News and Views is a twice-weekly column containing an assortment of interesting state, national and international political and financial information, opinions, candidate reviews, scheduled events, Tea Party information, meetings and press releases that we hope will interest you. We will now offer a special section segregating media bias and Hollywood bias to give the reader a better idea of how prevalent it is.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
What does the John Roberts Supreme Court decision on ObamaCare mean? My first impulse, hearing of the decision, was to imagine it a net positive. I said to myself, “This will surely mobilize opposition to the leftist president who gave us this piece of garbage!”
I thought of other positives. The President could not claim a “politicized High Court.” Roberts, a Republican, was voting with four justices appointed by Democrats. Had Roberts decided to make conservatives the scrappy underdogs, for the sake of the November election? He did say in his opinion, “It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.” Could you be any clearer, Chief Justice Roberts?
So, though I couldn’t imagine that the Court would uphold the law, given the remarks of justices in oral arguments, should I be grateful for the decision? And so I was, until I read the July 4th Liberty Legal Foundation piece, “Grieving for freedom.”
The piece called my reaction to the decision a form of denial, the first stage of grief. It said that, “Now Congress can regulate anything, as long as it forces us to comply by “taxing” non-compliance.” It said further that, “The Constitution was supposed to prevent any Congress from enacting any legislation that violates fundamental freedoms,” and, “if we must now depend upon winning every single election in order to keep our freedom, then freedom has no chance of surviving for our grandchildren.”
I’m not feeling so well now. Those who love the Constitution meet in Rockton the third Thursday each month at 302 W. Main Street at 6:30 pm. We have to keep fighting.
Jane Carrell
Coordinator, Northern IL Tea Party
Paul Ryan: We Win, We Repeal: Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), chair of the House Budget Committee–and potential running mate of Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney–told Breitbart News this week that the party’s leaders are “absolutely” committed to repealing Obamacare.
“It would have been nice for the Supreme Court to repeal it for us,” he said, “but it’s no harder today than it was the day before the decision. We win, we repeal. It’s just that simple.”
Ryan, speaking exclusively with Breitbart News, added that there was no disagreement about repealing Obamacare among the various Republican leaders, or with the Romney campaign. “Not in any of the meetings I have been having,” he said. Earlier in the week, conservatives criticized apparently conciliatory postures by the Romney campaign and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). McConnell and Romney have since confirmed their commitment to repealing Obamacare as a first priority after the election.
Health Care & Small Business: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly
Join us for a Webinar on July 31
Join The Steve Beaman Group as we present this insightful and powerful session with our guest, C. Steven Tucker, a small business insurance specialist. We’re going to cover the in’s- and-out’s of the Affordable Health Care Act (Obamacare) and see what it really does to small business. Don’t miss this! Your business might just depend on it!
Title: Health Care & Small Business; The Good, The Bad & The Ugly
Date: Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Time: 8:00 PM – 9:00 PM CDT
System Requirements:
PC-based attendees – Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server
Macintosh®-based attendees – Required: Mac OS® X 10.5 or newer
Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/167117847
Low-Life Cheating Republicans!
The Presidential election 2012 was too close to call. Neither Mitt Romney nor Obama had enough votes to win. There was much talk about ballot recounting, court challenges, etc., but a week-long ice fishing competition seemed the sportsmanlike way to settle things. The candidate that caught the most fish at the end of the week would win the election.
After much of back and forth discussion, it was decided that the contest would take place on a remote frozen lake in northern Wisconsin. There were to be no observers present, and both men were to be sent out separately on this isolated lake and return at 5 P.M. with their catch for counting and verification by a team of neutral parties.
At the end of the first day, Mitt Romney returned to the starting line and he had 10 fish. Soon, Obama returned and had no fish. Well, everyone assumed he was just having a bad day or something and hopefully, he would catch up the next day.
At the end of the 2nd day Mitt came in with 20 fish and Obama came in again with none.
That evening, the democrats got together secretly and said, “I think that Mitt Romney is a low-life, cheatin’ son-of-a-gun. Tomorrow don’t bother fishing. Just spy on him and see just how he is cheating.”
The next night (after Mitt returns with 50 fish), the democrats got together for the report of how the republicans were cheating.
Obama said, “You are not going to believe this, he’s cutting holes in the ice!
Editor’s note: No, this isn’t an authentic ICE News report. It was sent to us by a reader and we liked it well enough to reprint it.
Today’s Jobs Report: Private Sector “Not” Fine: It was this time last month when the president committed his infamous “private sector is doing fine” faux pas. To Barack Obama’s defenders, it was a classic Washington gaffe, in which a public figure utters a true but nonetheless impolitic remark. And, on some level, there was a fair amount of truth to it. Obama’s point was that the real drag on the economy isn’t the private sector, which has steadily added jobs over the last few years, but the public sector, which has continued to shed them at an alarming pace. As long as governors and mayors keep laying off teachers, firefighters, and cops, the president was saying, it’s hard to see how the recovery can get its legs. And, unfortunately, Republicans have consistently blocked his proposals for reversing this trend.
There’s more than a bit of truth to that. Still, if there’s one thing that really jumps out at you in today’s jobs report, it’s that the private sector isn’t doing so hot after all. In June, private employers added a mere 84,000 jobs. They added 105,000 jobs the month before, and 85,000 the month before that. To put this in some context, the economy needs to add about 100,000 to 150,000 new jobs each month just to keep up with population growth; the private sector has averaged 91,000 over the past three months. Which is to say, even if government job losses weren’t weighing us down, we’d still be struggling because the private sector has been pretty damn anemic.
The upshot is that we’re no longer in a world where sending states a few tens of billions of dollars to shore up their finances is going to get the recovery on track. The economy – the private sector – is disconcertingly weak, and strengthening it is going to take something on the order of several-hundred-billion dollars.
The ‘Gay’ Oreo and the Stupidity of Kraft Foods: First it was the CEO of General Mills who spoke at a gay pride event explaining to the crowd that the company opposes the Minnesota constitutional amendment banning homosexual marriage. The brain trust at General Mills seems to be ignoring the fact that there are over 35 million traditional marriage households in the US and only 111,000 same-sex households.
JC Penney made a similar business blunder hiring lesbian Ellen DeGeneres as one of their spokespersons and putting homosexual dads in their June catalog over Father’s Day. Then something happened:
Perhaps the biggest news within the retail industry at the moment is the sudden resignation of JC Penney’s president, Michael Francis. Only eight months after taking the helm at the retail behemoth, news of Francis’ abrupt departure was shocking to many. Poor sales were given as the reason. Were the poor sales the result of JC Penney taking up for the homosexual lobby and people shopping elsewhere?
Now we learn that Kraft Foods has joined up with the ‘gay’ rights ‘diversity’ movement in its celebration of the June 25the ‘Pride’ events across the country by creating an ad with rainbow filling in its highly popular Oreo brand cookie. You won’t find the rainbow-colored Oreos in stores. It’s a Facebook promotion. If you’ve ever seen an Oreo commercial, children are most often at the center of the ads. Kraft better understand its audience. It’s not the ‘gay’ rights movement; it’s parents who want to share a special moment with their children as they enjoy with them what they enjoyed as children. I can assure you that a rainbow-colored Oreo is not what parents want to visualize when they share a creamy-center Oreo with their children and a glass of milk.
CNN Cheers Liberal Nuns Protesting Paul Ryan Budget, Has Bo One from Ryan’s Side: Over the span of about three weeks, CNN followed a group of liberal nuns on their bus tour protesting the Ryan budget, interviewing one of the leading nuns three times. In contrast, Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) never went on CNN during that time to defend his budget, and during their reporting on the nuns CNN didn’t read a single statement from his office in response. “You go, girls,” CNN anchor Carol Costello cheered the nuns.
California Senate OKs Bill That Would Blunt Deportation Efforts: The state assembly is expected to pass the measure, which would limit California officers’ cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, particularly the Secure Communities program. The bill would restrict California law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement efforts. It passed the state Senate on Thursday. The legislation now goes to the Assembly, where even opponents say it is likely to pass.
The Trust Act would prohibit police and sheriff’s officials from detaining arrestees for possible deportation unless the suspects have previous convictions for a serious or violent felony. The measure is aimed at blunting federal immigration enforcement, in particular the Secure Communities program, under which fingerprints of arrestees are shared with immigration officials who issue hold orders.
If signed into law, the measure would mark another in a string of state legislative efforts on behalf of California’s estimated 2.55 million illegal immigrants.
2.55 million new Democratic Party voters?
Guess.
Morgan Freeman: ‘Obama’s Not America’s First Black President’:Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman said something Thursday that though true is destined to shock many Americans. Speaking on NPR, Freeman said Barack Obama is “not America’s first black president. He’s America’s first mixed-race president.”
In the middle of a “Tell Me More” interview, host Michel Martin asked her guest where America is now historically with its first African-American president along with “racially-charged episodes in the news. Do you see a film in this?”
“First thing that always pops into my head regarding our president is that all of the people who are setting up this barrier for him – what’s his name, Donald Trump and this who thing that he’s resurfacing. They just conveniently forget that Barack had a mama, and she was white — very white American, Kansas, middle of America,” Freeman said. “There was no argument about who he is or what he is. America’s first black president hasn’t arisen yet. He’s not America’s first black president. He’s America’s first mixed-race president.”
Media & Hollywood Bias
CBS’s O’Donnell Lets Schumer Defend Obamacare, Challenges Coburn’s Criticism: On Sunday’s Face the Nation, fill-in host Norah O’Donnell simply let Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) air his Democratic talking points on Obamacare while she challenged Republican Senator Tom Coburn (Okla.) over criticisms he made of the law. O’Donnell asked simple questions of Schumer like “What’s your reaction?” to Republican criticisms of ObamaCare, and “Mitt Romney says he is going to repeal this on day one of his presidency. Can he actually do that?”
Meanwhile, the CBS host challenged Sen. Coburn’s facts about the deficit, saying the CBO scored ObamaCare as saving millions of dollars in the long-run. “[T]he CBO has scored this as not just deficit-neutral but actually saving taxpayers a hundred billion dollars,” she claimed after Coburn said the bill would cost $1.9 trillion over ten years.
“This bill costs $1.6 trillion minimum. It’s going to cost more than that with the changes that the Supreme Court made in terms of the optionality of Medicaid for the states,” Coburn responded.
NY Times Movie Critic Blames ‘Reagan Years’ for Decline of Movies: New York Times movie critics Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott held their annual joyless, political summer movie conversation, focusing on the glut of superhero movies. Dargis managed to make a villain out of President Reagan, while Scott chimed in by complaining that movie superheroes are “avatars of reaction” and that the last X-Men movie was insufficiently attentive to the civil rights movement (really). Dargis: “The media consolidation that traces back to the Reagan years has had enormous deleterious consequences on American movies.”
CNN Anchor Tells Bill Nye He’s losing to Conservatives ‘Politicizing’ the Climate: CNN’s Carol Costello told guest Bill Nye “The Science Guy” on Monday that climate change skeptics are “politicizing this issue” and “winning.” Of course, the two did not admit to the possibility of man-made climate change believers doing the exact same thing. “But the people who are politicizing this issue, they seem to be winning because not much is being done on the issue of climate change even though President Obama promised that, you know, back in the day, 2008,” Costello said.
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