It’s called Right Wing Rant for a reason…

It’s called Right Wing Rant for a reason….

Check Out Patriot Dreams

Hi everyone, if you have come here looking for me I am still around, but I’ve made some changes.

This site, “The Good Fight!!” will be used for an archive of articles that I write for “I Hate the Media”.  I’ve created a new site called “Patriot Dreams” which can be found at patmichael.wordpress.com for longer stories.

I hope that you will visit and leave a comment about what you think.  Thanks so much for taking the time to read my articles and stories and I look forward to hearing from you in the future.

Sincerely,

Patrick Michael

Obama’s ‘buck’ still often stops with Bush

http://www.frugal-cafe.com/public_html/frugal-blog/frugal-cafe-blogzone/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/get-out-of-hell-blame-bush-card.jpg

When AP & MSNBC dump you – Man have you been dumped

Amazingly the AP recently posted an article that began ” He says “the buck stops with me,” but nearly a year into office President Barack Obama is still blaming a lot of the nation’s troubles — the economy, terrorism, health care — on George W. Bush.”  You think?  Adding to the amazement, the article was actually carried on MSNBC, 0r as we call it here at I Hate the Media the home of Bush bashing.

The AP made note of the fact that “On terrorism, Americans are less concerned about quiet successes than troubling failures, especially one that evoked harrowing memories of Sept. 11, 2001. On the economy, people prefer good news now, not updates on how things are gradually getting less bad. The way Obama sees it, the problems he took on — recession, war, health care, a warming planet — were always too huge and complicated to fix that fast. So he emphasizes progress by taking people back to where he began. Which means taking them back to Bush.”

Continuing in this vein, the article goes on to say “An overwhelming majority of people say 2009 was a bad year for the country, according to the latest Associated Press-GfK poll. As Democrats head toward midterm elections trying to hang onto control of the House and Senate, half of Americans still think the country is headed in the wrong direction.”  Actually it’s a more than half, but give the AP credit for flirting with honesty.

“I think we have been successful in averting disaster,” Obama said on Dec. 16 about righting the economy. “You know, you don’t get a lot of credit for that, because nobody knows how bad it could have been.”

Here is where the article gets very factual, in a way that must be painful to the Obama administration that is so accustomed to getting rave reviews.
“On this front, Obama often chides the media for what he sees as accentuating the negative and minimizing progress. As on Dec. 4 when Obama mocked the press for saying he had pivoted back from health care to jobs. He insisted that every day is about jobs. “Folks’ attention spans are short,” he said.”

But as the article summarized “Not everyone’s. Nearly 15.3 million people are unemployed, an increase of 3.9 million during 2009, and a lot of Americans seem aware that that problem is far from over.A Gallup Poll near the end of the year found 25 percent of people — just one in four — feeling satisfied with how things were going in the United States. “The president himself, not surprisingly, may feel quite satisfied with accomplishments in his first year,” said Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll. “But we don’t see signs that the American public is positive.”

Welcome back to the real world AP, we’ve missed you.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34771917/ns/politics-white_house/

By Patrick Michael

Posted on I Hate the Media  (ihatethemedia.com)

Obama Foodorama

Obama Foodarama?

If you are looking for something completely different it might be time to check out obamafoodorama.blogspot.com.   This website presents itself as being about “White House Food Initiatives…And Other Bipartisan Bytes of Food Politics”.  Despite the rather silly sounding description, we found that the site did in fact present a large amount of information on White House food programs from a positive and not so positive light.

Take the story about Barugula Obama for example.  The article says that  “It was created by Millie Holub of Los Angeles, and is a play on the whole arugula elitism discussion that went on during campaign season. Millie was a big Obama fan, and thought the idea of “arugula elitism” should be reframed: Every president should be well-versed in leafy greens.”

“Arugula elitism?”  Of all the different types of elitism that the Obama administration has displayed, this was a new one on us.  But apparently this controversy was started during the campaign when “The idea of Candidate Obama being an arugula elitist–out of touch with regular citizens–was a much-noted subject/accusation in the blogosphere, after he asked an audience of farmers if they’d noticed the high price of arugula at Whole Foods. Candidate Obama was in Adel, Iowa at the time, and the nearest Whole Foods was in Omaha, Minneapolis or Kansas City.”

The site also has oodles of information about “the Obamitas cookies, which might be the first cookies to ever be confused with hate speech”

http://obamafoodorama.blogspot.com/2010/01/obama-foodie-homage-barugula-obama.html#more

Is Health Care Math getting better??

By Patrick Michael

It seems like even MSNBC and the Washington Post are wondering about the health care bill, and apparently they are stirring up the voodoo Math issue I mentioned in a previous post called “   “  The article by Perry Bacon Jr. starts out “Even as Democrats seek the biggest expansion of health coverage in decades, as many as 23 million people could still be without insurance by 2018, illustrating the complexity of achieving the long-held Democratic goal of universal health care.”

The article assumes a number of 54 Million uninsured, which is higher than most numbers kicked around by the left, but the Washington Post want’s to play the voodoo Math game also by dismissing the uninsured as follows “But those who would be left uninsured have drawn little attention. This is in part because their ranks would include many who choose not to get health insurance, even though they can afford it — such as some healthy people under 30, who have little effect on rising health-care costs because they rarely go to the doctor. Though starting in 2014, individuals would face fines if they do not buy coverage, some may still refuse.” and then it get’s crazy “About a third of the uninsured would be illegal immigrants. Neither party supports expanding insurance to cover them, even though states spend millions caring for them at hospitals, where emergency rooms accept patients regardless of coverage.”

So there are only 7.6 Million Illegal Aliens uncovered by health care?  How can that even be remotely possible?  Immigration expert George Borjas’s has an interesting article called  “How many illegals Are there” , the following is a brief except:

Illegal Aliens 101: How Many Illegals Are There?

“I’ve received a number of emails asking me to provide some basic information about immigration in the United States. It’s a great idea and I’m happy to satisfy the demand.

So let me start with a central issue in the current debate: How many illegal immigrants are there? In recent days, I’ve seen numbers ranging from 6 to 20 million being floated around–depending on the spin that is being emphasized in any given article.

The basic approach used to calculate this number was first formulated by Jeffrey Passel and Robert Warren (who was then, if I recall correctly, the chief statistician at the INS) and was published in Demography in 1987.

The idea is this: The U.S. Census Bureau regularly surveys the population (as with the decennial Census), and these surveys provide a count of how many foreign-born people live in the country. This count will include many illegals as they try very hard to count people “living in the shadows.”

At the same time, the immigration bureaucracy keeps good records on how many permanent residence visas they’ve granted (i.e., how many “green cards” have been given out). By making a few assumptions about the mortality rate of immigrants, about the number of foreign students in the country, etc., we can predict how many foreign-born people should be living permanently in the country.”

Regardless of where you look for the data, it’s hard to find anyone who thinks the number is as low as 7.6 Million and in fact most sources (either center or right of the issue) will quote numbers that double those used by Borjas (as high as 40 million) as the U.S. Census  ”estimates’ that it only misses about 10% of illegal aliens.  Is it just me, or does that seem a wee bit on the low side?

This is not meant to be an article on immigration reform, but I think that immigration reform and health reform go hand in hand.   Add to this the fact that Immigration Reform legislation has been introduced and will hit on the back of the decision on health care.  That seems a little too close to be a coincidence doesn’t it?   The number of illegal immigrants just muddy’s the waters and contributes to the voodoo math that those on the right are so tired of hearing.  At this late date we have no idea how many people this bill is covering and how many it isn’t, nor how many that it isn’t that it should be.  The MSNBC/Washington Post article is sure quick to state that “This is in part because their ranks would include many who choose not to get health insurance, even though they can afford it — such as some healthy people under 30, who have little effect on rising health care costs” despite the fact that the left refused to believe that there were any such people during all the debate on the matter.

So are we still confused?  Are there still divisions?  The article from Washington Post quotes both sides of the aisle “Some Republicans have seized on the uninsured number to attack the health-care legislation, even though they oppose mandating the purchase of insurance and covering illegal immigrants. “After raising billions in new taxes, cutting about a half-trillion dollars from Medicare, and imposing stiff new penalties for people who don’t buy insurance and increasing costs for those that do, 23 million people will still not even have health insurance,” Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said before the Senate vote.” whereas “White House spokesman Reid Cherlin countered that “tens of millions of Americans will gain affordable coverage under this bill.”

One last word about the 23 Million left uninsured under this bill.  One has to wonder, where is the outrage?  Did none of the 23 Million write letters to their Congressmen or Senator’s that could be read tearfully in front of TV cameras, or were those letters just from the one’s who will get covered?

Threads:

http://borjas.typepad.com/the_borjas_blog/2007/05/illegal_immigra.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34664303/ns/politics-washington_post/

Originally posted on The Good Fight!! (patriotdreams.wordpress/com)

Running Circles around us?????

President Obama is very unhappy with the length of time that it takes to get legislation through the Senate, and is particularly distressed by the number of issues that have required a 60 vote majority to pass.

The President in an interview with PBS on Wednesday expressed frustration with the way the Senate does business, saying the use of delaying tactics there harms the nation’s ability to “deal with big problems in a very competitive world.”

“Other countries are going to start running circles around us,” Obama said  “We’re going to have to return to some sense that governance is more important than politics inside the Senate.”

Apparently he believes that the United States with our old slow method of legislation is being far outpaced by the rest of the world.  This pronouncement got my curiosity going.   Have I been paying so much attention to our own political turmoil that I have failed to see the rest of the world pulling ahead of us slow Americans?    While I was focused on the health care debate had our form of government become passe?

In order to convince myself that the world had not somehow launched full speed ahead of us, or worse was even now “running circles around us” and laughing out loud I checked out  the International headlines to see what I had missed.  Here is what the first 10 minutes of searching found:

Venezuela’s Chavez threatens to kick out carmakers

Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez has told car companies they must share their technology with local businesses or leave the country.

Greece votes for big budget cuts to reduce debt

The Greek parliament has voted to adopt big budget cuts designed to lower the country’s high levels of debt

Niger vows to arrest exiled opposition leaders

Niger has reactivated arrest warrants against three exiled opposition leaders – including a former president.

Japan PM apologies over funding scandal

Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has apologised after two former aides were charged with violating the laws on political funding.

UN sanctions shameful, says Eritrea

Eritrea has labeled UN sanctions imposed on Wednesday as shameful, and denied allegations that it arms Islamist militants in Somalia.

Violence mars protests over India’s new Telangana state

The opening day of a two-day strike by the supporters of a new state has brought violence to parts of India’s southern Andhra Pradesh state.

I hate to say this, but I still have absolutely no idea what the heck President Obama was talking about.  Apparently his idea of  ‘big problems’ includes things like Health care (which by all accounts doesn’t really start helping anyone for the next four to five years), Stimulus bills – the first one of which (here’s hoping it’s the only) still has yet to pay out 20% of the funds authorized, Immigration Reform – which is probably not going to help fix the double digit unemployment too awful much.

For all the talk of transparency that we heard from Candidate Obama, he failed to mention that the transparency he was referring to would only be available to political science majors who also happened to be speed readers.    For all the promises (or threats) of change in 2009, the year quickly passed with very little actually accomplished other than finger wagging, name calling, truth denying politics as usual

For all President Obama’s disparaging the delay tactics being used in the Senate, someone might want to remind him of who the majority party is?

The whole thing reminds me of an old sports joke.  It seems like the Democrats and Republicans decided to hold a football game to decide what party was going to be in power for the next four years.  The game was a scoreless tie.  A train went by and blew it’s whistle and the Republicans all thought that the game was over and went home.  The Democrats finally scored…..9 plays later.

Let’s get rid of the pork and the sausage too…

At the end of each year different media sources publish best and worst lists, or one of my favorites lists of terms that were overused the previous year.  Two of those terms that I would give good money to never hear again are “Nobody wants to see how the sausage get’s made” or any variation including “that’s how things are done in the big leagues”, pluuuzzzzee.

I guess both of those sayings sound better than “Isn’t graft great?” or “Wasn’t that a swell bribe?” terms that would far more accurately describe what has been going on in Washington to get this Health Care bill passed than any reference to producing meat products or baseball deals.

Having said that I am sure that some leftist somewhere is going to say “Yes but, a Republican named Norm Snitz in 1941 said…” really??  I don’t care.  There has been far too much of that lately also.  Crying out loud, question the war in Afghanistan and what do you hear?  “George Bush did worse” oh, well…sorry then, there goes my whole point.  I mean where are all the protestors?  Were they protesting the war, or protesting George Bush?   What happened yesterday, last week, last year, last century or the last millenium all has one thing in common, the word “last”, it’s not happening now and we live in the now.

So, how much of a percentage do you think that Obama would have won by if he had of campaigned on “Pork & Sausage”  rather than “Hope & Change”?  How many people really voted for what we’ve received?  If sausage making is so damn ugly (and apparently it is) why not take it off the menu entirely?  That “C-Span, bi-partisan, everybody get’s a seat at the table” campaign talk sure sounded a lot better than sausage.  It sounded kind of nice actually which should have been our first warning.   Again, saying “Well Republicans did not want to play…” does not mean that Democratic party could not have had the whole C-Span thing to themselves.  Hell, with one party it probably would have been a whole lot easier and they could have put on a play worthy of a..a …well a Obama town hall meeting.  But no, all we got were closed doors and this damned sausage.

Just because Pork and Sausage are how things have always been done does not mean that this is how they always should be.  Maybe when we are electing people in the future we can judge them on what they have accomplished, and where does that leave Obama?  Maybe we need to quit putting these Ivy League talking suits in power, left or right.   That includes the Bushes, the Kennedy’s the Kerry’s the Clinton’s and all the rest.  Putting them in the White House just guarantees us a President who thinks he knows better than the American people.  How well has that worked out so far?