ROMNEY – THE MILD RACIST…

Oh dear. Seems like the BBC have decided that Mitt Romney is a waycist! There was an absolutely DISGRACEFUL interview on Today this morning with   Stacy Hilliard, who worked on Mitt Romney’s campaign to become a Governor in Massachusetts.  With Billy Bunter look-alike Mark Mardell also putting in his pro Obama tuppence worth, this was a pure attack piece and I felt sorry for Stacy who at one point seemed to want to stop the “interview”.  Justin Webb was suggesting that Romney was playing the race card against Obama by referencing Anglo-Saxon heritage and when Stacy said that Romney hoped to rebuild the traditional alliances that Obama has chilled, again Justin launched into attack mode. The interview took place @7.21am but there is no link to it. However this was a pure hatchet job and as pro Obama as anyone could imagine. The BBC should be utterly ashamed of themselves for this. I hope Team Romney remember it.

The Foreign Bureau Of The White House Press Office Is At It Again

The President and Mitt Romney have both given what they say are economic policy stump speeches in Ohio this week (on the same day, actually), and the BBC is right there to tell about it. Or, as this is the BBC, some of it.

Obama and Romney offer US voters election choice

US President Barack Obama and his Republican rival Mitt Romney have laid out competing visions of the road to recovery in back-to-back speeches in the battleground state of Ohio.

Looks like we’re going to learn about both visions, no? Well, this is the BBC, so:

Mr Obama offered what aides called a “framing” of “two very different visions” facing US voters in November.

The President “offered”.

Mr Romney accused the president of failing to deliver economic recovery, saying “talk is cheap”.

Romney “accused”.

Then follows six paras of the President’s criticisms of nasty Republicans who are responsible for blocking His Plans, with a bit of class war thrown in for good measure, plus shifting blame to Congress in general, as well as criticism of Romney. Then the BBC tells us the President is going to a fundraiser hosted by Vogue demoness Anna Wintour and Sex & The City’s (a favorite of Beeboids) Sarah Jessica Parker. The BBC does not tell you that the Republicans are having a field day making fun of the elitism in the ad campaign featuring Wintour. They probably think it’s great, and certainly their fellow travelers in the mainstream US media haven’t dared to criticize it. What the BBC also isn’t going to tell you is that this is just more proof that no amount of campaign cash for Romney can match the combined power of the MSM, the liberal elite, and Hollywood. That would detract from their “money talks” Narrative, which we’ll get to shortly.

Romney gets four less substantial paras, followed by a line about his own campaign agenda. That last sentence is very dry, but it’s not the BBC’s fault that Romney doesn’t have Hollywood and the liberal media elite firmly behind him.

Next, “correspondents” tell us the White House talking point for His speech. Then we’re reminded once again that the Republicans have raised more money than the President recently. This is to continue the “money talks” Narrative the Left-wing media and the BBC have fed us about Wisconsin. In case the reader is too stupid to get the point, they set up the money line by mentioning that Gov. Walker outspent his opponent. We don’t get any talking points about how to interpret Romney’s remarks, though.

The BBC then mentions the President’s latest gaffe about how the private sector is “doing fine”, and His backtrack. Except we know that the BBC believes that this was not a mistake and it’s only something opponents are trying to use against Him because BBC US President editor Mark Mardell has already written a blog post defending the remark.

They were wrong: the point was Europe and the president’s “prodding” paid off at the weekend with a big bailout for Spanish banks. But they’re not interested in that.

What they did seize on was the president saying the private sector was “fine” and then hours later having to say it was “not fine”.

You can see what he was trying to do. There are very sound political reasons why he wants to point out that it is the failure to maintain jobs in the public sector that is the problem. They are shrinking, whereas the private sector is growing, albeit very slowly.

Poor Mardell was not inspired by the President’s speech. Naturally, He still thinks the President is right about Romney’s economic ideas, even though it’s a gross misrepresentation. Romney’s criticisms of the President, however, are pretty much correct. The Stimulus didn’t work, ObamaCare is about to cause massive economic problems, and His Green Energy Plan For Us has been an unmitigated disaster. The problem is that, while the BBC has often reminded its audience that the President inherited a bad economy from a Republican Administration, they have never reported about just how catastrophically bad His Green Energy Plan For Us has been. They mentioned Solyndra once, but I think they got away with it. At no point has the BBC ever made a real report about all the billions thrown down the Green toilet, so the reader who relies on the BBC for information about US issues will know only about how Republicans got things wrong in the past, and not about how the President has gotten things wrong.

To complete the lack of balance, the BBC gives you video of some of the President’s speech at the very top of the article. At the bottom is not an excerpt from the Romney speech, but instead a campaign ad making fun of the President’s gaffe, which Mardell has already told you was the right thing to say but merely expressed poorly, and which this article has already explained as an attack piece, thus diluting its effect.

In the end we get no substance from Romney, only criticisms of the President, while we do get some substance from the President’s vision, along with some White House talking points for the defense.

Your license fee hard at work. Now it’s time to go watch some more “bespoke” video magazine pieces about the iPhone and some large hail stones in Texas. No need to report on anything that hurts the President like Atty. Gen. Eric Holder appearing in front of Congress regarding Fast & Furious and looking like James Murdoch in front of Leveson, calls for his resignation, calls to hold him in contempt, or anything of the sort, right, BBC?

WHAT HAPPENS IN WISCONSIN STAYS IN WISCONSIN…

I was delighted to see that Obama got a bloody nose in Wisconsin but it’s OK, BBC has it sorted. A B-BBC reader writes;

“So a Republican Governor in a state which has voted for Democrat Presidential candidates in every election since Reagan took a greater share than either Obama or Hollande managed in their head-to-heads, beating his rival by close to 8%. Spot the difference in reporting.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18336641

Some great excerpts here….

1. The headline and narrative uses the term ‘survives’ making it sound like ‘skin of the teeth’ stuff.

2. Republicans have suggested the result may carry significance ahead of November’s presidential election.

Those damned partisans… Before the election, commentators from across the board labelled this as significant.

3. There should be a good-sized health warning over the result of Wisconsin’s bitterly contested recall election. The lopsided campaign spending – 7-to-1 in favour of the Republicans – was peculiar to this race.

It’s all about money. Voters are sheep too stupid to decide for themselves how to vote? ”

Plus…

Before the results were in, this was a dead heat and it was a key test… lol…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18326705

 

 

 

BBC Censorship: Spot Another Missing Book Report Edition

Last  year, a book about the President came out in which it was revealed that His White House was a hostile workplace for women. Even the lapdog US media had to talk about it, although they quickly moved on. The BBC censored all news of it, because it made the President look bad. Now another one is coming out, and the mainstream US media is all over it. Once again, the BBC is censoring the story, so you don’t get to learn anything which might make Him look bad.

The one book involving the President which the BBC did find time to briefly mention was “Obama’s Wars” by Bob Woodward (of Watergate fame). That didn’t make Him look too bad at all, so it was okay to tell you about its existence. At the time, Matt Frei, while realizing that the book showed Him as “thoughtful and serious”, had a concern:

But will the nuance of his finely-tuned brain be lost amongst the bold print of the headlines?

Of course, the BBC did find time to mention three different books about George Bush which came out during his time in office. One was about insider stuff from his Administration, one was an attempt to paint a portrait of the man from interviews with six people close to him, and one was by a psychiatrist who wondered if Bush was disabled. They even thought it was worth telling you about a biography of his wife. I’m not sure a regular biography of Bush was published while he was President. I can’t find one online anywhere. I wonder if that has to do with the fact that we knew all about him by the time he ran for office, while The Obamessiah’s background was shrouded in mystery or simply covered up, any negatives dismissed as racism or falsehoods.

So now that a second book about Him has come out, one has to wonder why the BBC refuses to acknowledge its existence. It may have something to do with the biggest story about it so far:

The Choom Gang: President Obama’s pot-smoking high school days detailed in Maraniss book

The Internet is buzzing after the Washingtonian published a review of Washington Post associate editor David Maraniss’s forthcoming book “Barack Obama: The Story,” including an excerpt about President Obama’s high school clique and their favorite pastime.

Let’s just say jobs weren’t the president’s first green initiative. The group of friends smoked marijuana frequently enough to nickname themselves the “Choom Gang.”

And it’s not just the internet buzzing. The mainstream media has been talking about it as well, plenty of links in the above WaPo post, and of course the rightosphere is bursting with amusing bits from the book. The following, though is from left-leaning Time:

Barry also had a knack for interceptions. When a joint was making the rounds, he often elbowed his way in, out of turn, shouted, “Intercepted!,” and took an extra hit. No one seemed to mind.

The boy is the father of the man.

Just do an internet search for “Choom” (mooch spelled backwards – so apt) and you’ll see just how much the BBC is out of step with the rest of the media on this one. It’s just another reason why their usual excuse for doing something because the rest of the media is doing it rings so hollow.

The BBC found plenty of time to remind you of George Bush’s youthful indiscretions, including here, here, and here. After he was inaugurated in 2001, Gavin Hewitt thought it important enough to grill Bush’s former pastor about it for a Panorama special. Even the late Alistair Cooke mentioned it once. So why does the BBC censor such stories about the current President?

The thing is, I don’t think this is going to hurt Him much at all. Perhaps it whittles away a little more at His shining image in the mainstream press, but anybody turned off by this revelation wasn’t going to vote for Him anyway, and anyone still dedicated to His cause certainly isn’t going to be dissuaded by this silliness. I doubt this will cost the President a single vote. But it makes Him look less than the supreme intellectual, smartest man in the room, superstar destined for greatness we’ve been hearing about from the BBC for the last four years. It’s also more evidence that the media failed in their jobs and refused to look too deep into His past in 2008, something else the BBC would hate to admit.

BBC Censorship: Cory Booker Edition

Some people here may be aware of Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, New Jersey. He’s a rising young Democrat star, well-liked in his city, and has gotten quite a bit of press and praise for his use of social media to get people together and personal touch when actually helping voters. Even the BBC knows about Booker. They’ve reported, for example, about how he personally helped to save a neighbor from a burning house (including an end note about his shoveling snow for residents during an earlier winter storm). Booker also got a special mention in the op-ed piece they commissioned (or licensed for reprint, it doesn’t say so I can’t be sure) to praise the President’s “historic” endorsement of homosexual marriage rights. That wasn’t written by a Beeboid, but there’s no way the BBC can claim never to have heard of him before as a progressive rising star. You can read some background on Booker here.

The reason I bring this up is that Mayor Booker has been all over the US news media in the last couple of days for criticizing the President’s attack on Romney’s professional history as a venture capitalist. There have been further developments, making it an even bigger deal than it was originally, but the BBC has so far decided to censor the story entirely. Why? Because it makes the President look bad, and makes Him look less like the same alleged superhero who supposedly ran the perfect Presidential campaign in 2008.

Last week, DB posted about the BBC’s one-sided reporting on the President’s attack ad on Romney. The ad was an attempt to mislead the public into thinking Romney earned money from personally destroying a business and putting hundreds of people out of work. The President’s campaign – or rather, a Super-PAC which supports Him – put out a second ad taking the same line of attack to another level. The US mainstream media, still being in the tank for Him, added fuel to the fire of attacking Romney for his business success. The ads backfired somewhat, because the US is not Europe or Britain, and class war and wealth hatred doesn’t sell quite so well with the voters.

The President continued that attack theme in other speeches, and Cory Booker, mayor of what some see as a suburb of New York City, criticized Him for it on MSNBC’s “Meet the Press”. He called the attacks on venture capitalism “nauseating”.

Needless to say, Booker was immediately vilified by most of the media, and the President’s own man, David Axelrod, publicly called him out on it. The President’s supporters at MSNBC also went on the attack, as did the usual suspects (next time someone complains to you about how biased Fox News is, show them that link). Booker apparently also got a lot of pressure from both the White House and the Democratic Party national bosses, and quickly had to re-emphasize his ultimate support for the President and His Party. This was all over Twitter, the HuffingtonPost, the Washington Post, and Politico. The New York Times called Booker a “surrogate” for the President. So we know the BBC staff in the US is well aware of the situation.

Things got so bad for Booker, in fact, that he made a special video statement to “clarify” his point. Politico’s headline on this could almost qualify for a typical BBC job: “Booker walks back ‘nauseating’ comments”. But the story doesn’t end there.

First, the President came under fire Himself because people started pointing out that He raised huge amounts of cash from venture capitalists. The most of any other candidate in 2008, in fact. Worse still, one of His current top bundlers not only worked for Bain, but actually did take over and shut down a company, sending workers to the unemployment line, and made a nice fat profit doing exactly what the President’s campaign tried to accuse Romney of doing by dubious association. If this had been done by a Republican, Mark Mardell or some other well-paid Beeboid in Washington would be lashing such hypocrisy with the usual sarcasm and sneering.

As for Booker’s own video, the White House tried to use this as a campaign tool. But, being the inept group of amateurs who added silly boasts about the current President to the official biographies on the White House website of a number of past Presidents (in the 20th Century, from Coolidge onward), the recent attack on Romney and that dog story, which backfired spectacularly, and all those failed hashtags, the campaign geniuses couldn’t leave well enough alone. So they heavily doctored Booker’s video to slant his words differently (something the BBC is also wont to do), and started promoting it.

First, here’s the full video:

Now here’s the White House version:

Ridicule ensued, and even someone at the Washington Post not named Jennifer Rubin admitted something was wrong. Leading Democrats have suggested the White House abandon this strategy and move on. Basically, this has been a big story, a possible early turning point in the election year, the kind of thing the BBC’s US President editor usually rushes to explain to you. But it’s really just another disaster that makes Him look bad, and the BBC censored it, as usual.

Reporting The US On The Bias

“Cutting on the bias” in wood or textiles means cutting diagonally against the grain so that it accentuates the lines. That’s what’s going on at the BBC’s special section on the US 2012 election. It hasn’t been updated in a couple of days, and here’s how it appears now:

White House propaganda, White House propaganda, and more of it, with a couple of fluff pieces thrown in. The top story at the moment is the BBC’s explanation of the President’s first ad attacking Romney for his association with Bain Capital. It’s become more balanced than it initially was, as people here pointed out earlier this week, and presumably after somebody at the BBC realized it. It’s still not entirely balanced as they’ve got the President’s ad embedded right at the top of the piece, while including only a link to Romney’s rebuttal. The link below that is to a second attack ad on Romney on the same topic. No links to anything from Romney.

The “Latest news” section is slightly out of date, but the bias is still obvious. Besides the news brief about Ron Paul ending his “active campaign”, the other featured reports are about Hollywood feting the President for His recent endorsement of homosexual marriage, a piece about Romney reacting contritely to that Washington Post hit piece – now proven to be less than accurate, although the BBC has never bothered to inform you of that – about him allegedly bullying a homosexual a few decades ago (another score for the White House campaign machine), and a piece lamenting Sen. Richard Lugar’s defeat in the Republican primary for Senate in Indiana. We’re told by “correspondents” that this will make the Senate more partisan than ever. Translation: the Democrat majority won’t get their way so easily. This is a biased position, of course, shown to be all the more ludicrous since the Senate just rejected the President’s own budget proposal 99-0. You can’t get more bi-partisan than that, which is why the BBC has so far censored that news.

The video features also reveal the biased grain in the BBC’s perspective on the US elections. The section on Battleground States isn’t all that bad in general, and I won’t try to read too much into a perceived emphasis on Democrat optimism. But there is a blatant lie in the section on Wisconsin. You have to click on the State in the Battleground feature to read the following:

Barack Obama will be hoping to hold on to the sizeable majority he won in 2008, and will be helped by the state’s strong union movement. The unions have been leading the opposition to new Republican Governor Scott Walker’s controversial bid to restrict workers’ collective bargaining rights. The proposals led to mass protests and a successful attempt to trigger a recall election for Mr Walker’s job.

The bit I’ve bolded is, quite simply, a lie. What Walker did was restrict the right of public sector unions’ rights on collective bargaining. The BBC admitted that part when they first began reporting on this story, yet here they deliberately mislead you to think it’s an attack on all workers, full stop. I simply don’t accept the excuse that this was simplified due to space constraints or because it’s an unimportant distinction. And of course, by “controversial”, the BBC means that the unions didn’t like it. Another issue of bias here is that the BBC gives you only the Democrat unions issue, and not the budget disaster Gov. Walker faced upon taking office, which just as much a concern for voters. The budget concern is why Walker sought to restrict public sector union power and their burden on the State. It’s not all union workers everywhere, only the public sector ones, which is why I maintain that it’s an important distinction. As most people here will know, their coverage of the Wisconsin situation has been extremely biased and at times dishonest. Plenty of background can be found here, here, here, here, and here. I don’t expect the BBC to update this section with the news that the union-backed candidate lost the Democrat primary for the recall, which kind of puts a damper on the whole issue, making the BBC’s take even less useful.

The magazine piece explaining why candidates’ wives don’t win elections is reasonable, no bias there, for a change.

Next up is the piece by Justin Webb – Mark Mardell’s predecessor as North America editor, whose gushing reports about The Obamessiah during the 2008 election won him the coveted seat on Today – explaining why the Republicans aren’t ready to lead. My fisking of ol’ Justin’s piece is here.

Then you get Jonny Dymond’s biased piece telling you how the Republican Party is just for white men, freezing out Hispanics. It’s just one in a series of race-baiting pieces from Dymond, whose remit seems to be proving that Republicans and any opponents of the President are racist. See here, for example.

If you still aren’t convinced that Republicans/conservatives are awful, then you can move on to former Obamessiah activist Matt Danzico’s “bespoke” magazine piece about yet another one of those studies showing conservatives are inspired by negatives while liberals are inspired by positives. The study’s goal was to prove a biological and cognitive difference between liberals and conservatives. I won’t bother to address how this leads us down a path to eugenics, but suffice to say that it’s always liberals these days who want to use “science” to prove that they’re superior. Danzico, of course, slightly misrepresents the findings. Another way of describing the findings can be found in the University of Nebraska’s own school paper: conservatives tend to be more realistic while liberals tend to be more idealistic. I find it amusing that a student journalist spins the study less than an adult professional journalist.

And finally, there’s Adam Blenford’s piece worrying that too many people in the US aren’t registered to vote. Setting up the article by using a Republican as an example of a dedicated voter betrays the bias, if one understands that voter “disenfranchisement” is the primary motivation behind ACORN and Left-wing activists who encourage absentee ballots (Blenford uses the youth vote, another Left-wing target demographic, as his example there), same-day registration, and who attack laws requiring ID to vote, all methods behind voter fraud. Some people here may remember Newsnight hiring Left-wing activist and “investigative journalist” to do a special report telling you that only white Republicans engage in voter fraud, and specifically to disenfranchise black people. He also defended ACORN against charges of voter fraud by saying that, even though they do it, it doesn’t affect elections. If that’s not enough to convince you, just do an internet search with the term “voter disenfranchisement 2012” and see who’s worrying about it and what issues are the focus. It’s obvious.

While not every single report is riddled with bias, much of it is, and nearly every single piece on the BBC’s US Election 2012 page is written from a Left-wing perspective one way or another. There’s no memo handed down to make this happen, no directive from on high. It’s due to the BBC hiring what seem to be exclusively Left-wing staff. If they all think that way, there’s no need for an organized institutional bias: it will happen naturally.

The BBC Reporting On Behalf Of The President

The other day, DB posted about the BBC’s dutiful promotion of White House propaganda about Mitt Romney’s earnings from investment in Bain Capital. They put up the President’s campaign video, and helpfully explained how awful Romney was for earning money off of a failed company and sending poor innocent workers to the unemployment line. The campaign meant to attack Romney’s business record, attempting to tarnish his track record of successfully turning businesses around, and hoping to undermine the growing mood of trusting him more than the President on fixing the economy. In short, it was an attack ad. And, as DB pointed out, it was misleading. The BBC still reported on it without question, and only belatedly (after someone called them on it, presumably) added a mere link to a Romney video hosted elsewhere.

This isn’t the first negative campaign piece from the President, who was supposed to be above it all. There was the attempt to hurt Romney with that silly dog story, which of course backfired. There was the charge against Romney and the Republicans for supposedly waging a “War on Women”. The President tried to frighten everyone by telling them that the Republican budget would be “radical”, and harm the middle class, the elderly, and ruin everything while helping only the wealthy. And of course there’s all the class war rhetoric, culminating in the ill-fated “Buffet Rule”. Most recently, we had the relentless coverage of what turned out to be a less than truthful account of Romney as a homophobic bully.

Now that the President is trailing Romney in voter trust on five different issues, the BBC, perhaps inspired by a piece in the New York Times last week, worrying about attack ads from Romney while at the same time encouraging the President to “push Romney’s face down in the dirt”, is rushing to His defense.

Obama campaign and Democrats raise $43.6m in April

Pity the poor President, they tell you, because He’s the financial underdog in this race. Sure, He’s raised more money than last month, but the awful Republicans are making these nasty attack ads. Worse, the poor President doesn’t have the same wealthy Super PAC to help Him.

Making the announcement, Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said large sums were being spent by special interest groups against the president.

So you’re already prepared not to raise an eyebrow when reading this:

At the end of March, the Democratic Party reported about $124m of cash reserves, while Republicans had about $43m in the bank.

Correspondents say the Obama campaign could see a further burst of donations after his recent endorsement of same-sex marriage.

I bet “correspondents” aren’t even remotely cynical in that analysis, or suspicious of any motives for that endorsement other than sheer honesty and integrity, either.

Although Mr Romney’s direct campaign funding has lagged behind the Obama campaign, Republican super political action committees (super PACs) are spending millions of dollars backing his candidacy.

In a sign of the gathering super PAC offensive, one group, Crossroads GPS, backed by Karl Rove, former adviser to President George W Bush, said it would spend $25m on anti-Obama ads.

He’s the underdog, a victim, I tell you!

About $57m has been spent on negative advertising against the president since October, Mr Messina said in the Obama campaign video.

Are you pitying Him yet? Ire raised enough against the vicious Republican machine? No? Maybe the closing line will help.

Meanwhile, a super PAC supporting the president, Priorities USA, has struggled to match that level of funding, raising just $10m by the end of March.

And that’s it. Not a single mention of the attack ads His own PAC has been making. Like the one they released Tuesday, showing the poor former workers of that plant Bain closed, the same one with which the campaign and the BBC have tried to tar Romney by indirect association the other day. The workers likened it to being attacked by “a vampire”. Oh, and apparently Romney’s opponents used this exact same tactic against him in his failed 1994 campaign for Senate. The BBC won’t bother to tell you that, unless they can find a way to praise Him for the brilliant strategy.

Ads from the President’s Super-PAC are also going to be aired in several states over the next few days. Vice President Biden is out there now doing the class war thing as well, telling the people in swing-state Ohio that Romney is bad because he was a venture capitalist. But He’s the underdog, and only it’s all the Republican’s fault for going negative, right?

The thing is, campaign cash is only half the story. The other half – and perhaps the more important one – is the media being in the tank for Him. Again. Think it’s sour grapes from one of His enemies who imagines bias in every report, and finds conspiracies under every media hack’s bed? Think again:

Déjà vu: ABC’s Robin Roberts Admits She Got “Chills Again” When Interviewing Obama

Not so subtle Obama-rooting in the media

CBS’s Rose Fishes For ‘High Marks’ For Obama From Robert Gates

Then there’s that Newsweek cover. Plus, Hollywood is in the tank for Him again as well. Tom Hanks has narrated a 17-minute propaganda campaign film, all of Hollywood is re-energized for Him on the heels of His half-assed endorsement of homosexual marriage, and there will be a film about His heroic killing of Osama Bin Laden coming out in October. Even the BBC thought you should know about that one.

Despite the White House campaign’s attempt to portray Him as the underdog, and no matter how many times the BBC worries about all those negative Republican ads, no amount of money from any Super-PAC or the evil Koch brothers or Fox News can compete with the full power of the entire mainstream media, from the New York Times and the Washington Post to CNN and MSNBC and ABC and NBC and the LA Times and Time and so many local papers, plus all of Hollywood and much of daytime television.

Yet the BBC dutifully pushes that Narrative anyway, like a foreign branch of the White House press office.

Life In These United States – No. 3

The latest edition of my report is up on EyeTube now (no embed possible at the moment). It clocks in at 15:23. Some stuff the BBC covered badly, and some they haven’t covered at all. Sources are below, and my thanks to all those who took the time to listen to the previous editions.

Life In These United States – No. 3

SOURCES:

BBC report about slowing US jobs growth, “fewer than expected”

Civilian labor force at 30-year low

NY Times report about slow jobs growth and people dropping out of the workforce

Washington Post trying to defend the President on unemployment

Long-term unemployed make up 42.4% of the total people out of work

Commodities and oil down

BBC report on new Keystone pipeline plan

President caves on part of Keystone after trying to put it off until after the election

Sierra Club criticizing new plan

Democrats voting for pipeline approval, too

Canada will just sell the oil to the Chinese

85% of tungsten supply is mined in China

China has 60% of tungsten market

China floods tungsten market to keep prices down and maintain their hold

US could be world leader in mineral supply

Obama Administration’s regulatory agenda hurting mining, energy production

Obama Adminstration still trying for more restrictive mining regulations

Niobium in Nebraska

Government prosecution of student loan default rose 25.7%

Columbia University course on the Occupy Movement

Government screwing up student loan interest rates

Student loan defaults rising

$67 billion in student loan default

The President reads policy speech on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon

Yes, it’s a violation of campaign law

BBC Censorship: Occupiers Arrested In Plot To Blow Up Bridge Edition

OccupyArrests.com

Occupy violence in Seattle, LA, SF, NYC

Occupiers attack photo-journalists

Katty Kay on the Occupy Movement

Gone To The Dogs

Well, well, well. After ten days, reality has at last forced the BBC to acknowledge the big joke about the President being fed dog as a child. How many of us here have noted that they’ve refused to touch this story? BBC US President editor Mark Mardell finally decided to address it.

Nobody is really taking it too seriously as a negative on the President, but it has been an effective counter against Democrat attacks on Romney for that one story about the dog on the car roof.

Two obvious examples of bias in Mardell’s post:

1. When acknowledging that the dog-eating story plays into the “larger Narrative” (a Beeboid knows a Narrative when he sees one, eh?) that the President is too foreign, he either doesn’t understand or refused to admit that this was the whole point of putting that anecdote in His autobiography. The intent was to make Him seem in tune with the whole world and not just a parochial, isolationist American. In fact, even the BBC told us that His world experience was a selling point. Mardell has either forgotten that, or just doesn’t want you to remember.

2. So it’s pathetic and biased for Mardell to then say, “But I fear more politicians may try to make dogs a touchstone of the American way.”  He admits bias right there in the open. If you sell yourself as being Post-American, don’t blame someone else for pointing it out. Instead, Mardell tries to defend his beloved Obamessiah.

The US President, the Supreme Court, and the BBC

On Monday, the President made a pre-emptive attack on the Supreme Court because He’s afraid they’re going to vote to overturn ObamaCare on the grounds that part or all of it violates the Constitution. Needless to say, there’s been a huge outcry, and a lot of fuss in the press about it. I commented about it here yesterday to give everyone a heads up before the BBC came in with their spin.

Right on cue, realizing there’s a growing controversy, the BBC whipped up a quick article online laying out the White House talking points. Naturally, it contained the same bit of dishonesty – or, if I’m feeling generous, lack of understanding – as their previous reporting on the law:

The act’s requirement that all those eligible should have medical cover has been condemned as an assault on civil liberties by conservatives

Of course, in actual fact, the law requires people to purchase health care from companies.  That’s what the “Individual Mandate” is, which is the key turning point of the entire fiasco. The BBC’s wording here is grossly misleading as to what exactly people are complaining about. No surprise there. BBC correspondent Steve Kingstone said that the President’s attack is “a sign of just how high the stakes are”, but it’s really sign that He doesn’t have confidence in a law He never even read before it was passed. Continue reading