly, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh have been targets along with the rampant hatred against Sarah Palin.



Numerous times I wrote articles identifying distortion by the liberal media, and savage attacks far beyond what any good journalist would attempt. It always seemed there was a secret conspiracy among liberal members of the media to coordinate their reporting in order to manufacture the news.



Little did I know it was true. But a series of articles by Tucker Carlson, Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Caller, a conservative web site, has finally got to the bottom of the mystery. Somehow Tucker was able to find a secret web site in which 400 liberal media members shared information with each other on how to discredit the conservatives, Republicans and Sarah Palin in the mainstream and cable news.



The names of prominent news members from the news networks, MSNBC, CNN, National Public Radio and many other liberal establishments show up in the mountain of emails sent back and forth in a concerted and concentrated effort by these supposedly objective reporters for many of the nation's most prominent news organizations.



It will come as no surprise to those of you who follow politics but it is a tremendous disappointment to me who was always proud to be a member of the press and journalism corps and believed these media institutions should have maintained a higher standard.



The following is a story by Tucker Carlson and a previous story by Jonathan Strong exposing the secret liberal media site called "Journolist" that served as the meeting ground by those dedicated to using the news media to advance a very narrow liberal agenda and to distort the news to help Obama.

Daily Caller

Letter from Editor-in-Chief Tucker Carlson on The Daily Caller’s Journolist coverage

By Tucker Carlson - The Daily Caller | Published: 3:54 PM 07/22/2010 | Updated: 4:41 PM 07/22/2010



We began our series on Journolist earlier this week with the expectation that our stories would be met with a fury of criticism from the Left. A hurt dog barks, after all.

The response hasn’t been all that furious, actually, probably because there isn’t much for the exposed members of Journolist to say. We caught them. They’re ashamed. The wise ones are waiting for the tempest to pass.

There have, however, been two lines of argument that we probably ought to respond to, if only because they may harden into received wisdom if we don’t. The first is that our pieces have proved only that liberal journalists have liberal views, and that’s hardly news.

To be clear: We’re not contesting the right of anyone, journalist or not, to have political opinions. (I, for one, have made a pretty good living expressing mine.) What we object to is partisanship, which is by its nature dishonest, a species of intellectual corruption. Again and again, we discovered members of Journolist working to coordinate talking points on behalf of Democratic politicians, principally Barack Obama. That is not journalism, and those who engage in it are not journalists. They should stop pretending to be. The news organizations they work for should stop pretending, too.

The second line of attack we’ve encountered since we began the series is familiar to anyone who has ever published a piece whose subject didn’t like the finished product: “You quoted me out of context!”

The short answer is, no we didn’t. I edited the first four stories myself, and I can say that our reporter Jonathan Strong is as meticulous and fair as anyone I have worked with.

That assurance won’t stop the attacks, of course. So why don’t we publish whatever portions of the Journolist archive we have and end the debate? Because a lot of them have no obvious news value, for one thing. Gather 400 lefty reporters and academics on one listserv and it turns out you wind up with a strikingly high concentration of bitchiness. Shocking amounts, actually. So while it might be amusing to air threads theorizing about the personal and sexual shortcomings of various New Republic staffers, we’ve decided to pull back.

Plus, a lot of the material on Journolist is actually pretty banal. In addition to being partisan hacks, a lot of these guys turn out to be pedestrian thinkers. Disappointing.

We reserve the right to change our minds about this in the future, but for now there’s an easy solution to this question: Anyone on Journolist who claims we quoted him “out of context” can reveal the context himself. Every member of Journolist received new threads from the group every day, most of which are likely still sitting in Gmail accounts all over Washington and New York. So feel free to try to prove your allegations, or else stop making them.

One final note: Editing this series has been something of a depressing experience for me. I’ve been in journalism my entire adult life, and have often defended it against fellow conservatives who claim the news business is fundamentally corrupt. It’s harder to make that defense now. It will be easier when honest (and, yes, liberal) journalists denounce what happened on Journolist as wrong.



Documents show media plotting to kill stories about Rev. Jeremiah Wright
By Jonathan Strong - The Daily Caller | Published: 1:15 AM 07/20/2010 | Updated: 1:56 AM 07/21/2010



Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., pastor of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ and former pastor of Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., addresses a breakfast gathering at the National Press Club in Washington, Monday, April 28, 2008. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

It was the moment of greatest peril for then-Sen. Barack Obama’s political career. In the heat of the presidential campaign, videos surfaced of Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, angrily denouncing whites, the U.S. government and America itself. Obama had once bragged of his closeness to Wright. Now the black nationalist preacher’s rhetoric was threatening to torpedo Obama’s campaign.

The crisis reached a howling pitch in mid-April, 2008, at an ABC News debate moderated by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. Gibson asked Obama why it had taken him so long – nearly a year since Wright’s remarks became public – to dissociate himself from them. Stephanopoulos asked, “Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?”

Watching this all at home were members of Journolist, a listserv comprised of several hundred liberal journalists, as well as like-minded professors and activists. The tough questioning from the ABC anchors left many of them outraged. “George [Stephanopoulos],” fumed Richard Kim of the Nation, is “being a disgusting little rat snake.”

Others went further. According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.

In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”

Michael Tomasky, a writer for the Guardian, also tried to rally his fellow members of Journolist: “Listen folks–in my opinion, we all have to do what we can to kill ABC and this idiocy in whatever venues we have. This isn’t about defending Obama. This is about how the [mainstream media] kills any chance of discourse that actually serves the people.”

“Richard Kim got this right above: ‘a horrible glimpse of general election press strategy.’ He’s dead on,” Tomasky continued. “We need to throw chairs now, try as hard as we can to get the call next time. Otherwise the questions in October will be exactly like this. This is just a disease.”

(In an interview Monday, Tomasky defended his position, calling the ABC debate an example of shoddy journalism.)

Thomas Schaller, a columnist for the Baltimore Sun as well as a political science professor, upped the ante from there. In a post with the subject header, “why don’t we use the power of this list to do something about the debate?” Schaller proposed coordinating a “smart statement expressing disgust” at the questions Gibson and Stephanopoulos had posed to Obama.

“It would create quite a stir, I bet, and be a warning against future behavior of the sort,” Schaller wrote.
Tomasky approved. “YES. A thousand times yes,” he exclaimed.

The members began collaborating on their open letter. Jonathan Stein of Mother Jones rejected an early draft, saying, “I’d say too short. In my opinion, it doesn’t go far enough in highlighting the inanity of some of [Gibson's] and [Stephanopoulos’s] questions. And it doesn’t point out their factual inaccuracies …Our friends at Media Matters probably have tons of experience with this sort of thing, if we want their input.”

Jared Bernstein, who would go on to be Vice President Joe Biden’s top economist when Obama took office, helped, too. The letter should be “Short, punchy and solely focused on vapidity of gotcha,” Bernstein wrote.

In the midst of this collaborative enterprise, Holly Yeager, now of the Columbia Journalism Review, dropped into the conversation to say “be sure to read” a column in that day’s Washington Post that attacked the debate.

Columnist Joe Conason weighed in with suggestions. So did Slate contributor David Greenberg, and David Roberts of the website Grist. Todd Gitlin, a professor of journalism at Columbia University, helped too.

Journolist members signed the statement and released it April 18, calling the debate “a revolting descent into tabloid journalism and a gross disservice to Americans concerned about the great issues facing the nation and the world.”

The letter caused a brief splash and won the attention of the New York Times. But only a week later, Obama – and the journalists who were helping him – were on the defensive once again.

Jeremiah Wright was back in the news after making a series of media appearances. At the National Press Club, Wright claimed Obama had only repudiated his beliefs for “political reasons.” Wright also reiterated his charge that the U.S. federal government had created AIDS as a means of committing genocide against African Americans.

It was another crisis, and members of Journolist again rose to help Obama.

Chris Hayes of the Nation posted on April 29, 2008, urging his colleagues to ignore Wright. Hayes directed his message to “particularly those in the ostensible mainstream media” who were members of the list.

The Wright controversy, Hayes argued, was not about Wright at all. Instead, “It has everything to do with the attempts of the right to maintain control of the country.”

Hayes castigated his fellow liberals for criticizing Wright. “All this hand wringing about just
how awful and odious Rev. Wright remarks are just keeps the hustle going.”

“Our country disappears people. It tortures people. It has the blood of as many as one million Iraqi civilians — men, women, children, the infirmed — on its hands. You’ll forgive me if I just can’t quite dredge up the requisite amount of outrage over Barack Obama’s pastor,” Hayes wrote.

Hayes urged his colleagues – especially the straight news reporters who were charged with covering the campaign in a neutral way – to bury the Wright scandal. “I’m not saying we should all rush en masse to defend Wright. If you don’t think he’s worthy of defense, don’t defend him! What I’m saying is that there is no earthly reason to use our various platforms to discuss what about Wright we find objectionable,” Hayes said.

(Reached by phone Monday, Hayes argued his words then fell on deaf ears. “I can say ‘hey I don’t think you guys should cover this,’ but no one listened to me.”)

Katha Pollitt – Hayes’s colleague at the Nation – didn’t disagree on principle, though she did sound weary of the propaganda. “I hear you. but I am really tired of defending the indefensible. The people who attacked Clinton on Monica were prissy and ridiculous, but let me tell you it was no fun, as a feminist and a woman, waving aside as politically irrelevant and part of the vast rightwing conspiracy Paula, Monica, Kathleen, Juanita,” Pollitt said.

“Part of me doesn’t like this shit either,” agreed Spencer Ackerman, then of the Washington Independent. “But what I like less is being governed by racists and warmongers and criminals.”

Ackerman went on:

I do not endorse a Popular Front, nor do I think you need to. It’s not necessary to jump to Wright-qua-Wright’s defense. What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically.

And I think this threads the needle. If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us. Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists. Ask: why do they have such a deep-seated problem with a black politician who unites the country? What lurks behind those problems? This makes *them* sputter with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction.

Ackerman did allow there were some Republicans who weren’t racists. “We’ll know who doesn’t deserve this treatment — Ross Douthat, for instance — but the others need to get it.” He also said he had begun to implement his plan. “I previewed it a bit on my blog last week after Commentary wildly distorted a comment Joe Cirincione made to make him appear like (what else) an antisemite. So I said: why is it that so many on the right have such a problem with the first viable prospective African-American president?”

Several members of the list disagreed with Ackerman – but only on strategic grounds.

“Spencer, you’re wrong,” wrote Mark Schmitt, now an editor at the American Prospect. “Calling Fred Barnes a racist doesn’t further the argument, and not just because Juan Williams is his new black friend, but because that makes it all about character. The goal is to get to the point where you can contrast some _thing_ — Obama’s substantive agenda — with this crap.”

(In an interview Monday, Schmitt declined to say whether he thought Ackerman’s plan was wrong. “That is not a question I’m going to answer,” he said.)

Kevin Drum, then of Washington Monthly, also disagreed with Ackerman’s strategy. “I think it’s worth keeping in mind that Obama is trying (or says he’s trying) to run a campaign that avoids precisely the kind of thing Spencer is talking about, and turning this into a gutter brawl would probably hurt the Obama brand pretty strongly. After all, why vote for him if it turns out he’s not going change the way politics works?”

But it was Ackerman who had the last word. “Kevin, I’m not saying OBAMA should do this. I’m saying WE should do this.”.

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White House and Ag Secretary apologize - Is Sherrod going to sue for a Retirement Fund?

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It seems that the White House and Agriculture Department might have just handed Shirley Sherrod a retirement gift by apologizing for discriminatory actions by the Administration. Such an apology is an admission of guilt on the part of the White House of discrimination.

They just might have apologized to the wrong person as Shirley may have much more in mind than an apology. You see, Shirley was part of a group that sued the Ag Department years ago and in 1999 a group of 16,000 Black farmers received a nearly $1 billion settlement, meaning each received about $50,000. But Shirley and her husband received an extra award for pain and suffering of $150,000 each meaning an additional $300,000.

As part of a April 14, 1999 class action case settlement, commonly known as the Pigford case, U.S. taxpayers have already offered over $1 billion in cash, non-credit awards and debt relief to almost 16,000 black farmers who claimed that they were discriminated against by USDA officials as they “farmed or attempted to farm.” In addition, USDA’s Farm Service Agency spent over $166 million on salaries and expenses on this case from 1999-2009, according to agency records.



Settlement activities on thousands of discrimination suits against the Ag Department have been a priority of the Administration as about 80,000 cases for Black farmers, which were too late for the class action or thrown out for various grounds remain and Congress may soon be asked for an additional $1.5 billion to settle the remainder of the cases. As for Shirley, how much she really will receive would require an investigation of the "debt relief" and non-credit awards she received from the settlement.

Thus Shirley has previously sued Ag for discrimination and won a few hundred thousand dollars. Now she is handed on a silver platter a sure fire discrimination suit with the admission by the Administration of discrimination and a rush to judgment. How many more millions could she win by suing again, this time with provable grounds?

Perhaps this explains why she was reluctant to accept a new position with Obama when the apology was extended. Did her previous appointment by Obama to the Ag Department have anything to do with the earlier law suit settlement which remains to be paid? Did the Administration even know she had won a discrimination case against the government?

The Pigford case raises more questions than it answers. Settling the case has been a clear example of the waste and abuse by agencies if the cost of ligation to date, over $166 million, is the real cost. The fact less than half of the case is settled, so far 16,000 claims have been settled with 80,000 more to go, shows that such discrimination claims ran rampant in the government.

Are the settlements being negotiated to bury the claims so they cannot become political issues in the upcoming elections? There was a real rush to judgment but it may be repeated with the rush to apologize before the facts and background of the previous Ag Department discrimination suits are settled.



As for the conservative blog that exposed the tape in the first place, the liberal media and NAACP who first accused Shirley of racism and called for her resignation now say they were snookered by the conservative media. What idiots! Since when did the liberal media NOT have to fact check a story before throwing around condemnations? They claim the tape was edited. Nearly every day MSNBC commentators are throwing edited tapes on the air to prove the conservatives are the evil empire out to get the leftists. More often than not such tapes are taken way out of context, then repeated over and over on the various talking head shows of MSNBC by a series of daily Democrats from Congress smearing the conservatives or Tea Party for the out of context network claims.

Truth has never been a requirement of the left. Yet they suddenly found themselves caught in a quagmire of untruths and are still looking for a way to blame their irresponsible reporting on the Republicans and the Tea Party. People are fed up with the whimpering and whining of the liberal media and the wall of distortion that comes from the Washington news corps. Long ago Main Street learned this truth and media credibility ranks right down there with Nancy Pelosi and her agenda.



The following article today by Rosslyn Smith further explains the details still missing in the Shirley Sherrod episode which may be far from over.

Forty Acres & a Mule -- Sherrod Style?
Rosslyn Smith

Shirley Sherrod's quick dismissal from the Obama administration may have had less to do with her comments on race before the NAACP than her long involvement in the aptly named Pigford case, a class action against the US government on behalf of black farmers alleging that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) had discriminated against black farmers during the period from 1983 through 1997. According to Wikipedia:

The plaintiffs settled with the government in 1999. Under the consent decree, all African American farmers would be paid a "virtually automatic" US$50,000 plus granted certain loan forgiveness and tax offsets. This process was called "Track A".[2]

Alternatively, affected farmers could follow the "Track B" process, seeking a larger payment by presenting a greater amount of evidence - the legal standard in this case was to have a preponderance of evidence along with evidence of greater damages....

At the time the case was settled, it was estimated there would be in the area of 2,000 to 3,000 claims. As with most estimates involving government handouts that number was woefully short of the mark. Again, according to Wikipedia:

22,505 "Track A" applications were heard and decided upon, of which 13,348 (59%) were approved. US$995 million had been disbursed or credited to the "Track A" applicants as of January 2009, including US$760 million disbursed as US$50,000 cash awards. Fewer than 200 farmers opted for the "Track B" process.

Beyond those applications that were heard and decided upon, about 70,000 petitions were filed late and were not allowed to proceed. Some have argued that the notice program was defective, and others blamed the farmers' attorneys for "the inadequate notice and overall mismanagement of the settlement agreement." A provision in the 2008 farm bill essentially allowed a re-hearing in civil court for any claimant whose claim had been denied without a decision that had been based on its merits

In other words, according to Agri-Pulse.com the number of total claims filed not only exceeded the original estimate by almost 40 to 50 times, it is close to four times the USDA's estimate of 26,785 total black owned farms in 1977! One reason for this is that the settlement applied to farmers and those who "attempted to farm" and did not receive assistance from the USDA. Getting the latest round of Pigford cases from the 2008 farm bill settled is said to be a high priority for the Obama administration.

So where does Sherrod come into this picture? In a special to the Washington Examiner, Tom Blumer explains that Sherrod and the group she formed along with family members and others, New Communities. Inc. received the largest single settlement under Pigford.

... New Communities is due to receive approximately $13 million ($8,247,560 for loss of land and $4,241,602 for loss of income; plus $150,000 each to Shirley and Charles for pain and suffering). There may also be an unspecified amount in forgiveness of debt. This is the largest award so far in the minority farmers law suit (Pigford vs Vilsack).

What makes this even more interesting to me is that Charles appears to be Charles Sherrod, who was a big player in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the early 1960s. The SNCC was the political womb that nurtured the Black Power movement and the Black Panthers before it faded away.

Blumer has some questions about this settlement and about Sherrod's rapid departure from the USDA

Was Ms. Sherrod's USDA appointment an unspoken condition of her organization's settlement?

How much "debt forgiveness" is involved in USDA's settlement with New Communities?

Why were the Sherrods so deserving of a combined $300,000 in "pain and suffering" payments -- amounts that far exceed the average payout thus far to everyone else? ($1.15 billion divided by 16,000 is about $72,000)?

Given that New Communities wound down its operations so long ago (it appears that this occurred sometime during the late 1980s), what is really being done with that $13 million in settlement money?

Here are a few bigger-picture questions:

Did Shirley Sherrod resign so quickly because the circumstances of her hiring and the lawsuit settlement with her organization that preceded it might expose some unpleasant truths about her possible and possibly sanctioned conflicts of interest?

Is USDA worried about the exposure of possible waste, fraud, and abuse in its handling of Pigford?

Did USDA also dispatch Sherrod hastily because her continued presence, even for another day, might have gotten in the way of settling Pigford matters quickly?

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The Breakdown of Morality in America - Have we Gone Too Far to Recover?

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Main Street America must be wondering what happened to the United States of America? There is nothing united about America anymore and nothing but more and more signs of the destruction of any hope for being united.

Political parties have led the way and both are at fault. It is almost impossible to find a politician no matter what party who is willing to tell the truth about our nation and there is no chance they will tell the truth about each other.



Once upon a time political opponents like Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill would go at each other in debate and then get together for a drink after. Gone are the days of civility in politics and gone are the days of truth. Both parties daily make exaggerated claims about their policies that are never fact checked by the media. Spinning the truth is far more prevalent than telling the truth.

The news media, supposedly the defenders of truth and protector of the people long ago became a tool for politicians and a whore for the corporate interests trying to take advantage of the public. We have, plain and simple, the best news money can buy and that is the truth. News is bought and sold and truth is a secondary issue.

As for the government, it no longer serves the public interest but the special interests. Congress and the president are owned by special interests and will be as long as billions of dollars are needed to feed the campaign appetites of our politicians. No one in Washington is talking about campaign reform and it is the only way to rid politics and government of special interest control. War is acceptable while helping the poor is a burden.



Greed dominates our culture from education to health care and career choices are based on what is in it for me, not how can I help people. Once upon a time non-profit organizations and churches were the primary force in helping people but they are rapidly disappearing from the social, health and human needs of our society. As they fade into the history books so does the mindset that people have a responsibility to help people whenever possible.

Churches are measured by their success in drawing crowds and generating donations rather than saving souls and fighting for the invisible Americans. Charity used to be freely given but now it comes with a price tag.



Sexual promiscuity used to be bad but now it dominates advertising in all media and has led the American public from a society of values to a society of need and greed. The disease of pedophiles has reached epidemic proportions with hundreds of thousands roaming the land and Internet. There is no cure yet our justice system continues to let them loose to prey on innocent children.

Sales of illegal child pornography rakes in an estimated $3 billion a year in the U.S. The industry enslaves an estimated 300,000 children. In America 1 in 4 females will be sexually assaulted before they reach the age of 18 and 1 in 6 males will be sexually assaulted before the age of 18.



As for the Internet, it represents the greatest advancement in the growth of pedophiles, pornography, sexual deviation and human slave trafficking in the history of mankind. The lack of regulation, the early success of pornography and the compromising of social sites by sex predators has resulted in an explosion of moral decay.

Some Startling Internet User Statistics:

20% of children are solicited for sex (by either adults or other children) each year

67 of those arrested for Internet crimes against children also possessed child pornography

25% of children who receive sexual solicitations online tell their parents

89% of online sexual solicitations are received in chat rooms or on Instant Messengers

13 million children use Instant Messaging

Yet the moral degradation is felt in many others ways as well. We promote the rape of the earth through the obsession with petroleum, coal, minerals, diamonds, uranium, water and countless other natural resources. We destroy our ecosystem by leveling rainforests and over fishing our oceans.

Achievement is measured in assets and excess with accumulation of wealth the goal, not the protection of natural resources. We buy and sell land that was never ours to begin with and absorb resources faster than they can be acquired.

As a civilization we have adopted goals and standards with no relationship to good or moral quality. Our technological advances have removed the parents from parenting and the teachers from teaching and now every forbidden secret is exposed on the Internet, cell phones, text messages and videos unedited and sexually explicit.



Our movies glamorize sexual deviation and a breakdown of morality while our television programs make deviant, even criminal behavior an acceptable lifestyle. The state of moral decay in America makes stories of decadent cities in the Bible seem almost innocent. Sodom and Gomorra are commonplace cities in today's world.

We are in serious trouble. We are far more advanced toward moral collapse than any civilization in previous history yet no one is shouting alarm. We have met all the requirements of all types of prophecy to be at the End Times, to be in the midst of the Quickening and fast approaching the Purification when the spiritual forces must come forward to alter the fatal course of humanity.



Our institutions and our leaders are so caught up in the game they cannot see the truth. Greed and need has so captured the psyche of America that those souls wanting to do good have difficulty finding like minded souls who share their dream. Are you prepared for a spiritual intervention of epic proportions like predicted? Maybe it is time you consider what is really important to your salvation.

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Obama's Chicago Thugs Keep Racism alive by Forcing the Firing of Black Appointee for Racism

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In what must go down as one of the most bizarre episodes of the Obama presidency the White House, the NAACP and the national and cable news industry all showed their true colors, and it was not the rainbow prism they like to talk about but the darkness of bigotry and prejudice they claim to abhor.



Yesterday morning a conservative web blog released a partial video of a USGA official talking about an incident that took place nearly 25 years ago. In it she appeared to be making racist remarks. There is nothing wrong with a conservative or liberal web site raising questions.

This story came on the heels of the NAACP, in a lust for national attention, starting a firestorm by accusing the Tea Party of being racist. Of course Tea Party and media people fired back and in the end the NAACP would have been much better off saying nothing.



With that backdrop, the conservative story appeared. While there is nothing wrong with the release of a story for political purposes, there is a lot wrong when the White House gang and news media react to the story with no fact checking and in a panic mode, and nothing else could explain the amateur reaction by the Obama gang.

Perhaps they were trying to shove the issue under the carpet so it would not distract from today's big Obama news splash when he signs the financial reform bill and proves he is going after Wall Street. Of course with the stock for Wall Street bad boy Goldman Sachs going up, and Goldman was the top Obama campaign supporter, in spite of the Obama bill and a paltry fine imposed by the SEC, one wonders if financial reform Obama style is not just a ruse.



Back to poor Shirley Sherrod at the Agriculture Department, she was driving back to her office and got three calls from the Deputy Undersecretary of Agriculture Sharon Cook and was finally told to pull off the road. She was told the White House wanted her resignation before the story broke on the Glenn Beck Show on Fox News later in the afternoon. She was forced to text her resignation.



No due diligence. No protections guaranteed under the rules and Constitution. No one even asked her side of the story. The Chicago thugs running the White House will throw any staff appointee under the wheels of the nearest bus on just the threat of Glenn Beck talking about it on his show.



Well shortly after his election the White House and Obama declared war on Fox News and tried to punish Fox News by cutting off White House contact with them. After two years of the war with Fox News Obama and his gang are getting the same result as in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Administration continues to spin their wheels while trying to suppress all opposition. That does not sit well with the American public who has proven they want media watchdogs like Roger Ailes and Fox News to keep an eye on Obama because Fox is burying everyone else in the Nielsen ratings.



Shirley was not being racist, all any responsible person in the news media, White House or Agricultural Department would have known that with a simple fact check. But none was done and they fired her first with the approval of the president. That is a reckless disregard for all laws and protections in this nation. In fact, the white farmer she was supposed to have discriminated against came to her defense saying she saved his family farm.



Ironically, it took a combination of a Black appointee by the president, Glenn Beck and Fox News to show the true colors of this Administration. Their words have no meaning. Truth is a matter of convenience. They will destroy the careers of their own people to protect their media image.

As for the news media, they were just as guilty in failing to fact check the story. The same was true in many incidents in the past. The forces trying to manufacture the news are in control and the American public beware. DO NOT TRUST THE NEWS MEDIA. DO NOT TRUST THE WHITE HOUSE THUGS.

We can only hope that Obama was being used and was not behind the sinister plot to destroy the career of Shirley Sherrod for political expediency. This case of White House manipulation must be investigated and it better be by an independent prosecutor since the Obama Justice Department has proven itself to be inept and far too political to investigate itself.



Civil rights are in question today, and not because of the bigotry of the people but the actions by our political and media institutions. In the process very good and loyal administrators like Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, former governor of Iowa, have been steamrolled into huge mistakes by the White House and will be compromised by taking the heat for the president.

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Democrats Can't Pass Budget - Republicans Can't Tell Budget Cuts - What to do?

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So we have a stalemate in Washington, what else is new? Since neither the majority nor minority party has demonstrated any leadership to date on controlling our budget maybe they would like to hear from the people about how to go about balancing the budget.

Here is my primer on how to get control of America, our budget deficit and national debt.

1. No Congressman (House or Senate) should be allowed to vote on any bill benefiting their campaign contributors. A very straight forward law to prevent conflicts of interest. It should be illegal to vote on bills where the congressman received campaign money from a special interest. Such a rule does not exist and is long overdue.

2. Consolidate half of the overseas military bases in the USA along the Mexican border bringing home - 20,000 - 25,000 troops and support staff to each of four new bases, one in Arizona, one in New Mexico, and two in Texas strategically located along the border to discourage illegal immigration.



Over 1 million American troops are stationed overseas and NOT in a war zone. By relocating a total of about 100,000 troops back to America we would save billions of lost dollars and substantially reduce the cost of keeping troops overseas. A second phase of this relocation would be to bring home an additional, 500,000 troops over the next five years.

3. Require pharmaceutical companies to provide prescription drugs for 25% less than currently charged for the Medicare and Medicaid programs the first year, and an additional 25% less the second year. If they resist get generic drugs.



4. Require health insurance companies to reduce premiums by25% through eliminating unnecessary testing and treatment and adopting tort reform.

5. Create a National Trust for National Parks as a private, profit making enterprise and require the selling of stock to purchase these national treasurers and make them more profitable. Make stock available to all citizens allowing the purchase of trust stock with tax refunds and other incentives. All National Parks should be highly profitable and services could be expanded with private capital available for expansion. This could save raise several billions in the purchase of the Park property by the private trust and the profits from the operation could earn stock holders significant annual dividends. Right now there is no way for the average citizen to earn a fair return on their money.



6. Reduce foreign aid by 50%.

7. Establish small business development initiative to encourage rapid expansion in small business and innovation. Among components would be free patent service for small business, free trademark service for small business, free laboratory testing of small business products and a senior corps of retired business executives to consult with small business owners. This would eliminate some of the prohibitive start up costs of small business encouraging more hiring and expansion. The cost to the government would be more than offset by the increase in taxes paid by the businesses.

7. Offer free medical insurance to anyone agreeing to work beyond the Social Security retirement age of 62 or 67. Raise the retirement age to 65.



8. Undertake a one year review of all government expenditures, waste, duplication and lack of legal authority for the existence of programs with a goal of reducing agency costs by 15%. This review would give the agencies a chance to offset losses with cost efficiencies and elimination of waste.

9. Expand charter schools to 50% of all public education students within three years establishing performance standards on the charter schools and requiring them to give first preference for teacher hiring on displaced public school teachers.



10. Require an economic impact statement on all new expenditures which documents the legislative right to fund the program, identifies a five year budget for the new initiative, identifies the permanent funding source for the program, and determines the cost analysis of hiring employees versus contracting out for the service.

This is part one of my program to balance the federal budget and begin to eliminate the national debt. I welcome all other ideas from readers to help our congress do the job we elected them to do.

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