Nouvelles en Langue Anglaise

Rappel du premier message :

Bonjour Biloulou

Il me semblait que cette nouvelle plairait!

Ce matin les economistes nous annoncaient dans un article la fin de la recession. Maintenant, il serait question d'une SECONDE recession. ahahhh

U.S. may face second recession: Harvard's Rogoff
Tue Aug 11, 2009 4:43pm EDT


By Walden Siew
BOSTON (Reuters) - The United States faces a prolonged period of sluggish growth and perhaps another recession in the next five years, Harvard University economist Kenneth Rogoff said on Tuesday.

The U.S. recession that began in December 2007 is close to an end, and economic growth will hover near a sluggish 2 percent for the next five to seven years, he said.

"We're going to be Japan-light," he said in an interview, referring to Japan's years of sub-par growth after its financial crisis of the 1990s. "We won't have a lost decade, but we will face some of the same challenges."

Rogoff, a former International Monetary Fund chief economist and an expert on banking crises, said the United States faces a 50-50 chance of a second recession in the next five years.

....

Il doit etre Normand ce monsieur.

Rasmussen:

Date................................. Presidential Approval Index Strongly Approve Strongly Disapprove Total Approve Total Disapprove

08/12/2009	-5	31%	36%	48%	52%
08/11/2009	-7	30%	37%	49%	50%
08/10/2009	-9	30%	39%	49%	51%
08/09/2009	-8	31%	39%	50%	50%
08/08/2009	-5	33%	38%	50%	50%

=======

01/22/2009	+30	44%	14%	64%	29%
01/21/2009	+28	44%	16%	65%	30%

So far in August, the President’s Approval Index rating has ranged from -4 to -9. That’s an improvement from the last week in July when his ratings ranged from -8 to -12.

=============

Support for Congressional Health Care Reform Falls to New Low

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Public support for the health care reform plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats has fallen to a new low as just 42% of U.S. voters now favor the plan. That’s down five points from two weeks ago and down eight points from six weeks ago.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that opposition to the plan has increased to 53%, up nine points since late June.

More significantly, 44% of voters strongly oppose the health care reform effort versus 26% who strongly favor it. Intensity has been stronger among opponents of the plan since the debate began.

Sixty-seven percent (67%) of those under 30 favor the plan while 56% of those over 65 are opposed. Among senior citizens, 46% are strongly opposed.

Predictably, 69% of Democrats favor the plan, while 79% of Republicans oppose it. Yet while 44% of Democratic voters strongly favor the reform effort, 70% of GOP voters are strongly opposed to it.

Most notable, however, is the opposition among voters not affiliated with either party. Sixty-two percent (62%) of unaffiliated voters oppose the health care plan, and 51% are strongly opposed. This marks an uptick in strong opposition among both Republicans and unaffiliateds, while the number of strongly supportive Democrats is unchanged.
...

NP pour nous prouver que son programme est super, il l'a compare mardi a la Poste et a UPS (Bonjour Marieden ) et Fedex. Si ce n'est pas la pire chose qu'il est pu faire, ca n'est pas loin, vu que des milliers de postes vont fermer et que la Poste est pres de la faillite complete.

Une discussion a cours chez Politico et a part 1 defenseur dans les 7 premiers repondeurs, meme un* des deux** qui sont pour le programme de NP regrettent l'analogie!!


Is a health care "public option" the first step toward a government-run, single payer-type system? Or as President Obama suggested Tuesday in his New Hampshire town hall, can a public option coexist with private insurance, similar to the U.S. Postal Service and carriers like FedEx and UPS?

Responses:

Randy Barnett, Professor, Georgetown University Law Center:

I am not sure I understand the analogy. ...

PS: The US Post Office also suppressed abolitionist literature from reaching the slave states. When abolitionist Lysander Spooner started his own post office, the American Letter Mail Company, to compete with drastically lowered postal rates, it attracted lots of business, but the US government moved swiftly to suppress the company by prosecuting his carriers for violating the express mail statute. So perhaps the analogy does teach some lessons about a "public option" after all.

---------

Rory Cooper, Dir., Strategic Communications, Heritage Foundation:

"The President says his public option will be great, but then says it won’t be too great. C’mon."
The President is 100% correct; he has developed the “post office” of health care plans. This must be why members of Congress refuse to go on it themselves. The Post Office is targeted to post a $7 billion loss this year alone.
...

---------

Cesar Conda, Republican strategist, former Romney and Cheney advisor:

The reason why so many Americans are opposed to the public or government option is that they DON'T want the health care system be run like the Postal Service.

...

-------

Charles W. Calomiris, Professor of Financial Institutions, Columbia:

The public option is indeed a major step toward a government-run, single-payer system, as the result of scale economies in health insurance. But no, the current proposal is not the "first step." The first, second, and third steps already happened long ago (Medicare being the most significant one). Government already runs a substantial chunk of health care, deciding via its control over the purse strings what procedures and which doctors many people go to. Some experts believe that the "tipping point" that would lead to major withdrawals by private insurers, and thus a near-total government control over the system, would occur at around a 60% government share, and we are already close to that point. The public option now being touted by President Obama likely would push us over the tipping point.

...

---------

Bradley A. Blakeman, Republican strategist, consultant, entrepreneur:

The “public option,” no matter how it is created is a foot in the door to a single payer-type system that is ultimately the goal of Democrats. The U.S. Postal Service by the way is in the red in massive debt. Just look at what was reported just yesterday in the Journal Star:
...

---------
*
Darrell M. West, Vice President, Governance Studies, Brookings:

Public options such as Medicare, Medicaid, and the Veterans Administration have co-existed with private insurance for years. But if I were President Obama, I wouldn’t be using the U.S. Post Office to make the case for a public insurance option. With the deficits being run, threats of service cutbacks, and problems modernizing, the postal analogy is not going to make many Americans support a public health option.

NP avait du oublier de lire le teleprompteur.

=======

**
Timothy Stoltzfus Jost, Law Professor at the Washington and Lee University:

"What has private insurance done for us that makes it such a national treasure...?"
A public insurance plan could certainly coexist with private insurance. Indeed, in other countries it does. Higher-income Germans can choose to be either publicly or privately insured. About half choose public insurance because for them it is less expensive, about half choose private insurance, which they believe provides better access to care. Australians as well can choose to be either publicly or privately insured for hospital care, and about 45% are privately insured. The largest "private" insurer, however, is a public plan, Medibank Private. For years it has controlled about a third of the market, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less. It is generally believed, however, to keep the other private plans "honest" by keeping the market competitive.

So to if we had a vigorous public plan in the United States, some who were eligible for it (the CBO estimates about a third, or 10 to 12 million) would choose the public plan, the remainder would choose private insurance. Since, according to all proposals, the public plan would only be available within the exchanges and not to Americans working for large employers, the vast majority of Americans (164 million by 2019 according to the CBO) would continue to be privately insured through their jobs, as they are now. More...


C'est sans parler:

1) du cout: 1 trillion de dollars pour si peu de personnes ca n'en vaut plus la peine, si?

2) du depart des assures vers le systeme federal, causerait un vaccum financier qui devrait etre comble par les AUTRES assures => augmentation des primes (le double) => un depart lent mais soutenu du restant des assures vers l'assurance gouvernementale => la fin des assurances privees exceptes pour les familles tres riches

3) sans competition le gouvernement pourra augmenter les primes de la meme facon qu'il augmente les impots.

Il faut remarquer egalement le premier paragraphe. Ce monsieur pique un exemple dans un pays, un exemple dans un autre, il est plus qu'evident qu'il n'est pas tres au courant de l'ensemble des differents programmes, de plus il oublie comme le fait si souvent NP, que les Etats Unis ne sont ni le Canada, ni l'Allemagne, ni le Royaume Uni, ni l'Australie. Connait-il seulement le plan propose par les Democrates au Congres, qu'il soit oblige d'aller chercher ailleurs pour montrer comme ca marche bien alors que chaque pays semble avoir un programme different!

On peut facilement en douter surtout quand on sait que les senateurs se balladent avec des anti-seches dans leur poche preparees par Nancy, the W.W.W. . Une simple logique met pourtant tellement de choses en evidence!

...

Le Royaume Uni, vexe par les commentaires negatifs de son systeme sante se rebiffe ( ) et refute dans un email de trois pages les idées fausses sur le NHS publiees dans les media americains, ajoutant les "Ce n'est pas vrai." apres chacune d'elle. Excellent soutient pour NP.

U.K. Hits Back at U.S. Health Reform 'Untruths'

Pilloried by right-wing critics of President Obama's health care plan, Britain's National Health Service is fighting back, calling the claims 'ridiculous' and 'untrue.'
AP
Thursday, August 13, 2009

LONDON -- Britain's health care service says it is sick of being lied about.

Pilloried by right-wing critics of President Barack Obama's health care plan, Britain's National Health Service, known here as the NHS, is fighting back.

"People have been saying some untruths in the States," a spokesman for Britain Department of Health said in a telephone interview. "There's been all these ridiculous claims made by the American health lobby about Obama's health care plan ... and they've used the NHS as an example. A lot of it has been untrue."

He spoke anonymously in line with department policy.
...

Date...................Presidential Approval Index Strongly Approve Strongly Disapprove Total Approve Total Disapprove

08/13/2009	-8	29%	37%	47%	52%
08/12/2009	-5	31%	36%	48%	52%
08/11/2009	-7	30%	37%	49%	50%
08/10/2009	-9	30%	39%	49%	51%
08/09/2009	-8	31%	39%	50%	50%

Oui, voilà, nous avions déjà pris connaissance de la version francophone de cette nouvelle.

Vous ne pensez pas qu'il s'agit d'une loi de "courtoisie" envers précisément ce groupe d'électeurs de religieux durs et purs, comme l'article le suggère et que, une fois les élections passées, devra être abrogée car contraire aux engagements internationaux ?

Bon, de là à dire que le régime actuel se rapproche de celui des talibans.... oui, un centimètre sur un kilomètre, tout au plus... mais n'oublions pas qu'ils sont en période électorale, donc les promesses volent bas.

On verra plus clair dans quelques jours, n'est-ce pas ?

Biloulou a écrit:

Oui, voilà, nous avions déjà pris connaissance de la version francophone de cette nouvelle.

Vous
ne pensez pas qu'il s'agit d'une loi de "courtoisie" envers précisément
ce groupe d'électeurs de religieux durs et purs, comme l'article le
suggère et que, une fois les élections passées, devra être abrogée car
contraire aux engagements internationaux ?

Bon, de là à dire que
le régime actuel se rapproche de celui des talibans.... oui, un
centimètre sur un kilomètre, tout au plus... mais n'oublions pas qu'ils
sont en période électorale, donc les promesses volent bas.

On verra plus clair dans quelques jours, n'est-ce pas ?

Je ne pense pas que ce soit ni une loi de courtoisie ni une loi
temporaire tout comme certaines faveurs legales accordees aux
Islamistes surtout concernant les femmes et qui ne sont pas en cours
d'abrogation, loin de la meme.
Mis a part les problemes de corruption dans lesquels il est trempe jusqu'au cou, Karzai flirte avec le diable,
c'est le prix a payer pour rester au pouvoir. Je doute qu'il ait le
choix.

Boston Globe
Ridge accuses Bush White House of political use of terror alert system

August 20, 2009 04:21 PM

In his new book, the first Homeland Security chief, Tom Ridge, accuses top aides to President George W. Bush of pressing him to raise the terror alert level to influence the 2004 presidential election. Ridge, a former Republican governor of Pennsylvania, says that he refused the entreaty just before the election from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft, according to a summary of the book from publisher Thomas Dunne Books.

"After that episode, I knew I had to follow through with my plans to leave the federal government for the private sector," Ridge, who
resigned soon after the election where Bush defeated Democrat John F. Kerry, writes in "The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege ... And
How We Can Be Safe Again."

Ridge's book will only fuel Bush critics, who have long said that his White House used terror threats to distract the public from the unpopular Iraq war. The Bush team has long denied that was the case.

"In this probing and surefooted memoir, Ridge takes us through the challenges he and his new department faced, including Anthrax scares
and reports (both real and false alarms) of new Al-Qaeda operations sprouting up in the United States," says the publisher's summary of the book, scheduled to be out on Sept. 1.

"Ridge writes with refreshing candor on both the successes and missteps of the DHS. He details the obstacles faced in his new post -- often within the administration itself -- as well as the failures of Congress to provide for critical homeland security needs, and the irresponsible use of terrorism by both parties to curry favors with voters," the summary continues.

It says that Ridge also reveals in the book how the department was "pressured to connect homeland security to the international “war on
terror;” and how he had "pushed for a plan (defeated because of turf wars) to integrate DHS and FEMA disaster management in New Orleans and
other areas before Hurricane Katrina."

Asked about the allegation about the election, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs noted today that current Homeland Security Janet Napolitano launched a study whether to scrap the color-coded system, which critics say is ineffective and confusing.

"Decisions regarding the terror threat should be made based on the rise and fall of that threat, not based on anything else," Gibbs told reporters.

C'est la confirmation de la manipulation constante qui avait cours. Des alertes dont personne ne savait le pourquoi ni le comment et qui restaient forcement sans explications et que pour finir personne ne prenait a serieux. D'ailleurs elles se sont pratiquement arretes apres l'election de 2004
Bon il ya le bouquin de Cheney pour bientot egalement et il n'a pas des mots tres tendres pour son ancien boss, ce qui a priori me le rendrait plutot sympathique sympathique (le Boss, pas Cheney)..

Shansaa a écrit:

Je ne pense pas que ce soit ni une loi de courtoisie ni une loi
temporaire tout comme certaines faveurs legales accordees aux
Islamistes surtout concernant les femmes et qui ne sont pas en cours
d'abrogation, loin de la meme.
Mis a part les problemes de corruption dans lesquels il est trempe jusqu'au cou, Karzai flirte avec le diable,
c'est le prix a payer pour rester au pouvoir. Je doute qu'il ait le
choix.

Bonjour Shansaa !

J'ai mis "courtoisie" entre guillemets pour tenter de suggérer un rapprochement avec "courtiser", "courtisane".

Pour le reste... vous décrivez bien les dessous de la diplomatie, des compromis, des "un pas en avant, deux pas en arrière" en attendant mieux...

Vraiment, la politique me donne des boutons.

Bonjour Biloulou,

Citation :

J'ai mis "courtoisie" entre guillemets pour tenter de suggérer un rapprochement avec "courtiser", "courtisane".
Pour le reste... vous décrivez bien les dessous de la diplomatie, des
compromis, des "un pas en avant, deux pas en arrière" en attendant
mieux...

Vraiment, la politique me donne des boutons.

[/quote]

Ben oui, j'ai constitue une bonne reserve de Caladryl justement, mais c'est fou ce qu'elle diminue vite.....

Vous aviez donc remarqué mes incursions nocturnes et vous ne m'avez pas dénoncé ?
Ô merci ma généreuse bienfaitrice !
(Bonjour Shansaa, tout va bien ? )

Biloulou a écrit:

Vous aviez donc remarqué mes incursions nocturnes et vous ne m'avez pas dénoncé ?
Ô merci ma généreuse bienfaitrice !
(Bonjour Shansaa, tout va bien ? )

Obama, the mortal
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, September 4, 2009

What happened to President Obama? His wax wings having melted, he is the man who fell to earth.

What happened to bring his popularity down further than that of any new president in polling history save Gerald Ford (post-Nixon pardon)?

The conventional wisdom is that Obama made a tactical mistake by farming out his agenda to Congress and allowing himself to be pulled left by the doctrinaire liberals of the Democratic congressional leadership. But the idea of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi pulling Obama left is quite ridiculous. Where do you think he came from, this friend of Chávista ex-terrorist William Ayers, of PLO apologist Rashid Khalidi, of racialist inciter Jeremiah Wright?

But forget the character witnesses. Just look at Obama's behavior as president, beginning with his first address to Congress. Unbidden, unforced and unpushed by the congressional leadership, Obama gave his most deeply felt vision of America, delivering the boldest social democratic manifesto ever issued by a U.S. president. In American politics, you can't get more left than that speech and still be on the playing field.

In a center-right country, that was problem enough. Obama then compounded it by vastly misreading his mandate. He assumed it was personal. This, after winning by a mere seven points in a year of true economic catastrophe, of an extraordinarily unpopular Republican incumbent, and of a politically weak and unsteady opponent. Nonetheless, Obama imagined that, as Fouad Ajami so brilliantly observed, he had won the kind of banana-republic plebiscite that grants caudillo-like authority to remake everything in one's own image.

...

--------

L'article de Fouad Ajami cite plus haut

Obama's Summer of Discontent

The politics of charisma is so Third World. Americans were never going to buy into it for long.
By FOUAD AJAMI

So we are to have a French health-care system without a French tradition of political protest. It is odd that American liberalism, in a veritable state of insurrection during the Bush presidency, now seeks political quiescence. These "townhallers" who have come forth to challenge ObamaCare have been labeled "evil-mongers" (Harry Reid), "un-American" (Nancy Pelosi), agitators and rowdies and worse.

A political class, and a media elite, that glamorized the protest against the Iraq war, that branded the Bush presidency as a reign of usurpation, now wishes to be done with the tumult of political debate. President Barack Obama himself, the community organizer par excellence, is full of lament that the "loudest voices" are running away with the national debate. Liberalism in righteous opposition, liberalism in power: The rules have changed.

It was true to script, and to necessity, that Mr. Obama would try to push through his sweeping program—the change in the health-care system, a huge budget deficit, the stimulus package, the takeover of the automotive industry—in record time. He and his handlers must have feared that the spell would soon be broken, that the coalition that carried Mr. Obama to power was destined to come apart, that a country anxious and frightened in the fall of 2008 could recover its poise and self-confidence. Historically, this republic, unlike the Old World and the command economies of the Third World, had trusted the society rather than the state. In a perilous moment, that balance had shifted, and Mr. Obama was the beneficiary of that shift.

So our new president wanted a fundamental overhaul of the health-care system—17% of our GDP—without a serious debate, and without "loud voices." It is akin to government by emergency decrees. How dare those townhallers (the voters) heckle Arlen Specter! Americans eager to rein in this runaway populism were now guilty of lèse-majesté by talking back to the political class.

We were led to this summer of discontent by the very nature of the coalition that brought Mr. Obama, and the political class around him, to power, and by the circumstances of his victory. The man was elected amid economic distress. Faith in the country's institutions, perhaps in the free-enterprise system itself, had given way. Mr. Obama had ridden that distress. His politics of charisma was reminiscent of the Third World. A leader steps forth, better yet someone with no discernible trail, someone hard to pin down to a specific political program, and the crowd could read into him what it wished, what it needed.

The leader would be different things to different people. The Obama coalition was the coming together of disparate groups: the white professional liberals seeking absolution for the country in the election of an African-American man, the opponents of the Iraq war who grew more strident as the project in Iraq was taking root, the African-American community that had been invested in the Clintons and then came around out of an understandable pride in one of its own.



The last segment of the electorate to flock to the Obama banners were the blue-collar workers who delivered him Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana. He was not their man. They fully knew that he didn't share their culture. They were, by his portrait, clinging to their guns and religion, but the promise of economic help, and of protectionism, carried the day with them.

...

Obama "Green Jobs" adviser Van Jones Resigns Amid Controversy

Van Jones, an administration official specializing in environmentally friendly "green jobs," has been linked to efforts suggesting a government role in the Sept. 11 terror attacks and to derogatory comments about Republicans.



AP

Sunday, September 06, 2009


WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama's adviser Van Jones has resigned amid controversy over past inflammatory statements, the White House said early Sunday.

Jones, an administration official specializing in environmentally friendly "green jobs" with the White House Council on Environmental Quality was linked to efforts suggesting a government role in the 2001 terror attacks and to derogatory comments about Republicans.

The resignation comes as Obama is working to regain his footing in the contentious health care debate.

Jones issued an apology on Thursday for his past statements. When asked the next day whether Obama still had confidence in him, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said only that Jones "continues to work in the administration."



...

SEPTEMBER 6, 2009, 4:43 A.M. ET

Tens of Thousands Protest Chávez in Venezuela
Associated Press

CARACAS, Venezuela -- Tens of thousands marched through Venezuela's capital on Saturday to protest what they call growing authoritarianism by President Hugo Chávez.

A few thousand of the president's backers held a separate counter-rally to express support for the government's policies.

Anti-Chávez protesters, many of them wearing white, filled the streets of Caracas, denouncing recent arrests of opposition members for alleged violence during protests and a new education law that critics fear could lead to indoctrination in schools.Associated Press

An opponent to Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez helds up a copy of the National Constitution during a protest in Caracas Saturday.

"It's very concerning because education is Venezuela's future," said 23-year-old engineering student Carlos Delgado, who also complained of soaring inflation and rampant crime after more than a decade under Chávez.

"We have 11 years with the same faces, the same problems, and the truth is that we don't see any solutions," Delgado said.

Carlos Garcia, a 41-year-old administrative worker who attended the pro-government march, said Venezuela's poorer sectors have achieved greater equality under Mr. Chávez. He dismissed the opposition's claims about the education law, saying it aims to make the system more inclusive, and defended the recent jailing of opposition demonstrators.

"If a person is provoking violence, they should be punished," Garcia said.
Copyright 2009 Associated Press

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009, 8:54 A.M.
Obama and the Perfect Political Storm

It's hard to sell change voters don't think they need.
By KARL ROVE

August was the worst month of Barack Obama's presidency. And he seems to know it—he is now planning to deliver a speech to a joint session of Congress 232 days into his administration in a desperate attempt to save his biggest domestic priority, overhauling health care.

He has already had the budget-busting $787 billion stimulus package, a budget that doubles the national debt in five years, an earmark-laden appropriations bill that boosted domestic spending nearly 8%, and a cap-and-trade energy tax that limped through the House with dozens of Democratic defections (and which has stalled in the Senate). These achievements are unpopular, so they are boomeranging on him.

Mr. Obama's problems are legion. To start with, the president is focusing on health care when the economy and jobs are nearly everyone's top issue. Voters increasingly believe Mr. Obama took his eye off the ball.

In addition, Mr. Obama is trying to overhaul health care without being able to tap into widespread public unhappiness. Nearly nine out of 10 Americans say they have coverage—and large majorities of them are happy with it. Of the 46 million uninsured, 9.7 million are not U.S. citizens; 17.6 million have annual incomes of more than $50,000; and 14 million already qualify for Medicaid or other programs. That leaves less than five million people truly uncovered out of a population of 307 million. Americans don't believe this problem—serious but correctable—justifies the radical shift Mr. Obama offers.

Associated Press



Moreover, he's tried to sell it with promises Americans aren't buying. He says ObamaCare will save money, but Americans believe it comes with a huge price tag because the Congressional Budget Office has said it will.

Workers are also rightly concerned they won't be able to keep their current coverage. Many businesses will drop their health plans and instead pay a fine equal to 8% of their payroll costs, which is less than what they pay for employee coverage.

Families believe they will be pushed into a government plan as the "public option" drives private insurers out of the market.

Health-care providers fear they'll be forced to follow one-size-fits-all guidelines drafted by bureaucrats, instead of making judgments for specific patients.

And seniors are afraid of Mr. Obama's plan to cut $500 billion from Medicare over the next decade, including $177 billion for Medicare Advantage. It's simply not possible to cut that much from Medicare without also cutting services seniors need.

Each of these concerns is energizing opposition among many previously uninvolved voters and political independents. Members of Congress, especially those in closely contested districts, saw this firsthand when they returned home in August.

The administration's problems have been compounded by tactical mistakes. Allowing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to push for a Democrat-only bill shatters any claim Mr. Obama can make to bipartisanship, a core theme of his candidacy. Leaving the legislation's drafting to Congress has tied the president's fortunes to Mrs. Pelosi, who has a 25% approval rating nationwide, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, whose approval rating is 37% in Nevada.

...

BREITBART: Couric should look in mirror
By Andrew Breitbart

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Now that White House "Green Jobs Czar" Van Jones has resigned, what's next?

Inevitably, the American mainstream media - ABC, NBC, CBS, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, et al - must be held to account for sitting on the sidelines as this major story kept building without them, went viral on YouTube, and then became so large that a key appointee of President Obama was forced to step down.

But with their decision to ignore the Jones story, they may have actually done Mr. Obama far more harm than good: Who vetted this guy? How did he get past the FBI? What did he say, and how did he answer the infamous seven-page questionnaire that all Obama appointees were required to fill out? Inquiring Freedom of Information Act minds want to know.

For most people in this country, the resignation was the first they had heard of Van Jones. For this sin of journalistic omission, there's institutional media blame. Bias is too tame a word for the utter shamelessness on display: Only Republican scandals - real and imagined - matter.

And it's not just those the Democratic-Media Complex dub as "mobs" or "tea baggers" that are taking notice. Diminishing audience and evaporating subscribership reflect widespread consumer dissatisfaction. Eventually, the money will run out.

But until then, the growing alternative media of Internet and talk radio and a burgeoning mass of justifiably angry Americans will make every effort to expose the sham that is mainstream journalism.

Obviously, it's not that the Jones story wasn't newsworthy. His racist rants, his radical background and his membership in a 9/11 "truther" group made for heavy-rotation YouTube viewing that would have immediately destroyed other mere mortals if the shoe were on the right - or white - foot.
Compounding the problem, the Jones narrative hurts Mr. Obama because it underlines how the mainstream media helped elect the president by glorifying him instead of vetting him.

Just as Mr. Obama was not even cursorily investigated, Van Jones, a fellow "community organizer," was not given the slightest media attention when named as an unaccountable "czar" selected to oversee billions in taxpayer money for the ambiguous purpose of "green energy." And that despite having a body of damning evidence that could be found with a single Google search by an ADHD-addled high-school journalism student.

Instead, talk-radio host Glenn Beck and Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit, as well as Breitbart.tv editors Scott Baker and Liz Stephans, led the charge forcing the mainstream media's hand while the usually reliable George Soros-funded "netroots" media defense mechanism couldn't fend off the growing body of charges.

Calling Mr. Jones' critics "racist" was their best play, and that gruel gets thinner with every passing scandal cycle. In this case, the Jones "Swift Boat" already had left the harbor.

...

One of the stories is that ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a massive radical organization, is poised to receive billions from the Obama "stimulus."

ACORN's voting division is currently under investigation in multiple states for fraud. And its housing division exists to fulfill an unclear mandate that has been accused of using funds to pay for political protests. If the alternative media digs further and finds out ACORN is guilty as charged, and as corrupt as its ample critics say it is, the onus is those who didn't question when the Obama team decided to allocate billions to expand the group's reach.
...
"Recently there was a conference call arranged by the National Endowment for the Arts, with a representative of the White House, for potential grantees or actual grantees of the federal government, getting subsidies - the theme of it was how the arts community could advance the president's agenda. Now I don't know how many laws that breaks, but I am sure there are some."
...
All eyes are on the media. We are judging them by the standard they taught us during Watergate: "The cover-up is worse than the crime."

Bon, ce message sera bien ici! enfin, j'espere.

Donc comme je le disais et en reprenant l'expresion de Biloulou : vert a l'exterieur et rouge dedans (sans oublier les pepins)...

Ce qui me surprend c'est que certains soient surpris que ce monsieur, avec un tel pedigre, ait ete un des plus importants conseillers de Barack Obama. Evidemment, on nous a repete avant et apres les elections que le candidat a la presidentielle, puis le president n'etait et n'avait jamais ete socialiste. Je veux bien tout ce qu'on veut, si ca peut faire plaisir...

On nous en a dit des choses, par exemple que Barack Obama n'avait jamais ete present lorsque son pasteur de vingt ans, se lancait dans des harangues lourds de racisme et bourres d'anti-americanisme. Il semble que ce conseiller, tres proche de notre president, ait les memes opinions. Mais il ne les a, sans doute aucun, jamais proferees devant son president, sans quoi, il n'aurait jamais eu la position au gouvernement qu'il a obtenue.

=======

Un article en francais sur les consequences du petit scandale que les media americains bien-pensants n'ont pas juge digne de reporter.

Un conseiller d'Obama contraint à la démission

De notre correspondante à Washington, Laure Mandeville
07/09/2009 | Mise à jour : 10:12


Van Jones est accusé par ses détracteurs d'être un proche des Truthers, des «chasseurs de vérité» d'extrême gauche qui manifestent régulièrement pour accuser l'ancienne Administration Bush d'avoir organisé les attaques du 11 septembre 2001. Crédits photo : AP

Van Jones, membre du Conseil présidentiel sur la qualité de l'environnement, avait signé en 2004 une pétition réclamant une enquête sur le rôle de l'Administration Bush dans les attentats terroristes du 11 septembre 2001.

À MOINS d'une semaine du huitième «anniversaire» des attentats du 11 Septembre, Van Jones, un conseiller d'Obama pour la politique environnementale, a dû démissionner précipitamment, dimanche, pour ne pas ajouter aux casse-têtes déjà nombreux que doit affronter le président en cette rentrée politique délicate. La télévision d'opposition conservatrice Fox News venait en effet de révéler que ce «tsar des emplois verts» avait fait partie, dans le passé, d'un groupe négationniste marxisant, qui accuse l'ancienne Administration Bush d'avoir organisé les attaques contre les tours du World Trade Center en 2001.
...

La télévision d'opposition conservatrice Fox News

Ah si les journalistes ne cirent pas les pompes (oh pardon ) de ses messieurs du gouvernement en place a la Maison Blanche, vous faites partie de l'opposition...


figcom_sep_bulle='avec';

A peek at Al Gore's fortune

NEW YORK - Former U.S. vice-president Al Gore left the White House with less than $2 million US in assets, including a Virginia home and the family farm in Tennessee. Now, he's making enough to put $35 million in hedge funds and other private partnerships.

By The Vancouver Province March 12, 2008

NEW YORK - Former U.S. vice-president Al Gore left the White House with less than $2 million US in assets, including a Virginia home and the family farm in Tennessee. Now, he's making enough to put $35 million in hedge funds and other private partnerships.

Gore invested the money with Capricorn Investment Group LLC, a Palo Alto, Calif., firm that selects the private funds for clients and invests in makers of environmentally friendly products, according to a Feb. 1 securities filing.

Capricorn was founded by billionaire Jeffrey Skoll, former president of eBay Inc. and an executive producer of Gore's Oscar-winning documentary film on global warming.

Since losing the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush, Gore, 59, is best known for focusing attention on climate change through his book and movie, An Inconvenient Truth, which helped him win a Nobel Peace Prize. Gore's newfound wealth resulted, in part, from speaking engagements and ties to Silicon Valley firms with soaring stock market values, such as Google Inc. and Apple Inc.
"Gore got a lot of support from Silicon Valley when he ran for president because they knew the Internet was one of his primary concerns," said Tony Coelho, a former congressman and investment banker who served as chairman of Gore's 2000 campaign.

"It's very legit that these people would pursue him" after he left office, Coelho said, adding that Gore received Google and Apple stock options before their shares "went into the stratosphere."
Kalee Kreider, a spokeswoman for Gore and his wife, Tipper, declined to comment on the hedge-fund investment or how Gore has made his money.

"He is a private citizen, and as a private citizen he has never commented on his private finances," said Kreider, who works out of Nashville, Tenn.

Gore donated his proceeds from the global-warming book and movie to his Alliance for Climate Protection, Kreider added.

John Jonson, chief operating officer at Capricorn, also had no comment.

Gore's investment, disclosed in a private-placement filing at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, was made through Carthage LP. The partnership, formed last December, has the same name as the ex-vice-president's home town in Tennessee.

Skoll, 43, founded Capricorn after deciding in late 2001 that he wanted to diversify his wealth, at the time comprised primarily of eBay stock. The firm began taking on a few outside clients last year, according to SEC filings.

In the last personal finance report he filed as vice-president, Gore disclosed on May 22, 2000, that the value of his assets totalled between $780,000 and $1.9 million. In addition, Gore listed an interest in his father's estate that included Occidental Petroleum Corp. stock worth as much as $1 million.

He and Tipper Gore released tax returns for 1998 showing they earned $224,376 that year, less than half the income of then-president Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, news reports at the time said.

Now Gore charges a $175,000 speaking fee and has a net worth "well in excess" of $100 million, including pre-public-offering Google stock options, according to an article in Fastcompany.com last year. Kreider said the speaking fees vary and Gore doesn't disclose them.

Gore has served as a senior adviser to Mountain View, Calif.-based Google since February 2001, shortly after leaving public office. Google spokesman Jon Murchinson said in an e-mail: "We have not provided comment on if or how we compensate Mr. Gore in his role as an adviser to Google."

The former vice-president also served as vice-chairman of Metropolitan West Financial Inc., a money manager run in part by former Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. executives, starting in 2001.

He co-founded Current Media Inc., a cable-television and Internet company, in 2002 and is listed as its executive chairman in a January SEC filing for the company's initial public offering. It said he earned $1 million in salary and bonus last year and owned 3.7 million shares of company stock.

Gore joined Apple's board in 2003 and co-founded London-based Generation Investment Management in 2004. Last November, he became a partner with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a Silicon Valley venture-capital firm.

Capricorn, in managing Skoll's fortune -- estimated at $4.2 billion by Forbes magazine last March -- primarily allocates money to different private partnerships, including hedge funds and energy and real-estate funds.

One of Capricorn's clients, the Skoll Foundation, had almost $264 million, or 78 per cent of its assets, invested in more than 75 partnerships as of June 30, 2006, according to its most recently available tax filing with the Internal Revenue Service.

The funds included Eric Mindich's Eton Park Capital Management LP, Ralph Whitworth's Relational Investors LLC, and Arthur Samberg's Pequot Capital Management Inc.

"They don't put all their eggs in one basket," said Homi Vazifdar, a managing director at the Canyon Group, of Larkspur, Calif., who is familiar with Capricorn's investment style.

Stephen George, Capricorn's chief investment officer, previously worked as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. specializing in helping technology clients develop expertise in e-commerce. New York-based Goldman underwrote San Jose, Calif.-based eBay's initial public offering.

Pour tous et pour OmbreBlanche en particulier!

Speech to Students Puts Politics Aside
By JOHN HECHINGER and ROBERT TOMSHO


President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan (right) hold a discussion with 9th graders at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Va.
President Barack Obama urged students to buckle down and excel in a speech most notable for the absence of controversy after critics had warned it would be used to mobilize young people to the Democrats' agenda.

======

(OmbreBlanche, l'opinion que vous vous etes formee sur le monde vu par Obama, est base sur le contenu du discours entendu par sur celui du discours prevu. Je suis tout-a-fait d'accord avec le speech, c'est d'ailleurs en grande partie celui que j'ai tenu a nos trois enfants quand ILS etaient a l'ecole.

Ceci dit: La droite a eu tort de critiquer le discours avant de l'avoir entendu (meme si des fuites avaient eu lieu AVANT pour voir la reaction justement.

Le resultat une fois de plus le GOP est blame: La preuve: Obama School Speech A Tempest In A Teacup 1:45 In the end, Barack Obama's back-to-school speech was much GOP ado about nothing, says WSJ's Jonathan Weisman. The president emphasized that kids should stay in school and didn't impart any policy wisdom on the nation's youth.)

Il aurait ete bien plus intelligent de laisser faire, d'ecouter et, apres, de commenter ou de critiquer si necessaire. mais bon...

The Van Jones Matter By Charles Krauthammer

Friday, September 11, 2009

So Van Jones, the defenestrated White House green-jobs czar, once called Republicans "assholes." Big deal. I've said worse about Democrats. I've said worse about Republicans. I've said worse about members of my family (you know who you are).

How prissy have we become? Are we allowed no salt in our linguistic diets?

Having once written a column praising Vice President Cheney's pithy deployment of the F-word -- on the floor of the Senate, no less -- I rise in defense of Jones. True, Jones's particular choice of epithet had none of the one-syllable concision, the onomatopoeic suggestiveness, the explosive charm of Cheney's. But you don't fire a guy for style.

Another charge was that Jones was a self-proclaimed communist. I can't get too excited about this either. In today's America, to be a communist is a pose, not a conviction. After the Soviet collapse, Marxism is a relic, a pathetic anachronism reduced to its last redoubts: North Korea, Cuba and the English departments of the more expensive American universities.

In any case, every administration is allowed a couple of wing nuts among its 8,000 appointees. As long as they're not in charge of foreign policy or the Fed, who cares?

Other critics are scandalized that Jones once accused "white environmentalists" of "essentially steering poison into the people of colored communities."

In fact, from a global perspective, Jones is right. Environmentalists -- overwhelmingly white and middle/upper class -- have blocked drilling offshore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. From where do you think the world gets the missing oil? From the poor, exploited, poisoned people of the Niger Delta, the Amazon Basin and other infinitely less-regulated and infinitely dirtier regions of the Third World.

Affluent enviros are all for wind farms, until one is proposed that might mar the serenity of a sail from the crew-necked precincts near Nantucket Sound. Then it's clean energy for thee, not for me.

Jones's genius as an ideological entrepreneur was to mine white liberal anxiety -- they are quite aware of their own NIMBY hypocrisy -- by selling them the "green jobs" shtick to reconcile class/racial guilt with environmental enthusiasm, thus making them feel better about themselves.

That's why Jones rose so far. That's why he was such a "progressive" star. That's why, as top Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett put it, "we've been watching him" and were so eager to recruit him to the White House.

In the White House no more. Why? He's gone for one reason and one reason only. You can't sign a petition demanding not one but four investigations of the charge that the Bush administration deliberately allowed Sept. 11, 2001 -- i.e., collaborated in the worst massacre ever perpetrated on American soil -- and be permitted in polite society, let alone have a high-level job in the White House.

Unlike the other stuff (see above), this is no trivial matter. It's beyond radicalism, beyond partisanship. It takes us into the realm of political psychosis, a malignant paranoia that, unlike the Marxist posturing, is not amusing. It's dangerous. In America, movements and parties are required to police their extremes. Bill Buckley did that with Birchers. Liberals need to do that with "truthers."

You can no more have a truther in the White House than you can have a Holocaust denier -- a person who creates a hallucinatory alternative reality in the service of a fathomless malice.

But reality doesn't daunt Jones's defenders. One Obama administration source told ABC that Jones hadn't read the 2004 petition carefully enough, an excuse echoed by Howard Dean.


Carefully enough? It demanded the investigation of charges "that people within the current [Bush] administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war."

Where is the confusing fine print? Where is the syntactical complexity? Where is the perplexing ambiguity? An eighth-grader could tell you exactly what it means. A Yale Law School graduate could not?

No need to worry about Jones, however. Great career move. He's gone from marginal loon to liberal martyr. His speaking fees have just doubled. It's only a matter of time before he gets his own show on MSNBC.

But on the eighth anniversary of 9/11 -- a day when there were no truthers among us, just Americans struck dumb by the savagery of what had been perpetrated on their innocent fellow citizens -- a decent respect for the memory of that day requires that truthers, who derangedly desecrate it, be asked politely to leave. By everyone.

Tea Party Express Arrives for 'March on Washington' to Protest Government Spending

FreedomWorks Foundation, a conservative organization led by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, has organized several groups from across the country for the Saturday event, dubbed a "March on Washington."



FOXNews.com

Saturday, September 12, 2009

The Tea Party Express -- a gathering of activists protesting what they view as out-of-control spending by an expanding federal government -- is arriving in the nation's capital Saturday.

Demonstrators have filled Freedom Plaza and Pennsylvania Avenue in downtown Washington. They are waving U.S. flags and holding signs reading "Go Green Recycle Congress," "I'm Not Your ATM" and "Obamacare makes me sick."

Some men are dressed in colonial costumes with tri-colored hats.
Protesters plan to march later to the U.S. Capitol.

FreedomWorks Foundation, a conservative organization led by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, has organized several groups from across the country for the Saturday event, dubbed a "March on Washington."

The demonstration is part of the so-called Tea Party Movement that gathered steam in April to protest tax policies. And Saturday's event is the culmination of a 34-city, 7,000-mile bus tour that began Aug. 28 in Sacramento, Calif. The "partiers" have cited a host of grievances and demands, such as a call for any health care reform to create more competition and be guided by market principles, not a government-run plan.

Organizers say they anticipate tens of thousands of proponents of limited government to attend. They say it will be the largest group of fiscal conservatives to ever gather in Washington.

The rally comes on the heels of heated town halls held during the congressional August recess when some Democratic lawmakers were confronted, disrupted and shouted down by angry protestors who oppose President Obama's plan to overhaul the health care system.

"I can't figure out to save me what [Mr. Obama and the Democrats] are trying to accomplish, unless they want socialism," 73-year-old Joseph Wright, a retired paper-mill worker, told The Wall Street Journal.

Wright rode from Tallahassee, Fla., to Washington this week on one of the many chartered buses bringing in demonstrators from states as far-flung as Massachusetts and Arkansas.
The White House on Friday claimed it was unaware of the planned rally.

"I don't know who the group is," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters with a shrug.
But a House leadership aide has warned fellow Democrats that up to 2 million demonstrators could turn out.

"It looks like Saturday's event is going to be a huge gathering, estimates ranging from hundreds of thousands to 2 million people," Doug Thornell, an aide to Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., wrote in a memo obtained by FOXNews.com.

But conservatives believe the memo is ploy to inflate expectations for the turnout anticipating that it will fall short.

"It's an old political tactic to get out in front and make wild projections and when they're not met, claim their opponents don't have the juice," said Pete Sepp, a spokesman for the National Taxpayers Union, one of the organizers of the rally.