Obama Celebrity Fundraiser Barrage Worries Some in Hollywood

Hollywood Reporter, via CalChronicle  "Some of the president's most ardent entertainment industry supporters quietly tell The Hollywood Reporter that while they realize he needs to deploy all of his weapons to compete with deep-pocketed Republican super PACs, they fear the increasing reliance on stars and celebrity contests could backfire with swing voters and mobilize the right."
..." "It's a mistake," a veteran Hollywood exec says flatly of the event, which the Drudge Report headlined "Checks in the City." The exec adds: "He's supposed to be a man of the people, and he's hanging out with Anna Wintour? Is he trying to turn the election into a celebrity reality show?" ".

Reaction was particularly strong to the $40,000-a-plate dinner co-hosted June 14 by Sarah Jessica Parker and Vogue editorAnna Wintour with guests including Meryl Streep, Aretha Franklin and Bravo's Andy Cohen. Critics say the tony, heavily promoted event­ -- Parker sent an e-mail to supporters promising the evening would be "fabulous," and Wintour posted a video online urging supporters to enter a lottery for two tickets -- risked creating the impression of an elitist, out-of-touch candidate in a period of ongoing distress and growing economic inequality.

Team Obama Rallies Young Hollywood for (Yet Another) Celebrity Fund-Raiser

OBAMA CAMPAIGN: TELL YOUR WEDDING GUESTS TO SEND US MONEY  "Just when you thought the Obama campaign couldn’t get any more desperate, they come up with this: the Obama Event Registry, asking supporters who are getting married, having a birthday, or celebrating an anniversary to direct gift-givers to Obama’s re-election website:"
This from American Thinker:

MICHELLE CAMPAIGN E-MAIL: BARACK'S YOUR HUSBAND, TOO  "These personal appeals have become the desperate calling card of a sad and frightened campaign. They degrade the office of the presidency, and they mock the seriousness of American electoral politics. The entire American populace awaits with bated breath an email announcing that because Barack once bought Michelle flowers, we ought to open up our wallets for him."

HBO series "The Newsroom," gets panned

Based on Sorkin's work, he's never met ... a bona fide conservative.

But "The Newsroom" isn't persuasive. It doesn't even seem to want to persuade. It wants to preach. In this case, the choir is liberal, and the sermon is about how much smarter the choir is than that other choir across town....

"The Newsroom" newscasts quickly degenerate into McAvoy espousing almost exclusively liberal arguments (which also happen to be Sorkin's) while dismissing the conservative side -- or presenting its arguments in less than "the best possible form...."

Real journalism - the kind of deep-dive into conservative movement that the New Yorker does so well - might help liberal viewers understand what they're really up against. Instead the show invites them to throw up their hands and say, well, the other side is crazy.

That's not helpful. That's hopelessness.

"It doesn't have to be that way."

ABC'S JAKE TAPPER DISMANTLES SORKIN'S 'NEWSROOM'  "Tapper ... found himself pretty disappointed by the end result.

"Tapper's full review is well worth a read, but the highlight is how Tapper brilliantly exposes Hollywood's tired and lazy partisan ploy of using Republican characters to further a left-wing agenda.

 ....they believe that responsibility consists mostly of criticizing Republicans. This is done through the oldest trick in the book for a Hollywood liberal: by having McAvoy be a “sane Republican” who looks at his party with sadness and anger.

NY Times;  So Sayeth the Anchorman   ...."Mr. Sorkin has created his own newsroom — a Brigadoon version — where high-minded journalists pursue accuracy and excellence by, as one character puts it, “speaking truth to stupid.” "

Politico = MSNBC

Lessons in civility from Politico;  John Nolte of Breitbart:

Politico, the unofficial web-branch of MSNBC, and whose staff spends more time on MSNBC than Chris Matthews, has a so-called reporter named Joseph Williams who all but called Mitt Romney a racist on Martin Bashir's show today. 

Williams says declaratively that Romney is only comfortable around white people.

But if you think the video clip is disgraceful, wait till you see Mr. Williams' greatest tweets collection assembled below.

"Dick" jokes about Ann Romney. Really.

...."How much discussion is necessary before firing Williams?  On what planet can he be regarded as a reliable source of political reporting? The man is a hater and has a sexual fixation that is disturbing.

"There was a lot more media outrage over Neil Munro daring to ask a question of Obama. The fact that the media are not hounding this man out of the profession shows me that we can expect a lot more line crossing, targeting the Romneys for vile hatred."

Politico's suspended White House Correspondent, Joseph Williams, lashes out in a not-so-subtle way at Breitbart News.

How Long Do Canadians Wait for Healthcare?

The Daily Beast  "According to a new study by Canada's Fraser Institute, surgical waitlists are costing the nation about $1 billion each year in lost productivity. The average Canadian can now expect to wait 9.5 weeks for treatment with a medical specialist, this number up from 9.3 weeks last year."....

With more and more attention being placed on Canada’s poor productivity relative to other industrialized nations, Mr. Esmail [the author of Fraser's study] says it’s high time Canada’s leaders begin examining more efficient means of providing health care through a socialized healthcare model that operates parallel to a private care model that is open to competition (similar to the model used in Japan and numerous European nations).

Imperial Presidency

Heritage  "We can now see before us a persistent pattern of disregard for the powers of the legislative branch in favor of administrative decision-making without—and often in spite of—congressional action.  This violates the spirit—and potentially the letter—of the Constitution’s separation of the legislative and executive powers of Congress and the President.

"Examples abound:"....

The article concludes: 

"The President has unique and powerful responsibilities in our constitutional system as chief executive officer, head of state, and commander in chief. Those powers do not include the authority to make laws or to decide which laws to enforce and which to ignore. The President – like judges or Members of Congress – takes an oath to uphold the Constitution in carrying out the responsibilities of his office."

The Punk President and His ‘Gangster Government’ Go All In; Can we really survive four more years of this?  "That moniker came not from whim but from study. By Election Day in 2008, the question was no longer whether our new president was a punk. It was only whether he would only fit the word’s relatively benign definition as a “young, inexperienced person” or would be much worse than that....

"It wasn’t long before it became obvious that the country had selected the latter, after which a grievous and ongoing financial toll which continues began to accumulate."

http://townhall.com/political-cartoons/2012/06/22/100396

Selectively editing MSNBC

http://townhall.com/political-cartoons/2012/06/21/100360

Bill O'Reilly Slams MSNBC's Sneaky Editing of Romney Wawa Clip  "An Attorney General of the United States is about to be held in contempt of Congress and NBC is just finding this out now?  It is ironic when the most vilified news network in the country by the political left, also happens to be the only ones doing their job concerning reporting the state of governmental affairs.  However, I guess NBC is so good, they can’t be possibly biased."

Executive privilege in cartoons

http://www.conservativedailynews.com/category/political-cartoons/

Is President Obama A Pathological Liar?

IBD Editorials  "The Obama Record: The most frightening aspect of this president may not be his radical ideology but his rank dishonesty in selling that ideology. Now he's been caught lying about family racism."
....
"This is only the latest example of a growing body of fabrications, embellishments and outright lies told by this president, who has a real and possibly pathological problem with the truth."
"Stacked up, his whoppers would make even Bill Clinton blush. Here's a sampling:"....

Putin wants Russia to be a superpower; Obama wants to be elected

http://terrellaftermath.com/

The American Interest:  Obama Bets Ranch on Weak Syrian Hand; Putin Calls

"The Obama administration dialed up its rhetoric on Syria in recent months, but it hasn’t matched U.S. words with action. Russia has noticed the chasm between U.S. words and will and has seen an opportunity:"

Obama-Putin Meeting Brings Chill to Mexico  "The G-20 meeting was a missed opportunity to recognize that the “reset” policy has indeed reset U.S.-Russia relations—back to the Cold War—and is in dire need of reassessment. For starters, Obama should have told Putin that Russian cooperation on Iran and Syria are the litmus test of the U.S.-Russian relations.

"Unfortunately, however, the president could not do even that."

Reading List

US-Russia: from ‘Reset’ to regret   "The fact is Putin wants the US to get out of the way of Russia’s re-emergence — but is willing to cooperate on issues that benefit him politically or Moscow in general. That’s really nothing new."

U.S., Israel developed Flame computer virus to slow Iranian nuclear efforts  "The effort to delay Iran’s nuclear program using cyber-techniques began in the mid-2000s, during President George W. Bush’s second term."


Earth Summit Babble  "There is one good reason to not ignore the Earth Summit. They are telling you just what kind of an Orwellian and totalitarian world they have in mind for you." Alan Caruba


The Scandal of Our Age  "We sort of knew about the cyber war against Iran, but not to the detail that Sanger provides and not through the direct agency of the Obama administration itself." Victor Davis Hanson



US Senator Urges Independent Probe of National Security Leaks "Senator Joseph Lieberman, an Independent who nevertheless is part of the chamber’s Democratic majority, is now siding with Republicans on the matter." GlobalSecurity.org

Vulgarians On The Loose!  "That is, unless your little body hasn't been born yet, in which case, liberals think it can be torn to shreds and dumped in the garbage -- a point they argue by shouting "vagina" and claiming Republican legislators want to date-rape them."  Ann Coulter

Samuelson: Obamacare a 'Colossal Error of Judgment  "President Barack Obama’s focus on reforming health care as a centerpiece of his first term amounted to a "colossal error of judgment" that weakens the economic recovery and angers millions of Americans..."  Robert Samuelson

Gum chewing at the G20  "This is embarrassing. The President of the United States looks like an unpopular kid at a high school dance in the early seonds of the video below, circling around the more popular kids, chewing gum."  American Thinker


Jon Stewart: A Rich Man Attacking Other Rich Men For Being Rich "While Romney is wealthy, he created hundreds of jobs and has run a state very successfully. Oh, and he saved Olympics. Jon Stewart, simply has created no jobs other than the people he pays to run his condescending, low-rated show."


BIOGRAPHER ADMITS: THERE WAS NO OBAMA FAMILY  "What Maraniss has laid bare, perhaps without meaning to, is a journalistic scandal of historic proportions in which, alas, he himself has played a part."  Jack Cashill   Yes, Obama’s Bio Lies Constitute a Pattern


Obama now owns "Fast and Furious"  "No longer is this a merely DOJ problem. The president’s invocation of his privilege makes the problem his own." NRO

Pelosi: “I could’ve arrested Karl Rove on any given day” "Asked on what grounds she could have arrested Rove, Pelosi replied, “Oh, any number. But there were some specific ones for his being in contempt of Congress."  Hot Air


More Rats Jump Ship… Two More Democrats Will Skip DNC Convention   "Artur Davis, one of President Obama’s earliest supporters and a former co-chairman for his presidential campaign, announced Tuesday that he was leaving the Democratic Party for good." Gateway Pundit


Mitch McConnell and Free Speech  "...McConnell says, Obama and his allies will keep shaming Americans who support conservative causes. " NRO


House Committee Told Political Correctness Towards Islamic Terrorism Hampers Military…  The Obama administration “chose political correctness over accurately labeling and identifying certain terrorist attacks appropriately, thereby denying Purple Heart medals to killed and wounded troops in domestic terror attacks,” the report said. Weasel Zippers

House panel votes 23-17 to place Holder in contempt of Congress

The Hill  "The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, led by Republican Chairman Darrell Issa (Calif.), approved a resolution along party lines to place Holder in contempt after battling him for months over access to internal agency documents about the gun-tracking operation known as "Fast and Furious."

"The vote came after Obama escalated the conflict by sending a letter to the committee claiming executive privilege over the documents the panel had sought.

"All 23 Republicans on the committee voted for the contempt resolution, while all 17 Democrats voted against it. Every member of the panel was present for the vote."

BBC  "Historically, Congress and the White House have negotiated agreements to avoid a court battle that would limit either Congress' subpoena power or executive privilege itself.

"In a separate development on Tuesday, the family of an Immigartion and Customs Enforcement agent killed in Mexico has filed a $25m wrongful death lawsuit against several US officials, including Mr Holder.

"Jaime Zapata's family say the weapons that killed him were brought into Mexico because of US investigations into gun trafficking."

The Potemkin President Disintegrates

Potemkin: "a pretentiously showy or imposing façade intended to mask or divert attention from an embarrassing or shabby fact or condition. "Po·tem·kin village  Origin of POTEMKIN VILLAGE: Grigori Potëmkin, who supposedly built impressive fake villages along a route Catherine the Great was to travel. First Known Use: 1937

The Potemkin President Disintegrates
...."The political unifier who claimed, “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America,” has been exposed as one of the most divisive and partisan presidents of modern times. The post-racial candidate who supposedly transcended our racial divisions has intensified them, whether by crudely racializing incidents like the Trayvon Martin shooting, or by allowing the Justice Department to facilitate race-industry attacks on state voter-identification laws, or by calling his own grandmother “a typical white person” for fearing black criminals.".... 

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/jack_ohman/index.ssf/2012/06/cartoon_new_wing.html

"Indeed, any mention of Wright even today calls forth shrill charges of “race-baiting” and “racial politics” from the Democrats and MSNBC. The same media that in 2006 hyperventilated over Republican Senate candidate George Allen saying something that sort of sounded like what maybe was an obscure ethnic slur apparently didn’t see a story in the fact that Obama’s spiritual mentor hates white people and had glorified the terrorist attacks of 9/11 as “chickens coming home to roost.” "  Emphasis added.


Canada Free Press: Barack Obama, the Illusion   " In other words, Obama’s spun fairytales on his Kenyan family were as bogus as the faux Greek columns from which he first strode onto the world stage at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

....

"Designed down to the last politically correct detail, for making it well past his best-before date, he just had to be half black, half white, metrosexual, the Underdog of Underdogs; an illusion that could never be nailed down and exposed."