Buckeye RINO

If you clicked the links to my prior brief posts about MSM coverage of the Tea Party in Lorain County held while Obama’s town hall was in progress, you may have noticed something odd.  A portion of the campus at Lorain County Community College was designated as the “free speech area,” where protesters were welcome to rally.

From this article by Cindy Leise of Elyria’s Chronicle-Telegram, it seems that the “free speech area” was probably not in a prime location that had a high degree of visibility among passers-by.

Just a handful of protestors gathered at the designated “Free Speech” area on the outskirts of campus near a parking area.

Most preferred being near the Abbe Road commercial area, where they spoke to shoppers and proudly showed off signs such as “Thank You Mass” and “No Recovery Here.”

Protesters shrugging off the “free speech area” and lingering along heavily traveled Abbe Road . . hmm . . . what do you think about that?  Probably a smart move that increased the Tea Party’s visibility.

Of course, in the United States of America that I’m accustomed to, the whole nation is a “free speech area.”

[UPDATE 1/23/2010] This poster reads, “Speech can segregate you from everyone,” and, apparently, the President and his entourage wanted to segregate themselves from the speech of the Tea Party, hence the “free speech area.”

Chris Ritchey, a former student of Lorain County Community College, is the creator of this poster.  It is with great pride that I reprint it here with the permission of his mother, Loraine Ritchey.  Chris was taken from our midst by the H1N1 virus on December 3, 2009, while he was trying to recover from Hodgkins Lymphoma.  A loving tribute to his legacy may be found on Loraine’s blog.

Loraine shared this piece of information about Chris with me:

“Yes, he did leave a legacy of wit and standing up for freedom . . . actually, I will be exploring that aspect of him as time goes on.”

Personally, I look forward to reading about it.  Thanks so much for sharing.

In contrast to the MJ’s reporting with an ugly slant, the Plain Dealer‘s Thomas Feran presents a more complete portrait of the 300 or so Tea Partiers at LCCC.

I’d be curious to learn other estimates of the people count.

[UPDATE 1/23/2010] Here’s another excellent article by Thomas Feran about the stalwarts who stayed all day to give Obama a defiant send-off.

Tea Partiers had their say on video, posted by David I. Anderson on the PD website.  Check it out.  It’ll put a smile on your face.

Who does Lorain’s Morning Journal hire as reporters?  I couldn’t find a byline for this story to locate the name of the person who wrote it.

Here’s the objectionable excerpt:

Just a few minutes before the north gates of the LCCC are set to close, protesters and self-proclaimed teabaggers are starting to come into the free speech area. Located as far from the president as possible, their signs read “Abortion is murder” and “Jesus is pro life.”

“Teabaggers” is a profane derogatory slur that refers to a sexual act.  Those who attend Tea Parties do not proclaim themselves to be “teabaggers.”  It’s the bloggers and vile lefty pundits like Keith Olbermann who denigrate those who attend Tea Parties with that disparaging label.

Is that a representative sample of Tea Party signs that only address the pro-life cause?  The signs are silent about bailouts, Obamacare, and cap-and-trade?

What an amateur hatchet job masquerading as MSM journalism.  And to think this doesn’t even appear on the Op/Ed page, but is being reported as real news.

It’s another Saturday of college football,  a government-subsidized, tax-exempt moneymaker for the biggest collegiate athletic programs.

I’m not suggesting we should start taxing college athletics to death.  I definitely think the federal government needs to drastically cut both spending and taxes.

But I do want to call attention to a charade.

At the end of the season, there will be bowl games, and a mythical champion will be crowned.

No playoffs.  But there’ll be a champion.

The two teams vying for the championship will be chosen by . . . pundits.

Since pundits do the choosing, why not have the championship at the beginning of the season, and what is currently the regular schedule can become mere exhibition games?  The pundits just have to pick the best team from the SEC and the best team from the Big 12, and those’ll be the contenders for the big championship game that kicks off the exhibition season.

Think that makes no sense?  What happens in reality makes only slightly more sense.  There is this ranking formula called the BCS that automatically assumes that the SEC is strongest conference.

Oh, but on the gridiron, the SEC proves its dominance with its winning record against its non-conference opponents, right?

Oh yeah!  I was totally impressed with that 62-3 beatdown that Florida gave to Charleston Southern.

I can’t wait to see how the Alabama Crimson Tide fares against Tennessee-Chattanooga.

That’s sarcasm, in case you missed it.

Charleston Southern and Chattanooga are colleges that aren’t even in the NCAA Bowl Subdivision.  It’s like a high school varsity squad cushioning the schedule with JV teams.  Yeah, there’s a chance the game will be competitive, but will the outcome of such games really inform you how good the varsity squads are?

Despite the creampuff nonconference schedule, even an SEC team with a loss can make it into the national title game, conceivably even two losses, which means that besides Florida and Alabama, LSU is still in the running.  LSU sheduled only teams within the NCAA Bowl Subdivision this season, unlike Florida and Alabama, though it’s non-conference lineup isn’t exactly scary, with the likes of Lousiana Tech, Louisiana-Lafayette, Tulane, and a U of Washington squad that lost all of its games last season.

By the way, each team plays 12 games during its regular season.  That means 6 home games and 6 away games, right?  Well, Alabama and LSU scheduled 7 home games and 5 away games.  Florida scheduled 8 home games and 4 away games.

The deck seems a little stacked, don’t you think?

Even my favorite collegiate team, the Ohio State Buckeyes, pad their schedule.  7 home games and 5 away games is standard for the Buckeyes.

The schools in the NCAA Bowl Subdivision don’t want to switch to a playoff format.  They want to make money.  The current bowl game scheme helps the fattest cats get fatter.

I’m not saying making money is a bad thing.  In America, we are at liberty to make money.

But let’s not kid ourselves that football in the NCAA Bowl Subdivision is a wholly capitalist venture.  The government does subsidize universities, and it does grant universities tax-exempt status.  Someone might even suggest that our universities are socialist, and who am I to say they’re wrong?

Occasionally, some members of Congress, and even President Obama, have called out the football bowl scheme and the so-called championship game for what it is: a charade.  Is there an approach that might improve the system that wouldn’t totally overturn it?  Sure!  That’s where I come in!

Daniel Jack Williamson is the solution.

For an annual salary of $48,000 (that’s less than $1000 per week!) and reimbursement for any job-related travel expenses (I’ll fly coach, or take Amtrak, and stay at budget motels, I promise!) I’ll go to work as the Obama Administration’s sports scheduling czar!  That’s right!  I’ll work for Obama!  Do you hear me, Mr. President?  If I work for you, that means I won’t be able to blog about you, and I won’t be in a position to criticize you!  Doesn’t that sound like a great deal?  And when Glenn Beck picks on me for being a White House czar, I won’t be thin-skinned like Van Jones, and, if Glenn Beck says something about me that’s untrue, I will not be afraid to call Mr. Beck’s phone, unlike Anita Dunn. (Oh, I’m sorry–I assumed Ms. Dunn was afraid.  I guess I assumed wrong.  Ms. Dunn is not afraid of Glenn Beck.  It’s just that the record didn’t need to be corrected because Mr. Beck was 100% correct.  My bad.)

As sports scheduling czar, I will schedule all the regular season games so that teams play meaningful schedules.  The teams won’t be playing schools who aren’t in the NCAA Bowl Subdivision (perhaps with the exception of schools who are in their first year after transitioning to the Bowl Subdivision).  If the typical school has 4 non-conference games, then, for the most part, they’ll play 2 games (one home, one away) against teams from 2 different major conferences and 2 games (one home, one away) against teams from 2 different mid-major conferences.  The regular season will have 6 home games and 6 away games for all teams, whether the team happens to be Florida, or the team happens to be Eastern Michigan.  With the more balanced regular season schedule, that I, as White House sports schedule czar, will impement, pundits will be able to compare apples to apples instead of apples to oranges when bowl selection takes place.

By taking the scheduling privileges away from college athletic directors and giving them to me, your sports scheduling czar, you will be reminding the schools that they are dependent on government for a great many things.  They are socialist institutions, not capitalist institutions, and you aren’t about to let them forget it.

If you’d like, I’ll even schedule all the other NCAA sports teams from all the divisions–big school, little school, volleyball, synchronized swimming, fencing, you name it, I’ll schedule it.

I’ll have my rolodex filled with contacts at all the sports venues so I’ll know when concerts and other events have dibs on the stadiums and arenas.  For venues that house home games of more than one team, I’ll make sure there are no time conflicts.  If a game is postponed due to weather, I’ll get that make-up game on the schedule.

Major League Baseball has an exemption from anti-trust laws.  As a bonus, at no extra charge, as White House sports schedule czar, I’ll schedule the MLB regular season, too.

NFL, NBA, NHL, MLS, WNBA, I’ll whip up regular seasons schedules for all of them, if you’d like.  Any day of the week you’d like to sink into a sofa and watch sports on TV while dithering and procrastinating decisions about Afghanistan, I’ll make sure there’s a compelling sports matchup on tap.

Mr. President, just email me (email address appears on my “About” page), to let me know you’d like to set up an interview for the czar job, and I’ll respond with my phone number so we can iron out the remaining details by phone and in person.  Like Glenn Beck, I’ll be waiting by my phone for your call.

😀

Last week, the Boston Globe released a story by a staff reporter named Bryan Bender that suggests that some Beltway politicos may be contemplating changing the mission of the Secret Service.

The Secret Service is entrusted with protecting our nation’s currency from counterfeiting and is also entrusted with guarding our nation’s president.  The Secret Service was created during the 1860’s to battle counterfeiting, and its mission was expanded to presidential protection in the wake of President McKinley’s assassination at the start of the 20th century.  When the Department of Homeland Security was created, the Secret Service was placed within that department.

The question at hand:  Does the Secret Service have the resources to handle these twin missions when far more safety threats to the President are being identified and when counterfeiting is so much more technologically advanced?

I’m not even sure it’s an honest question.

How are we to know the scope of resources at the Secret Service’s disposal?  How are we to know if there truly are more threats against the President’s safety?  How are we to assess the sophistication and proliferation of present-day counterfeiting schemes?

The answers to these three questions being unknowable to the public can enable alarmists to inflate the risks and to downplay the available resources with the intent of framing an ensuing debate that may be based solely on conjecture.  What fact-checking tools are available to the public to quantify and qualify the risks vis-a-vis the resources?

It’s with that skeptical eye toward the original question that I peruse the rest of Bender’s report.

What if the Secret Service were given one mission instead of two?  Would it make sense that the Secret Service be divested of the anti-counterfeiting role that it’s held since its founding?  If so, should that responsibility be handed over to the Treasury Department?

Let me ask that last question another way:  Should the Secret Service’s powers to investigate specified types of financial crimes be handed off to . . . Tim Geithner???????????

I can answer that last question:  NO WAY!

Last year, when Hank Paulson was Treasury Secretary, I blogged against the power that would be granted to Treasury Secretaries by the bailout bill (which, sadly, was passed into law):

The fundamental crux of the matter is that this bill gives Hank Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury, friend to the Wall Street crooks and enemy of the taxpayer, $250 billion of taxpayer money right up front, and perhaps $700 billion over all (and maybe more, since the precedent has already been set) to bailout whoever he pleases, with no judicial review.  He already acted on behalf of Bear Stearns without getting permission from the American people.  He already acted on behalf of AIG without getting permission from the American people.  He was able to coax Congress into going along with a bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  He’s been a crybaby that threw a tantrum to get this latest bailout approved, but it didn’t work.  Now he’s handing out candy to get this bailout approved.  Paulson and his Wall Street cronies have been more manipulative than any spoiled rotten brat I know.  Has it occurred to anyone on Capitol Hill and in the MSM that Paulson has been wrong with every move he makes?  Has it occurred to anyone that on Capitol Hill and in the MSM that Paulson has quietly assured his Wall Street cronies that the fix is in, and that he guaranteed to them that he’ll deliver the goods?  If we want accountability and oversight, it has to start with denying any of this bailout money.  It has to start with not granting additional power to the Secretary of the Treasury.

My dim view of Paulson is coupled with my dim view of Geithner, Paulson’s successor.  I distrust them both.

With a further consolidation of power over all financial aspects of our nation, what mechanisms are at the people’s disposal to check and balance any abuses that might occur at the Treasury Department?

I doubt that it would ever become necessary to trim the Secret Service’s twin missions down to one, but if it ever came down to it, I’d be much more comfortable with the Department of Homeland Security retaining the role of investigating the types of financial crimes that the Secret Service currently has jurisdiction over, and letting the Treasury Department guard our President, than doing it the other way around.

I’ve seen soundbite interviews with Pat Caddell, a self-described liberal Democrat and former pollster for McGovern and Carter, and wanted to hear more of his down-to-earth insightful analysis.

Why?  Because he’s not happy with Washington DC . . . and, quite frankly, neither am I.

So I did a google search hoping to find something longer than a soundbite, and I found one (though it’s more than two weeks old).  This interview with Pat Caddell is over 22 minutes long, and it engrossed me so much, I thought I’d share a link to it with my readers.

Hey, Fox News (or any other network, for that matter), will you please give Mr. Caddell his own TV show?  I guarantee you, this guy is not astroturf, and I’d like more of the featured voices from the left to be genuine and thoughtful, not cloned by Axelrod and knee-jerk.  He has so much information to share, soundbite appearances just don’t cut it.  He needs a lengthier format.

The American people gave Congress an earful and let them know that they did not favor a bailout.  Wall Street is being a crybaby about it and doing what they can to induce the American people to panic so that they can get their bailout.  I think that we will indeed experience painful economic shocks even if we do have a bailout, so I don’t see the point of a bailout.  I have already urged families to prepare for the downturn that is coming while your cash still has purchasing power.

Today, I learned that the MSM, especially the medium of television, is tone deaf to the American people.  Those people who phoned Congress against the bailout?  TV journalists have no understanding of those ordinary folks.  I guess if we don’t organize a march on Washington DC with picket signs hoisted high in the air, the reporters won’t bother to figure out why we just don’t want the bailout.  The protest of the people couldn’t be caught on camera, as we sent phone calls and e-mails instead.

The TV pundits have made an assumption about us.  They have determined that we are too stupid to realize that economic pain is coming.  The MSM has chosen to mingle their voices with those of Wall Street.  Wall Street threw a tantrum, and now the MSM has joined in.  The reporters are trying to pin blame for the failure of the bailout bill on one politician or another.  Blame?  Should we blame them?  Shouldn’t we be giving them credit for doing the right thing and listening to their constituents?  Clearly, the MSM has been partial.

Wall Street is in New York City.  The MSM capital is in New York City.  I guess I can’t expect the MSM to figure out how the economic news is playing in Ohio.

Go ahead, MSM, ask me some questions about my feelings about the economy going sour as I sit here in Ohio.  What do you want to know?  Nothing?  I’ll tell you anyway.

My own financial credit crisis occurred in 2003.  I lost a good paying job.  I’ve had a trickle of income ever since.  I’ve had to make do with whatever cash I have on hand.  I have no investments.  I have no 401k.  I had to sell my house.  I had to sell my car.  I still have no house.  I still have no car.  I live a fairly spartan lifestyle, sometimes with a bit of cash carrying over from one month to the next, sometimes not.  The computer I post these blog entries on is the most expensive asset that I own, and with the quick depreciation rate among computers that are rapidly outmoded by technological advances, this computer really isn’t worth a whole lot.

But it’s 2008 now, which is 5 years after my own personal financial meltdown.  I remain among the most vulnerable of Americans as our economy worsens even further.  I’m still hanging in there, still surviving, still happy to be alive, still happy to see what each new dawn brings my way.

But I am outraged, nonetheless, by what’s going on with Wall Street chicanery.  To Wall Street, I say, though I am of modest means, I don’t try to steal from somebody to get more.  I don’t try to defraud anybody.  I am not greedy.  I don’t want your Wall Street $$$$ millions $$$$ redistributed to me by way of ushering in a socialist society to replace our capitalist society.  If I, in my spartan surroundings, can resist scheming to make a quick buck in a dishonest way, why can’t you, in your opulent lifestyle, resist such schemes?  Wall Street, you ought to be held accountable.

Now back to my observations of the mainstream media.

Today, I noticed that TV reporters appear to be well compensated.  When “financial experts” appear as guests on the cable news shows, the reporters are asking questions such as “What should I do with my 401k?  How much should I have in stocks?  How much in commodities?  How much in bonds?  What should I do with my portfolio?”  I begin to understand why the MSM doesn’t understand me or many of the Americans who live paycheck to paycheck or who live, like me, on a cash-only basis because my credit rating was ruined a very long time ago, and my low income precludes me from becoming credit-worthy again.

I think the MSM is taking the side of Wall Street and not the American people on this bailout issue because the reporters are realizing they have a lot that they could potentially lose.  Their own lifestyle could possibly resemble mine someday.  If companies large and small are cash-strapped with little access to credit, and have trouble meeting payroll, and have to cut their advertising budgets, and companies start folding, then the MSM will lose advertising revenue, their own Super Bowl ad revenue bubble will burst, and networks will have to start becoming leaner, and perhaps shedding some journalists’ jobs.  Nevertheless, even should the worst befall them, there is still life after financial crisis.  Life goes on.  And . . . as long as we don’t cave under the pressure to convert our economic system from capitalism to socialism, we remain free.

The American people DO get it.  They DO understand that an economic crisis looms.  But they will brave the storm.  America is, after all, “the land of the free, and the home of the brave.”

And, eventually, the marketplace will stabilize, and we’ll count our blessings.

I see Democrat strategist Chris Kofinis bloviating on MSNBC about the prospects of passing a bailout bill.  Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi doesn’t want a floor vote on the bill until she is assured that about a hundred House Republicans will go along with the measure.  Everybody’s pacing the floor while the House Republicans are huddled in their chambers poring over 106 pages of legislation.

Chris Kofinis is saying that the the House Democrats, the White House, and the Senate don’t like this bill, but they are doing it because it’s what’s good for the country, and that House Republicans are trying to play politics with this instead of doing what’s right for the country.

I have to ask, what country do we live in?  The U.S.A.?  Or the U.S.S.S.A (The United Soviet Socialist States of America)?  This vote is pivotal.  This vote tells us whether we are a capitalist democracy, or a socialist bureaucracy.  The political risk for bailing out Wall Street is that if the people of the United States voted on the matter directly, we’d retain our capitalist economy, even though it falters from time to time.  Since Congress is willing to buck the will of the people, they are fairly confident that incumbency will protect them from blowback as they seem poised to become the elites of a socialist state.

If this is still the U.S.A., then Chris Kofinis is no patriot, and is clueless about what’s good for the country.