Friday, November 7, 2008

Obama Exposes Elite Secret Psuedo-Religious Cults

In an article exposed on CNN.com, Obama is quoted as saying "I didn't want to get into a Nancy Reagan thing... doing any seances."

Many societal elites in America and Europe have been known to follow many strange, often anti-Christian, but usually ridiculous religious practices. It could be said that some of these practices, ideologies, have to be exposed to the public before the elites act on the "messages" they recieve (I.e Bush and his talks with God), but some are generally wacky or even frightening, (i.e. Tony Blairs writhing on the floor in prayer on top of a pentagram in a dark, candlelit room).

There are strong undercurrents that the new "global" religion that will sweep the world will be under the guise of Environmentalism, Mother Earth, Gaia worship, but the real scary thing is this global "carbon tax" that will be what the Enviro-preachers will be bringing their collection baskets to your pockets for.

Enough of my ramblings, here's the article:

Obama apologizes to Nancy Reagan for seance remark

CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN) -- President-elect Barack Obama called Nancy Reagan on Friday to apologize for a remark about seances he made during his first news conference earlier in the day.

When a reporter asked Obama if he had spoken with any ex-presidents since his election on Tuesday, he responded that he had spoken to all former presidents "that are living."

"I didn't want to get into a Nancy Reagan thing about, you know, doing any seances," he said.

Nancy Reagan, wife of 40th President Ronald Reagan, was derided in 1988 when his former chief of staff Donald Regan revealed in a book that the first lady had consulted an astrologer to determine the president's schedule.

Obama apologized to Reagan "for the careless and offhanded remark," Obama transition team spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said.

"The president-elect expressed his admiration and affection for Mrs. Reagan that so many Americans share and they had a warm conversation," Cutter said.

President Reagan died in 2004 at 93.

Other first ladies have reportedly used spiritual advisers.

In his 1996 book, "The Choice," Washington Post editor and writer Bob Woodward said that as first lady, Sen. Hillary Clinton had seance-like sessions at the White House during which she conversed with late first lady Eleanor Roosevelt. At the time, the White House said the sessions were not seances.

Abraham Lincoln's wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, was rumored to have held seances at the White House in order to contact her two dead sons, Eddie and Willie. She also reportedly went to seances under an assumed name after the president's death to attempt to contact him.

Immediately after the seance remark, Obama said he had "re-read some of Lincoln's writings, who's always an extraordinary inspiration" and mentioned that former Presidents Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush and current President George W. Bush "have all been very gracious and offered to provide any help that they can in this transition process."

Friday, May 23, 2008

The Straw That Broke the Camels Back

by Antonio Franklin

5/22-23/08



Before I start venting and losing grip of what i'm truly pissed about, let's simply explain the details of the event.

A year ago, I recieved numerous tickets for fare evasion on the train and was given a fine that I obviously couldn't pay off, given the fact that I had to evade the fare in the first place. Fastforward to last night, as for the third time, i'm pulled over, on the sidewalk, coming from work and boxing classes by LAPD by motorcycle. They've stopped me numerous times for not having a light. With that squared away, now, my crime is simply riding my bike on a completely empty sidewalk. I am completely polite and answer all their unconstitutional questions to help the process go faster. I discover that I have a bench warrant for my arrest because of the ticket fines and because my patience is wearing thin, I DEMAND to just speed the process up and take me in.



I've never been in jail, nor did I ever expect to go. As a completely hardcore wimpy law abiding citizen, why should I see it in my future... Oh, that's right - because I'm a young, black male in America. Or should I put it as, a proletariat underclass neo-slave in a fascist dictatorship. Let's not mince words.



I am interrupted and found to have a warrant because I rode my bike on the sidewalk? What's next? Arrested and held for a year for not having a helmet and bike seatbelt? This is getting ridiculous, and I simply can't take it anymore.



We're all boiling in this melting pot and I for one, want out. I remember the days when you'd say that to another typical ignorant, uneducated white American male and they'd say, "WELL GOOD! LEAVE THEN!" Today that smugness is slowly being replaced with silence. As they morph into their proper slave masks of compliant little automatons as this country becomes the dreaded dictatorship it was always destined to become - see: Antony Sutton.



I think I'm done here. My rant should be kept simple and direct, yet as in almost all cases, the story is so deep and unnappealing that everyone should hear it. So let's rewind and provide the gory details about this soon to be American dictatorship escapee.



My whole life has been filled with a certain clarity of who and where I am, and how I came to be in the position that I'm in. I discovered that I was a black lower class heathen at 13 and as a highly advanced student/bookworm/nerd/hermit, whatever you want to call it, I soon came to deeply despise this nation, built entirely upon lies. Who propogated the lies? Obviously the media and "traditional" American family, as a quick glimpse into a history book, ANY HISTORY BOOK, PLEASE! - will give you a contrary story of just how equal every human being truly is. All our histories are just as bloody, complex, and riddled with slavery, strife and hardship as the next, but try explaining that to your average day Joe, and if you have any success, please blog it and allow me to review. I learned to keep my mouth shut early on and allow those ignorant, soulless blokes to wallow in their own devoid-of-curiousity filled days. It became quite the burden, sure, as the days turned into years and the bigotry, backwardsness and ignorance became so rampant and loud and in-my-face that I could burst with torture.... But I didn't.



I just wanted to live my life and let them live theirs, but see how far society can crumble in a matter of a decade? My journey from central Indiana to Southern California came, of course, against the wishes of my family, yet I was never an individual that could be kept from doing exactly as I wished. With barely a penny in my pocket and minimal help from distant relatives living in the area (and by minimal, I mean basic starvation) I achieved that which could be considered independence. In three months I had a job, an apartment (share) and a chunk of manhood I could call my own, yet at 18, curiousity got the best of this cat. After a string of quitting jobs, losing a place to stay, finding odd jobs and odd living arrangements, I learned how to become comfortably independent in Los Angeles, and was it grand! Of course it didn't last as my desire for continued upward mobility drove me to all corners of this lively city. That traveling on pressed pennies, infinite dreams, tumultuous gasps of a fuller, richer life are what life is about, but they also brought me the tickets.



People don't comprehend that the LA Metro System is a merit/trust system, with open spaces and minimal police presence. With such a vast landscape, of course there will be those who don't have the currency to pay, and so if you're trying to hold on to job and home, it is a God-send, guarded at times by angels in bulletproof vests, of course. And so, after a year of relative freedom, and a move back to North Hollywood, where transportation of any sort other than the foot is MANDATORY, I found myself in a police state, with sharks for police cars, four or more to a street, where in my 15 minutes home every night, I could count on spotting roughly seven.



We know they have quota's, the veritable stock option put on the future of criminality by the police, which ironically turns police from defending crime to enforcing it. The trick is to recognize that they're forced to make a quota, of say 4 arrests a night, which will translate at the end of day to them being FORCED to "FIND" "criminals", i.e. blacks, latinos, skaters, homeless, drug abusers, anyone in plain sight who the general public won't raise a fuss about being disproportionately detained or abused. This translates to a rise in the percentage of crime, which, the same police force who enforced a quota will decry the lack of personel/capital and demand that the local corrupt/inept politician will throw on a couple hundred million onto the back of the taxpaying public. The game is disgusting, but let's not pretend it's not easily readable and not entirely the fault of the complacent public, meaning that nothing will ever come to it, because that which is in place view will fail to be spotted every time.



This is why I love America.



And so I happen to be a victim of the police state, which appears as the snake which eats its own tail, and I found myself in a hellhole for one night which If ever faced with again, you can surely count on my unwillingness to cooperate (Tupac Shakur, anyone?)

The conditions of this "police department" were horrendous, large numbers of hispanic and black vagabonds, domestic abusers, angry, trashy, wreched, old, urinals in the open, inneficient police offices, a 5 hours waiting period to be simply processed before placed into a cell, personal items disposed of or misplaced, rude, pompous "officials", lack of proper sanitary conditions ('want something to eat?' 'while staring at the feces on the floor and the urine in my nose, no thanks' 'no thanks what?' '*sighs* no thanks supreme almight official who i've seen beat people in wheelchairs to death on youtube'), horror stories, abuse - generally a cornicopia of everything right in our "justice system". Afterwords, after another four hours of sleep, two hours transport to a facility 20 miles away, two more hours waiting for a judge to say something and nothing at the same time and to find out that this "holding cesspool" was the actual punishment, I was let out.



Ahhh... The sweet smell of fresh air...



Of course the fresh air loses its luster once you discover that all your belongings, keys, wallet, shoelaces, belt, glasses, are all at the facility you were processed at, and you'll need to take a bus to get there, but don't worry, there's a group of taximen waiting for you.... even though they can't seem to comprehend that they're right in front of a holding facility with people who have to wait hours to have their belongings returned or recieve tokens to travel the hours back to retrieve those said belongings. And so, here I am, a victim, yet again, of more police ineptness, type-type-typing this away on a library computer, with another two hours of waiting time before I can get my keys, to my beloved bicycle, so that I can travel to where I need to go to retrieve the rest of my belongings, which won't be brought to me.



That's the wondrous American penal system at work. With 5% of the worlds population and gaining on 35% of it's prison population, America is the quintesential beacon and idea of freedom and justice. Ignore that China, with roughly four times our population has only 75,000 prisoners.... With over 4 million within its walls at any one time, and record instances of police brutality, there is no better place in the world to call home than America, which is exactly why our tourism industry is flourishing, our standard of living is approving, and the peaceful pot smokers are staying here and not immigrating to the Netherlands.



Thank you so much for my freedoms, officer.



Oh... and How low do you want me to bend?





Noooo!!! Please! Don't go to http://infowars.com, you might learn something.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Wealthy Whites Spit in Poor Black America's Face

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080413/ap_on_sc/sludge_poisoned_land

Sludge fertilizer program spurs concerns

By JOHN HEILPRIN and KEVIN S. VINEYS, Associated Press Writers
Sun Apr 13, 3:48 PM ET



BALTIMORE - Scientists using federal grants spread fertilizer made from human and industrial wastes on yards in poor, black neighborhoods to test whether it might protect children from lead poisoning in the soil. Families were assured the sludge was safe and were never told about any harmful ingredients.



Nine low-income families in Baltimore row houses agreed to let researchers till the sewage sludge into their yards and plant new grass. In exchange, they were given food coupons as well as the free lawns as part of a study published in 2005 and funded by the Housing and Urban Development Department.

The Associated Press reviewed grant documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and interviewed researchers. No one involved with the $446,231 grant for the two-year study would identify the participants, citing privacy concerns. There is no evidence there was ever any medical follow-up.

Comparable research was conducted by the Agriculture Department and Environmental Protection Agency in a similarly poor, black neighborhood in East St. Louis, Ill.

The sludge, researchers said, put the children at less risk of brain or nerve damage from lead, a highly toxic element once widely used in gasoline and paint. Other studies have shown brain damage among children, often in poor neighborhoods, who ate lead-based paint that had flaked off their homes.

The idea that sludge — the leftover semisolid wastes filtered from water pollution at 16,500 treatment plants — can be turned into something harmless, even if swallowed, has been a tenet of federal policy for three decades.

In a 1978 memo, the EPA said sludge "contains nutrients and organic matter which have considerable benefit for land and crops" despite the presence of "low levels of toxic substances."

But in the late 1990s the government began underwriting studies such as those in Baltimore and East St. Louis using poor neighborhoods as laboratories to make a case that sludge may also directly benefit human health.

Meanwhile, there has been a paucity of research into the possible harmful effects of heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, other chemicals and disease-causing microorganisms often found in sludge.

A series of reports by the EPA's inspector general and the National Academy of Sciences between 1996 and 2002 faulted the adequacy of the science behind the EPA's 1993 regulations on sludge.

The chairman of the 2002 academy panel, Thomas Burke, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, says epidemiological studies have never been done to show whether spreading sludge on land is safe.

"There are potential pathogens and chemicals that are not in the realm of safe," Burke told the AP. "What's needed are more studies on what's going on with the pathogens in sludge — are we actually removing them? The commitment to connecting the dots hasn't been there."

That's not what the subjects of the Baltimore and East St. Louis research were told.

Rufus Chaney, an Agriculture Department research agronomist who co-wrote the Baltimore study, said the researchers provided the families with brochures about lead hazards, tested the soil in their yards and gave assurances that the Orgro fertilizer was store-bought and perfectly safe.

"They were told that their lawn, as it stood, before it was treated, was a lead danger to their children," said Chaney. "So that even if they ate some of the soil, there would not be as much of a risk as there was before. And that's what the science shows."

Chaney said the Baltimore neighborhoods were chosen because they were within an economically depressed area qualifying for tax incentives. He acknowledged the families were not told there have been some safety disputes and health complaints over sludge.

"They were told that it was composted biosolids that are available for sale commercially in the state of Maryland. I don't think there's any other further disclosure required," Chaney said. "There was danger before. There wasn't danger because of the biosolids compost. Composting, of course, kills pathogens."

The Baltimore study concluded that phosphate and iron in sludge can increase the ability of soil to trap more harmful metals including lead, cadmium and zinc, causing the combination to pass safely through a child's body if eaten.

It called the fertilizer "a simple low-cost" technology for parents and communities "to reduce risk to their children" who are in danger of lead contamination. The results were published in Science of the Total Environment, an international research journal, in 2005.

Another study investigating whether sludge might inhibit the "bioavailability" of lead — the rate it enters the bloodstream and circulates to organs and tissues — was conducted on a vacant lot in East St. Louis next to an elementary school, all of whose 300 students were black and almost entirely from low-income families.

In a newsletter, the EPA-funded Community Environmental Resource Program assured local residents it was all safe.

"Though the lot will be closed off to the public, if people — particularly children — get some of the lead contaminated dirt in their mouths, the lead will just pass through their bodies and not be absorbed," the newsletter said. "Without this iron-phosphorus mix, lead poisoning would occur."

Soil chemist Murray McBride, director of the Cornell Waste Management Institute, said he doesn't doubt that sludge can bind lead in soil.

But when eaten, "it's not at all clear that the sludge binding the lead will be preserved in the acidity of the stomach," he said. "Actually thinking about a child ingesting this, there's a very good chance that it's not safe."

McBride and others also questioned the choice of neighborhoods for the studies and why residents were not told about other, possibly harmful ingredients in sludge.

"If you're not telling them what kinds of chemicals could be in there, how could they even make an informed decision. If you're telling them it's absolutely safe, then it's not ethical," McBride said. "In many relatively wealthy people's neighborhoods, I would think that people would research this a little and see a problem and raise a red flag."

The Baltimore study used a compost of sludge mixed with sawdust and wood chips packaged as "biosolids," the term for sludge preferred by government and the waste industry.

"What we did was make the yards greener," said Pat Tracey, a Johns Hopkins University community relations coordinator who recalled helping with the lawn work. "They were bald, bad yards. It was considered sterile fertilizer."

Baltimore environmental activist Glenn Ross says choosing poor neighborhoods destined for demolition makes it hard to track a study's participants. "If you wanted to do something very questionable, you would do it in a neighborhood that's not going to be there in a few years," he said.

HUD documents show the study's lead author, Mark Farfel, has pursued several other studies of lead contamination including the risks of exposure from urban housing demolitions and the vacant lots left behind.

Farfel has since moved to New York, where he directs the World Trade Center Health Registry surveying tens of thousands of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks. He denied repeated requests for interviews and referred questions to Baltimore's Kennedy Krieger Institute, the children's research facility that was the recipient of HUD grants with Farfel as project manager.

The institute referred questions to Joann Rodgers, a spokeswoman for Johns Hopkins. She said a review board within its medical school approved the study and the consent forms provided to families that participated. "The study did not test children or other family members living in the homes," she said.

Some of Farfel's previous research has been controversial.

In 2001, Maryland's highest court chastised him, Kennedy Krieger and Johns Hopkins over a study bankrolled by EPA in which researchers testing low-cost ways to control lead hazards exposed more than 75 poor children to lead-based paint in partially renovated houses.

Families of two children alleged to have suffered elevated blood-lead levels and brain damage sued the institute and later settled for an undisclosed amount.

The Maryland Court of Appeals likened the study to Nazi medical research on concentration camp prisoners, the U.S. government's 40-year Tuskegee study that denied treatment for syphilis to black men in order to study the illness and Japan's use of "plague bombs" in World War II to infect and study entire villages.

"These programs were somewhat alike in the vulnerability of the subjects: uneducated African-American men, debilitated patients in a charity hospital, prisoners of war, inmates of concentration camps and others falling within the custody and control of the agencies conducting or approving the experiments," the court said.

___

On the Net:

Baltimore study: http://tinyurl.com/3g2e3q

East St. Louis project: http://tinyurl.com/43s3qx

Maryland lead lawsuit: http://tinyurl.com/4ydssm

National Academy of Sciences' report: http://tinyurl.com/4esxjv

________________________________________________________________

I. HATE. THIS. COUNTRY!

Some evil fucker, somewhere is laughing his balls off.
Oh sure! To offset the toxic lead we've spilled off from our factories into your water and land, we're going to spend money developing a new technology to give you something that we say is beneficial... Never mind that we've never been generous to you before!

What's the gift? Get this: We're going to clean toxic lead, WITH TOXIC SLUDGE! Not just toxic sludge! We're going to sprinkle a little human shit in there too!!! HEY! LET ME ADD MY OWN!!!!!

First it was King Louis VII in the Congo - 20 million blacks
Then it was the Portuguese, English, and Jewish traders selling blacks to the Americas - 100 million blacks
Then we have the epic of institutionalized slavery - 10 million or so (don't want to destroy precious property)
Then we get Margaret Sanger style Eugenics and our own personal abortion clinic. For those who still like Planned Parenthood, consider that they gave Hitler awards for his handling of Eugenics in Germany... Yeah... exactly... 30 million black abortions
Oh, let's not forget, AIDS was engineered in a U.S Navy lab, exposed by Dr. Boyd E. Graves. And don't give me that bullshit of "NO WAY! WE'D NEVER DO THAT! IT'S IMPRACTICLE AND EVIL!" Well I just gave you the numbers on what you've done before!

I'm so pissed right now. I could... I could.... go ballistic writing a rant in my blog..... *sighs*

Thanks for the flouride, reducing my interest in getting so pissed off, btw.
Reply to this comment
+1 diggs by Frnnkdlxx 6 hours ago
Where are my sources for my claims? History is my fucking source.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=AIDS_co ...
http://digg.com/world_news/I_want_my_donation_to_g ...
http://youtube.com/watch?v=vrIeYfuviq8

I know, i'll get dugg down for being so angry at America and the European worlds past crimes, but can you blame a man for not liking a certain subgroup of humans being responsible for over 100 million deaths of just ONE single subgroup? How about the other 100 to 100's of millions for the others? Let's get real. There are no excuses. But i know you'll make up one.
Hide 1 reply to this comment (most popular has 1 digg)
[you have blocked whoreable, hide comment] +1 digg by whoreable 4 hours ago
You portray blacks as helpless little animals who can't help themselves, and procreate on instinct alone. You think you are standing up for them because nobody else will. They are a very smart and strong people. I think they can handle it.
Hide 1 reply to this comment (most popular has 1 digg)
+1 digg by Frnnkdlxx 4 hours ago
Compared to the Hyper Power, far above a superpower with new weapons like emp pulse tech, nuetron bombs, the largest arsenal of smart weaponry, advanced tanks and heavy machinery that allow it to touch any target on the globe within hours(coming on minutes soon with the space forces developed in the early 2000's , information for which can be found on nasa's website), jets that can leave atmosphere and therefore more swiftly reach a target anywhere else on the globe, high energy projectile laser weaponry... the list goes on. Do you really think ANYONE not U.S. establishment can defend against a fascist dictatorship that wants them dead? Oh, there is no conspiracy?:

http://youtube.com/results?search_query=planned+pa ...
or this:
http://youtube.com/results?search_query=endgame+bl ...

I don't know about you, but yes,, I think every single individual not a part of this system is threatened by it. Blacks in America do as they can, after being raped by this dictatorship for 400 years to this day, apparently. And what are you talking about? I'm black! You speak as if I speak from a foreign platform. This is an assault on me directly, which is why I speak with such urgency, vigor, and fear. We are weak, exposed and helpless animals compard to the machinery and powerhouse which is this nation.

Do you think we could revolt? We could escape? We could find a way to get out of the wreched decay and repression forced upon us. Yes! Forced. Or should I link another cointelpro video?

Who can stand against this nation successfully? No nation has ever succeeded, no subgroup has every achieved true independence without the say so of the higher powers which govern this nation, which, coincidentally, reside in Europe. Not Vietnam, which suffered about 2 million(really much MUCH more) deaths and claims to have "defeated" America, but if you look at the conspiracy behind the whole mess, it was simply a plan to keep America bogged down in a war so that foreign bankers could reap enormous profits from the u.s. Government to be repaid with enormous interests that turn into tax on the u.s. citizens, which, incidentally, blacks end up paying a portion for as well. So not only are we raped, pillaged, and pilloried, we are told that everything is just fine, please help us fight these fake wars for us, here's your "freedom" and please pay us for it.
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[you have blocked whoreable, hide comment] +1 digg by whoreable 2 hours ago
So, hows the Kool-Aid?
Hide 1 reply to this comment (most popular has 1 digg)
+1 digg by Frnnkdlxx 14 minutes ago
So you agree that nothing I said was innacurate then?

also

I only drink water after i've made sure there is no flouride or chlorine in it. But by all means, you can eat the aspartame and wonder why you're having trouble concentrating because your iq is plummeting, my fellow America.


F'ing D-butt.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Tampa Bankruptcy: Rebuilding Credit

Tampa Bankruptcy:
Rebuilding Your Credit Quickly and Efficiently
After Bankruptcy

Those considering bankruptcy should always have a checklist to run through before making such a substantive move.
File a Credit Report
Your credit report has information which affects whether you can get a loan – and how much you will have to pay to borrow money. You want a copy of your credit report to:
make sure the information is accurate, complete, and up-to-date before you apply for a loan for a major purchase like a house or car, buy insurance, or apply for a job.
help you to guard against identity theft.

2. Examine Your Credit after bankruptcy
Those considering bankruptcy frequently worry that they will never get credit after a bankruptcy, or that it will be 10 years before they can get credit. Neither is true.

Can I keep a credit card out of the bankruptcy for use later?
If you owe money on a credit card at the time you file bankruptcy, you must list the card as a debt.
If you don't owe anything on the card, you don't have to give the credit card company notice of your bankruptcy. Note, however, that they may find out through other means and cancel the card as a precaution.

Can I get new credit after bankruptcy?

In today's competitive lending environment, credit is available to the recently bankrupt. It may be more expensive than before, and available with lower limits, but it will be offered. A secured credit card is usually available post bankruptcy at lower rates than unsecured cards.
Can I buy a house after filing bankruptcy?
Absolutely. Studies show that 18-24 months after a bankruptcy discharge, bankruptcy debtors can qualify for a loan on the same terms as if they had not filed bankruptcy
Is my credit record ruined by filing bankruptcy?
Bankruptcy in reality is no more harmful to your credit record than the financial circumstances that lead to the bankruptcy filing. It is much more important for your future financial health to look at your net worth (assets minus debts) than at your ability to borrow in the future.

Credit in Tampa
Tampa has made a name for itself in regards to streamlining the process from credit awareness to credit reconstruction. Here is one website in particular that easily spells out the steps towards securing oneself onto the path of credit stability:

The website spells out in 5 steps how to improve your credit rating. Here are a few:

Examining your reports carefully
Nearly every consumer has an error on at least one credit report from one of the major credit bureaus. Credit bureaus generate your report on information they receive from your creditors; they don't verify.
Keeping your credit report a true reflection of you is your responsibility. Get ready to clean and polish. Carefully look for everything from typing errors, outdated and incomplete information to inaccurate account histories. Make a thorough list of items you dispute and why.

Monday, February 18, 2008

Latest Message from Ron - Please Donate!

February 18, 2008


The DC neocons think their old dream is about to come true. They think they can defeat me in the Republican congressional primary in Texas on March 4th. And you know what? They may be right.

My opponent, who describes himself as a traditional conservative, is a dedicated servitor of all the special interests who have given us the disaster of recent years, from unconstitutional wars to a looming recession, from huge deficits to massive new welfare programs. A Republican operative allied with the worst forces in DC recently said: "Give what you can [to Ron Paul's opponent]. Ron Paul is running scared -- using his Presidential campaign's donors' money to subsidize a desperate last-minute attempt to save his Congressional seat." That is a lie, of course. It is illegal to use presidential campaign donations in my congressional race. The congressional campaign has to stand on its own. But so far, we have raised only about a third of what a well-funded effort would need. In my 10 terms in Congress, I have not only been able to serve my constituents, and help them, for example, negotiate federal red-tape. I have also been able to defend our principles of less spending, lower taxes, no inflation, and strict adherence to the Constitution.

Some people in DC laugh at the idea that I should obey my oath of office, and ask first of any proposed legislation, is it constitutional? But I know that you share my support for the vision of the framers. My friend Congressmen Wayne Gilchrest (R-Maryland) was just defeated in his primary election by a neocon fraud similar to the one I face. My friend Walter Jones (R-North Carolina) is under heavy pressure as well. People like our hand-picked opponents will do anything to gain and keep power. They represent everything that is wrong with DC. If I am defeated in the upcoming congressional primary, our ideas will be held to have been defeated as well. It will be proclaimed from the rooftops in DC that such "ridiculous and outmoded notions" as the free market, sound money, personal liberty, limited government, and a pro-American foreign policy are through. I am determined not to let this happen. All that you and I believe in is far too important to the future of our country, and to everyone and everything we love, to let the neocons dance on its grave. Please, help me stop the lies, the distortions, the pressure groups, the special interests that benefit from DC rip-offs.

There is still time to run radio and tv ads, to set up phone banks, to get out the vote. But unless you help, my reelection to Congress may be in jeopardy. Please help me return to Congress to fight for the people of my district, and for the ideas that can save our country from the path to trouble we are now on. I hesitated to ask you, since you have already done so much. But my wife Carol said, "When you need help, you ask your best friends." So I do ask you, to hold out your hand in support.


Please give today http://www.ronpaulforcongress.com, as generously and as quickly as you can.

Sincerely,
Ron

Sunday, February 17, 2008

movie

Monday, February 11, 2008

Who does the Media Adore?

A Statistical Analysis of Media coverage for the candidates:
Very Revealing. Notice how there is 0% for Ron Paul across the board and McCain gets more coverage than Barack Obama, when Barack is clearly the frontrunner of the entire pack?

http://www.journalism.org/node/9610

PEJ Campaign Coverage Index: Jan. 28 - Feb. 3, 2008McCain Wins the Coverage Battle as Media Move to Anoint Him
Printer-Friendly PDF Version E-mail The media’s coverage of the campaign last week seemed to reflect a growing consensus that the Republican and Democratic nomination fights were moving along two distinctly different trajectories.
With Florida winner John McCain getting about 75% more coverage than Mitt Romney, and with Mike Huckabee almost invisible, the press appeared conspicuously close to turning McCain into the presumptive nominee last week. In that Jan. 28-Feb. 3 period, which ran from the day before the Florida primary to two days before Super Tuesday, McCain generated more coverage than any candidate. And that coverage suggested a media “tiering” of the race, with McCain a heavy favorite over several also-rans. McCain had not necessarily put Mitt Romney away, but the press nearly had.
On the Democratic side—where Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were virtually equal in media attention for the third consecutive week—the tone and level of coverage anticipated a long and intense battle. The message here, which began two days after Obama’s victory in South Carolina, was that there would be no verdict soon. And for the second week in a row a non-candidate (this time, Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy) played an important role in the Democratic narrative.
Two candidates called it quits last week, and they also generated quite different coverage. Republican Rudy Giuliani, the early frontrunner whose candidacy expired in Florida, generated twice as much coverage as Democrat John Edwards, who was never able to crack the media’s “two company, three’s a crowd” view of the Democratic contest. But much of Giuliani’s coverage was a schadenfreude-saturated post-mortem attacking his candidacy.
These are some of the findings from Project for Excellence in Journalism’s fourth edition of the Campaign Coverage Index, a measure of which candidate is winning in the all-important race for media exposure. The Project will run the Index until nominees are selected in each party.
Last week was a big one for McCain. He beat Romney in Florida, and won the endorsements of Giuliani and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. In the first three weeks of the CCI, the gap between McCain and Romney never exceeded five points. Last week, however, McCain was a significant or dominant newsmaker in 37% of the campaign stories compared with only 21% for Romney. Both totals were up from the previous week, but McCain’s more than doubled—from 17% to 37%.
Giuliani, at 14%, matched his coverage from the week before. But Huckabee, who had earned a respectable 14% of coverage as recently as the week of Jan. 19 South Carolina primary, was down to just 2% last week, even though he is still running.
The parties’ overall battle for coverage was close, with the Democrats featured in 46% of the stories compared to 42% for the GOP.
One story line was also answered in the coverage last week: would the press consider the Democratic vote in Florida important? The Clinton campaign hoped they would, and she talked about the significance of the turnout there to make that happen. The answer was the press generally did not, leading MSNBC talk host Dan Abrams—who often accuses the media of anti-Clinton bias—to ask “how can so many ignore the results in Florida?” The Republican Florida primary was much more important to the media than the Democrats’ contest where no delegates were at stake. But if Florida was not a key part of the Democratic coverage last week, Clinton and Obama did attract major attention
For the week, Obama was a significant or dominant newsmaker in 34% of the campaign stories compared to 32% for Clinton. (Both candidates’ coverage dropped from the previous week when Obama nipped Clinton, 41% to 40%.) And Edwards was at 7% in his swan song week.
The wild card was Kennedy, who with his niece Caroline, delivered Obama a symbolically significant endorsement on Jan. 28. As a result, Kennedy was a dominant newsmaker (50% or more of the story) in 7% of the campaign stories last week.
During the week of the Democrats’ Jan. 26 South Carolina primary, the non-candidate newsmaker was Bill Clinton, whose aggressive campaign role made him a significant or dominant figure in 18% of the stories and generated numerous suggestions that he lower his profile. Last week he did, registering at only 6% on the Coverage Index.
The Campaign Coverage index, which will appear weekly until nominees are selected in each party, is an addition to PEJ’s NCI report, which tracks what stories the media covered in the previous week. The CCI offers a greater level of detail of the campaign coverage. That includes the percentage of stories in which a candidate played a significant role (as a subject of between 25% and 50% of the story) or a main newsmaker role (making up at least 50% of the story). The Index also identifies the key narratives in the reporting and the “Line of the Week,” a statement from a journalist or source that in our researchers’ estimation seems either to capture the story or is particularly colorful. PEJ’s News Coverage Index will not disappear. It will come at the bottom of the CCI.
The campaign also continued to overwhelm all other news in the national press. The story accounted for 51% of all the news measured by PEJ’s News Coverage Index in the week of Jan. 28-Feb. 3. That was the highest level for the campaign since that Index began in January 2007. The race for the White House consumed 49% of the network news airtime, 59% of the radio time, and 76% of the cable newshole. Since the beginning of the year, the campaign has swamped all other news, averaging 46% of the newshole per week. In all of 2007, only one story ever reached that level and that was the Virginia Tech massacre, which accounted for 51% of the coverage for just one week.
For McCain, the media narrative began with him locked in a tight race with Romney in Florida. The Jan. 29 New York Times described both candidates “trading attacks [and] aggressively courting voters across the Florida peninsula in a primary battle that could producer a clear front-runner…” The Florida win then cemented the idea of McCain as a frontrunner, if not a steamroller. A Jan. 30 FoxNews.com report on Google News described the Arizona Senator’s “wave of political momentum” in his race.
The next morning NBC’s Today show codified that momentum. “John McCain is very quickly consolidating Republican support,” correspondent David Gregory noted. “Mitt Romney’s only play left is to appear as the conservative alternative to John McCain, a job more difficult with Mike Huckabee still in the race…” By the time the weekend polls had hit, the press was portraying McCain on the cusp of victory. A Feb. 3 Washington Post story showed him up by 24 points over Romney in a national poll, a lead, the article concluded, that “gives him the opportunity to effectively wrap up the nomination with a strong showing Tuesday.”
In a week, the narrative had taken McCain from the Florida nail biter to the Super Tuesday Promised Land, a considerable journey.
As for Giuliani, his departure finally generated a fair amount of attention, just as his expected departure had a week earlier. (He had a lot more trouble generating attention before that). But the narrative was blunt and pretty universal.
“He was a terrible candidate,” Mark Shields put it on the Jan. 30 edition of PBS’ NewsHour. “The more he campaigned, the worse he did in every state…He didn’t seem very comfortable with people.”
As seems to be the case every week, Clinton and Obama were locked in the same one-on-one story line. The Kennedy endorsements, complete with the fiery rhetoric of the silver-maned Massachusetts Senator, generated plenty of coverage, with ABC’s Kate Snow speculating that “the Kennedy name could help in heavily Hispanic states, like New Mexico and Arizona.” Her ABC colleague David Wright went considerably farther, rhapsodizing that “today, the audacity of hope had its rendezvous with destiny.” But the most eagerly awaited event was the Jan. 31 debate, the first chance for the African-American and female candidate to square off directly. When it was over, the media verdict was summed up by CNN’s Bill Schneider. Writing for CNN.com on Feb. 1, he described it as an encounter that settled little. “In all, it was an unhelpful debate,” Schneider wrote. “They minimized their differences. Last night’s showdown will rally Democrats…but won’t help them make a decision.”
Perhaps, but media polls still showed Obama closing the gap. The new Washington Post-ABC survey found Clinton narrowly leading Obama nationally, 47% to 43%.
“Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.) are running roughly even nationally as the battle for the Democratic nomination heads into Tuesday's big round of primaries and caucuses,” the Feb. 3 Post story declared. “The Democratic contest is likely to keep going.”
And now, in the rest of the week’s news:
In other news, for the third week in a row, the troubled U.S. economy was the second-biggest story behind the campaign, as measured by the News Coverage Index for Jan. 28-Feb. 3. But at 7% of the newshole, it was down significantly from 19% the previous week. That was followed by President Bush’s State of the Union address at 6%. (In contrast, last year’s State of the Union was at 13% and tied for top story of the week.)
Rounding out the top-five story list was violence in Kenya (2%) and the conflict in Afghanistan (also at 2%). Once again, with the primary season reaching its peak, there is little oxygen for other news.
Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ

Media Exposure by Candidate
Main Newsmaker
Significant Presence
Total Percent of Campaign Stories
John McCain
25.0%
12.4%
37.4%
Barack Obama (D)
26.6
7.4
34.0
Hillary Clinton (D)
22.1
9.9
32.0
Mitt Romney (R)
11.1
10.2
21.3
Rudy Giulaini (R)
7.9
6.2
14.1
John Edwards (D)
5.5
1.7
7.2
Bill Clinton
2.0
4.0
6.0
Mike Huckabee (R)
1.0
1.0
2.0
Bill Richardson (D)
0
0.2
0.2
Ron Paul (R)
0
0
0
Total Number of Campaign Stories = 597

Top Overall Stories of the Week
Rank
Story
Percent of Newshole
1
2008 Campaign
51%
2
U.S. Economy
7
3
State of the Union
6
4
Kenya Elections and Violence
2
5
Afghanistan
2
6
Events in Iraq
2
7
Super Bowl
2
8
China
1
9
War on Terror
1
10
Pakistan
1
Click here to see the top ten stories for each media sector.
Click here to see the methodology for the Campaign Coverage Index.