It's not you, it's your media at fault..

Back in the late sixties, when I first heard the now ubiquitous reason: "I want to make a difference!", for college journalism majors selecting that trade, I got a little chill.

Dont ask me how I knew what was coming, I just did.  And now we are reaping the sour fruit of that.
There is issue after issue where the media's selection of favorite politics is either ignored or submerged.  In order of importance at the moment:

Benghazi - Lie upon lie atop lack of protection by design.  Coarseness and insensitivity piled atop the outrage just for seasoning.

Said to the father of a hero who defended the compound with no hope of survival"

"We will arrest and prosecute the person who made that video."

- Our Secretary of State. Of course the video had absolutely nothing to do with the attack other than being a stated excuse. There wasn't even a demonstration.

"'Did your son always have balls the size of cue balls?'

- That was by none other than Joe Biden at the reception of one of the men killed at Benghazi.  And you notice that will only be pointed out by foreign press and blogs here.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2223554/Did-son-balls-size-cue-balls-Bidens-bizarre-question-father-Navy-SEAL-died-Benghazi-attack.html#ixzz2Ah1jQNk2

Add in the 'Fast and Furious' sting which was totally botched and continues to pile up a body count of over 300 Mexicans plus at least one border agent and which contiues to be lied about as a continuation of Bush Admin operation.. it wasn't, that was ended and this was totally freestanding.
None of you are interested in that because none of your favored news media is interested.. YET.
The desperate clingers to a political paradigm which breeds crony capitalism and the ensuing corruption proceeds apace.

So you just go ahead and pretend there is no proof your pet politicians are crooks and liars, then when the truth comes out.. you can say. "Well... I didnt know, no one told me." Well they DID try to tell you, you just refused to listen becuase it shook your world view that the Democratic party had reformed from the days of Tammany Hall, The Boston Machines and the Daley Regimes.
It's no secret the GOP establishment has had its share of these blind mice. But Watergate had NO body count.

Maybe you should pay attention to one of the reporters who exposed that Watergate Scandal anyway.  Just look up Bob Woodward and see what he has written about what's going on.
Or read this by Pat Caddell.. former Democrat pollster:
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/10/28/The-October-Surprise-and-the-November-Election

Versailles on the Potomac

Instapundit: The Sun King

This is something that Romney and Ryan have paid very little attention to..  the lavish amounts spent on dates, parties and vacations, in the last four years, by our first couple.
- We cannot compare State Dinner expenses to Dubya's because he locked that information. And for a good reason.. so that efforts expended on one dignitary couldn't be compared to another. It's called smart diplomacy. But we know how much Obama spent on each.
- Also; Dubya didn't do that.. the Plebian! He went to Kennebunkport and Crawford or Camp David.

More, in depth:
Spending At State Dinners Soars Under Obama.

It's as if all the little people are expected to live vicariously through our Rock Star Pres and First Lady. You know.. like they do when they read about JLo and whoever else is in E! and People Mag.

via Glenn Reynolds, who always points out interesting stuff like this.

Short on Money? Just print some... Easy-Peasy!

This sums it all up in a nutshell. 

 OBAMA VOTERS, EXPLAINED:  A postage stamp is sufficient to write what these people know about the economy.  

 

For all you who think you can create jobs with a health care system, or easing interest rates, this is what's going on right now.. we are just printing the economy. No one's buying the bonds that back up that printed money, they're just sitting there at the Treasury. Who isn't even trying to sell them.

To follow up on the inevitable results, research 'Weimar Republic'. In case you dont get it, the value of the dollar is not based on the barrel of oil, it's the other way around. Just over ten years ago the floor price of oil was $20.. 5 years ago it was $40, now it's over $80.

George McGovern - tribute from a conservative

I was alive, thinking and aware during the Nixon era and I'm very much affected by the passing of one of the last true Liberal Democrats, especially those Tricky Dick campaigned against.  There will be many eulogies made to Senator McGovern and much of what you read will be slanted toward freezing his political views in time.  But unlike {apparently} Jimmy Carter, he did adapt them based on further information.

He said himself that he was an idealist with little stomach for implementing details.  I don't think many would argue with that.  Many of his ideas are ones that I can easily support, the most  striking being that we should never have been in Viet Nam in the first place.
- We got snookered into it be our so-called 'Ally', the French, who in typical fashion made a mess of their former colony, withdrew and asked us to stanch the bleeding. Which LBJ did, with the aid of the execrable Robert McNamara,  in a manner setting us up to win battles and lose the war.
It will be lost to the simple minded that he and Barry Goldwater were in partial agreement on that.  If you are in a war go for the win, otherwise get the hell out. See Powell Doctrine.
At that time, Nixon was more akin to the Democrat grass roots of the day than he was.  And it was critical that once in, we had to find a way to get out with some honor, the 'Progressive' thinkers {many of whom sympathized with the rioters at the 68 Dem convention} .. like Cronkite and Kerry to the contrary.
There's an old saying that people get the government they deserve, and in a lesser way the US gets the government it needs.
So we necessarily got a pushy, manipulative self-serving politician, Richard Nixon.  Who reversed a course that would otherwise have led to disastrous confrontations with China. And who was instrumental in cementing the last of LBJ's Great -as in 'Great White Father'- Society into place. shh.. dont tell that to your 'liberal' friends.  It's important that Nixon be identified only with the GOP so progressives dont have to strain their synopses.

Once those were accomplished, God.. or the fates, you decide.. discarded Nixon. Leaving Hubert Humphrey and McGovern untarnished and able to comment on our society without prejudice of having been in the decision loop.
Here's the article by a fellow conservative/libertarian that triggered my recollections:
 http://reason.com/blog/2012/10/19/george-mcgovern-an-appreciation

it's worth noting that later in life, after he acquired the leasehold on a Connecticut inn, McGovern came to understand the underside of the regulatory state. "In retrospect, I wish I had known more about the hazards and difficulties of such a business," he wrote in 1992. "I also wish that during the years I was in public office, I had had this firsthand experience about the difficulties business people face every day." In more recent years, citing the same experience, he campaigned against new labor regulations.

Here's another -more 'dogma'- that also makes some good points:
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/mcgovern-unwavering-often-unrequited-liberal

For a time, he also advocated a $1,000 tax grant to every American to replace complex welfare and income support programs, saying the needy could spend it and the wealthy would pay it back in taxes. It came with no numbers, no estimate of the cost, although McGovern claimed, against arithmetic and logic, that it would balance out at zero. He dropped that idea, but the Republicans never did.

Of course!  It assumes that everyone should have to think of their own welfare instead of having their support doled out -by government ribbon clerks- to them as if they were retarded children. 

So.. I'll take McGovern's compassion over our President's any day.

Secrets from the South Side of Chicago

  One of my favorite pol sites during 2008 was 'Hillbuzz.com'. I didnt always agree with the posts but it was pretty great to see how much I agree with a thirty some year old who is just about as different from me as you can get.
Which is to say.. Urban, Gay and black.
He'd been staunchly for Hillary as I recall but had no great love for the Democratic machine...
I have no idea how much of what I'm linking is true.. and how much is just scurrilous gossip.  But I think you can get a feel for his veracity from the comments section.  Not to mention the excellent prose in his posts.
I say again, some of the hearsay and observations he makes in the two posts I'm linking, Michael Savage might hesitate to offer.  But that doesn't make them false, either.

There is REALLY SHOCKING CONTROVERSIAL STUFF in these and I'm not about to have it searchable to my site..
But they might explain a few puzzling things.  You'll see why when you read them:

Prominent Members of Chicago Black Community Confirm: those closest to Obama know there is no second term coming

Once you finish that link, then go here, you aint read nothin' yet...

THINK SQUAD: Chicago blacks say Democrats are “clueless about how mad they’ve made black folk” in last year

 Members of the black community who are disgusted by how the Democrat Party treats blacks like animals and uses them as weapons or political pawns have formed these informal “Think Squad” groups coast to coast, which are underground salons of free thought wherever black professionals get together to talk openly about the anger black people feel about Democrats today.

...

As breakfast was being cleared away and we were all getting ready to leave the conversation turned toward what black preachers have been saying on Sundays about the election.  The Thinkers represented not just what’s going on here in Chicago, but what’s happening with their friends and relatives all across the country.  ”One thing you need to always remember is that black people all know each other,” a Thinker reminded me, “we all talk and have family all over so there’s a grapevine and it’s buzzing right now”.  It seems in all the states these Thinkers have friends or family black preachers really are — in subtle or obvious ways, depending on the congregation — telling the faithful that Democrats have turned against God and that the Democrat Convention in Charlotte, in particular, was an abomination.  For the last few years a realization has been building amongst black people that Democrats push abortion as a means of black population control and the abortion advocates are now being seen as virulent racists since it’s mostly black babies that are killed in the womb.

Which brings us to this on the Blaze:

Pastor Offers Fiery Rebuke of Fellow Blacks: End Your ‘Slavish Devotion to the Democrat Party’

Which can no longer be dismissed as an 'outlier' point of view.
So if you were thinking there's something just not quite right about those polls, or wonder why black Christians still put up with this.. there may be an answer coming up shortly.

Obama, Socialism, Romney and Bain - the basic truths

First lets get one thing straight, we may disagree strongly with his policies and programs but Barack Obama is not a closet 'commie' or a Marxist. All his speech and action, as well as his educational/formative years, point to his fitting the broad label of 'Social Democrat'.  He is not about to start nationalizing anything, whether financial trading or goods and services.
We see clearly -if we actually bother looking- that his MO will be central control through mandate and regulation. See Obamacare.

I think a case COULD  be made that it would be better for the country's economic health if he did nationalize all the country's raw resources. 
Then those revenues could be used to fund his social programs.  Seriously.. if I were him, that's what I would do.  Of course once they saw the results, not only would the landholders be howling but environmentalists, as well.  The US is freaking resource rich.. still!  And the Europeans are looking on with envy as the US is starting to regain the mantle, Energy Capitol of the World. 
- 'Peak Resource' alarmists are idiots, they NEVER consider technical solutions.. we are 'this close' to major breakthroughs in technologies that will not only reduce energy consumption per capita, but make it possible -for example- to convert coal into clean transport fuels.
- once the CO2 scam is fully exposed, that is.
I'm speaking in generalities, of course. The relative cost of heating or cooling your house isnt going to decrease, nationally. Nor is cost per mile of travel. 
Current indications of the EPA strangling resource recovery are transient, we hope. It wouldnt be hard for a 'reform from within' to reverse that narrative if revenue, now going to private leaseholders, from all mines, wells, and pipelines went straight into the Treasury.  See Alaska Oil.
 - Note: Obama saying that national lands oil leases were pulled, because the holders were just sitting on them is basically correct.  The question is if they are ever going to be re-sold.

Seriously, it would be easy to justify that 'Resource Grab' in the long run despite the near term upheavals. But it would take a 'centrist' doing it.. sort of like Nixon to China.  We bitch and moan about China now but you can't dispute that the world was changed for the better by pulling China into the global market economy.
- The global political 'Sphere of Influence' is a different matter, but once again it will be true that you don't go to war with your trading partners.  The only way of escalating to military conflict is if that trade is impeded or shut off.  Like huge tariffs, for example.

Don't look now but that energy resource grabber COULD be Mitt Romney.  Given promises made, and the difficulty in resolving our ballooned national debt, it's not unfeasible to assume the best of worse choices.

All that said.. let's address the Bain Capital bogeyman.
Charge: Bain snaps up perfectly good US companies, fires workers, cheats retirees on pension sucks out all the equity, and sends the work to China.


That's ridiculous and those making the charges know it if they even bother looking. Bain
Capital bought companies that were in deep trouble. There may be a few individual cases of Bain 'forcing the events' but, overall, Bain has saved and created many more jobs than if they -or any other capital equity group- hadn't intervened.  
How do you find out.. and how do you know it's true?

Simple.. just look at Bain Capital's track record as if you were an investor.  You want to look at their corporate buys and interventions, the profit from them and how successful were the transactions over time.
 Forbes -The Truth About Bain: Inside The House That Mitt Built

And especially look at those brands/businesses since Romney's not in charge. The focus didn't change because he was no longer there.  How many of those jobs could be shifted to China?

Damn few!

Added:  In the interest of full disclosure, Bain owns Sensata corp in Illinois which is closing down plant and 179 jobs.  which will be moved to China.
I researched the corporate tax rate in Illinois and found that there is no disclosure law in that state.  There should be if state leaders are truly wishing to be transparent.  Caterpillar and other large corporations have threatened to leave the state without some sort of relief. Which is a sticky wicket as IL wishes to bolster their revenue shortfalls with Corp taxes.
related:

CNN: Illinois tax hikes will hurt companies

Point and Laugh: 'Binders Edition'

Beeler - Columbus Dispatch

When you got nothing else.. you make up a 'scandal'.  Doesn't matter how lame it is, the sheep will follow blindly.

Still bruised a little by derision toward an idiotic PAC cautioning women to 'vote their ladyparts', the Dems have seized on Romney's saying he had 'Binders full of women' to fill key jobs.

Naturally Democrats project their unsaid views on that..
Here's a collection of  hypocrisy that in another time would have been on national news and front pages for days:

The left’s got a fee-vah and the only prescription is … something about Mitt Romney and binders

Well.. if that aint chuckleworthy enough.. we get a breathless breaking story about the women in those binders:

Many In Romney's "Binder Full Of Women" Were Campaign Donors

The former Massachusetts Governor touted hiring “binders full of women” for his cabinet, but many were donors to his gubernatorial campaign.

Mitt Romney answered a question at the presidential debate Tuesday on how he would close the gender pay gap by telling how he filled his cabinet with women appointees using "binders full of women" provided by women's groups.
But a cross reference of Romney's very senior positions held by women, his senior staff and cabinet heads, show that 5 of 8 positions were filled by campaign donors, suggesting that Romney did indeed surround himself with female executives, but that the outside advice had a limited effect.

So let me get this straight.. the fact that  those women he appointed gave him campaign contributions means they didn't come from the binders, but from the contributor list.. or what?

If I were hiring for a position that was largely a political one, I'd certainly look for someone I thought wouldn't be conflicted. And if they shared my views, it's reasonable to assume they might contribute to my campaign, right?  OR is that just another misogynist republican point of view.
And let's take note that this guy said himself that Romney had women in EIGHT SENIOR POSITIONS

I know.. let's check out some Dem Governors' staffs and see how many women were high in rank and wonder later if they contributed to their current bosses..

Romney cabinet’s women representation better than today’s leading Democratic governors

Unlike the previous article, you will see ALL the pertinent data included. Along with source links. Not just that which makes the writer's weak  propaganda point.

___________________________________________________

Meanwhile..here's some specially solicited 'Binder Humor'

John 'F'ing' Kerry is still a moron!

This is really on the edge of unbe-freakin'-lievable!!

Kerry Compares Benghazi Attack To 9/11

Says GOP efforts to politicize deaths of four Americans is a “disgrace.”

Please read the whole thing...This guy was almost our President!
Gee, I'm not a Senator or even a politician.. hell, didnt even stay at a Holiday Inn Express.. but I DO have a brain.

The Benghazi attack WAS a 9/11 attack and it was against US Sovereign territory.. and it WAS a terrorist attack -Get the Irony there, in CONTEXT of a hateful video- but that's where the similarities end.



The attack was on a building on foreign soil and easily forseeable. In fact both the Libyan govt and previous events against that buildoing and other embassies pointed out.
- The Brits had already pulled out due to attacks on them.
The Ambassador and staff knew they were at risk, unlike those who worked in and around the WTC.
That's why they begged for additional security.  Which security didnt even match that in safe European capitals. And was even less than the Twin towers had.
- The ONLY security pro who RIGHTLY considered the Towers at risk was the legendary Rick Lescorla
Kerry is blaming Republicans for the Benghazi issue because they notice it and point out the failures both intentional and accidental.

He didn't mention  how unfortunate the 'It was the Video' coverup.. or have any criticism of the false narrative his kind put up and still are trying to sell their gullible base.
- He is totally rewriting recent history that we all saw in REAL TIME!  The President covered up the failure by blaming a lousy video.. did NOT admit ANY fault until it was unavoidable.

Who is it doing the political spinning, you execrable  lying Twit

The good old sixties: When our Enemies were Sane

When we thought the Cuban Missile crisis was over, it wasn't.   The Soviet Union still had to retrieve dozens of tactical nukes, that we didn't know about, from Cuba.

The scariest moment in history was even scarier than we thought.

- via Instapundit
That they realized what they'd done and made it right changed things a lot.  Ronald Reagan must have known about this and used it to his advantage.

- It's too bad Reagan didn't lift the Cuban Embargo at the same time he 'dismantled' the USSR. Freedom of ideas would have affected the Cuban people much more than it subverted ours.
- It's also too bad Reagan didn't talk to China about prying open the borders of the prison camp we call North Korea
Dalrymple in DPRK:The Wilder Shores of Marx

Now, in Iran and across the middle east, we're dealing with insane people.  Who think God wants them to immolate Israel and die in his name.  Well.. that's not our God, so you figger out who wants them to die by fire.

For more on the Missile Crisis story, CBS Sunday Morning (10/14) has an in-depth transcript available.

When the U.S. was on the brink of nuclear war

 It features exactly the reason we did not invade Cuba. Those tactical nukes.  We were sane. The only insane voice we had was General Curtis LeMay, founder of the Strategic Air Command.  And, even in the mid to late sixties, he was recognized as such and shoved to the side.

But it WAS the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction that saved the world.

And even now, while we see Russia ending the partnership to reduce arsenals, we still have stupid people saying that we can reduce chances of destruction by eliminating our own.. thus shaming our enemies by taking the moral high ground.
This of course is the narrative of the International Socialist Community,  and our own 'Progressive Thinkers'.. brilliant as they are.

Big Bird lives in a Taxpayer Feathered Nest

At least the limb on which the nest sits is government supported.  Yet it's apparent to all of us.. not just a few.. that the Sesame Street franchise could have supported ALL of Public Television.  Mark Steyn Points it out, here:
Sesame Nation

...On the latter point, whether or not everybody loves Sesame Street, everybody has seen it, and every American under 50 has been weaned on it. So far this century it's sold nigh on a billion bucks' worth of merchandising sales (that's popular toys such as the Subsidize-Me-Elmo doll). If Sesame Street is not commercially viable, then nothing is, and we should just cut to the chase and bail out everything.

The program's influence is far more pervasive than we might think, though..  it occurs to some that the world has been 'de-monsterized':

Unlike Mitt, I loathe Sesame Street. It bears primary responsibility for what the Canadian blogger Binky calls the de-monsterization of childhood - the idea that there are no evil monsters out there at the edges of the map, just shaggy creatures who look a little funny and can sometimes be a bit grouchy about it because people prejudge them until they learn to celebrate diversity and help Cranky the Friendly Monster go recycling.

That is not unrelated to the infantilization of our society. Marinate three generations of Americans in that pabulum and it's no surprise you wind up with unprotected diplomats dragged to their deaths from their "safe house" in Benghazi. Or as J. Scott Gration, the president's special envoy to Sudan, said in 2009, in the most explicit Sesamization of American foreign policy: "We've got to think about giving out cookies. Kids, countries - they react to gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes . . . " The butchers of Darfur aren't blood-drenched machete-wielding genocidal killers but just Cookie Monsters whom we haven't given enough cookies. I'm not saying there's a direct line between Bert & Ernie and Barack & Hillary . . . well, actually I am.

Well... that's true except when it comes to Tea Party people, Republicans and -shudder- Free Market advocates.
There, the best treatment they'll get is being compared to Oscar.

Of course I liked Sesame Street, even as an adult.. though I liked 'The Muppet Show' a lot more.  But even then I didn't swallow the political line they spun.  Same as I understood fairy tales.

- via AoSHQ

More Gov't Stupidity - Jelly Jar Edition

It just boggles the mind that any culture would subject themselves to such self-parody. Or is it self-loathing?

EU bans Jelly Jar reuse!
- via Bishop Hill
What we have here, in case you can't at all think for yourself, are rules made up by trained academics that have no clue as to the processes involved, in what they are legislating against and who assume that the general public are all as stupid as a few are, and always have been, in reality.
How about we just put this down as a thin shell for 'Preventive Measures' against stupid people making themselves sick.
Is this what YOU want life to be like?

Maybe instead of calling it government stupidity, we should lay the blame where it belongs.. on people who vote for these pettifoggers!

_______________________________________________

More geniuses at work:

Keep subsidizing us or we quit!

- also via Bishop Hill

That's the 'trough of green power subsidy', they're talking about.  There IS NO MONEY - and by that I mean TAX REVENUE - in green industry investment.. it's a black hole.  Check out China!

How about UK doesn't subsidize Gas development at all. Just let private funding be found.

Democrats UNEXPECTEDLY tied to Big, Hard to Trace, money.

Update: Newsweek / Daily Beast publishes. Scroll down

Breitbart: Obama.com Owned by Bundler in Shanghai with Business Ties to Chinese Government

In an explosive[*] report set to send shockwaves through official Washington, the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) released a 108-page GAI investigation into the threat of foreign and fraudulent Internet campaign donations in U.S. federal elections (visit campaignfundingrisks.com to download the full report).

Breitbart News obtained an advance copy of the bombshell report which reveals that the Obama.com website is not owned by the president’s campaign but rather by Obama bundler Robert Roche, a U.S. citizen living in Shanghai, China. Roche is the chairman of a Chinese infomercial company, Acorn International, with ties to state-controlled banks that allow it to “gain revenue through credit card transactions with Chinese banks.”

'Acorn International'.. isn't THAT a special name!

* Original Breitbart text said 'Daily Beast'.  Will they print it, or not.
Hell.. is it TRUE or not.  Someone getting cold feet?  How many Republicans are doing the same?

Best bet - go directly to Campaign Funding Risks' site and read all the pertinent stories

Remember the Clinton bundler in California?  He took one for the team and went to jail. Also in 08, the DNC turned off the security that should block shady contributions.

We shall see.  "Look.. over there.. isn't that a Koch brother?!"
heh..

UPDATE:   It's out now on Daily Beast.  Must have been a hell of an argument at Newsweek..  whether they act like real journalists or not.

 http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/10/08/the-illegal-donor-loophole.html

Budget Deficits - by the Numbers Chart

- Instapundit at PJMedia
When the President says he inherited a mess from Dubya, he's right. No one disputes that.
But that is apparently where the truth serum runs out.
Note that the 08 peg is when the Toxic Assets Relief Program happened.  This was when all those risky mortgage instruments blew up.  Why all that junk instruments came to be is another issue.. traceable directly to Democrats, Barney Frank, for one.

If you're like me, you wanted TARP because we weren't sure how damaging the financial failure might be.  It DID take down several large banks.. and maybe it SHOULD have have taken down more.
The '00 number is the culmination of the 'Tech Bubble' as it burst, leading to a mini-recession even prior to 9/11.
And no matter who had been elected in '08, the first few years would have been deep in the red,  especially since McCain doesn't really have a clue when it comes to economic matters.
But blaming the current situation on Iraq?  Pretty much any finance/economist can easily blow that out of the water.  The current deficits stem from safety net entitlements and subsidy expenditures.  The former, you cant do much about in real time.
The 'Stimulus'.. It aint stimulating because it is not generating business activity.  This especially applies to 'Green Energy' where, time after time, those companies receiving the gifts then go belly up shortly after.
Coincidently most of these companies owned or managed by campaign fund bundlers.  Solyndra is only a typical example.
Here's a smaller fish, but with the same smell.

Abound Solar under investigation by Weld County district attorney; received $68 million stimulus

American History: Is the Big Picture being taught, anymore?

In 2008, we the people elected a man of color to the Presidency of the US.  Even if we didn't vote for him, we hoped.. beyond logic, in most cases.. this would be a change in the direction of the racial divide.
But even before being elected, the One showed how foolish that was, rewriting history by claiming the government didn't care about New Orleans. 

In heated ’07 speech, Obama lavishes praise on Wright, says feds ‘don’t care’ about New Orleans [VIDEO]

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/02/obama-speech-jeremiah-wright-new-orleans/#ixzz28EpTf2gr

Thus pretty much rewriting history by shifting blame away from typical bureaucratic incompetency on all levels, particularly local Democrats, to an 'establishment attitude'.  Never mind the military's extraordinary response, since it is the ONLY organization fit for rapid reaction.

That this was not reported or commented on at the time is not an accident.  Higher education in it's left leaning paradigm is not interested anymore in turning out well read and informed individuals.  It's interested in promoting special interest viewpoints.  Read what the University of Michigan is doing as noted by KC Johnson on Minding the Campus
In History—the Obsession with Race, Class and Gender

With the rise of the race/class/gender approach, subfields perceived as excessively “traditional" or overly focused on “dead white males” have gone into decline—or, in the case of political history, have been “re-visioned” in the hopes of transferring focus to topics oriented around themes of race, class, and gender. Since (at least in large departments, or at elite institutions) U.S. history hires in the national (post-1789) period come in subfields, looking at personnel specialties can give a sense of exactly how a university does—or does not—fulfill its obligation to train future citizens in the foundational events of their nation.
Most of Michigan’s handful of active scholars researching historical topics deemed “traditional” do so in a way that conforms to the department’s preferred view of the American past. Michigan has no U.S. military historians on staff. (It does have several specialists in Native American history.) The department’s sole specialist in U.S. foreign relations, Penny Von Eschen, describes her research interests as “transnational cultural and political dynamics, and race, gender, and empire” and “the political culture of United States imperialism”; her most recent book, Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War, certainly would not be confused with traditional diplomatic history. The department’s political historians tend to focus on themes of race and politics—again, an important theme, but obviously not an all-encompassing one.

 This isn't too extreme a viewpoint, either.  It extends to independent historical organizations.  Special Interest views now focus on race and gender rather than time, place and sociological/economic conditions

Look What they've Done to U.S. History

If you doubt that leftist activists now dominate the study and teaching of U.S. history, take a look at the program for the 2013 American Historical Association conference in New Orleans. The pattern  is similar to the University of Michigan’s history department, discussed here yesterday—a heavy emphasis on race, class, and gender, with more “traditional” topics frequently reconfigured to conform to the dominant paradigm.....

Multiple other U.S. history panels deal with race and gender, while in general, the preferred tactic seemed to be finding any excuse to tack on race (race and education, for instance). Or consider an environmental history panel entitled, “BLACKOUTS: Using Energy Regimes to Narrate Place, Race, and Ethnicity.” Almost comically, the panel organizers appear to have worried that they didn’t sufficiently stress race, so they selected a specialist in African-American history as commentator; they said they did so “in part because [the commentator] is not an environmental historian.” So much for the idea of the importance of academic expertise.

 I don't think any of this is a big surprise to someone who's kept their eyes open.  After all we've noticed that the prevailing motive of Journalism students is that 'thgey want to make a difference.  Meaning ACTIVELY SHAPE opinion.  A total corruption of the Fourth Estate's traditional charter.

Why should historians be different?  Any wonder why our leaders urge us to send more of our kids to college?

Foreign Policy Nutmeg: 'Why Don't they Love Me?'

WSJ: The Three AM call came at 5 in the afternoon..

The logic here is akin to supposing that because the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center failed to bring down the towers, nobody need have been concerned thereafter. But let's still make allowances for the kind of bureaucratic ineptitude that knows neither administration nor political party.

The more serious question is why the administration alighted on the idea that the attack wasn't a terrorist act at all. Also, what did the White House think it had to gain by adopting the jihadist narrative that a supposedly inflammatory video clip was at the root of the trouble?
Nobody can say. All the administration will acknowledge is that it has "revised [its] initial assessment to reflect new information that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack."
That's from James Clapper, the director of national intelligence. It suggests that our intelligence agencies are either much dumber than previously supposed (always a strong possibility) or much more politicized (equally plausible).

No doubt the administration would now like to shift blame to Mr. Clapper. But what happened in Benghazi was not a failure of intelligence. It was a failure of policy, stemming from a flawed worldview and the political needs of an election season.

 In case it's not clear, the official line on what happened in Benghazi came from the West Wing. To say it was a failure in State makes Hillary a goat.. she is not stupid. 
And Susan Rice, {UN Ambassador} who must have vomited before and after blaming the video certainly didnt believe it. She's spent her whole adult life on Middle East affairs.  Andwas the GO TO source of policy for the Libya incursion.
 
No.. this is all the earmarks of Valerie Jarret and David Axelrod.. they both really believe you can make a lie true just by repeating it enough. It's the Chicago Way.

Discordant Narrative: Time to start counting bumperstaickers and yard signs

http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2012/10/01/the-narrative-in-london/
There was some surprise (not to say incredulity), then, when I repeated my frequent refrain (like a broken record) that I thought Mitt Romney would not only win but win big. I was not surprised by the wonder with which my prediction was greeted. The Narrative, nearly seamless in the United States, is positively monolithic in the UK. And there is this difference: in the U.S., the idea that Barack Obama has the election sewn up, while assiduously disseminated by the media, is at least treated to some of the skepticism it deserves by a large and vibrant dissenting commentariat, to whose mast your humble correspondent proudly nails his colors. That is one reason that, although you’ll rarely hear a peep of dissent on the “major” networks or politically correct organs like The New York Times, there is nevertheless a strong and indeed growing current of contrary sentiment, broadcast by venues like PJ Media but underwritten by a vast electorate that is seething with discontent over the top-down, socialist, spread-the-wealth-around policies of our handsome but shockingly incompetent president.

Breibart: 41 Million Tea Party Supporters Set to Vote

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http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/how-the-economy-collapsed-as-a-political-issue

In August of 2011, Americans of all parties said the news was mostly bad, with only minor differences showing between members of different political parties.
A year later, a survey taken in early September found a "record partisan gap." A full 60% of Republicans said they were hearing “mostly bad” news. Only 15% of Democrats reported the same. And independent voters split on the question, with 36% saying they were hearing mostly bad news.
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http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/breakout/wall-street-secretly-loves-obama-bleier-141915787.html