There’s a short excerpt of a 1988 C-SPAN video purportedly showing Newt Gingrich bashing Reagan when talking about how Bush, Sr. should run. As I suspected, it’s edited to give a false impression. What you don’t see is immediately after when Gingrich praises Reaganism and the Reagan platform. If you can’t watch it all, it begins at about 2:30 in to confirm it’s the same segment. It’s the minute or two afterward you also need to hear to understand that Newt wasn’t bashing Reagan at all.

Drudge and others are pushing an edited version to attack Newt today. Make sure you share the real version so people are not decieved.

Jeff Goldstein:

Incidentally, there are many with ties to the Reagan years who are supporting Gingrich and telling a different story. But apparently these folks have escaped the attention of National Review, Ann Coulter, and now, Mr Drudge.

Probably just an oversight, though. Because otherwise we’d almost have to conclude that Drudge, Coulter, NRO, et al are working actively against the man who engineered the Contract with America that gave the GOP the House after 40 years, and working actively for a candidate who continues to support his individual mandate, is for mortgage bailouts (provided you are financed through a GSE), and has hinted, through his advisors, that we can’t really repeal ObamaCare, because there are some really good parts to it that are worth saving and tweaking.

And that would be surreal.

Anyhow, The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza called the speech a “confrontation wrapped in kumbaya”

At first listen, President Obama’s State of the Union address had all the hallmarks of the sort of bipartisan, let’s-do-the-right-thing-for-America tone that characterized his 2008 presidential campaign.

Probably because it was a campaign speech, in which Obama has proved further that he is only interested in being president of some Americans, and not others.

But, listen closer and a more hard-edged, challenging tone reveals itself— a preview of what the incumbent will likely sound like as he seeks a second term this November.

“We’ve come too far to turn back now,” said Obama at one point. “As long as I’m President, I will work with anyone in this chamber to build on this momentum. But I intend to fight obstruction with action, and I will oppose any effort to return to the very same policies that brought on this economic crisis in the first place.”

First, those policies were primarily Democrat ones, and who was in charge of Congress when the economy went south? Yup, Democrats. Second, if we do not turn back now, we’ll end up going over the falls like Greece, Italy, and other European countries.

Later, he offered an even more blunt challenge: “With or without this Congress, I will keep taking actions that help the economy grow.” He also repeatedly urged Congress to “send me a bill”, making clear that the ball, legislatively and politically, was in their court.

Well, gee wiz, Barry, the House GOP has passed over 30 economic bills which are languishing in the Democrat controlled Senate. Perhaps you should have a talk with Harry Reid, ya think? But, I guess it is easier for Obama to mimic Hugo Chavez then Bill Clinton, who mostly played well with others and realized that the game is about leadership and compromise, rather than abusing one’s political opponents and becoming a tin pot dictator.

Obama even had the temerity to whine at the Republicans for not immediately passing the payroll extension for a whopping two months, and he wants a long term extension, which is what Republicans wanted in the first place.

Anyhow, over at Speaker Boehner’s website, we find a few things Obama didn’t say during his 7,000 word campaign speech

“My policies are hurting families and small businesses, and making the economy worse.” Since President Obama took office, 1.7 million fewer Americans have jobs, gas prices have doubled, and families have endured nearly three years of an 8 percent or higher jobless rate.

“I’m to blame for the failure of my policies to create jobs and strengthen our economy.” President Obama has resorted to the politics of division, blaming everything and everyone from Congress to his predecessors to the American people to ATMs for his poor economic record.

“I have listened to the American people and will approve the Keystone XL energy pipeline.” The Keystone project, which would create at least 20,000 new jobs in manufacturing and construction, is supported by lawmakers in both parties, labor unions, governors, and editorial boards across the country. And US News reports most Americans want the pipeline built too.

“My own hand-picked jobs council has urged me to embrace the Republican approach to job creation – and I’m going to take their advice.” Not only does the president’s jobs council report align with the Republican approach to creating new private-sector jobs, it reflects legislation already passed by the House and awaiting action in the Democratic-controlled Senate. See here.

Along with a few more. Oh, and apparently Obama didn’t take the time discuss his signature legislation, Obamacare. He ignored it. I wonder why?

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

(The Hill) President Obama ended 2011 by predicting a contentious 2012.

In his final weekly address of the year, the president said he was hopeful about making progress on his agenda in the coming year but warned that it wouldn’t be easy.

“We’ve got some difficult debates and some tough fights to come,” Obama said. “As I’ve said before, we are at a make-or-break moment for the middle class. And in many ways, the actions we take in the months ahead will help determine what kind of country we want to be, and what kind of world we want our children and grandchildren to grow up in.”

And how right Obama is: do we want a country like Greece, which is where Obama and the Democrats are leading us? Or, do we want to have a country which is self sustaining?

As President, I promise to do everything I can to make America a place where hard work and responsibility are rewarded – one where everyone has a fair shot and everyone does their fair share. That’s the America I believe in. That’s the America we’ve always known. And I’m confident that if we work together, and if you keep reminding folks in Washington what’s at stake, then we will move this country forward and guarantee every American the opportunities they deserve.

He forgets that he is part of Washington, and part of the problem. But, don’t forget to sign up for Obama 2012 emails. Team Obama is using whitehouse.gov, the official website of the office of the POTUS, to mine email addresses to solicit campaign donations again.

President Obama and his various quislings and underlings still cannot bring themselves to say that the USA is under attack by radical Islamists. This is the self-destructive garbage that comes from the Obama administration every day. This is the kind of stuff that makes of us the “weak horse” that Islamists use to justify their attacks on the US.

We have two examples of this today, one from a representative of the Department of Homeland Security and one from Gaffemaster Joe Biden.

First up, our erstwhile VP. Ol’ Slow Joe Biden told Newsweek’s Leslie Gelb that the Taliban isn’t our enemy, either. You know, despite that we invaded Afghanistan to oust them from power, and all.

Look, the Taliban per se is not our enemy. That’s critical. There is not a single statement that the president has ever made in any of our policy assertions that the Taliban is our enemy because it threatens U.S. interests.

Next we have assistant defense secretary for homeland defense Paul Stockton refusing to agree with Rep. Dan Lungren’s (R.-Calif.) characterization of al Qaeda as “radical Islamists.”

YouTube Caption:

Wednesday Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) opened a hearing to examine the emerging threat to the military from homegrown terrorists within the U.S. and named the armed services as the “most sought-after” target for radical Islamist extremist groups.

Rep. Dan Lungren (R.-Calif.) asked Paul Stockton, assistant defense secretary for homeland defense, whether “we are at war with violent Islamist extremism.

The idiocy from the Obama administration is startling. They won’t even deign to identify the enemy and the enemy IS radical, terrorists driven by a fanatical devotion to Islam. But we can’t even get Obama and his comrades to identify our enemy, an enemy that has no problem announcing their own animus toward the USA.

Did you know that the only reason those famed “Reagan Democrats” voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984 was because they were… uh… racists? Well on the little watched Ed Show on MSNBC, Salon’s Joan Walsh assured the nation — or at least the 20 people watching — that this was the truth.

Sometimes a talking head on TV will say something so stupid that jaws drop nationwide as a result. Often that stupidity becomes the talk of the news cycle, too. But usually that only happens when there are actually viewers for the show upon which the stupidity is uttered. In this case, Joan Walsh of Salon uttered the stupidity, but since no one watches MSNBC — most especially the Ed Show — I thought I’d help pass around her comments to make her stupidity the talk of the day. It’s just a service from us here to you in the Internet tubes.

The rotund Ed Schultz was disparaging the Reagan Democrats as “dead” (both figuratively and literally) and was saying that Reagan Democrats could not possibly be a factor in 2012. Whatever merits of that claim, when Schultz turned to Salon’s Joan Walsh he got one of the most absurd comments about Reagan Democrats evah!

Walsh said:

You and I both know that a segment of the white working class did go over to Ronald Reagan, did abandon the Democratic party. Some of it was race, and some it was just believing that government was out of control and some people were getting something for nothing.

What, you may gasp? Reagan Democrats were all racists and that is why they voted Republican in the millions?

You may be confused by the comment. What was the big racial issue of 1980? Was Jimmy Carter really an African American and only the Reagan Democrats knew it? Was Reagan running on a repeal the Civil Rights bill platform and we just didn’t know it? I know, maybe Carter’s VP candidate, Walter Mondale, was the African American… hmmm, no he’s as white-bread as one can humanly get. Couldn’t have been MonDull!

Yes, you got it. There was no racial component to either the 1980 or 1984 elections. The fact is Joan Walsh is simply — and clumsily at that — trying to warp the past with her racebaiting as a way to win for Obama in the present. If Democrats crossed over in 1980 to vote Reagan, Walsh is saying, then they were raaaacists just like they will be if they do so today. THAT is her message. This is nothing more than Walsh’s attempt to throw the race card at anyone that is sick and tired of Obama’s destructive regime.

Walsh revealed a desperate ploy to staunch the bleeding of this destructive and self-destructive president. Nothing more. Nothing less.

(The Politico) Barack Obama offered a spirited defense of his presidency in an interview that aired Sunday on “60 Minutes,” framing the 2012 election as a “contrast in visions.”

Stressing that the views that got him elected in 2008 still drive him, even as many supporters voice dissatisfaction, Obama said he is still determined to change Washington and to make ordinary Americans’ lives better.

“I didn’t overpromise. And I didn’t underestimate how tough this was going to be,” Obama said in the sitdown with CBS News’s Steve Kroft that was conducted on two days this week, in Washington and also in Osawatomie, Kan., where the president on Tuesday delivered a speech calling this a “make-or-break moment” for working and middle class Americans.

Really? He promised to completely change Washington. He promised to “fundamentally transform America.” His administration promised that the Stimulus would work. He promised to “restore America’s standing in the world (which Democrats had already torn down)”. He promised to have all troops out of Iraq within 16 months. That he would close Guantanamo Bay detention facility. He promised quite a lot of things, and most Obama promises have expiration dates.

The vision he offered in 2008 was something he “always believed … was a long-term project,” Obama told Kroft. “Reversing a culture here in Washington, dominated by special interests, it was going to take more than a year, it was going to take more than two years. It was going to take more than one term.”

The vision was “hope and change”. The policy was reversing a culture that he was part of as a sitting US Senator, and made even worse when he took office. The Stimulus and health care bills, among others, were all about special interests. Special interests show up at the White House on a constant basis. He panders to special interests all the time. What he can’t do is lead.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

There was once a famous liberal congressman from New York who reminded his opponents that they could have their own opinions but not their own facts. This, of course, was Daniel Patrick Moynihan, one of the few respectable liberals of his or any other day. But, for the most part, the left operates on pushing the lie until it is accepted as “fact” whether it is true or not. And the leftist blog Crooks and Liars pulled a doozie this week.

Apparently the guffaw inducing leftist blog thinks that the Occupy protests have been completely peaceful despite the hundreds of arrests, the rapes, the property destruction, theft, and other various act of lawbreaking! No, they are not joking.

C&L, blogger John Amato centered his risible claim upon the video of the “bedlam” that occurred at a recent college football game that saw the Oklahoma State University Cowboys beat the University of Oklahoma Sooners. As the game ended, OSU fans flooded the field to celebrate. Unfortunately, in their exuberance to tear down the goal posts upwards to twelve fans were hurt.

Amato called this a “riot.”

“Some reports called it as terrifying as a natural disaster,” Amato luridly began. “Thousands of crazed fans rushed onto the field. It’s a typical response at many college football games, but this one caused massive injuries to people participating in the rioting.”

Rioting? It was hardly a “riot.” It wasn’t anything to excuse, mind you, but to call it a riot is hyperventilating at its worst.

I have to thank Tina Korbe who brought this to my attention at her HotAir blog. Now, I don’t bother much with lefty blogs. After all, who needs lefty blogs when the Old Media fills that bill so excruciatingly? Usually I only hit the lefty blogs when I want to see the left’s reaction to a particularly hot story, so this one I missed. But Korbe was at that game and she has a first hand account of the “riot.”

Now, it just so happens that I was in Stillwater, Okla., for this game — and I’d characterize the atmosphere afterward as anything but violent. Jubilant, ecstatic, buoyant, sure. But violent? Not so much. Nevertheless, it’s incumbent upon me to say — and, honestly, I’m very happy to say it — that injuries caused by excessive celebration after a football game are unnecessary, inexcusable and regrettable.

Korbe’s account aside, it is easy to see that the fans on the field were not there to destroy the place. Save tearing down the goal posts, as stupid a tradition as there ever was, the fans were just happy not overly destructive. This was hardly the sort of riots we’ve seen in years past when pro basketball teams have won the big game.

Regardless Amato seriously tried to compare the “riot” at the football game to the “peaceful” OWS protests. He lamented that OWSers were treated to pepper spray and had the evil police pushing them around. Those poor OWSers were treated to a “Stasi-type response” by the man… man. Why, those kindly OWSers were just “sleeping in tents,” ya know? What could be more peaceful?

Amato then went on to decry the money that it cost “to medically transport and treat severely wounded people and clean up after this violent outburst.”

All this arm waving and foaming at the mouth is a perfect example of the great lie, a misdirection used to distract people into accepting that his underlying premise was fact. However, in truth it is the OWS “movement” that has cost cities across this land — and therefore you and I as taxpayers — millions of dollars in police overtime, repairs to destroyed public property, and streets and san clean up crews that had to dispose of the OWSers bodily fluids left in bottles all over these “protests.”

Worse, the act of injudicious jubilation at the football game was nothing compared to the nearly 400 criminal acts perpetrated by OWSers at their anarchic “protests.” And this does not include the breaking of the many thousands of small laws — like permit requirements, vagrancy laws, and rules meant to keep protests orderly and safe for both protesters and passersbye. In fact, every single OWS protest has broken these laws. None of them got permits, none of them observed any of the laws and ordinances passed by the cities in which they gathered.

This is quite unlike the Tea Party movement that was forced to hold to every single tiny little law on the books to be “allowed” to hold their protests over the last two years. Further this is unlike the Tea Partiers that had no arrests, no destruction of private property, no rapes, no… well, nothing like the criminal activity perpetrated by the Occupiers.

Yet, C&L’s Amato pushed the big lie that the OWS events have been entirely free of arrests, free of criminal activity, perfectly peaceful. Amato is employing the left’s favorite game. Tell the lie long enough and scream it loud enough that people start to believe it. That is the goal, at any rate.

“American Atheists announced Monday on their “No God Blog” a new billboard campaign in their continued effort in “laboring for the civil liberties of atheists,” but in reality just upsetting those who disagree with their theological stance. A press release for the American Atheists’ new holiday season billboard campaign reads:

“American Atheists announced today that their new billboard is going up in several locations nationwide, including the New Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel: the same location as last year’s famous ‘You KNOW it’s a MYTH’ billboard. The new billboard will also be going up in Ohio and Florida.

This year’s holiday season billboard features pictures of Neptune, Jesus, Santa Claus, and the Devil and says, ‘37 Million Americans know MYTHS when they see them. What do you see?’”

Anticipating the inevitability that their billboard will offend others, Dave Silverman, the president of American Atheists, said, “When you question someone’s long-held beliefs and doctrine they are going to be immediately offended and be on the defensive: it’s a known psychological phenomenon.”

More here

Being offensive will always get you disliked. Is that what they aim at? I guess they are so hate-filled that it just bursts out.

Odd that it’s OK for atheists to tell Christians that they are wrong but Christians get attacked for “hate speech” if they tell homosexuals that they are wrong.

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

I have long pointed out on my sidebar on GREENIE WATCH that, just as “The Jews” were once blamed for every ill, so Global Warming is nowadays blamed for every ill. I will not try to spell out the similarities in any further detail but I think readers will see for themselves areas of similarity well enough. Even the first sentence could well apply to Warmism.

“The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” are perhaps the best proof that the Nazis’ “Big Lie” theory — tell something long enough and loud enough, and some people are sure to believe it is true.

A fabrication of the Russian Secret Police between 1897 and 1903, the documents described a putative Jewish plot to take over the world. Their speciousness repeatedly proven over the years, they continue to fuel anti-Semitism: in Nazi Germany, in communist Russia, in anti-Semitic Arab countries, in the writings of Western racists and so on.

And “The Protocols,” translated into scores of languages, continue to live on in popular culture — a 2005 documentary, a new novel (“The Prague Cemetery”) by Italy’s Umberto Eco, a new nonfiction book (“License to Murder”) by Alex Grobman, director of the America-Israel Friendship League. The Jewish Week spoke with Grobman this week about “The Protocols.”

Q: More than a century after “The Protocols” were written — and discredited as a fraud — why are we still talking and worrying about them?

A: The myth of an international Jewish conspiracy to control the world as advanced in “The Protocols” has been exposed by historians, journalists, politicians, police and religious leaders. Yet this has not stopped “The Protocols” from being part of a view held by many people. The potential danger of “The Protocols” in shaping public opinion is real and should not be underestimated. When Jews are portrayed as manipulators who seek power over other people’s lives, they come — only naturally — to be perceived as severe dire threats.

It is thus particularly disconcerting that this false and harmful perception of Jews is embraced even today by the leadership of the Arab-Muslim world, where “The Protocols” continues to be published in vast quantities, and cited in the writings of mainstream academics, who lend credibility and legitimacy to this falsehood and utter fallacy.

Q. Who takes ‘The Protocols’ seriously today?

Aside from many in the Arab world, the belief that Jews have an inordinate amount of power in the world can also be found throughout the West as well. In September 2007, The Financial Times reported that “Currency Wars,” a Chinese bestseller, claimed “The Battle of Waterloo. The deaths of six U.S. presidents. The rise of Adolf Hitler. The deflation of the Japanese bubble economy, the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis and even environmental destruction in the developing world,” which occurred over two centuries “have a single root cause: the control of money issuance through history by the Rothschild banking dynasty.”

Every time a friend returns from international theological conferences, he laments how pervasive the underlying belief in “The Protocols” is among leading theologians. Were you to confront them, they would be highly insulted, yet they accept the basic premise.

Jewish history is full of bogus accusations against Jews, like the blood libel. Why have “The Protocols” had such a lasting influence?

The notion of the Jew as a demonic character is still prevalent, allowing anti-Semites to use “The Protocols” to incite against Jews, particularly during times of political and social unrest. Conspiracy theories are attractive because they absolve the individual of any personal responsibility for failures, reverses and suffering. In this moral universe of “us” and “them,” the victim is not responsible at all for what has occurred. The conspirators are the ones who are culpable.

The fact that it was allegedly written by Jews makes the work more authentic. Reliance on contradiction— that to succeed Jews employ capitalism and communism, philo-Semitism and anti-Semitism, democracy and tyranny — made it possible for “The Protocols” to reach out to all: rich and poor, right and left, Christian and Muslim, American and Japanese.

Debating the advocates of “The Protocols” doesn’t work. Showing that “The Protocols” is a fraud doesn’t work. Banning the book — as some countries have tried — doesn’t work. What works?

Certain portions of the population will never be convinced that “The Protocols” are a forgery or that Jews are not an evil force trying to control the world. Logic and reason have little or no place in their way of thinking.

The purpose of [Grobman’s new book] is to inform those interested in historical truth why this canard and other lies against the Jewish people are so pervasive, and why they pose a danger not only to the Jewish people, but to all those who cherish a democratic way of life. If we do not respond to the canards, the assumption will be that we have no answers.

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

In her exclusive interview with Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D, AZ), ABCs Diane Sawyer began with a retrospective of the terrible crime committed against the Congresswoman by a mentally disturbed, a-political gunman. But true to her left-wing agenda, Sawyer could not resist illicitly linking Tea Party activists, anti-Obamacare sentiment, and even Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to what was perpetrated against Rep. Giffords on that terrible day.

Yes, even though these calumnies against conservatives and Sarah Palin have been thoroughly discredited, Sawyer links them anyway to the shocking crime that took the lives of six people, injured others, and delivered a debilitating head wound to Representative Giffords.

It was only hours after the shooting occurred on January 8, 2011, that left-wing activists, purported journalists, and Democrat operatives alike began blaming the shooting of Rep. Giffords on “Tea Party hate” and the “violent rhetoric of the right.”

The false narrative was picked up by nearly every Old Media outlet and disgorged from their talking points sheets over and over again. It was days before everyone learned that the killer, one Jared Lee Loughner, had been stalking Giffords for several years before the Tea Party, Obamacare or Sarah Palin became national news.

In fact, killer Loughner was not interested in politics at all. He was just a sick-minded, lunatic that had a crazy infatuation with Rep. Giffords.

The media ultimately stopped bandying about its discredited theory that the shooting was spurred by conservatives, the Tea Party and Gov. Palin, but no apologies were ever uttered by the spinmeisters in the press.

At least we thought that the discredited theory that the Giffords shooting was the fault of conservatives had disappeared. Now, with Sawyer’s new interview, we are once again treated to scenes of Tea Partiers unhappy at townhall meetings in the days before the shooting. We also get a brief scene of Gov. Palin addressing a crowd. So, once more we are visited with the lie that conservatives are at fault for Giffords shooting. Sawyer didn’t say so directly, of course. She’s too slick for that. But by showing Tea Partiers, conservatives, and Palin and painting them as a hostile force against Giffords, Sawyer was obviously linking them to the crime. Sawyer slyly floated irate conservatives as the reason the “atmosphere” of the days before her shooting was so filled with portent of the dangers to come.

Only it’s all a lie. The Tea Party, the dislike the nation has for Obamacare (which is still extant, by the way), and the political activism of Governor Sarah Palin had precisely nothing to do with Giffords’ shooting. Giffords was in Jared Lee Loughner’s gunsights regardless of the political situation in the country in the days leading up to his crime.

In fact, it is more sensible to blame Obama and Democrats for the enflamed political environment then and now. Such levels of vitriol didn’t exist until Obama and Democrats rammed Obamacare through Congress. Dispensing with our proper legislative process, the Democrats led by Nancy Pelosi and President Obama pushed through a bill that was not actually even written, a bill we had to “pass to know what is in it.” In fact, it is a bill that still has high unfavorables that run across party lines.

That Giffords’ shooting is not the Democrat’s fault should go without saying. The enflamed political environment had nothing at all to do with the crime committed that January morning. Democrats aren’t at fault for it. Certainly, neither are Tea Partiers, conservatives, anti-Obamacare activists, or Governor Sarah Palin.

The report is not without its nearly tear inducing moments, though. It is heartwarming to see Rep. Giffords on the road to recovery. It is wonderful to see her speaking clearly, even if she is sometimes reaching for the right words. Sadly Diane Sawyer sullies these wonderful moments by bringing into her report a partisan, left-wing bias against conservatives. But despite Diane Sawyer’s gauche effort to smear America’s conservatives by pushing discredited talking points, Giffords’ pluck and determination shines brightly through the smear job anyway. That is a triumph.