White House Press Secretary Hasn't Known the Answer 1,905 Times

Jay Carney — former Time reporter, current White House Press Secretary, and weekly punching bag — has spoken for President Obama and his staff during the most fraught period of Obama's presidency. He was installed in February 2011, less than a month after a fresh class of Tea Party politicians settled into office, and stayed on through the following summer's debt-ceiling crisis; the attacks in Benghazi, Libya; the overheated 2012 election; the Democratic push for increased gun control; and, most recently a spate of scandals involving the IRS, the NSA, and the Department of Justice. That might explain why, in the 444 press briefings Carney had held since, he has so often deflected questions from reporters. To place one number on his frequent prevarications, Yahoo News determined that Carney indicated he "did not have the answer" to journalists' questions exactly 1,905 times since he began flacking for the President, a subset of nearly 10,000 instances when Carney declined to answer, passed off the question to a subordinate, or claimed ignorance about the subject matter. The entire report forms a brutal dossier of Carney's tenure.
The compilation certainly delivers a sting, in part because Carney is sui generis among his contemporary predecessors. Unlike, say, Robert Gibbs (who recently opened PR firm) or Ari Fleischer (now a sports publicist), or even George Stephanopoulos (who became an ABC News anchor), Carney worked as a journalist at Time for twenty years before becoming the mouthpiece of powerful politicians. (He served as spokesman for for Joe Biden during the 2008 election before Obama tapped him to deal with reporters.) The only recent predecessor who followed a similar career track, Tony Snow, edited opinion pieces for a series of newspapers before joining the first Bush White House as a speech writer, and later the second Bush White House as a press secretary in 2006. Unlike Snow, Carney was perpetually concerned with seeking out the factual truth, especially from those in power. It must at least slightly pain him, then, to inform his former cohort, over and over and over again — literally thousands of times — that he, and by extension the President himself, doesn't know the answer to this or that question. At the same time, he must know how it feels to be told the same.

Are media buying into ‘phony scandal’ claim?

Conservative leaders allege the media are trying to ignore the once high-profile scandals overshadowing the Obama administration, as President Obama and his aides aggressively push the claim that these controversies are "phony."
The "phony scandal" line was the unofficial talking point of the week in Washington. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney made it his fallback retort from the podium -- when asked about the president's new wave of speeches on the economy, Carney explained Obama was trying to refocus Washington away from "fake" controversies.
For three speeches in a row, Obama hammered this refrain: "With this endless parade of distractions and political posturing and phony scandals, Washington has taken its eye off the ball."
But, at least on the IRS targeting scandal, both the Obama administration and the mainstream media took that controversy quite seriously when it broke in May. MSNBC's Chris Hayes called the selective screening of conservative groups a "genuine abuse of power" at the time.
Fast forward two months. As Obama hit the trail to talk economy, two CNN anchors this week described the controversies that had dogged him as "so-called scandals."
The conservative Media Research Center also calculates that on the Big Three network news channels -- NBC, CBS, and ABC -- the number of stories on the IRS scandal has plummeted.
The evening and morning shows did 96 stories in the first two weeks, according to MRC. The coverage steadily disappeared, and between June 28 and July 24, the center recorded "zero stories" on the matter.
When a major development broke last week -- testimony by a retired IRS worker that an Obama appointee was involved in the screening process -- only CBS Evening News gave the issue a mention.
Brent Bozell, founder of the Media Research Center, and other conservative leaders issued a statement Thursday decrying the alleged blackout.
"No fair, objective journalist can look at the facts of this flagrant abuse of power and not conclude that it is a massive political scandal deserving of constant, merciless scrutiny," they said in a statement.
Even before Obama and his team began pushing the "phony scandal" line, a few media outlets and personalities were making that case. Salon published an article on the IRS issue earlier this month asserting that, in the end, "the entire scandal narrative was a fiction."
MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell made the same argument.
But given the attention their own networks gave the IRS and other scandals just a few weeks earlier, a number of journalists and media personalities refused to go easy on the president this week.
On MSNBC, host Joe Scarborough ripped into Carney on Wednesday after the press secretary claimed the attention on "phony scandals" had all "come to naught."
"Do you think the IRS scandal is a phony scandal?" Scarborough asked.
Carney described it as "inappropriate activity," claiming that the press got "extremely excited" about the potential for scandal only to drop it when the "facts came out."
Scarborough, getting heated, pointed out new allegations that the controversy went all the way up to the IRS counsel's office, led by a political appointee. After Carney accused the host of pushing a GOP talking point, Scarborough said: "Stop your games with me. ... I'm not playing your games. I'm not somebody you talk ... down to from your podium."
Carney closed by asserting the IRS controversy was not a scandal because the White House was not involved.
Congressional Democrats have tried to downplay the IRS scandal lately by pointing to emerging evidence that liberal groups may have been singled out in IRS criteria as well. The matter is still being investigated. However, as Republicans note, liberal groups have not come forward to say they actually were targeted -- as conservative and Tea Party groups have done, by the dozens.
And the other so-called "phony scandals" continue to churn in Washington.
After the Obama administration took heat for seizing phone and email records from journalists, the Department of Justice earlier this month released new guidelines for investigations involving reporters -- in response to the outcry. The administration continues to battle with Congress over the surveillance power of the National Security Agency -- narrowly defeating a House bill this past week that would have reined in the NSA.
And on the Benghazi terror attack, Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., and others continue to raise serious questions about what happened that night and why lawmakers have not been provided access to the survivors.
Becky Gerritson, a Tea Party activist whose group was stalled by the IRS and who testified about it on Capitol Hill, took umbrage at the administration's "phony scandal" line.
"I think it's like the captain of the Titanic calling the icebergs phony," she said. "I think the only phony thing going on is the narrative that the White House is trying to push off on the American people."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/07/27/are-media-buying-into-phony-scandal-claim/#ixzz2aLFEO85E

Welfare

Welfare: SNAP, the U.S. food stamp program, has become a conduit for redistributing wealth and fundamentally transforming America, as welfare recipients now send food overseas and the White House markets to illegals.

While the administration laments the distraction of "phony" scandals like Benghazi and Fast and Furious that leave real Americans dead, it trots out phony statistics about how well the economy is doing.
"And what is absolutely true is that we have come a long way since the depths of the Great Recession," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said at a recent press briefing. "We've created over 7.2 million private-sector jobs." How many of those jobs are part-time is one of the many things Carney left out.
Since February 2009, the first full month of Obama's presidency, 9.5 million Americans have dropped out of the labor force. Nearly 90 million working-age Americans are not working today. Doing the math, 1.3 Americans have dropped out of the labor force for every job the administration claims to have created.
Read More At Investor's Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/072613-665390-two-food-stamp-recipients-per-job-created.htm#ixzz2aCAJsUGO
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Excuse me, Mr. President

680,000 Workers to Pay the Price for this Bloated Government

12 July 2013 / 33 Comments

It’s not like you haven’t read many other stories just like this one, since the mention of ‘sequester’.   But, it does highlight the complete audacity of a government spinning out of control.
680,000 civilian Defense Department employees are going to be furloughed.    The word ‘employees’ means that these people actually have jobs.  They’re not sitting at home on the government dole.  They earn a salary, and they pay exorbitant taxes to fund this ridiculous, monstrosity of a government.   How does the administration show appreciation for their efforts?   Furlough!
Just who does pay the price for bloated government, out of control spending, billions in objectionable foreign aid, and a ‘President’ who thinks he’s royalty?  Well, 680,000 civilian Defense Department employees are going to be feeling it in their pocket books…

The Pentagon began furloughing the vast majority of its civilian employees as part of an effort to generate billions in savings required to address budgetary constraints.

To meet the mandates of the so-called sequestration, 680,000 Defense Department employees will be forced to take a day of unpaid leave each week over the next 11 weeks. The move is expected to save about $1.8 billion, but it’s frustrating many of those affected.

“This is exactly the wrong way to balance the budget, to arbitrarily furlough everybody,” said Professional Services Council President Stan Soloway, whose organization represents government contractors whose work will be disrupted when large numbers of their government counterparts are forced into mandatory leave. “It’s unfortunate and unfair.”

As badly as the lost income will sting those who are furloughed, the Pentagon had originally expected it to be much worse. The current plan is a reduction from the 22 furlough days the department thought would be necessary.

Read More:  http://washingtonexaminer.com

Read more: http://MinutemenNews.com/2013/07/as-if-paying-taxes-wasnt-enough-680000-workers-to-feel-the-cost-of-this-bloated-government/#ixzz2aFAiWCOz

Enough of Trayvon

David Lawrence

Enough of Trayvon

On the cover of the “Daily News” we have the usual protestors—Beyonce, Jay Z, and AL Sharpton.  Add the really aggrieved, Trayvon Martin’s mother, Sybrina Fulton.

It’s not my party.   It’s not my death.  But I don’t like long faced grievers trying to publicize, glamorize and get ego satisfaction out of misfortune. 

The court said Zimmerman was innocent.  Let it die.  Let Trayvon die peacefully rather than be tossed up in the air as a political cause. 

I didn’t know Trayvon.  I wouldn’t have wanted to know him.  Not because he’s black.  But because he’s an uneducated kid.  And those thousands of demonstrators who act like Trayvon was their best friend didn’t know him either. Jay Z is not a poor kid from the streets; he’s worth millions.

If you really need to breathe in the sadness of the dead, go up to Chicago and mourn some of the nameless murders of black on black crime.  Don’t pick and choose your wailing according to Presidential whim.  As the rappers say, stop biting out of Trayvon’s lyrics.

When my mother died I didn’t even invite any guests.  I’m not a wake person.  I don’t like parties over the dead.  I think it’s disrespectful and digressive. 

If Trayvon is to rest in peace he should not have 101 demonstrations around the country shaking up his bones.  Let him go with dignity, not with anger and vituperation.

Let the Jay Z’s of the world wipe those blank mindless expressions from their faces and mourn their own previous contributions to crime and the drug culture. Let them look for solutions rather than to wail, cry and complain. 

Benghazi

What Democrats and unions have done to Detroit

Light years seem to have passed between Detroit's June 17, 2013, bankruptcy filing and the warning issued by the city's newly elected Mayor Coleman Young in his 1974 inaugural address.
"It is time to leave Detroit. Hit Eight Mile Road. And I don't give a damn if they are black or white, if they wear Superfly suits or blue uniforms with silver badges. Hit the road," he said.
To the first African-American mayor of a major U.S. city, equating the police with criminals was a way of telling his overwhelmingly black constituency that he understood their concerns about police brutality and civil rights.
To the city's white residents, it was a message that he placed those concerns above public safety and civil order. White flight, which began in the late '60s, accelerated.
In 1970, Detroit's population was 1.5 million. Forty-four percent was African-American, 54 percent was white. By 1990, the city's population had fallen to slightly more than 1 million, with African-Americans accounting for 78 percent and whites only 20 percent.
The population shift under Young cemented the Democratic Party's lock on the city. The labor organizer-turned-Democratic lawmaker would serve five terms, stepping down in 1993 at age 74 as his health worsened.
Under him, Detroit became a one-party big city machine. The last Republican mayor, Louis Miriani, was elected in 1957. Since 1970, only one Republican, Keith Butler, was elected to the city council.
As a result, Detroit exemplifies what happens when one political party - and it doesn't matter if it's the Democrats or the Republicans - keeps an iron grip on political power for decade after decade.
Young used the power to reward his base. The police force became 50 percent minority under his watch. Efforts to steer city business to a black-owned company resulted in two federal corruption probes in the early 1980s. Young himself was never charged.
Other corruption scandals followed. Young's police chief, William Hart, was convicted of embezzling $2.4 million in police funds in 1992.
Young's successor, Kwame Kilpatrick, resigned amid a "pay to play" and sex scandal in 2008. In March, he was convicted on 24 counts including racketeering and bribery.

Read more: http://nation.foxnews.com/2013/07/22/how-democrats-and-unions-destroyed-detroit#ixzz2a0bGNQVf

Cockroaches are infesting the whole government.