Author: Papa Giorgio

Catching Up With Some `WhiteBoard` Videos

Published by Papa Giorgio

From video description (above video):

Each year, the United States spends $65,000 per poor family to “fight poverty” — in a country in which the average family income is just under $50,000. Meanwhile, most of that money goes to middle-class and upper-middle-class families, and the current U.S. poverty rate is higher than it was before the government began spending trillions of dollars on antipoverty programs.

The Dependency Agenda uncovers the hidden politics of the welfare state and documents the historical evidence that proves that Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society” was designed to do one thing: maximize the number of Americans dependent upon the government. The welfare state was never meant to eliminate privation; it was created to keep Democrats in power.

Learn more here: http://www.encounterbooks.com/books/the-dependency-agenda/

From video description (above video):

America is facing a higher education bubble. Like the housing bubble, it is the product of cheap credit coupled with popular expectations of ever-increasing returns on investment, and as with housing prices, the cheap credit has caused college tuitions to vastly outpace inflation and family incomes. Now this bubble is bursting.

Learn more at: http://www.encounterbooks.com/books/the-higher-education-bubble/

From video description (above video):

In the Age of Obama, the racism charge, rather than abating, has become more prevalent than ever. Why? Because to tell the truth about matters like crime, racial profiling, social fallout of single parent homes, or the ways racial preferences distort the very meaning of equity and justice would mean facing up to the soul-destroying pathologies of urban black culture. Instead, black leaders and their guilty white allies blame these problems on historic oppression and lack of government aid, and demonize those who challenge such views as — what else? — racist.

Prager Reads from Walter Russell Mead’s Article on `Legacy Media` ~ Sooo True!

Published by Papa Giorgio

From video description:

Great insights into the differences between if there were a Republican in office right now. (Posted by: Religio-Political Talk)

For more clear thinking like this from Dennis Prager… I invite you to visit: http://www.dennisprager.com/

Here is a bit of the article entitled, “Americans Turn on MSM: What Does It Mean?“

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…If the president were a conservative Republican rather than a liberal Democrat, I have little doubt that much of the legacy press would be focused more on what is wrong with America. There would be more negative reporting about the economy, more criticism of policy failures and many more withering comparisons between promise and performance. The contrast between a rising stock market and poor jobs performance that the press now doesn’t think of blaming on President Obama would be reported as demonstrating a systemic bias in favor of the rich and the powerful if George W. Bush were in the White House. The catastrophic decline in African-American net worth during the last four years would, if we had a Republican president, be presented in the press as illustrating the racial indifference or even the racism of the administration. As it is, it is just an unfortunate reality, not worth much publicity and telling us nothing about the intentions or competence of the people in charge.

The current state of the Middle East would be reported as illustrating the complete collapse of American foreign policy—if Bush were in the White House. The criticism of drone strikes and Guantanamo that is now mostly confined to the far left would be mainstream conventional wisdom, and the current unrest in the Middle East would be depicted as a response to American militarism. The in and out surge in Afghanistan would be mercilessly exposed as a strategic flop, reflecting the naive incompetence of an inexperienced president out of his depth. The SEALS rather than the White House would be getting the credit for the death of Osama bin Laden, and there would be more questions about whether killing him and then bragging endlessly and tastelessly about it was a contributing factor to the current unrest. Political cartoons of Cheney spiking the football would be everywhere.  It’s also likely we would have heard much more about how killing Osama was strategically unimportant as he had become an increasingly symbolic figure and there would have been a lot of detailed and focused analysis of how the foolish concentration on bin Laden led the clueless Bush administration to neglect the rise of new and potentially much more dangerous Islamist groups in places like Mali. The Libyan war would be widely denounced as an unconstitutional act of neocon militarism, with much more attention paid to the civilian casualties during the war, the chaos that followed, and the destabilizing effects on the neighborhood. The White House fumbling around the Benghazi murders would be treated like a major scandal and dominate the news for at least a couple of weeks.

If Bush were in the White House, the Middle East would be a horrible disaster, and it would all be America’s fault.

Many people on the right look at this and other examples and conclude that the major press outlets are deliberately distorting the news in the hope of shifting public opinion to the left and supporting the President’s re-election. This is not, in my view, the main reason for press bias, but it is a real phenomenon. There clearly are people in the press who think they are called to this work to support and further a political and moral vision of what kind of place America should be. They have come to the media because they want to “change the world” as so many idealistic young people put it. As human beings who try to incorporate their ideals and their passions into their professional lives, they believe in many cases that conservative governance would be a disaster for the country, and they are sure that an “informed” public opinion would reject conservative nostrums. Given that, they want to make sure that their own work contributes to an enlightened, informed public opinion and so they consciously approach their work by looking for stories or angles that reinforce liberal narratives and undermine conservative ones. Environmental reporting in the MSM is largely dominated in my reading by this kind of activist journalism; there are a lot of reporters out there who yearn to Save the Planet…

Great Question: `Do We Want More or Less Mitt Romney’s in Society?` ~ Mitt Romney Releases His Tax Info for 20-Years (Dems Look Dumb!)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Via HotAir:

The admission only comes after about a full minute of teeth-pulling from CNBC’s Joe Kernen, and only after Howard Dean tries to keep impugning Mitt Romney’s integrity, but even the former DNC chair has to grudgingly acknowledge that the game is all but up for Harry Reid and his baseless, reckless charges of tax fraud. Dean halfheartedly trots out the complaint that Romney lied by overpaying his taxes, but Kernen laughs him into a rather lengthy silence (transcript by The Daily Caller):

And from Commentary Magazine:

Mitt’s Tax Info Undermines Dem Smears

After months of being taunted on the issue by Democrats and even some of his Republican primary rivals, Mitt Romney is releasing more information on his tax returns this afternoon. The candidate’s 2011 return will be released in full along with a 20-year summary of his tax rates from 1990 through 2009 (he’s already released his 2010 returns). While you can bet this won’t satisfy partisan Democrats who will call for more information, it ought to not only put this issue to rest but give voters another reason to think well of the Republican.

Is it really possible to characterize a man who paid a tax rate of over 14 percent on his income in 2011 a cheat? Even more to the point, Romney gave away to charity double — $4,020,072 — the amount of his very hefty $1,935,708 tax bill in 2011. And since it is almost completely investment income, it needs to be pointed out that Romney had already paid tax on the money when it was first earned. Over the 20-year period, he paid an average of 20.2 percent in taxes and gave away 13.45 percent to charity.

This paints a picture of a man who is not only paying his fair share of taxes, but is also a model of civic virtue in his dedication to sharing his bounty with those who are less fortunate. That’s especially true when we realize that neither President Obama nor Vice President Biden have ever given anywhere close to that percentage of their incomes to charity. The release also should give Romney a much-needed shot in the arm after a couple of shaky weeks. Having done their best to demonize Romney as a heartless plutocrat, Democrats have probably made his tax information a much bigger deal than it may have been.

Given that the answers to the questions the Democrats have been posing (and falsely rapping about) for so long actually make Romney look good,…

…read more…

Fox News comments:

Reid and other Democrats have repeatedly invoked the example of Romney’s father, George Romney, who as Michigan governor released 12 years of tax returns during his unsuccessful 1968 bid for the Republican presidential nomination.

Mitt Romney has countered that he already has done more than what is required. Presidential candidates typically release past tax returns, but they are not required to do so by law.

…read more…