WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama on Tuesday praised American Muslims for enriching the nation's culture at a dinner to celebrate the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
"The contribution of Muslims to the United States are too long to catalog because Muslims are so interwoven into the fabric of our communities and our country," Obama said at the iftar, the dinner that breaks the holiday's daily fast.
The president joined Cabinet secretaries, members of the diplomatic corps and lawmakers to pay tribute to what he called "a great religion and its commitment to justice and progress."
Attendees included Congress' two Muslim members -- Reps. Keith Ellison and Andre Carson as well as ambassadors from Islamic nations and Israel's ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren.
Obama shared the story of Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir, another invited guest, who broke a state record for most career points as a Massachusetts high school student.
"As an honor student, as an athlete on her way to Memphis, Bilqis is an inspiration not simply to Muslim girls -- she's an inspiration to all of us," he said.
Obama also noted the contributions of Muhammad Ali, who was not in attendance, though the president borrowed a quote from famous boxer, explaining religion.
"A few years ago," Obama said, "he explained this view -- and this is part of why he's The Greatest -- saying, 'Rivers, ponds, lakes and streams -- they all have different names, but they all contain water. Just as religions do -- they all contain truths."'
Ramadan, a monthlong period of prayer, reflection and sunrise-to-sunset fasts, began Aug. 22 in most of the Islamic world. It is believed that God began revealing the Quran to Muhammad during Ramadan, and the faithful are supposed to spend the month in religious reflection, prayer and remembrance of the poor.
White House dinners marking the holy month are nothing new. Former President George W. Bush held iftars during his eight years in office.
Obama has made a special effort since taking office to repair U.S. relations with the world's Muslims, including visits to Turkey and Cairo. In a June speech at the Egyptian capital, as well as in one to another important Muslim audience, in Turkey, Obama said: "America is not -- and never will be -- at war with Islam."
Obama also released a video message to Muslims before the start to Ramadan. In the video, he said Ramadan's rituals are a reminder of the principles Muslims and Christians have in common,including advancing justice, progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.
The White House hired a private communications company based in Minnesota to distribute mass e-mails, helping to shed light on how some recipients received e-mails in support of President Obama's health care plan without signing up for them, FOX News has learned.
The company, Govdelivery, describes itself as the world's leading provider of government-to-citizen communication solutions and says its e-mail service provides a fully-automated on-demand public communication system.
It is still unknown how much taxpayer money the White House provides to Govdelivery for its services.
The revelation comes after the White House acknowledged this week that people were receiving unsolicited e-mails from the administration about health care reform and suggested the problem was with third-party groups that placed the recipients' names on the distribution list.
Republicans quickly pounced on the news.
"This is yet another ominous chapter in the administration's rabid campaign to jam its radical health care scheme onto an unwilling public by any means necessary," Rep. Thaddeus McCotter of Michigan said in a statement.
Govdelivery sent hundreds of e-mails from senior adviser David Axelrod asking supporters to help rebut criticism of Obama's health care plan circulating on the Internet. It also sent e-mails highlighting Obama's speech to the Muslim world in Cairo and the announcement of Sonia Sotomayor as a Supreme Court nominee.
Several FOX News viewers complained they received these e-mails even though they had never requested any communication from the White House.
On Monday, the White House implemented several new changes to its Web site, apparently aimed at reducing the number of people who receive unsolicited e-mails and at fighting charges that it's collecting personal information on critics.
The White House also pulled the plug on a controversial e-mail address, flag@whitehouse.gov, that was established for supporters to report "fishy" information about health care reform.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., has sent a letter to the White House asking for the "full truth" behind the Axelrod e-mails and expressing concern that "political e-mail address lists were used for official purposes."
Chris Hansen, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union told FOX News that if the White House used the private firm, it's the same as if it had sent the e-mails.
The White House insists that Govdelivery aggregates nothing and plays no role in the formation of its e-mail list; it is merely an end-product e-mail distributor.
Govdelivery does extensive work with a bevy of federal, state, and local agencies, including 11 Cabinet-level departments such as Defense, State, and Justice. Among the tasks Govdelivery performs are FBI internal e-mails and external regional crime alerts, and FEMA hurricane or other natural disaster alerts.
In fact, before Jan. 1, Govdelivery handled 85 percent of mass e-mail deliveries for federal agencies.
The White House said it hired Govdelivery based on its performance with those agencies. The company was hired after Jan. 1 but before Obama took office on Jan. 20.
The White House notes that Govdelivery also handles mass e-mails for Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, both Republicans.
Earlier this week, Govdelivery's president, Scott Burns, declined to comment to FOX News on whether the White House had used his firm to send out the Axelrod e-mails.
WASHINGTON — Six months after President Obama launched a $787 billion plan to right the nation's economy, a majority of Americans think the avalanche of new federal aid has cost too much and done too little to end the recession.
A USA TODAY/Gallup Poll found 57% of adults say the stimulus package is having no impact on the economy or making it worse. Even more —60% — doubt that the stimulus plan will help the economy in the years ahead, and only 18% say it has done anything to help improve their personal situation.
That skepticism underscores the challenge Obama faces in trying to convince the public that the stimulus has helped turn the economy around. It also could complicate the administration's plans to overhaul the nation's health care system.
"This is a wake-up call for the administration." says House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va. "People see the stimulus hasn't worked, and now you want to lay on over $1 trillion in a health care plan."
The administration declined to comment on the poll results.
The stimulus package contains $288 billion for tax cuts and $499 billion in new spending, much of it meant to pay for unemployment and other social services. The $1 billion "cash for clunkers" program was not part of the bill, although its $2 billion expansion comes from stimulus funds.
The government has allocated more than $200 billion in aid. Since the plan began, however, the recession has left an additional 2.2 million Americans without jobs, according to Labor Department surveys.
Economists generally say the recession would have been worse without the stimulus, though they disagree widely on how much it has helped.
"The economy was like a huge pothole we had to fill, and what we did was throw a little gravel in the bottom. You don't fill the hole, not even close. But you make it better," says University of Oregon economist Tim Duy. "Many people don't see the effects so they assume it's not working."
The poll Aug. 6-9 of 1,010 adults has a margin of error of +/–4% for the full sample. In a question asked of a subsample, 51% of Americans say the government should have spent less on the stimulus; 31% say the amount was "about right." Also, almost half in the full sample say they are "very worried" that stimulus money is being wasted.
USA TODAY/Gallup Poll
One year from now, do you think the economy will be:
Are you worried, or not worried, that money from the economic stimulus plan is being wasted? If you are worried, are you very worried, or only somewhat worried?
Do you think the economic stimulus plan has made the economy better, has had no effect or made it worse?
Over the long term, do you think the stimulus will make the economy better, have no effect or make it worse?
In the short term, do you think the economic stimulus plan has made your financial situation better, not had an effect, or made your financial situation worse?
In the long term, do you think the economic stimulus plan will make your financial situation better, not have an effect, or make your financial situation worse?
Students, teachers and local pastors are protesting over a court case involving a northern Florida school principal and an athletic director who are facing criminal charges and up to six months in jail over their offer of a mealtime prayer.
There have been yard signs, T-shirts and a mass student protest during graduation ceremonies this spring on behalf of Pace High School Principal Frank Lay and school athletic director Robert Freeman, who will go on trial Sept. 17 at a federal district court in Pensacola for breaching the conditions of a lawsuit settlement reached last year with the American Civil Liberties Union.
"I have been defending religious freedom issues for 22 years, and I've never had to defend somebody who has been charged criminally for praying," said Mathew Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, the Orlando-based legal group that is defending the two school officials.
An ACLU official said the school district has allowed "flagrant" violations of the First Amendment for years.
"The defendants all admitted wrongdoing," said Daniel Mach, director of litigation for its freedom of religion program. "For example, the Pace High School teachers handbook asks teachers to 'embrace every opportunity to inculcate, by precept and example, the practice of every Christian virtue.' "
The fight involving the ACLU, the school district and several devout Christian employees began last August when the ACLU sued Santa Rosa County Schools on behalf of two students who had complained privately to the group's Florida affiliate, claiming some teachers and administrators were allowing prayers at school events such as graduations, orchestrating separate religiously themed graduation services, and "proselytizing" students during class and after school.
In January, the Santa Rosa County School District settled out of court with the ACLU, agreeing to several things, including a provision to bar all school employees from promoting or sponsoring prayers during school-sponsored events; holding school events at church venues when a secular alternative was available; or promoting their religious beliefs or attempting to convert students in class or during school-sponsored events.
Mr. Staver said the district also agreed to forbid senior class President Mary Allen from speaking at the school's May 30 graduation ceremony on the chance that the young woman, a known Christian, might say something religious.
"She was the first student body president in 33 years not allowed to speak," he said.
KNOXVILLE — A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union against the public school systems in Knoxville and Nashville over access to gay Web sites after a settlement was reached.
The ACLU filed suit over Internet blocking that denied access by students to educational sites about gay, lesbian and transgender issues.
The ACLU said Tennessee law required schools to filter Internet sites to block those which are obscene or harmful to minors, but said the sites being filtered out were educational sites which are not sexually gratuitous.
The group filed the federal lawsuit in Nashville on May 19 on behalf of three high school students in Nashville and one student and a high school librarian in Knoxville.
The ACLU said the two school systems have agreed to stop using filtering software that blocks those sites.
2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
I told you this was going to happen, and it has happened. We can prove that it's happened once, and I think we're going to be able to prove it happened a second time. I predicted it halfway yesterday. Right before Obama's... We now know, by the way, the whole thing yesterday was a stacked deck. That thing in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, was totally phony. The little girl that asked a question is a daughter of a huge Obama supporter. ... So yesterday it was right back about one o'clock, 1:15 Eastern Time when Obama started that dog-and-pony show that was the most pathetic thing. Yesterday that town hall illustrated his lack of experience and lack of competence in what he was trying to do.
I said, "Folks, don't be surprised if during the course of this town hall meeting there is a disturbance and some people show up in Klan outfits or carrying swastika signs, and if it happens it will be union supporters. It will be ACORN people. It will be political plants." Let us never forget: Nancy Pelosi started this whole swastika business. All I did was respond in kind with an accurate and researched comparison between the National Socialism in Germany and the attempt to socialize health care in this country with some of the other Obama programs tossed in as well. Pelosi started all of this. Dick Durbin started all of this. He called our interrogators at Club Gitmo Nazis, Nazi-like.
Democrats have been tarring and feathering conservatives (or trying to) for my whole career with this. I fired back in kind, and so I get up last night or this morning and I'm diligently doing show prep. As I always do, I go to Drudge page and say, "Whoa! Congressman David Scott's sign outside the office has a swastika painted on it. Ha-ha-ha. How convenient! How absolutely convenient." I don't know in this case, but we do know that a swastika sign at a Dingell town hall was made and paraded around by a Dingell supporter. It has been proven. It has been established. I'll get to that in just a second. Here's David Scott. Let's go to CNN Headline News. See, this is why you people in the State-Run Media are in big trouble. You're trying to make this whole health care debate something about me. I didn't start anything!
As usual, I'm defending America. I'm defending myself. I'm defending the honor of the people who make this country work. You people are out calling us Nazis, saying we're running around with swastikas, when we are threatened with the loss of our freedom. So we're showing up to people who work for us, and we're demanding answers, and they don't have the answers, and they tell us when we read the bill that that's not what's in the bill. Well, we've read it and they haven't. There ought to be anger about this, there ought to be outrage, and there is. So we get tarred and feathered as Nazis 'cause we just don't bend over, grab the ankles, and let you guys ram whatever down our throats that you want. So the name-calling starts, and the Democrats do not know how to deal with this kind of opposition.
The media, in an effort to repeat and promote the propaganda from the White House and to push Obama's agenda, tries to make me the story. I am the story! I can't do anything to your health care. I can't change it. I can't force any change whatsoever on your health care. Somehow I'm the story. You would think that the State-Run Media and the Democrats would learn that trying to make me the story doesn't work. For 21 years they've tried to and I'm still here -- and if I say so myself, bigger, more powerful, more popular, more effective than ever. Right, Zev? (interruption) "And slimmer," exactly right. And slimmer, which makes me even doubly effective and intimidating. So these people trying to make me the story -- me the story! -- when I did nothing but respond to the Speaker of the House saying that people on my side of this fight "are running around with swastikas," when there wasn't any photo evidence to establish it. So let's go to CNN Headline News, the dutiful State-Controlled Media, the anchor Robin Meade reporting this about Congressman David Scott, who is a Democrat from Georgia.
MEADE: A Georgia congressman who supports health care reform found a swastika painted outside his office. Democrat David Scott says that it should remind people to tone down the rhetoric. Well, several conservatives have made Nazi references about health care reform including radio host Rush Limbaugh.
RUSH ARCHIVE: [Y]ou will find that the Obama health care logo is damn close to a Nazi swastika logo.
MEADE: Congressman Scott's office was vandalized less than a week after he got into a heated argument about health care at a community meeting.
RUSH: I'm sorry, folks, I don't buy this. This is too politically convenient. We know that Obama staged an event yesterday. The Democrats are staging events. It's what they do. They don't deal in reality. They don't tell the truth. I'm not buying that this happened with an angry, anti-health care person putting the swastika. I think the Democrats are doing this themselves trying to make it an issue, because they know that dummkopfs like this infobabe are going to blame it on me. I did find similarities, scary similarities between the Obama "Health Care Now" logo and something the Nazis used to use and we morphed it at my website, RushLimbaugh.com, and it is dangerously close. Now, there's no swastika in Obama's logo. I'm just talking about the entire shape of the thing -- and nobody's saying Obama's Hitler.
Everybody seems to be forget that Pelosi started all of this. The Democrats started all of this. (interruption) Well, maybe you're right, Snerdley. Snerdley just shouted at me over the IFB, "They're not forgetting!" But somebody like Robin Meade at CNN Headline News may not know. It's entirely possible that many people in the State-Run Media don't know because if the truth isn't on the sites they read the, quote, unquote, "truth," they'll never know. So CNN's "American Morning" today, the cohost Kiran Chetry is interviewing Representative David Scott (Democrat-Georgia). She says, "What is it about this health care debate that seems to have brought out the worst in so many people as we're discussing what everybody wants which is to figure out solutions to our collective programs?"
SCOTT: My situation in all of this has been a realization that it has become politicized. From the very beginning, when Rush Limbaugh says, "Well, we don't want him to succeed. We don't want President Obama to succeed. I want him to fail." Well, Rush Limbaugh has an extraordinary audience. And many of them feel very strongly and are influenced by him.
RUSH: Right.
SCOTT: The tone has been set there, so you find people who will come in and hijack these meetings for the purpose of spreading that.
RUSH: Here they go in denial again. They're trying to tell themselves this. What these people do is project. What the liberal Democrats do they're the ones that are the professional protesters. They have the professional rent-a-mobs -- ACORN, the union people -- and they're just projecting. Well, this can't be real because what they do isn't real. And so happening to them on the reverse it's gotta be made up, it's gotta be trumped up. Yes I wanted Obama to fail and I think everybody understands how what I meant, finally. I think most people understood when I meant at the time anyway. There was just shock and dismay that anybody would have the gonads to say it! But I knew all of this was coming down the pike before it happened.
Why? Because I know socialists. I know liberals. I know what Bill Ayers stands for. I know what Reverend Wright stands for., I know who Obama is. I know who Pelosi is. None of this is a mystery. We knew they were going to try this. But, no, some people are holding out hope, "He's going to be a great moderate governing from the center. Sssssss! He's going to triangulate, post-racial, post-partisan." BS. It was all BS. Yes, I wanted him to fail. Sadly for the country, he's succeeding, which means the country is failing. Three million jobs lost since he's immaculated? How's that hope and change working out for you?
See the latest on the stimulus numbers? Fifty-some-odd gazillion dollars spent on airports -- how is that working out? -- while they're telling everybody not to fly because it's polluting the planet. Now let's go to audio sound bite 27. Yesterday at a John Dingell town hall or some sort of meeting there was a guy, a black guy carrying around a sign, Obama as Hitler, swastika, whatever it was. It was an Obama has Hitler sign. And this is why I don't believe that this swastika painted on the office door at what's-his-face, David Scott's office, is anything other than politically convenient. The guest here is Bill Cornish. He's a Dingell town hall attendee talking to Neil Cavuto and here's the exchange.
CORNISH: There was actually a gentleman in there carrying around a sign outside with Obama as Hitler, and it turned out later he was outside handing out Dingell information on the health care program. So it appears that he was part of the Dingell operation.
RUSH: So, the Dingell operation grabbed a black guy, gave him a sign, "Obama is Hitler," had him parading around outside for the cameras to catch, and then after the meeting this Dingell worker ditches the sign and is passing out Dingell information. We have proof of this from a blog called "The Blog Prof." Here's the money paragraph in this blog: Note man holding up the poster," and there are pictures here and screen shots from YouTube. "This screen shot was used in reports by [the state-controlled media] who painted the protesters at Dingell's place as Nazis. Here's the thing, though. That black man is a Dingell supporter. Last Friday, Frank Beckmann" on our Detroit affiliate, WJR "interviewed an eyewitness that said not only were union let in through a side door before anyone else was let into the venue but that he clearly saw from his vantage point that very Obama-as-Hitler poster in the back hallway after the [union thugs] took their seats.
"The interview was around 11 a.m., but WJR chose not to post the audio, thought it would have been bigger news and needed more than just to write a post, albeit an audio clip would have partially sacrificed." In any case, the blogger has been scouring YouTube and the web for more info, finally found some, and there's an account of all of this. So the bottom line is that at Dingell's town hall, the Obama-as-Hitler sign was being paraded around by a Dingell supporter. This is what I predicted yesterday prior to the Obama town hall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. So today we conveniently see on the Drudge Report page a picture of the office of Congressman David Scott in Georgia with a swastika painted on it -- and, of course, I am responsible, when Nancy Pelosi put the thought into everybody's head.
The bottom line here is that the Democrats and Obama cannot defend their plan. They cannot answer questions about their plan. So once again they are making me the issue in trying to not advance their plan, but to discredit critics of the plan.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, I'm not going to let this Nazi thing go. I'm going to get back to it. I'm not going to let this Nazi thing go, this swastika thing go, because the Democrats here -- in an effort to divert everybody's attention from what's in this rotten piece of legislation called health care reform -- are once again taking a page out of the playbook and trying to make this about me. Once again I'm sitting here, minding my own business one day and I see Nancy Pelosi say that all these peaceful people showing up at these town hall meetings on health care are caring swastikas. She's calling us Nazis. I responded in kind, and I understand why they don't like it. But I need to ask a question here. The reason we're not supposed to talk about the Nazis is because of the genocide of six million Jews. So no comparison to Nazi Germany and German socialism is allowed.
We can't go there simply because of the genocide of six million Jews. When Pelosi starts calling and saying people are running around "carrying swastikas," that is what she means. She is trying to associate people like you and me with that event in the world. I'm tell you, folks, I'm not going to sit here and take it anymore. I am not going to sit idly by while a bunch of fascist socialists in this country try to smear and impugn mainstream conservatism rooted in the founding of this country with a genocide of six million Jews in World War II. That's what they are trying to do. That's the association they are trying to link. As such, everybody is afraid to bring up Germany in World War II because that's all anybody is going to think. So when you say somebody is like Hitler, "Oh, you can't say that! Nobody is as bad as Hitler!" Well, let me make a point. The Nazis were National Socialists.
Forget the genocide here. That came toward the end of what they were doing. They got started in the mid-thirties or a little prior to that. Don't forget what they were doing. But they were National Socialists. They were not liberty loving individuals. They did not preach respect for human beings. They were not for small, decentralized government anywhere. They were not for honest capitalism. They were National Socialists, and it was National Socialism -- and the view of big government, and the idea that some were better than others -- which led to that monstrous genocide. The two are not separately contained, and to sit here and be compared to the monstrous genocidal Adolf Hitler, that's beyond the pale. And that's what Pelosi and that's what Dingell is trying to do when he has one of his run around with a swastika or Obama-is-Hitler sign.
Why...? Why do we have to ignore all of the National Socialism of Nazi Germany just because much the monstrous genocide? This experiment in National Socialism in Germany went on for well over ten years. And I'm going to tell you right now: If you want to do a comparison just taking this health care bill... If you want to do a comparison between the people pushing it and the people opposing it, to National Socialism in Germany, it ain't a contest. The people pushing this health care bill have far more in common with the National Socialists of Germany (exempting genocide) than any of us who are opposing this health care have. We are not in any realm close. Now, the people in the media look at this as just an opportunity to divert attention, to attack me. They love doing it. It gets them ratings. They love to make this association between conservatism and Nazism.
Nothing could be further from the truth in any aspect of Nazism. We are for capitalism, small, limited government, individual liberty and freedom. We have nothing in common -- and the right has never had anything in common -- with any socialism anywhere, including Nazism. You want to put it on a...? The wrong way to look at this is a circle. You need to draw a straight line and put your precious moderates and independents in the middle, put conservatives on the right. On the left you're going to find Nazism, socialism, communism. You're not going to find it on the right. It ain't going to happen. So these people want to continue to try to say -- and we know that Dingell is out there having one of his own staffers running around with a sign. We know full well what they're trying to do.
That's fake just like Obama's town hall meeting was fake yesterday. I'm just going to tell you: There is no way conservatives, were we writing a health bill -- and we have our own versions. There is no way ever, any time, anywhere that we make a serious proposal that the government decides who dies based on their age and health. That's not who we are, for whatever reason. To us, health care is not about money. It's not about saving money, not about controlling money. Health care is about health. Health care is about health care. It's not about insurance. It's not about money. It's not bang for the buck. Conservatives don't demonize, as a matter of political course, to advance our ideas. People who are exercising individual freedom and liberty to advance those same notions, capitalism in the country, we do not look at this country and instinctively dislike it, hate it, demonize it, want to change it.
It didn't take chaotic town-hall meetings, raging demonstrators and consequent brooding in various sectors of the media to bring home the truth that the campaign for a health-care bill is, to put it mildly, not going awfully well. It's not hard now to envision the state of this crusade with just a month or two more of diligent management by the Obama team—think train wreck. It may one day be otherwise in the more perfect world of universal coverage, but for now disabilities like the tone deafness that afflicts this administration from the top down are uninsurable.
Consider former ABC reporter Linda Douglass—now the president's communications director for health reform—who set about unmasking all the forces out there "always trying to scare people when you try to bring them health insurance reform." People, she charged, are taking sentences out of context and otherwise working to present a misleading picture of the president's proposals. One of her key solutions to this problem—her justly famed message encouraging citizens to contact the office at flag@whitehouse.gov if they got an email or other information about health reform "that seems fishy"—set off a riotous flow of online responses. (The word "fishy," with its police detective tone, would have done the trick all by itself.)
These commentaries, packed with allusions to the secret police, the East German Stasi and Orwell, were mostly furious. Others quite simply hilarious. Ms. Douglass, who now has, in her public appearances, the air of a person consigned to service in a holy order, was not amused.
Neither has she seemed to entertain any second thoughts about the tenor of a message enlisting the public in a program reeking of a White House effort to set Americans against one another—the good Americans protecting the president's health-care program from the bad Americans fighting it and undermining truth and goodness.
She intended no such outcome, doubtless. That this former journalist, now a communications director, failed to notice anything amiss in the details of that communiqué is a bit odd but not altogether surprising.
Crusades are busy endeavors, the enlistees in this one, like those in every undertaking of this White House, concerned with just one message. Which is that the Obama administration is in possession of vital answers to ills and inequities that have long afflicted American society (whether Americans know it or not), and that those opposed to those answers and that vision are cynics, or operatives of the powerful vested interests responsible for the plight Americans find themselves in (whether they know it or not), or political enemies bent on destroying the Obama administration.
27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000>
Dorothy Rabinowitz tells FOX News that President Obama is running a tone-deaf health-care campaign.
It shouldn't have been surprising, either, that the tone of much of the commentary on the town-hall protests was what it was. There was Mark Halperin for one, senior political editor for Time, bouncing off his chair, Sunday, in agitation over all the media coverage of this rowdiness—"a horrible breakdown of our political culture, our media culture" and so "bad for America," as he told CNN's Howard Kurtz. "I'm embarrassed about what's going on, as an American." The disruptions and coverage thereof distorted serious discussion, he explained. Mark Shields said much the same on Friday's PBS NewsHour, if with less excitation, pointing out that these events were "not good for the democratic process," and were a breakdown of civil debate.
There was no such hand-wringing over the decline of civil debate, during, say, election 2004, when cadres of organized demonstrators carrying swastika-adorned pictures of George W. Bush routinely swarmed about, and packed rallies. There was also that other “breakdown of our media culture,” that will dwarf all else as a cause for embarrassment, the town-hall coverage included, for the foreseeable future. That would be, of course, the undisguised worshipful reporting of the candidacy of Barack Obama.
That treatment, or rather its memory—like the adulation of his great mass of voters—has had its effect on this president, and not all to the good. The election over, the warming glow of those armies of supporters gone, his capacity to tolerate criticism and dissent from his policies grows thinner apace. His lectures, explaining his health-care proposals, and why they'll be good for everybody, are clearly not going down well with his national audience.
This would have to do with the fact that the real Barack Obama—product of the academic left, social reformer with a program, is now before that audience, and what they hear in this lecture about one of the central concerns in their lives—his message freighted with generalities—they are not prepared to buy. They are not prepared to believe that our first most important concern now is health-care reform or all will go under.
The president has a problem. For, despite a great election victory, Mr. Obama, it becomes ever clearer, knows little about Americans. He knows the crowds—he is at home with those. He is a stranger to the country's heart and character.
He seems unable to grasp what runs counter to its nature. That Americans don't take well, for instance, to bullying, especially of the moralizing kind, implicit in those speeches on health care for everybody. Neither do they wish to be taken where they don't know they want to go and being told it's good for them.
Who would have believed that this politician celebrated, above all, for his eloquence and capacity to connect with voters would end up as president proving so profoundly tone deaf? A great many people is the answer—the same who listened to those speeches of his during the campaign, searching for their meaning.
It took this battle over health care to reveal the bloom coming off this rose, but that was coming. It began with the spectacle of the president, impelled to go abroad to apologize for his nation—repeatedly. It is not, in the end, the demonstrators in those town-hall meetings or the agitations of his political enemies that Mr. Obama should fear. It is the judgment of those Americans who have been sitting quietly in their homes, listening to him.
The liberals have gone out of their way to control the media. All they are nothing more then sheep. All over hollywood all you hear is big shots bashing christians and conservitives. When young people and others see this, they jump on board, as the sheep they are. Why can't people make up there own minds? Why are you so shallow that you have to believe something only because Brad Pitt says it? Like i said, SHEEP. Get a life, make your own decisions. I also want to know why People allow this to happen, by saying im not going to do anything only allows them to become stronger. You have to say something and stand up for yourself. The goverment now controls the auto industry, the banks, and soon your healthcare. This has happened by people not doing anything to stop it. When family guy comes on, change it, don't give them the rateings. It won't be long before everything you ever stood for will be gone. The liberal media has made it to where now it's not cool to be a christian. Kids want to be cool so if the liberal media says it's not cool, then they won't be christians. Show them that it is cool, that it is okay to believe in God. We can't just let all this go by us and never come back. Now is our chance to do something. Liberals want to push tolerance. Ya right! Tell them you love God and see how tolorant they are then. Look at Miss California. She stood up for what she believed and the tolerant left attacked her, she lost her job, and her crown. That's tolerance? Fight back people, don't let the liberals have another inch.
WASHINGTON – Walter Cronkite is dead at 92 – but most Americans, many of whom considered him "the most trusted man" in the country during his reign as CBS News anchor – still don't know what motivated him and how he secured such an influential and lofty position.
He was like a grandfatherly institution in the early days of TV. People believed him. Uncle Walter wouldn't lie, America believed.
Thus, when he gave his opinions, they had impact. One example was his report on the Tet offensive in Vietnam, which is credited with swinging the tide of opinion against the war.
Even in his death, however, nobody has addressed how and why an otherwise obscure figure at the time was elevated to become the most prominent anchorman on television.
The story was told publicly in the July 10, 2000, edition of the Nation, a Marxist-oriented journal, in a report on death of Blair Clark, who served as editor of the Nation from 1976 through 1978: "Whether it was calling on Philip Roth to recommend a Nation literary editor or persuading CBS News president Richard Salant to make Walter Cronkite anchor of CBS Evening News, Blair had a gift for the recognition and recruitment of excellence."
Clark was not only the editor of the Nation, he was also heir to the Clark thread fortune, a Harvard classmate and friend of John F. Kennedy, a buddy of Washington Post Editor Ben Bradlee and the manager of Eugene McCarthy's 1968 campaign for the Democratic Party presidential nomination.
He veered back and forth between politics and journalism seamlessly as an associate publisher of the New York Post, a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, vice president and general manager of CBS News and yet remained a fixture in Democratic Party politics throughout his career.
Clark wasn't the kind of man who would promote Walter Cronkite for the most visible job in journalism because of his press accomplishments alone – and his press accomplishments were noticeably meager.
(Story continues below)
MOST READ
News From The Worlds Of History, Gemology, And Science.
Cronkite never graduated from college. He had entered the University of Texas at Austin, but left to take a part-time job reporting for the Houston Post. In 1939, he got a job at United Press and covered World War II.
While working for UP, Cronkite was offered a job at CBS by Edward R. Murrow – and turned it down. He finally accepted a second offer in 1950, and stepped into the new medium of television.
He became the host of "You Are There" in which key moments of history were recreated by actors. Cronkite was depicted on camera interviewing "Joan of Arc" or "Sigmund Freud." But somehow, he managed to make it believable. From that entertainment series, he went on to be named host of "The Morning Show" on CBS, where he was paired with a partner: a puppet named Charlemagne. In 1961, CBS named him the anchor of the "CBS Evening News" – a 15-minute news summary anchored for several years by Douglas Edwards, thanks to prodding from a socialist activist who edited The Nation.
Just a few years later, his commentaries on the Vietnam War were credited with turning the tide of American opinion against that conflict.
"But Walter was always more than just an anchor," said Barack Obama upon his death. "He was someone we could trust to guide us through the most important issues of the day; a voice of certainty in an uncertain world. He was family. He invited us to believe in him, and he never let us down. This country has lost an icon and a dear friend, and he will be truly missed."
After leaving his position with CBS, Cronkite's political activism and offbeat ideas had no restraints.
In 1989, Cronkite spoke to a dinner organized by People for the American Way, a group founded by Norman Lear. His candid politics surprised even that audience.
"I know liberalism isn't dead in this country," he said. "It simply has, temporarily we hope, lost its voice."
"About the Democratic loss in this election ... it was not just a campaign strategy built on a defensive philosophy. It was not just an opposition that conducted one of the most sophisticated and cynical campaigns ever. ... It was the fault of too many who found their voices stilled by subtle ideological intimidation."
"We know that unilateral action in Grenada and Tripoli was wrong. We know that Star Wars means uncontrollable escalation of the arms race. We know that the real threat to democracy is half a nation in poverty. ... We know that religious beliefs cannot define patriotism. ... God Almighty, we've got to shout these truths in which we believe from the housetops. Like that scene in the movie 'Network,' we've got to throw open our windows and shout these truths to the streets and the heavens. And I bet we'll find more windows are thrown open to join the chorus than we'd ever dreamed possible."
In 1999, he appeared at the United Nations to accept the Norman Cousins Global Governance Award from the World Federalists Association. He told those assembled, including Hillary Rodham Clinton, that the first step toward achieving a one-world government – his personal dream – is to strengthen the United Nations.
"It seems to many of us that if we are to avoid the eventual catastrophic world conflict we must strengthen the United Nations as a first step toward a world government patterned after our own government with a legislature, executive and judiciary, and police to enforce its international laws and keep the peace," he said. "To do that, of course, we Americans will have to yield up some of our sovereignty. That would be a bitter pill. It would take a lot of courage, a lot of faith in the new order."
In his acceptance speech, Cronkite added, "Pat Robertson has written in a book a few years ago that we should have a world government, but only when the Messiah arrives. He wrote, literally, any attempt to achieve world order before that time must be the work of the devil. Well, join me. I'm glad to sit here at the right hand of Satan."
Later, in an interview with the BBC, Cronkite described this new order as something that sounded like a militaristic world dictatorship.
"I wouldn't give up on the U.N. yet," he said. "I think we are realizing that we are going to have to have an international rule of law. We need not only an executive to make international law, but we need the military forces to enforce that law and the judicial system to bring the criminals to justice before they have the opportunity to build military forces that use these horrid weapons that rogue nations and movements can get hold of – germs and atomic weapons."
He spoke openly about the need for America to give up its national sovereignty.
"American people are going to begin to realize they are going to have to yield some sovereignty to an international body to enforce world law, and I think that's going to come to other people as well," he said. "It's a fair distance to get there, but we are not ever going to get there unless we keep trying to push ourselves onto the road."
The total price tag for federal support stemming from the financial crisis could reach $23.7 trillion in the long run, the government's top bailout watchdog says in a new report to Congress.
Neil Barofsky, the inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, plans to deliver his report Tuesday to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
The $23.7 trillion figure is admittedly a high-ball number and reflects the total potential gross exposure, but Barofsky in his prepared testimony notes that the TARP -- which started as a $700 billion bailout -- has expanded well beyond that.
"TARP has evolved into a program of unprecedented scope, scale and complexity. Moreover, TARP does not function in a vacuum but is rather part of the broader government efforts to stabilize the financial system," the report says.
"The total potential federal government support could reach up to $23.7 trillion," the report estimates, factoring in commitments from "dozens of programs" implemented throughout the federal government since 2007.
In supporting documentation obtained by FOXNews.com, the inspector general's office explains that the $23.7 trillion spans about 50 "initiatives or programs" created by federal agencies in the wake of the economic crisis.
The estimate covers commitments that could come from programs at the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the Federal Housing Administration, the Department of Veterans Affairs and other agencies.
It notes that the total "financial exposure" of TARP and related programs alone could reach $3 trillion.
While not a firm or official figure, the estimate has the potential to send lawmakers into sticker shock.
"The potential financial commitment the American taxpayers could be responsible for is of a size and scope that isn't even imaginable," Rep. Darrell Issa, ranking Republican on the oversight committee, said in a written statement. "If you spent a million dollars a day going back to the birth of Christ, that wouldn't even come close to just $1 trillion -- $23.7 trillion is a staggering figure."
In the report, Barofsky also says that the Treasury Department has "repeatedly failed" to adopt recommendations that his office believes will bring more transparency and accountability to the execution of the bailout.
MEADE: A Georgia congressman who supports health care reform found a swastika painted outside his office. Democrat David Scott says that it should remind people to tone down the rhetoric. Well, several conservatives have made Nazi references about health care reform including radio host Rush Limbaugh.
See the latest on the stimulus numbers? Fifty-some-odd gazillion dollars spent on airports -- how is that working out? -- while they're telling everybody not to fly because it's polluting the planet. Now let's go to audio sound bite 27. Yesterday at a John Dingell town hall or some sort of meeting there was a guy, a black guy carrying around a sign, Obama as Hitler, swastika, whatever it was. It was an Obama has Hitler sign. And this is why I don't believe that this swastika painted on the office door at what's-his-face, David Scott's office, is anything other than politically convenient. The guest here is Bill Cornish. He's a Dingell town hall attendee talking to Neil Cavuto and here's the exchange.
