Category Archives: Media

Desperately Needed: A Dose Of Kim-Jong-Un Justice

Democrats, Healthcare, Media, Socialism

“Desperately Needed: A Dose Of Kim-Jong-Un Justice” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

… As crucial as the pundits who bestow them with the “non-partisan” adjectival are the CBOafs (The Congressional Budget Oafs). They too protect the status-quo.

This federal agency is as “independent” as the country’s columnists, who might as well register as lobbyists for the RNC or DNC respectively.

Typically, the CBO will first confirm government predictions of the great savings that will accrue due to this or the other wastrel, welfare program. Later, when it’s safer, they adjust their statistical sleight of hand.

Yes, getting reliable data out of the CBO is like frisking a wet seal. Consistent with the agency’s drive to preserve its prized position, one finds older CBO-generated news headlines heralding the following healthcare breakthroughs:

“CBO Confirms Families Will Save Money Under Health Reform.”

“CBO Update Shows Lower Costs for the New Health Care Law.”

“CBO Confirms: The Health Care Law Reduces the Deficit.”

As if the above assurances are mathematically possible, given the $1 trillion in tax increases and $2 trillion in subsidies that Zero Care imposes.

Lately, as even an Obamahead at the Washington Post deigned to report, “The CBO [has] predicted that the law would have a ‘substantially larger’ impact on the labor market than it had previously expected: The law would reduce the workforce in 2021 by the equivalent of 2.3 million full-time workers … This will inevitably be a drag on economic growth, as more people decide government handouts are more attractive than working more and paying higher taxes.”

The White House quickly countered its bean-counters by releasing the news that, to date, 3.3 million people had signed up on Healthcare.gov, and that enrollment was proceeding apace.

The swirl of new statistics is bound to disorient the ditz aforementioned. Before she forgets, let us remind Kirsten Powers of two small things. The latest sample generated by Health and Human Services is heavily weighted by:

1. People who’ve clicked on a plan but have not paid for it.
2. People like Powers who previously had insurance. First to be expunged from the individual health-care market, they have now been corralled into Obamacare.

NHAHAHAHAHAHA! …

Read on. The complete column is “Desperately Needed: A Dose Of Kim-Jong-Un Justice.”

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US Fascism Rising: 46th Best Country For Journalistic Freedoms

Fascism, Free Speech, Journalism, Media

Via The Wire: “The United States took a nasty drop in the World Press Freedom rankings, released on Wednesday by the media group Reporters Without Borders, falling 14 spots to the 46th best country for journalist freedoms. Of the 180 countries ranked, the home of the First Amendment now sits snuggled between Romania and Haiti.”

The U.S.’s jump in last year’s rankings was dismissed at the time as “deceptive progress,” and true to form, America has fallen back down the list. The rankings report blame the U.S.’s drop on its wide-ranging crackdown on whistleblowers, particularly Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning (who got a 35-year sentence for leaking documents), and the attempted 105-year sentence for Barrett Brown. To the American government, “The whistleblower is the enemy,” the report writes. Similarly, the subpoena of Associated Press phone records contributed to that drastic drop.

MORE.

I am a tad surprised at the pass the UK gets. Via RT:

RWB did not considered the most recent revelation about British intelligence, found practicing not just spying but actively using cyber-attacks to deal with such information disseminators as Anonymous and LulzSec hacktivists, or that global media watchdogs are planning to investigate press freedom in the UK.

Also, Glenn Greenwald’s revelations about UK and US mainstream media being “devoted servants” of the intelligence agencies seemingly have not affected the rating.

Meanwhile WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is still trapped in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, with the freedom of information campaigner still being pursued by UK and Swedish justice.

Bill O And Barack O’s Zero-Info ‘Sparring’

Barack Obama, English, Media, Republicans

During his interview with Barack Obama, which he had advertized non-stop for weeks, Bill O’Reilly acted his trademark abrupt. Nobody much minded given who was sitting opposite him.

Also trademark Fox News was the heavy focus not on the infractions of the healthcare law and the law-makers who midwifed it, but on the technical glitches.

When Obama began bandying about bogus numbers of people who’ve signed up for healthcare, O’Relly might have nabbed him but … didn’t. Instead, on the broadcaster noodled about the need to fire Kathleen Sebelius.

O’Relly did get to the, “If you like your insurance, you can keep your insurance” lie, but let it slide without resolution.

For the rest, the interview is vintage Bill O’Reilly bluster. A lot of bravado and noise from O’Reilly; but not much more.

Thanks to Fox News for finally offering a transcript. I usually leave the page when I see one of the network’s big fat pictures of a video clip I’m supposed to watch. Some of us still prefer the written word.

MORE Exchanges On Mark Levin

Constitution, Media, Natural Law, Paleolibertarianism, Political Philosophy, Republicans, States' Rights

Contrary to ML, the libertarian reader who was annoyed with me for giving Mark Levin the time of the day (a premise with which I’d agree were Mr. Levin anything like the rest of the radio mouths; the tele-twits and teletwat, but he isn’t)—another reader, a fan of Mr. Levin, is angry that I dared question The Great One.

He quotes this from “Secession, Not Convention, Offers Salvation”:

The healthiest and most intuitive response to deep-seated, irreconcilable unhappiness – political or personal – is not to hold a constitutional convention, Mark Levin, but to leave, to exit the abusive relationship.

The reader then swats me down, as follows:

Ms. Mercer,
Have you even read The Liberty Amendments? Doesn’t appear so and it doesn’t appear that many posters on the WND website have either. Article V is pretty clear and so is the logical and rational arguments made by Mark Levin. Whose credentials, I would put up against all. Your gratuitous remarks about this “radio mouth” are vapid.

You, along with James McClellan portend there is “no mechanism to compel congress to act” (?) Wrong. Both of you need to go back and reread Article V again. It says “shall”. Not maybe, or might, or could, or probably. SHALL. There’s no gray area here and congressional involvement is limited to 1. putting the process in motion and 2. “as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed”. That’s IT. Just because the states historically, haven’t exercised this power means nothing. They certainly have the power to do so.

At the Mt. Vernon Assembly back in early December 32 states had representatives in attendance. This assembly was put in motion way before Mr. Levin ever started talking about his book. People are starting to wake up and understand the “real and present danger” this country is in. Mark Levin concisely lays out how the process would work, what the process would include and how it would be enforced. He also proposes amendments that are directly relevant to the runaway government we have today. If the convention devolved into the so called “runaway convention” enough states withdrawing from the convention to breach that 34 state threshold would end it right there. 33 States voting for “something” would mean nothing. Not to mention the 38 state threshold for ratification.

What is inexplicable Ms. Mercer is your wrongful rationale to shelve our Constitution and in turn, OUR country. Perhaps you should rethink the affinity you have for a nation that welcomed you with open arms with rights and freedoms unfamiliar to your homeland of South Africa. And while “the healthiest and most intuitive response to deep seated, irreconcilable unhappiness” may be best for personal reasons, it’s absurd to apply that rationale to this issue. The analogy is useless.

In closing, we don’t have to wait for a runaway convention. We have one NOW. A “coup d’etat”. Without one shot fired. This regime is pushing lawlessness and a quite anarchy so as to bring this nation to the breaking point. Which is exactly what they want. Don’t think for a split second that obama is not frothing at the mouth to implode this society so that he can declare Marshall Law and do away with the rest of the Bill of Rights. What other plausible explanations can there be for this man’s actions and those of his party? Our Constitution is being amended unlawfully on a daily basis and should be abundantly clear to anyone. We can do this the civil, lawful way or the uncivil way. Do you think that BO would just let us walk away? You’re not paying attention if you answered yes.

Mark Levin’s The Liberty Amendments provides the answer and the road map. Not the absolute anarchy that would come about from your solution.

Time constraints being what they are, here are some of the points made in my short answer (I chose to leave unchallenged the silly, quintessentially Republican notion that the unraveling began with Obama):

Dear D.,

I appreciate your passion, if not your emphasis on legalistic, positivist law, as opposed to the natural law. The first has failed us: http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=743

It all began with Mr. Levin’s hero, Abe: http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=586 & http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=31

MORE here.

As to your claims about secession causing “anarchy”: The only reason chaos—which is what I presume you mean by anarchy—could come about when people, peacefully, go their separate ways is because the central government would launch Total War against peaceful separatists. Consider that! You and Levin would argue that such a war is legal. Maybe so, but such a war [like the War of Northern Aggression] is never naturally licit.

The great Yorktown Patriot Dr. James McClellan has long since passed. He was easily and indisputably one of THIS country’s greatest constitutional scholars. More on McClellan’s constitutional take on secession: http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=718

Mark would have to agree, however great our disagreement, that this immigrant is a patriot. He should appreciate any immigrant who has fought for the American Creed as this immigrant has for so long.

I appreciate Mark as a potentially powerful anti-establishment force (witness the fact that he is seldom asked to join the Idiocracy on TV), and as the intellectual the rest (Savage, Prager, Medved, Rush, Laura, etc.) are not.

Best,
ILANA Mercer