It’s time to change the name of the United States to the United Socialist States of ACORN.

Illegal immigrants voiting for the Democrat/Socialists with the help of “community organizers” such as ACORN.
Election boards dominated by the Democrat/Socialists disgard more than 25 percent of US soldiers’ ballots. Major manufacturers are “nationalized” by the new one-party system.

Note to cool, trendy Obama supporters: Only U.S. Citizens over 18 are allowed to register to vote. Illegal immigrants and felons (in most states) do not have the right.

“It’s not who wins the votes, it’s who counts to vote,” Stalin.

ATLANTA — The Obama  Justice Department has rejected Georgia’s system of using Social Security numbers and driver’s license data to check whether prospective voters are citizens, a process that was a subject of a federal lawsuit in the weeks leading up to November’s election.

What’s wrong with a real ID check? 

“This flawed system frequently subjects a disproportionate number of African-American, Asian and/or Hispanic voters to additional, and more importantly, erroneous burdens on the right to register to vote,” Loretta King, acting assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, said. 

The decision comes as Georgia awaits word on whether a law passed in the spring that requires newly registering voters to show proof of citizenship will pass muster with DOJ. Under the law that takes effect in January, people must show their proof up front just as everyone does when paying with a check.  

The Soviet Plan
Lessons were learned by watching the socialists take over Russia and transform through class and race warefare. The one-party Bolshavics took control and held it for 70 years before the people of Poland, Georgia and Romania took down the tyrants. Lessons were taken and used to prepare the American liberals for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and political insiders.

These observations are published in Pravda: 

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their “right” to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our “democracy”. Pride blind the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different “branches and denominations” were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the “winning” side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the “winning” side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America’s short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes.

America has traded places with the USSR. It’s time to congratulate the Democrat/Socialists and change the name of America in the spirit of “truth in advertising.”

Chronicle to purge 150 starting April 1 — A cruel April fools joke?

The SF Chronicle’s carbon footprint is getting smaller, about 150 people smaller.  Some may feel a little foolish now about turning off their lights for Earth Hour, especially when they learn that Al Gore kept the lights on in his 9,000 sq ft mansion. California’s power use didn’t budge. It was a dim idea. 

Back to the lights out on newspapers top heavy with executive editors: 

“Until the current newspaper crisis, you rarely heard politicians or activists bleating about how important newspapers were to self-government. They mostly bitched about what awful failures newspapers were at uncovering vital data. The only group that holds a consistently high opinion of newspapers is newspaper people,” Jack Shafer.

He cites a recent Pew study that shows most people don’t care if their local newspaper folds, and he says they have a point — few of the stories printed every day “are likely to supercharge the democratic impulse,” and even the ones that do, generally fail to spur voters to do anything.

 

Slate‘s Shafer laughs at the high-minded talk of the critical role newspapers play in a democracy, declaring, “I can imagine citizens acquiring sufficient information to vote or poke their legislators with pitchforks even if all the newspapers in the country fell into a bottomless recycling bin tomorrow.”

Shafer shows that some of the people arguing for the importance of newspapers — academics and liberal activists — have shown little love for them in the past.

CHRONICLE UNIT BULLETIN — It’s official!

More than 80 Chronicle staff members took the severance deal on March 31, 2009. The overall number will be 150 in the next two weeks. Is anyone keeping a talley? Has it been 500 cuts the last four years? That’s my estimate.

 

Because of the large number of employees volunteering for termination during The SF Chronicle’s voluntary termination period, the WARN Act provisions requiring 60 days advance notice of involuntary layoffs is not valid. That means that after April 1, another 80 will be given their walking papers.

The company would have no legal need to give the 60-day notice provided for under the WARN Act.

Some members have said that they would not apply for the voluntary termination package and would, instead, wait for the layoff in order to get 60 days notice and the additional pay involved. Given the current situation, however, the Guild advises against taking this course of action because it appears there is a good possibility that the 60 days additional notice with pay won’t materialize. Remember that after April 3, 2009 no member regardless of age can receive the Supplemental Pension Benefit as a lump sum and all will have to take it as a monthly annuity. So if the Supplemental Pension Benefit as a lump sum from the Guild Pension Plan is important to you, and if the 60 days notice you were counting on is no longer a solid possibility, and you are certain you want to leave The Chronicle, we suggest that you should strongly consider volunteering to terminate your employment by the 5 p.m. March 31 deadline.

So, if another 50 or more rush to get your modest buyouts. The remainder who wait very well could end up with an extra 60 days pay.  Not a bad bet. And there are still 60 days of skiing at Heavenly and Squaw Valley.

 “Until the current newspaper crisis, you rarely heard politicians or activists bleating about how important newspapers were to self-government. They mostly bitched about what awful failures newspapers were at uncovering vital data. The only group that holds a consistently high opinion of newspapers is newspaper people,” Jack Shafer.

 Names of Chronicle staff taking the buyouts are piling up like winos in front of the Salvation Army food kitchen.   

Some of the paper’s veteran reporters and biggest names are leaving. It looks like music, books and arts coverage will be hit hard, as well as the photo department.

 Here are the names so far:

 Joel Selvin, who has covered the rock and roll scene for 30 years or so.

 Carl Hall, a longtime science reporter currently on leave.

 Tom Meyer, editorial cartoonist.

 Zachary Coile, a long-time reporter in the Washington D.C. bureau.

 Nancy Gay, who covers 49ers football and other major league teams. 

Three of the papers top culture writers are departing, including:

 Jesse Hamlin, Edward Guthmann, and Heidi Benson. They frequently profile authors, actors, and musicians.

Sabin Russell, who has covered science for decades.

Alison Biggar, the long-time editor of the Chronicle Magazine.

Sylvia Rubin, who covers fashion.

Bernadette Tansey, a biotech reporter. (She has been writing a new feature each Sunday that I love, a round-up of books on a particular business topic, but done in a very clever way.)

The photography department will take a big hit as six photographers, including Pulitzer-Prize winner Kim Komenich, are departing. The others include Michael Maloney, Craig Lee, Eric Luse, Mark Costatini and Kurt Rogers, a sports photographer

Other departures include:

Kevin Albert, editorial assistant

Greg Ambrose, copy editor

Charles Burress (who has covered Berkeley for years.)

Peter Cafone, sports copy editor

Ken Costa, graphic designer

Elizabeth Hughes, copy editor
Leslie Innes, Datebook editor
Timothy Innes, foreign news wire editor
Rod Jones, copy editor, news
Eric Jungerman, designer
Kathy Kerrihard, library researcher
Simar Khanna, editor of Home and Garden section

Even lower level employees are taking the bum’s rush:

Bonnie Lemons, copy editor, news
Glenn Mayeda, editorial assistant, sports
Johnny Miller, library researcher
Dan Giesin, sports night copy editor
Janice Greene, editorial assistant on the op-ed page
Shirley-Anne Owden, copy editor, features
Courtenay Peddle, copy editor, news
Lee Sims, copy editor, news
Michelle Smith, a sports reporter who covers women’s basketball
Patricia Yollin, metro reporter

There are many, many more. Please post what you know on comments.

 So the list will grow longer. Hearst wanted to lay off as many as 225 workers, (and threatened to shutter the paper) but backed off after the Newspaper Guild agreed to cuts in vacation time and seniority rules.

I wonder how these soon to be retired professionals feel now about their liberal politics, the kind that use their taxes to pay for the Mayor Gavin Newsom to fly off to Davos, Paris and London to mingle with the rich and powerful world leaders, while the “good people” work 50-hour weeks and pay nearly 50 percent of their wages in tax?

This is a profile of journalists in Gawker:

“While journalists might continue to forge forward despite workload, deadlines and salary issues, they will not stand by as the foundation of journalism crumbles beneath them. At that point, they will quit,” the study concludes. Hey! Anyone want to start a rock band or a truffle farm with me? Clips not required.

 

Dems to ban modern firearms, labeling them assault weapons?

This is the big one. Hillary is discussing how the Mexican border is our problem because so called “assault weapons” are flowing from the USA to Mexican drug lords. 

Funny, I call them home defense weapons.

Here comes the government gun grab, take away Americans’ Second Amendment rights to own firearms and protect their family’s lives and do it for Mexico? How gullible do they think we are? 

We all know that the Mexican drug gangs have military, fully automatic weapons from China and Eastern Europe and are exporting tons of drugs and scores of people every day over our borders. Why would banning modern home defense firearms from Americans stop or even slow the drug violence and human trafficing? 

It’s “new speak” coming from the Obama/Orwellian Big Brother/Big Sis government. 

The progressive Democrats are going to ignore a major tenant of the Constitution out of fear, I believe of a civilian backlash.

Tip of the day: Buy guns and bullets. They are the new gold. 

 

 

The Obama administration didn’t waste more than a month to seek to reinstate “the assault weapons ban” (really the modern home defence firearm band) that expired in 2004 during the Bush administration, Attorney General Eric Holder said today.

Wednesday Attorney General Eric Holder said that the Obama administration will seek to reinstitute the assault weapons ban which expired in 2004 during the Bush administration.

(AP Photos/ABC News Graphic )

“As President Obama indicated during his campaign, there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons,” Holder told reporters.

Holder said that putting the ban back in place would not only be a positive move by the United States, it would help cut down on the flow of guns going across the border into Mexico, which is struggling with heavy violence among drug cartels along the border.

Really, why can’t we stop the flow of humans and drugs along the border?

“I think that will have a positive impact in Mexico, at a minimum.” Holder said at a news conference on the arrest of more than 700 people in a drug enforcement crackdown on Mexican drug cartels operating in the U.S.

How are Americans to defend themselves, with only 150-year old gun technology against Mexican drug runners and a well armed new U.S. socialist police state?

Imagine the government making a law that kept new computer or cell phone technology from the public?

Which country’s citizens is Obama concerned about?

Obama Creating the United Socialist States of Amerika — trillions spent on Big Government programs

Back in the USSA. We don’t know how lucky we are, eh! Back in the USSA! 

WE GOT YOUR  MONEY     GONNA SPEND YOUR  MONEY   GONNA PRINT SOME MORE  MONEY

 

Antonia Ferrier, a spokeswoman for House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), said Gibbs was trying to create a distraction by responding to Limbaugh.

“What we are seeing is a desperate attempt by Democrats to distract attention away from a multi-trillion dollar spending spree taking place in Washington,” Ferrier said. “Creating a boogeyman to change the subject does nothing to alter the fact that there are 9,000 earmarks in the omnibus spending bill, that the economic stimulus bill contained no Republican input or that their budget would increase taxes on all Americans.”

Mick Gregory

The EU is on the verge of crumbling as Obama and Gordy Brown use the banking crisis to nationalize and build more power for central government.

Historians will look back and say this was no ordinary time but a defining moment: an unprecedented period of global change, and a time when one chapter ended and another began.

The scale and the speed of the global banking crisis has at times been almost overwhelming, and I know that in countries everywhere people who rely on their banks for savings have been feeling powerless and afraid. But it is when times become harder and challenges greater that across the world countries must show vision, leadership and courage – and, while we can do a great deal nationally, we can do even more working together internationally. — Gordy Brown, UK Prime Minister

Anyone who took Economics 101 remembers the root cause of inflation — the central government prints massive amounts of currency. Change is coming. Inflation is coming my friends. From near zero under Bush (the evil one) to what may rival Zimbabwa in about a year or two. 

What will happen to the Democrat/Socialist Party’s plan to tax “only the rich?” We will all be the rich. Any two income household making over $210,000 will be taxed at the super high rates of Jimmy Carter, LBJ and FDR. 

That is coming. Bet on it. We will be wards of the state with more than 50 percent of our wealth taxed by the Democrats. The home mortgage deduction has been taken away from those like Joe the Plumber. Welcome to the USSA. We don’t know how lucky we are, eh! 

 

 

 

Back on Uncle Sam’s plantation 
Star Parker – Syndicated Columnist – 2/9/2009 8:00:00 AM

 

Six years ago I wrote a book called Uncle Sam’s Plantation. I wrote the book to tell my own story of what I saw living inside thewelfare state and my own transformation out of it.

I said in that book that indeed there are two Americas — a poor America on socialism and a wealthy America on 
capitalism. 
 
I talked about government programs like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Training (JOBS), Emergency Assistance to Needy Families with Children (EANF), Section 8 Housing, and Food Stamps.

A vast sea of perhaps well-intentioned government programs, all initially set into motion in the 1960s, that were going to lift the nation’s poor out of poverty.

A benevolent Uncle Sam welcomed mostly poor black Americans onto the government plantation. Those who accepted the invitation switched mindsets from “How do I take care of myself?” to “What do I have to do to stay on the plantation?”

Instead of solving economic problems, government welfare socialism created monstrous moral and spiritual problems — the kind of problems that are inevitable when individuals turn responsibility for their lives over to others.

The legacy of American socialism is our blighted inner cities, dysfunctional inner city schools, and broke n black families.

Through God’s grace, I found my way out. It was then that I understood what freedom meant and how great this country is.

I had the privilege of working on welfare reform in 1996, passed by a Republican Congress and signed 50 percent.

I thought we were on the road to moving socialism out of our poor black communities and replacing it with wealth-producingAmerican capitalism.

But, incredibly, we are going in the opposite direction.

Instead of poor America on socialism becoming more like rich American on capitalism, rich America on capitalism is becoming like poor America on socialism.

Uncle Sam has welcomed our banks onto the plantation and they have said, “Thank you, Suh.”

Now, instead of thinking about what creative things need to be done to serve customers, they are thinking about what they have to tell Massah in order to get their cash.

There is some kind of irony that this is all happening under our first black president on the 200th anniversary of the birthday ofAbraham Lincoln.

Worse, socialism seems to be the element of our new young president. And maybe even more troubling, our corporate executives seem happy to move onto the plantation.

In an op-ed on the opinion page of the Washington Post, Mr. Obama is clear that the goal of his trillion dollar spending plan is much more than short term economic stimulus.

“This plan is more than a prescription for short-term spending — it’s a strategy for America ‘s long-term growth and opportunity in areas such as renewable energy, healthcare, and education.”

Perhaps more incredibly, Obama seems to think that government taking over an economy is a new idea. Or that massive growth in government can take place “with unprecedented transparency and accountability.”

Yes, sir, we heard it from Jimmy Carter when he created the Department of Energy, the Synfuels Corporation, and the Department of Education.

Or how about the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 — The War on Poverty — which President Johnson said “…does not merely expand old programs or improve what is already being done. It charts a new course. It strikes at the causes, not just the consequences of poverty.”

Trillions of dollars later, black poverty is the same. But black families are not, with triple the incidence of single-parent homes and out-of-wedlock births.

It’s not complicated. Americans can accept Barack Obama‘s invitation to move onto the plantation. Or they can choose personal responsibility and freedom.

Does anyone really need to think about what the choice should be?

 

Philly Newspapers Rolled – Inquirer and Daily News in free fall

Bankruptcy documents filed Sunday by Philadelphia Newspapers LLC, The Inquirer and Daily News and seven affiliated suburban publications report the newspaper group bought  from McClatchy (the troubled chain that Knight-Ridder unloaded in 2005) is asking the court for bankruptcy protection. The Philly group paid McClatchy  $562 million for the papers. The value of the assets is far lower than that just a few years later.

You have to admire the business knowledge of the Knight-Ridder family share holders who knew when to fold them and chuck them off before the business trends became obvious.

This report in Forbes Magazine is by Wm. P Barret, former Dallas Times Herald and Philly Inquirer reporter and editor. He has good sources. 

The Inquirer and Daily News join a growing list of newspapers forced into bankruptcy after sharp declines in advertising destroyed their ability to service big debts taken on when they changed hands. A day earlier, Journal Register Co. (nyse: JRC – news – people ), parent of Connecticut’s New Haven Register and 178 other weekly and daily newspapers, sought bankruptcy-court protection. The same fate befell the Minneapolis Star Tribune last month. In December, Tribune Co., whose holdings include the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and Newsday, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. All newspapers have suffered sharp ad revenue declines due to Internet competition and the recession, but those that recently changed hands in leveraged deals are the most vulnerable.

The bankruptcy threatens to wipe out the $150 million equity investment made by Tierney’s Philly group, which included local labor unions and business interests. It also raises the prospect of big losses by the lenders that provided the balance of more than $400 million in debt financing. The list of largest unsecured creditors was topped by Royal Bank of Scotland (nyse: RBS – news – people ), which is owed $22 million. As of Jan. 31, the company said it still owed $395 million to lenders.

 

“The debtors’ assets and going concern value are worth less today than they were worth in 2006,” Thayer wrote. He added that Philadelphia Newspapers had 2008 free cash flow–before interest, taxes, depreciation or amortization–of $36 million. That is expected to drop 31% to $25 million this year, Thayer wrote. It is from cash flow that debt-servicing payments are made.

Thayer’s statement hints at hard-ball tactics on all sides as Tierney’s team fought to restructure its finances outside of court. A Tierney request in November for $20 million in equity investment from lenders was rejected. Then this month, Thayer wrote, lenders countered with a proposal that the money be a loan and demanded an answer to their proposal within 48 hours–and without providing a copy of the paperwork describing fees for their loans.

In a memo to employees, Tierney said the company has asked the hometown bankruptcy court to allow payments of benefits and pensions. A bankruptcy filing usually halts such payments, at least initially. In recent years, many employees of the Inquirer and Daily News have taken buyouts or have been laid off.

Thayer’s affidavit says Tierney’s management has “dramatically improved the operations.” But one thing not specified was print circulation numbers of the Inquirer and Daily News, both Pulitzer Prize-winning newspapers. Latest audited figures put their combined daily circulation at 398,000, on the order of half what it was when the papers’ main competition, The Philadelphia Bulletin, went out of business in 1982.

Joe the plumber is in deep sh*t now for speaking up against Obama

By Mick Gregory

You knew it would happen. Joe the Plumber’s 15 minutes of fame in last night’s debate have turned into a round of public humiliation for the wannabe business owner. The Toledo Blade is reporting that Joe has no plumber’s license.

To make matters worse, the Blade also found that the Ohio Department of Taxation placed a lien against Joe because $1,183 in personal property taxes had not been paid. The piling on has begun. The media is searching for more dirt on Joe. Why aren’t journalists looking at William Ayers and Obama’s ACORN support and the Fannie and Freddie financial disastor with as much vigor?

You know why, don’t you. Welcome to the new United Socialist/Democrat States! Where the media is in lockstep with Big Brother and Senator Government. Make way for a wave of taxes and government control not seen in this country since Jimmy Carter, or LBJ’s Great Society, maybe even FDR’s New Deal. It’s BO’s time.

It took a hard working, average citizen to expose the media propaganda and lack of reporting on Democrat candidate for president, Barack Obama. Rather than report on Obma’s ACORN and William Ayers long-term alliance with Obama’s political support, they turn to ripping into Joe from Ohio.

 

 

We know that more than 90 percent of the major media consider themselves liberal. Even more so, the “minor media” like loser reporters in Scranton and those working for the Stribe.

We know that the small town Scranton fat, homely liberal reporter who made up hearing people at McCain-Palin saying “terrorist,” etc.

Who wrote Dreams From My Father? Not Obama but William Ayers?

The evidence of a close kinship between Barack Obama and Bill Ayers is coming out in the open on blogs, talk shows and in magazines. The mainstream media is hoping it will all be “noise” with no consequences. After all, the election is in the bag for Obama with only three weeks left.

Jack Cashill has written a story in American Thinker about the timing and evidence of a ghost writer who may have written Dreams From My Father — the book that put Obama on the national stage.

Time Magazine called Dreams … “the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician.”

But Obama had not really written anything up until that. So, did he use a ghost writer? The evidence is there, it is very professional and has a wonderful style. So why doesn’t he name the ghost writer? Or why doesn’t the great writer come forward and say “It was all Obama, I just zipped it up a little.”

Greta Van Sustren is said to be about to break this story.

Come on, this is your time to get some credit. Call yourself just an editor. But let us know who you are?

Wait a minute, what if the ghost writer is Bill Ayres? That would show that Obama is a fabricated man, built by the life-long socialist Ayres.

This is the October surprise.

It’s patriotic to pay more taxes? Say it ain’t so, Joe! Joe, there you go again!

She connected with the West and Midwest.

Sarah stood toe to toe with an old Democrat who has been in Congress since she was in second grade.

“This was a knockout. She did the best of any debate I’ve ever seen.” — Rudy Guliani

She is more than qualified. She is a maverick governor of a large, important state.

She uses plain talk.

“McCain rang the warning bell in 2005. The Democrat Party ignored that warning and shut it off. That’s why we are in the financial bail out we are in,” Sarah Palin.

Create jobs, lower taxes, end the war with victory…

— Sarah Palin

Look, $180 billion to Kenya’s poor?

Energy independence.

I can’t wait to get to work there.

Did Joe Biden’s kids go to public schools? Did Clinton’s? Did Kerry’s? Did Obama’s?

Why do the teachers unions send their dues to Democrat elitists?

Joe there you go again.

Our schools need to be ramped up. Palin comes from a family of school teachers. Increase the standards.

“We need people from middle America’s opinions. They know what hard work and morals are about.”

“I’m totally blown away,” Senator Fred Thomson.

I’m so happy for her. She has been made to look like a bafoon. She has placed shame on a lot of people if they are capable of shame,” Thomson.

Obama said he would sit down with Amadidajon.

Biden said he was against coal. All coal in the U.S.

Try and say the following with a straight face to a liberal friend:

Senator Biden made the performance of a lifetime. He is substanitive, presidential and has gravitas. Sarah Palin, the hockey mom, pitbull with lipstick was an embarassment. What does she know about governing? She was an embarassment!”

PBS Democratic Party propaganda exposed by viewers — one sided poll is a laugher

Taxpayer supported PBS should at least try and show some restraint during the runup to a national election. But the programing executives do all they can to get Obama/Biden in the White House and complete the project of one party rule in the United States.

The media executives at PBS published a survey asking if Sarah Palin was qualified to be Vice President.

But there were no such surveys about Obama, Biden or Hillary were there?

Here are some examples of citizen journalists remarks buried on the PBS ombudsman Web page.

WIll you see this in your daily newspaper? Nah. And the Democratic Party promises to bring back the Fairness Doctrine after they take over the White House. Why do they have to go that far?

I am once again aghast and stunned that the PBS would be so involved in politics that they actually circulated the “is Sarah Palin qualified to be Vice President” poll. How dare you use federally subsidized taxpayer platform for your own political ambitions: have you know shame?

You code of ethics mentions a “neutral platform” and that means you do not have the right to back a candidate. The poll regarding the qualifications of Sarah Palin would only be put out by a biased, liberal attack apparatus: Everybody else knows that she is well enough qualified to be President, far far more than Obama. It is a moot point and undebateable fact that Obama is not qualified by experience, background or character to be President; yet you have the audacity to question whether the sitting governor of the State of Alaska is qualified.

The mere asking of the question is an unethical violation of your own “neutrality” status. As for me; Every night I pray to God that Obama does not reside at the White House.

James Steven Slater, Fort Worth, TX

New Yorker cover draws fire

Mick Gregory

The cover shows Michelle Obama giving Barack (who is dressed in Muslim jihadist garb) a terrorist “fist-pump” similar to the SLA. The American flag is buring in the fireplace and there is a portrait of Osama bin Laden on the wall.

Blasphemy. Kill the cartoonist! This is an insult to the Democrat party and Islam!

An insult to Obama!

How many nasty covers made fun of Bush, Cheney, Nancy and Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich and Dan Quale? Plenty. But that is to be expected.

The New Yorker cartoonist and editors are laughing at all the attention the elite, liberal, well-written, (but poorly read) weekly magazine is getting. The joke is, that’s what they think Republicans think of Obama.

Not quite, we think of him as a “progressive” socialist selling the same old FDR, LBJ, quasi-communist, class warfare propaganda. He’s a Chicago ward politician with less than 150 days of experience as a U.S. Senator.

Major national poll finds 70% of U.S. believe newspaper journalists are out of touch with reality — Newspapers are now the last source of news at only 10%

Mick Gregory

Nearly 70 percent of Americans believe traditional journalism is out of touch, and nearly half are turning to the Internet to get their news, according to a new survey.

While most adults think all forms of journalism are important to the quality of life, 64 percent are dissatisfied with the quality of journalism in their communities, a “We Media/Zogby Interactive” online poll showed.

Nearly half of the 1,979 adults who took the survey said their primary source of news and information is the Internet, up from 40 percent just a year ago. Less than 1/3 watch television to get their news, while 11 percent listen to radio and 10 percent read newspapers.

Newspapers are now at the bottom of the heap. What is the NYT trading at today? Next…

The New York Times Co.’s continued struggles with declining advertising revenue, circutlation, unehtical yellow journalism smear tactics and the bling support for the old guard, the Clinton machine, prompted Standard and Poor’s to caution Friday that it is inching closer to cutting the company’s debt ratings. That is a rare and serious threat.

The office at Standard & Poor’s said it placed all of the New York Times’ ratings, including its key long-term corporate credit rating, on CreditWatch with negative implications. In plain English, that means the rating agency is leaning heavily toward a downgrade unless current financial trends at the company improve.

Why the drop? A dissident investor stepped up pressure on The New York Times Co. Friday, formally proposing its own slate of four directors and saying the company needs to take more drastic action to compete online.
Harbinger Capital, an investment firm that now owns about 19 percent of the company, filed its own proxy statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission listing its nominees for directors to be elected at the Times’ annual meeting April 22.

The Times has already filed its own full slate of director nominees, but has said it was still considering whether to accept Harbinger’s candidates.

Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis said the company’s board was interviewing the Harbinger nominees. She declined to comment further on their proxy filing.

The looming proxy battle comes as the Times and other U.S. newspapers are facing huge challenges in adapting to the steady migration of readers and advertising dollars to the Internet. An economic slowdown coupled with a deep slump in the housing market is worsening the situation.

Earlier Friday, the Times reported that its newspaper advertising fell 11.4 percent in January, with a 22.6 percent dropoff in classified advertising, a once cash cow business for newspapers that is vulnerable to competition from online rivals like Craigslist, eBay and Yahoo.

The New York Times is hedging its future. They are big investors in WordPress.com.

Obama just missed winning the jackpot in Nevada — Hillary’s union activists muscle in. Now reported: election districts in New York’s Harlem had zero votes for Obama. More than 80 voting districts in New York had zero votes for Obama.

By Mick Gregory

Updated when relevant reports come in.
Feb. 16, 2008:
Wire reports summarized in a 1 col.x 5 inch story burried within the Houston Chronicle mentions:

No (0) votes for Obama in Black voting district in New York.
Black voters are heavily represented in the 9th Election District in Harlem’s 70th Assembly District. Yet according to rustls from the New York Democratic primary last week, not a single vote in the district was cast for Obama.
That anomaly was not the only one. A review by the New York Times of unofficial results on primary night found some 80 election districts where Obama did not recieve even one vote, including districts where he ran a respectable race in the ajoining districts

This while Kucinich is paying for a recount in New Hampshire where he received (0) votes and low to (0) counts for Obama.

Has the Clinton machine been vote tampering again like they tried to do in Miami for Al Gore?

Why isn’t this a front page news article? Are you concerned that the U.S. election process is corrupt?

Obama wins South Carolina with 54% of the vote to Hillary’s 26%. Oops. The Bill factor didn’t help much, did it.
Maybe it was because the Clinton machine doesn’t have clout in South Carolina.

US Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign on Sunday said that it had received reports of voting irregularities in Nevada’s nominating caucuses, which were won by rival Hillary Clinton.
Spokesmen for Obama’s campaign told reporters that a Clinton party handout urged registration lines for the caucuses Saturday to close at 11:30 am, whereas state party rules said anyone in line until 12:00 pm was to be allowed to participate.

“Despite clear rules and timelines laid out by the Nevada Democratic Party that caucus doors should remain open and voter registration should continue until noon, the Clinton campaign encouraged their operatives to close the caucus doors at 11:30 am, a half hour before that deadline,” said spokesman Bill Burton.

“This caused confusion and led to people leaving the caucuses before having the chance to participate.”

Clinton won the state’s nominating contest with 51 percent of the vote, while Obama received 45 percent. The victory increased the former first lady’s lead over Obama, after she also won the New Hampshire primary on January 8.

Obama won the Democrats’ first nominating caucuses in Iowa at the beginning of the month. His campaign called for a full review of the Nevada vote but insisted it was not calling into question the results.

“We found an unusually high number of reports that the Clinton campaign was insisting that 11:30 was the deadline,” said general counsel Bob Bauer, adding that at least 300 complaints had come in.

“We are not calling the results into question at all. We want to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Bauer said.

“We are going to notify the Nevada Democratic party that we want a full review of this, and make sure we have in front of us a full picture to make sure this behavior is highlighted and discouraged in the future.”

Like New Hampshire, Nevada was another do-or-die situation for the Hillary machine.
Right out of Stalin’s playbook, voter suppression was on and the pro-Hillary teachers unions, Teamsters and government workers unions went all out for the machine — Hillary.

And just like BIG BROTHER/BIG SIS, the truth of voter suppression and cheating were flipped around and turned on Obama supporters. This power grab is serious business.

To go over the facts here, the only publicly reported radio ad anything like what Clinton refers to is one that encourages Republicans and independents to caucus, but doesn’t mention Hillary.

And the Vegas papers haven’t found any evidence of the kind of straightforward voter suppression Clinton reports. The Obama campaign has suggested the Clinton campaign file formal complaints if it has evidence.

“This is ludicrous,” Culinary Workers political director Pilar Weiss told Politico. She said the union is “aware that some workers aren’t going to vote our way” and doesn’t engage in intimidation.

“The fact that they lost a lawsuit aimed at suppressing workers’ votes, and that now they’re trying to hold on to these baseless claims is ridiculous,” she said.

Weiss also said Clinton’s claim is “technically impossible.” Clinton supporters can ask union organizers — who are actively promoting Obama’s candidacy — to add their names to the lists of workers who will take time off to caucus today. But signs posted around the casinos advertise another avenue to get the time off: Workers can go around the union and ask their managers directly.

“We have found it shocking that President Clinton has gotten so engaged in promoting these accusations,” she said.

My friend and attorney nicknamed Marjon* told me about this story.

Turn out the lights, the party is finally over for Hillary. Her lawsuit filed to hinder casino workers from voting was thrown out by an honest judge.

Here is another example of how the Democrat machine is anything but democratic. Hillary’s teachers union tried to block out casino workers from voting in Saturday’s Nevada caucuses. Was the mainstream media reporting this? An AP reporter had the story on the wires, but very few newspapers bothered to pick it up. Meanwhile, Dennis Kocinich is paying $70,000 for a recount of the New Hampshire primary because of evidence of voter fraud by the Hillary Rodham-Clinton machine.

The Nevada results that come in Saturday will put Obama on top before Florida, South Carolina and Super Tuesday.

Here are the details from the AP report:

A union with ties to Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton failed in court Thursday to prevent casino workers from caucusing at special precincts on the Las Vegas strip.
The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge James Mahan was presumed to be a boost for Clinton rival Barack Obama in the Democratic presidential caucuses Saturday because he has been endorsed by the union representing many of the shift workers who will be able to use the precincts.
“State Democrats have a First Amendment right to association, to assemble and to set their own rules,” Mahan said.
Nevada’s Democratic Party approved creation of the precincts to make it easier for housekeepers, waitresses and bellhops to caucus during the day near work rather than have to do so in their neighborhoods.
The state teachers union, which has ties to Clinton, brought the suit against the special precincts shortly after local 226 of the Culinary Workers Union endorsed Obama for the Democratic nomination. The union is the largest in Nevada, with 60,000 members. The Clinton campaign said it was not involved in the suit.
The suit contended party rules allowing the precincts gave too much power to the casino workers and violated federal equal protection guarantees.
But the judge said, “We aren’t voting here, we’re caucusing. That’s something that parties decide.”
He said it is “up to the national party and the state party to promulgate these rules and enforce them.”
The Democratic National Committee ratified the state party’s rules in August.
Campaigning in San Francisco, Obama welcomed the judge’s decision, saying, “Any alternation would have disenfranchised maids, dishwashers, bellhops, people who work on the strip. Some of the people who set up the rules apparently didn’t think that we would be as competitive as we were and tried to change at the last minute.”
Nevada State Education Association — a pro-Hillary union — initiated the lawsuit.

*Marjon is the blind fearless lion of Afghanistan who would bite at the wind.

Another Major Newspaper Shuttered — The Cincinnati Post

Yesterday was the final press run of the Cincinnati Post. Turn out the lights, the Post is over. Note that even the paper’s “obituary” was written by a freelance journalist, not one of the staff. Telling isn’t it? The full-time Post writers didn’t even care enough to write it.

By Lew Moores
Post contributor

The history of The Cincinnati Post and Kentucky Post in the last four decades has been something of an exquisite paradox – an afternoon newspaper that had managed to attract incredible talent and practice a scrappy brand of journalism over those years while staring inexorably into the face of declining revenues and, ultimately, business failure.

What had been thought to be inevitable – certainly in the past decade or so – becomes indisputable today as The Post will cease publication.

A consensus emerges among more than a few Post alumni – even in the last 30 years as it functioned under a Joint Operating Agreement with the Cincinnati Enquirer, The Post was a joyride filled with effervescent memories.

Many Post alumni have also found their way into careers outside journalism, contributing to the community in other ways.

The Post was where Ken Bunting, now associate publisher of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, practiced his incomparable brand of shoe-leather journalism. It was where Bob Mong, executive editor of the Dallas Morning News, was allowed to pursue hard-hitting, in-depth reporting. It was where Mike Blackman, who went on to become editor of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and Polk Laffoon IV, who went on to a remarkable career with Knight Ridder newspapers, both set the standards here in the ’70s for literary journalism.

It was where Michael Kelly cut his journalistic teeth in the early 1980s before moving on to the Baltimore Sun to the New York Times to the New Yorker to the New Republic to Atlantic Monthly. His was a meteoric career before it ended tragically in April 2003 when he was killed covering the early stages of the war in Iraq.

“The Post spawned a whole bunch of really interesting talent that left Cincinnati richer for the journalism they practiced,” recalls William R. Burleigh, chairman of the E.W. Scripps Co., parent company of The Post, and Post editor-in-chief from 1977 to 1983. “I think it was because The Post was always the underdog, and as a result was able to be not quite as conventional as the other paper in town and could afford some risks.”

The Post will also leave a legacy of service to the community in the many people who worked there who have gone on to serve in other community roles. Judy Clabes, for example, is president and CEO of the Scripps Howard Foundation, the philanthropic arm of E.W. Scripps, in addition to serving in a variety of other community roles. She was editor-in-chief of the Kentucky Post for 13 years, 1983 to 1996.

“My philosophy was we had to be connected to the community,” says Clabes. “I think we accomplished that. The staff was really connected to the community.”

Proof of that is former staffers who moved on and yet remained in the area and state. Jay Fossett, city manager of Covington since 2005, worked as a reporter and in an editing role on the sports desk at The Kentucky Post from 1981 to 1985.

J. Patrick Moynahan is a vice provost at Northern Kentucky University who worked at the Kentucky Post from 1984 to 1991, serving as city editor and assistant managing editor.

Mike Farrell, who worked at The Kentucky Post for 20 years as a reporter and managing editor, is the director of the Scripps Howard First Amendment Center at the University of Kentucky, where he teaches journalism.

Mark Neikirk, former reporter, city editor and managing editor, is now executive director of the Scripps Howard Center for Civic Engagement and Nonprofit Development at Northern Kentucky University.

Paul Knue, who had one of the longest tenures at both the Cincinnati and Kentucky Post among editors-in-chief, grew up in Lawrenceburg, Ind., reading The Post. He worked in Cincinnati from 1970 to 1975 as a copy editor and Weekender editor, left for Evansville, Ind., for another Scripps paper, returned as Kentucky Post editor in 1979, became Cincinnati Post editor in1983 and retired in 2001.

“We may be behind the eight-ball, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be pound for pound as good a newspaper as anybody else,” said Knue of his first years as editor here, with the JOA already in place. “We aimed for a culture that says we’re gonna work our asses off, we’re gonna kick butt, we’re gonna work harder.”

NCAA Soviet-Style Social Moralists Cleansing College Teams of Indian-based Traditions. Why? To Politicize and Divide Us.

Mick Gregory —
What does Hillary say about this issue?

Liberals politicize everything. The NCAA is based in Indianapolis, Indiana. Of course, the names of the city and state are not based on any tribe or Native American historical fact. The irony is amazing. My theory is the Progressive Democrats in Indy feel inferior to Berkeley and Boston, so they “try and do the right PC thing.”

But the real crime is that the PC movement looks for disgruntaled, self-annointed, distant relatives of any Native American tribe be the authority on what is or is not PC. Seek and you shall will find a loser who wants to get their 15 minutes of fame for the next liberal cause.

In fact, PC is the act of politicizing an issue.

After a 100-year-old tradition is “cleansed,” by the NCAA “Soviet Moral Authority,” that is it; the debate is over. Anyone who has another opinion is labeled a bigot, racist, or hate monger. The liberal media jumps onboard siding with the offended “victims.”

It’s a system to Balkanize the United States by rewriting history, culture and traditions. The qualites that unite us. In the case of the Illini tradition at Champaign-Urbana, the thrilling “fancy dance” was first developed by an Eagle Scout some 80 years ago, who had studied the Native American culture. The Illini “fancy dance” was a tribute.

Now its been cleansed by the NCAA and the result is dividing America with siloed semi-Americans. It is also rewriting history. Accroding to current PC rules, you can’t even discuss the subject out of fear.

Is that what America is about?

Free speech is crushed. That’s the way the Progressive Democrat machine works. Chilling.
Every aspect of Amerian life is politicized by the liberals, team sports, symbolic dance, today even the weather.

Will a reporter have the guts to ask Hillary or Obama what they think of the Illini symbol?
How about at the Indianapolis Star?

It’s up to bloggers to ask. It’s still legal to ask questions.

BY KENNETH L. WOODWARD

European intellectuals have long complained of excessive moralism in American foreign policy, politics and attitudes toward sex–the lingering effect, as they see it, of our Puritan heritage. But if they want to spot the real Puritans among us, they should read our sports pages.

Last week, the National Collegiate Athletic Association announced that it would ban the use of Native American team names and mascots in all NCAA-sponsored postseason tournaments. If a team turns up wearing uniforms with words like “Indians,” “Braves” or similar nicknames the association deems “hostile and abusive,” that team will be shown the locker-room door. Surely I was not the only reader who noticed that this edict came out of the NCAA’s headquarters in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Already, one university president, T.K. Weatherall of Florida State, one of 18 colleges and universities on the Association’s blacklist, is threatening to take legal action–and I hope he does. Florida State’s athletic teams are called the Seminoles, and the university says it has permission from that tribe in Florida to use that name. Not good enough, counters Charlotte Westerhaus, the NCAA’s new vice president for “diversity and inclusion.” “Other Seminole tribes,” she claims, “are not supportive.”

Keep looking, you can always find a disgruntaled person to help your cause Ms. Westerhaus.

One might suppose that any organization with an Office of Diversity and Inclusion would welcome mascots and team names reflecting the Native Americans among us put in a positive light. College teams are not showing the horrible blood letting that wiped out entire tribes.

The Media Mob Snobs.

The battle for dominance between the mainstream media and citizen journalists is boiling. Some have their panties in a bunch.

By Mick Gregory

James Lewis at American Thinker, penned this gem about “The Media Mob”:

Like other unaccountable elites, they are monumentally fickle, self-indulgent, snobbish, vain, vulgar, entitled, incestuous, arrogant, ignorant, unprincipled, hysterical, and demagogic. They sound like a unified chorus for the same reasons that street mobs run as a group — because by and large, they don’t dare to stand alone.

Pinchy — Time to fly back to the Aspen Institute to discuss how much more objective the press is than blogs. Could you pass me that organic Grey Pupon?

James Lewis nailed it. Congratulations!

Read all about it: Journalists urge their readers to drop subscriptions and advertisers to boycott the paper they work for

Mick Gregory

Imagine at your office, if the managers were encouraging customers to stop using your company, and they posed for pictures, putting up a banner over a highway that stated “Quit buying from my (X) company!”

Ms. Wendy McCaw is the publisher of Santa Barbara News-Press (which she over-paid the New York Times for four years ago). If you have been following this saga in the mainstream media, i.e. the LA Times, SF Chronicle or NY Times, you would think she is somehow trying to destroy her own property in just trying to manage it. But of course that is just one side of the story pushed out by the “objective journalists” who believe that the newspaper is some kind of government/taxpayer supported public service that they can use to smear the middle class and the Hollywood personalities who live in the area.

Below is the full version of Ms. McCaw’s commentary. You will get a good look at what journalists really do behind the scenes at your daily newspapers.

Earlier, the Times published in its print edition another commentary by Mr. Cannon attacking the News-Press. The Times refused to publish Mrs. McCaw’s response to Mr. Cannon’s accusations in its print edition. Times editors finally put it on the Times Web site, but only after the News-Press published the commentary along with a note about that newspaper’s initial refusal.

Dear Mr. Cannon,
The world has passed you by. Young people today no longer wear watches, no longer read newspapers, no longer watch TV news. They communicate by text messaging and in MY SPACE. They distrust the mainstream media, in large part because they distrust the decrepit ideas asserted by the old generation who claim to be “experts” such as yourself. You exemplify the basis for this distrust with your reference to “various inquiries” allegedly finding that we committed some journalistic sin.

This is the essence of irresponsible journalism and at the core of your deserved loss of reputation. Instead of relying on purposely uninformed bloggers and the biased “journalists” they support who are attempting to insert the Teamsters Union into Santa Barbara’s mainstream newspaper for supposed facts, why not roll up your sleeves and do some real investigative work? I challenge you to state a single legitimate agency “inquiry” that has found we violated a journalistic standard. None exists. It is simply more evidence why certain journalists today have committed a grave disservice to the public they claim to serve.

For decades, reporters who had no ownership interest in the product they produced were allowed to say whatever they wanted. They ran the newspapers even though they didn’t own the newspapers, with no heed paid to the bottom line. While these journalists claimed as “theirs” the newspapers by which they merely were employed, they acted in total disregard for whether the paper was profitable enough to ensure it would survive into the next year, much less the onslaught of the cataclysm of the Internet. The end result is that countless newspapers today face massive declines in circulation if not outright collapse. The L.A. Times is laying off hundreds as is the San Francisco Chronicle. Circulation is down all over the country. The time has come for the owners of these papers to step in and see to it that they are run in a proper business fashion.

The journalists, such as you, Mr. Cannon, who had nothing at stake but still exercised dominion and control for so many years over business entities they never owned, turned out to be the worst of stewards of the public’s need for a long-term journalistic presence.

Newspapers continue the downward flush. The only ‘floater’ to pop back up is Gannett–because of the sale of poor performing newspapers

The downturn in the newspaper industry is getting worse. Come to think of it, why would it spring back? They are still run by the PC editorial elite, not managers. Except for News Corp. and Gannett, which are run by real executives.

Here are some stats collected by the Wall Street Journal on the eve of their premium buyout by News Corp.

Last fall, newspaper executives and analysts were caught by surprise by the severity of a slump that took hold last summer. Since the beginning of this year, the rate of decline in advertising revenue has accelerated. Total print and online ad revenue was down 4.8% to $10.6 billion in the first quarter from a year earlier, according to the Newspaper Association of America, compared with its full-year decline in 2006 of 0.3%. Actually they should be unscrewing the Cooks sparkling wine for that.

• The Bad News: The rate of decline in newspaper advertising revenue has accelerated since the beginning of the year.
• The Background: Competition from the Internet and other media has transformed the market. In addition, real-estate classifieds have plunged along with the property market.
• What’s Next: The decline, which has sent newspaper stocks into a clockwise spin down the toilet, has prompted restructuring and consolidation, and has affected Dow Jones’s talks with News Corp. and the auction of Tribune Co.
Publishers have reported sharply lower ad revenue for April and May. The depth of the downturn is expected to become clearer as many companies report second-quarter earnings in coming days. Gannett Co. plans to report later today, and Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, and McClatchy Co. tomorrow.

In the first quarter, revenue for every major ad category — classified, national and retail advertising — was down. The sharpest declines were for classifieds, where spending dropped 13.2% — not so much a result of competition from the Web as of economic woes affecting certain categories of advertisers. Real-estate classifieds, until recently a bright spot for the industry, have plunged along with the property market. Auto and employment classifieds are also sinking. Financial-news outlets such as the Journal are being hurt by a slump in technology advertising.

“Right now, you’ve got a perfect storm,” says Edward Atorino, an analyst with financial broker Benchmark Co. He predicts total ad revenue will fall 4.3% this year. The decline will be one of the steepest in history. See what I mean, a .3% drop will be looked at with fond memories.

Yet, the editorial executives continue to court Democrats, and denounce American corporations and have no clue how to manage a sandwich shop, let alone an expensive newspaper.

Coming to your school district — Busing will be back if you vote for Edwards

Mick Gregory

Former Senator and ambulance chaser, John Edwards sent out a trial balloon; he plans to warn later this week that the nation’s schools have become segregated by race and income, and he will propose measures to diversify both inner-city and middle-class schools.
“It’s another CRISIS!” Hasn’t busing been proven to be a disaster 20 years ago?

I think he picked up an old Bobby Kennedy play book. Mr. Edwards, you are no Bobby Kennedy and it is about 40 years since LBJ took over the U.S. government and created “The Great Society” to keep the secrets of his help in the JFK assassination burried.

What a pandering hypocrit, trying to carve off some of the Hillary/Obama vote.

The plan calls for beefing up inner-city magnet schools to attract suburban kids, and providing extra money for schools in middle-class areas as a reward for enrolling more low-income students.

Edward lingered in the Big Easy this morning – admiring a 5-year-old Head Start pupil’s sneakers and hobnobbing in a wood-floored café — before racing into Mississippi, Arkansas and Tennessee as part of a three-day poverty tour designed to shine a national spotlight on the plight of what he broadly calls “the poor.” The poor in America are likely to own two cars, half even own their homes.

During a town meeting staged in a New Orleans museum by ABC’s “Good Morning America,” he said the nation’s schools reflect the “two Americas” that he wants to unite with the ideas he’s proposing on this week’s “Road to One America” swing through the South and Appalachia. Just like Bobby Kennedy.

Now he needs an ACLU survey of 100 pre selected democrats and find that 8 out of 10 feel that they are poor and inferior to white folks.

“We still have two public school systems in this country,” Edwards said. “They’re not segregated just based on race. They’re segregated, to a large extent, based on economics, which has racial implications.”

“The result is,” Edwards continued, “if you live in a wealthy suburban area, (like he does) the odds are very high that your child will get a very good public school education. If you live in the inner city or if you live in a poor rural area, the odds of that go down dramatically. And I think there are very specific things we can do to not only improve the quality of the education in those areas but also to improve the quality of our schools at large.”

The wife of Democrat Presidential Candidate ‘Good Hair’ John Edwards talked at the Gay And Lesbian Breakfast before the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade

By Mick Gregory

The campaign appearances the Democrats don’t want the public to know about. Did you read this in your daily newspaper?

Mrs. Elizabeth Edwards received enthusiastic applause from dozens during a speech at a restaurant/bar in San Francisco as part of Sunday’s Gay Pride celebration.

Elizabeth Edwards, wife of 2008 presidential candidate John Edwards, advocated her husband’s democratic campaign and addressed issues pertaining to poverty, lesbian and gay rights, and free health care among other topics.

As the 20 or more members of the audience held up John Edwards campaign posters, Elizabeth Edwards conveyed her and her husband’s beliefs regarding one of the most important issues to many San Franciscans: the rights of gay and lesbian American citizens. Why couldn’t her husband make it for the photo-op event? Ann Coulter may have had a point.

Will she be riding in the parade, behind Dykes on Bikes?

Everyone should have the same rights and Social Security benefits for their family she explained. “Same-sex couples should receive the same treatment (as straight couples, as in widow benefits).

Elizabeth Edwards, who has been fighting breast cancer since 2004, also declared that the country’s healthcare is “in shambles.” Smiles all around as everyone knows she means more money for free HIV/AIDS treatments.

I think it’s the gay-lesbian-transgender lifestyle that’s in a shambles.

Is it healthy? One has to ask.

In addition, Elizabeth Edwards said she and John Edwards both support stem cell research, deeming it an important part of the country’s progress toward curing many medical problems including HIV/AIDS.

Elizabeth Edwards’ speech took place at the annual Alice B. Toklas Pride Breakfast, hosted by the Alice B. Toklas Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Democratic Club, at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel at 9 a.m.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and California Assemblyman Mark Leno (wearing leather) , D-San Francisco, were among the opening speakers at the event.

Referring to Saturday and Sunday’s Gay Pride celebration, Newsom shared his belief that the “magic of San Francisco” stems from the non-judgmental nature of the city.

Clad in leather pants that he jokingly referred to at one point during his short speech, Leno used his time at the podium to thank the audience for their support.

The Gay-Lesbian-Transgender voter block is a powerful force, keeping Nancy Pelosi and Gavin Newsom in power.

“Nice ass,” was heard a couple of times from the enthusiastic crowd.

Rich Lowery Nails the Democrats’ attack on talk radio, especially Rush Limbaugh.

Rush Limbaugh, the conservative talk-radio pioneer, has been called many nasty things before, but never a “structural imbalance.” That’s the fancy term a liberal think tank uses to characterize his success — and to dress up its proposal for counteracting that success through new government regulation.

The report of the Center for American Progress on “The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio” marks the latest phase in liberaldom’s grappling with conservative talk radio. First came the attempts to create a liberal Rush Limbaugh — Mario Cuomo, Jim Hightower, et al. — that fell flat. Then an entire left-wing network, Air America, was founded, and foundered. So there’s only one option left — if you can’t beat them, and you won’t join them, you can agitate for government to regulate them.