There is something you should know about the deal to cut federal spending that President Obama signed into law on Tuesday: It does not actually reduce federal spending.

By the end of the 10-year deal, the federal debt would be much larger than it is today.

Indeed, both the government and its debts will continue to grow faster than the American economy, primarily because the new law does not address federal spending on health care.

That is the reason that the ratings agency Standard & Poor’s and its rivals still are threatening to remove the United States from their lists of risk-free borrowers, although the other agencies, Moody’s and Fitch, both said Tuesday that they would watch and wait for now.

It is also the reason that many conservative Republicans refused to vote for the agreement, calling it a grossly inadequate answer to a pressing problem.

“The current deal to raise the debt ceiling doesn’t stop us from going over the fiscal cliff,” Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, wrote Monday in an open letter explaining his opposition. “At best, it slows us from going over it at 80 m.p.h. to going over it at 60 m.p.h..”

You get all that? After all this carping about whining all we’ve done is slowed the rate of growth, not made actual cuts. Contrary to what Washington says, there really is a difference between the two.

I love that even the New York Times isn’t buying the lies, and they’re Obama’s Cheerleader in Chief.

Source

After his acquittal on flimsy corruption charges, former Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan famously asked, “Which office do I go to get my reputation back?”

The Toyota Motor Co. and local attorney Tracy Eichhorn-Hicks must be asking the same thing right about now.

After 10 months of study, none other than the feds themselves have exonerated Toyota for its so-called electronic throttle malfunction, the subject of worldwide media attention and a litany of lawsuits.

“We enlisted the best and the brightest engineers to study Toyota’s electronics systems,” is how Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood put it, “and the verdict is in. There is no electronic-based cause for unintended acceleration in Toyotas.”

The official findings (made with the help of NASA engineers) essentially confirm earlier analysis done by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, along with Toyota’s own exhaustive investigations.

I rarely find myself in disagreement with Jason Lewis on anything, but on this issue, I have to say he’s just flat-out wrong.

Toyota gained a reputation, and rightly so, for ignoring safety issues and potential mechanical failures until they reached a scale large enough for a recall, and sometimes longer than that, long before this “sudden acceleration” incident. In fact, the LA Times did a huge article right around the time this story was percolating about Toyota’s poor history with recalls and safety concerns. Their findings? Toyota often hid the truth altogether.

A relevant quote from the LA Times article:

In the wake of Toyota’s announcement of the massive recall, The Times examined some of the ways the automaker has dealt with safety problems in recent years and found that:

* The automaker knew of a dangerous steering defect in vehicles including the 4Runner sport utility vehicle for years before issuing a recall in Japan in 2004. But it told regulators no recall was necessary in the U.S., despite having received dozens of complaints from drivers. Toyota said a subsequent investigation led it to order a U.S. recall in 2005.

* Toyota has paid cash settlements to people who say their vehicles have raced out of control, sometimes causing serious accidents, according to consumers and their attorneys. Other motorists who complained of acceleration problems with their vehicles have received buybacks under lemon laws.

* Although the sudden acceleration issue erupted publicly only in recent months, it has been festering for nearly a decade. A computerized search of NHTSA records by The Times has found Toyota issued eight previous recalls related to unintended acceleration since 2000, more than any other automaker.

* A former Toyota lawyer who handled safety litigation has sued the automaker, accusing it of engaging in a “calculated conspiracy to prevent the disclosure of damaging evidence” as part of a scheme to “prevent evidence of its vehicles’ structural shortcomings from becoming known” to plaintiffs lawyers, courts, NHTSA and the public.

The fact that Toyota’s culpability in the sudden acceleration issue has been determined to be zero is great for them. Congratulations. Their handling of the issue, however, along with handling of prior issues, is what made them a target for the federal government to begin with. It wasn’t just a campaign to discredit Toyota (although I wouldn’t be surprised if some of it was), it was a campaign to get Toyota to live up to the standards it patted itself on the back for having.

In all the incidents I quoted above, Toyota was either forced to act or acted after public pressure couldn’t be ignored any longer. It’ll be interesting to see if the damage they did to their own reputation will be something they try to fix or do better handling in future situations similar to this one.

Where does Toyota go to get its reputation back? I don’t know, but if they want to know where it went, they’d be better off looking at their front office for direction.

Oh, and just a side note; there was nothing electronic found wrong. That’s true. Toyota, however, did apply a different spacer to all recalled vehicles in an effort to change accelerator pedal behavior. Guess something was, in fact, wrong.

Lewis’ Op Ed

Just to refresh, if you go to my Platform page, under Abortion:

An abomination to life and those that believe in it. I’m still not sure how I feel about abortion in cases of rape/incest/molestation, but other than that, I’m pretty steadfast in how I feel about it. It must go. Period.

So when that friend said that those people shouldn’t be judged, I replied that they were correct, and we should not judge murderers because we don’t want to make them feel bad.  Of course, I do see the difference, but at times, that’s how that argument sounds to me.  As is usually the case, the very next post involved a child raped by an uncle and what did I think about children that are the product of molestation.  It’s amazing to me that every time you talk about something, the “ender” is always “What about the innocent children?” in this case, the innocent child who was molested by their “crazy uncle.”  I quoted a statistic from a 2000 report that showed that 13,000 out of 1.3 million abortions (1%) were done due to rape or molestation or incest and encouraged the person to not haul out 1% to justify 99%.

Interestingly, I finally got around to reading the study I cited from the WCBS news article (before I had only read the article which was a quick snapshot of the study) and lo and behold, some interesting stats…  Take a look at the “induced terminations” table.

It’s probably a tad hard to read, but the numbers are very interesting.  Seeing as New York City doesn’t track the reasons for abortions, I’m going to have to make a few leaps of faith here, but I’m going to make them in favor of the opposition just to prove a point.

In 2009, 87,273 abortions happened.  Of those, 73,235 (84%) were to women ages 20-40+.  14,038 (16%) of those were for women ages 19 and younger.

Let’s assume that every woman under the age of 19 had an abortion due to incest, rape, or molestation.  I understand that’s absolutely ridiculous, but look at the numbers; only 16% of abortions in my scenario would be because of forced sex of some kind, and we already know that number to be unreasonably high (which may compensate for rape in higher age groups, but you understand my point here)

Maybe we need to put that “what if” to bed and have open honest discussions about issues instead of hyperbolic blathering about things that just aren’t really happening.  I think that would be a good way to open a new year, don’t you?

Good for you, Weston!

See Chris’ post about Smorty here.

[tags]smorty[/tags]

Ottawa, Canada – The Canadian Coalition for Democracies (CCD) applauds Prime Minister Stephen Harper for taking a stand against exempting one religious group from the requirement of photo identification when voting.

“Prime Minister Harper is right to demand that all voters, regardless of their religion, be equal before the ballot box,” said Alastair Gordon, CCD President. “Permitting or accommodating the anonymity of a full Muslim veil or burqa at a polling station undermines the integrity of our electoral system.”

On April 19, Sun media reported that “Elections Canada has begun to contact Muslim organizations to gauge their feelings on how to accommodate veiled women if photo identification becomes necessary to cast a federal ballot… Sameer Zuberi, with the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations, said he spent 30 minutes on the telephone with an Elections Canada representative on Tuesday.” Following this consultation, Elections Canada appears to have bowed to sharia standards, agreeing to exempt women with face coverings, including full burqas, from the accepted practice of photo identification to which all other voters are, and should be, subjected.

“The risk is that once such a principle is accepted, we will face radical demands for its consistent application in other areas of our lives,” added Gordon. “Having said that photo ID is not required for one religious group for a transaction as important as voting, the same demand for sharia privileging can be made for driver’s licenses, passports, airport security passes, and other accepted mechanisms of personal accountability and public safety.”

A bedrock principle of our successful democracy is that people are open and identifiable. That openness has helped create the relatively safe, tolerant, pluralistic society that we enjoy today. Cloaked voting clearly breaches this principle.

“By agreeing to bend our electoral system to sharia demands, we not only undermine our democratic system, but create a precedent that will have potentially deadly consequences if extended into areas of public safety and national security,” added Gordon.

The Canadian Coalition for Democracies expresses special concern about reports that some public officials’ might favour a “solution” calling for fully-veiled voters to raise their veils exclusively to female electoral officials for identification purposes. Any such approach would constitute a grossly unacceptable enforcement of sharia gender sensibilities and inequalities by government personnel and processes. It would undermine gender equality and electoral integrity, and represent a constitutionally unacceptable affront to the human rights of male officials barred from the performance of their duties on this account.

Source

[tags]democracy, voting, islam[/tags]

“We believe technology is ready for primetime, and Dvorak is the man for the job,” said Ron Bloom, CEO and Co founder of PodShow. “Typical technology channels are really just listings of programming, featuring boring talking heads or uninformed rants. PodShow TECH will feature personality driven content with a healthy dose of attitude… fair, but not necessarily impartial… accurate but also exciting.”

Personality driven content? Holy crap what a load of bullshit that is.

First of all, the idea that “technology is ready for primetime” isn’t a new one. ZDTV / TechTV / G4-TechTV / G4 thought that and look how well that worked out.

Secondly, to say most tech channels are listings and boring talking heads is bullshit. TWiT has done more for podcasting and technology than anything Curry has ever touched including the most popular shows on Podshow, GeekBrief (which I love) and whatever the hell Adam Curry’s podcast is. None of Leo’s shows are boring or uninformed.

Cali, as much as I love her, sells herself as a cute perky host with a jones for tech. That’s her niche and I think she does it well. She’s quite informed and knowledgeable. Let’s not kid ourselves, though. GeekBrief is as much about style as it is about substance. There’s nothing wrong with that, but the idea that suddenly Podshow is going to move from the flamboyant Curry and the perky Cali to a more “edgy” and “personality-driven” format and that the person who’s going to lead that personality charge is JOHN C. FUCKING DVORAK (who I also love) is ludicrous. You don’t go “old media” to create revolutionary new media. Dvorak is as “old media” as it gets, and despite his knowledge of the industry, he’s not the kind of guy I’d want leading my new media technology venture.

The minute I heard this, I thought that Dvorak was hired for who he knows more than who he is. Adam Curry may have unintentionally said the same exact thing in a quote on the news release:

“In life, technology is no longer in the back row seat; it is now taking center stage… PodShow TECH will reflect that change,” says PodShow President and Co founder Adam Curry. “John is the perfect anchor, combining his legendary insight, on-camera personality and extensive rolodex to help us keep the channel fresh, informative, entertaining and relevant.”

Uh huh… That rolodex is a secondary thing.

Podshow has done right by its content creators, but Curry and Bloom have proven themselves to be a bunch of delusional asses with this release.

I did want to hit on one other thing, though. Personality-driven niche content doesn’t always play well. I brought up the comparison to Food Network in the title of this post. Here’s why.

In February, a notoriously brilliant man named Anthony Bourdain (if you don’t know him, wake the fuck up people) wrote the following…

I actually WATCH Food Network now and again, more often than not drawn in by the progressive horrors on screen. I find myself riveted by its awfulness, like watching a multi-car accident in slow motion. Mesmerized at the ascent of the Ready-Made bobblehead personalities, and the not-so-subtle shunting aside of the Old School chefs, I find myself de-constructing the not-terrible shows, imagining behind the scenes struggles and frustrations, and obsessing unhealthily on the Truly Awful ones. Screaming out loud at Sandra Lee in disbelief as she massacres another dish, then sits grinning, her face stretched into a terrifying rictus of faux cheer for the final triumphant presentation. I mourn for Mario..and Alton…Bobby and yes–even Emeril, nobly holding the fort while the TV empire he helped build crumbles like undercooked Bundt cake into a goo of Cheez Wiz around him.

Imagine Tech shows with cute girls, “edgy” content (think guitar riffs as that’s said) and “big” personalities.

It’s been done, guys, and it never works.

via Podshow.com

Police chief Timothy Hefferan has decided to drop the charges because the case was not winnable in court (completely ignoring the fact that it’s utterly ridiculous).

Despite still feeling strongly that Gannon broke the law, Hefferan said the single reason his department will not continue to prosecute the case is because it wasn’t winnable in court.

“The citizen complaint has no bearing on the outcome of my decision as far as what to do with the charges,” Hefferan said by telephone yesterday. “It was solely based on the facts of this case and not anything to do with the complaint.

“We sustained the allegation that the officer was discourteous to a member of the public. I’m admitting that, and I want to be above board on these things. We will take the necessary action with our employee. And, like we would normally do, we would never discuss the nature of that action might be.”

Gannon said from his home yesterday that the news was a “big weight off (his) shoulders,” but added that he still has outstanding issues with the police department that he wants resolved.

“This is huge coverup and has been from the beginning,” said Gannon. “I’ve seen these things on TV and you never think they really happen, but I’m in a big one right now.”

Oh yeah. Did you catch the important part of that section? The part where the police actually were jerks?

Oh, and despite the charges being dropped, Gannon will not have his recording equipment returned to him.

Hefferan said Gannon would not be able to recoup any of the videotapes or any of the recording equipment that police confiscated during their investigation.

“That material is still illegal. It would be like returning drugs to somebody because you can’t prove it. Plus, you’d have to have the consent of those involved and Detective Karlis has not consented.

“The department will maintain and destroy the evidence according to the normal protocol.”

Gannon is still considering suing the department for Karlis’ and other officers’ behavior and for Hefferan’s claims that the department won’t return the evidence.

I’m so glad this is a free country. Really. When you put signs up all over the place saying “Smile, you’re on jackass camera!” that should be enough of a warning. Apparently, the police officers who arrested Gannon aren’t that alert or intelligent, or in other words, perfectly suited for their job.

[tags]nashua, new hampshire, michael gannon[/tags]

So unpleased was Mrs. Greenberg that she contacted Thomas Hawk’s employer.

I wish I were kidding.

Despite the fact that Thomas made the post on his own time on his own blog, this insufferable bore decided to go after him at his place of business.

First she tries to discredit me as an insane person with personal problems who she doesn’t even think has kids (even though in my blog post about her I clearly state I’ve got four children, have photos of my four children up on flickr and elsewhere on my blog etc.) She tells this to a professional publication American Photo (whom I’ve asked for a retraction from and who never contacted me to verify her claims even though they pulled quotes from my same post that referenced that I had four kids).

Next, Jill tracks down my employer, an unrelated third party who has absolutely zero to do with my personal views and opinions and tries to apply pressure to get me to pull my post. She literally calls my boss this morning who has absolutely zero to do with any of my blogging. (By the way Jill, I blog from my own laptop on my own time). The last company who thought that they could intimidate me by involving my employer, an unrelated third party, went by the name PriceRitePhoto. I don’t think they are in business anymore but feel free to Google them to read the story.

And then her husband tells me that in his opinion I’m committing libel. I’m committing libel for having an opinion that what Jill is doing to these kids constitutes abuse. That to emotionally work these kids up is abusive. My opinion Robert Green. He goes on to tell me that if I want to discuss this further that I get a lawyer.

Read the whole thing here. Thomas makes some great points including that about the hypocrisy of someone saying torturing kids is free speech but criticizing someone who does it isn’t.

Well done, Thomas. Don’t back down buddy!

[tags]jill greenberg, photography, stupidity, hypocrites[/tags]

CREDIT CARD SIGNS

We apologize to any of our customers that have been offended by our signs regarding credit cards and minimium purchases. They have been updated. We are a small mom and pop ice cream company and have “asked” our customers to use their credit cards for purchases over $10. Most people don’t realize Visa and Mastercard charge us when you use your credit card. For example, if you buy a small ice cream with one crushin’ and charge it, the fees can be as much as 15%. We don’t want to raise our prices, but EVERYTHING is more expensive; gas, insurance, workman’s comp, TWC and we felt this was an area we could cut costs. If you have don’t have cash, feel free to use your credit card. We are only trying to hold off price increases.

Well, they still leave all the BS in, but at least they aren’t being jerks about accepting credit cards anymore. Guess they got a call from Visa or Mastercard informing them that their policy could get their ability to take credit cards yanked altogether.

Hey, guys. Here’s a suggestion.

Accept debit cards.

Most people who pay with a credit card are really paying with a debit card. I know for a fact the processing fees on pin-based transactions are lower than that on credit cards.

Just a thought.

Oh, and if your company is charging 15%, you may wanna consider finding a new company.

And one more thing… 13 locations is an awfully big mom and pop…

Just sayin’.

Amysicecream.com via Consumerist

[tags]amy’s ice creams, consumerist[/tags]

In a statement, Toussaint said before the court: “We were engaged in civil disobedience, we did so because we had to. It is the (Transit) Authority that is the chief law breaker in the transit system.”

Toussaint called the work stoppage a “defensive strike” to thwart the MTA’s attempt to create a two-tiered pension system.

Terry Meginniss, a lawyer for Transport Workers Union Local 100, added that “jail sentences do not serve any kind of purpose but vengeance.”

The judge will hear more arguments Wednesday regarding the $3 million in union fines and the automatic dues check-off for union members, Toussaint will be cross-examined tomorrow by MTA lawyers.

The union’s secretery treasurer Ed Watt, the no. 2 TWU official, received a $500 fine. The No. 3 member, Darlene Lawson, also got a $500 fine.

There was one light moment during the hearing when attorney Neil Abramson, representing the MTA, asked Toussaint if he was familiar with the agency’s accounting pratices.

“Two sets of books,” Toussiant [sic] quipped, referring to revelations in 2003 that the MTA kept a public and private set of financial figures.

Source: NY Newsday

[tags]twu, toussaint, strike, nyc, new york, transit[/tags]

Anyway, she had the stones to write me another e-mail. Yep, they never go away…

Dear Insignificant Thoughts:

Apparently someone has been doing something called “crawling the web” and emailing folks from my CPR address! I have received a million “out of office replies” but yours is the first odd posting I’ve seen. I googled myself (because I’m getting married soon and wanted to see if our wedding website was up) and saw this terribly odd posting on your blog, with my name and CPR’s name on it! My apologies, and I hope that you don’t think badly of the CPR Institute. I’m sure we’d appreciate it if you’d take that down (since I’m the membership director, I assume I get some googles) but our IT guy says this happens to a lot of people and because my email address is out there, anyone can mail from it. Do let me know if there is any information I can provide to help remove my name and association with CPR from this, ahem, “odd” conversation? You can contact me at any time using the information below. Thanks so much!

Best,
Annah Boyer
Membership Director
International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution
(CPR Institute)
www.cpradr.org

Apparently, Annah thinks I’m an idiot, so I had to put her in her place:

I have no problem with the CPR isntitute, but your e-mail was published in accordance with the site policies. Here’s a piece of advice. Next time you want to claim you didn’t send an e-mail, try making sure you didn’t send it from an inside corporate IP. The e-mail stands, since not only did that e-mail come from an inside CPR address, your current e-mail came from exactly that same address. Spammers and mail stealers are smart, but they aren’t that smart.

All the best with your wedding.

Vincent M. Ferrari
Webmaster
Insignificant Thoughts.com

You know, I would have had more respect for her, and probably even would’ve removed the post altogether if she had just said, “I screwed up and shouldn’t have wrote all that. Sorry.” Instead, she handed me a line of crap.

Sorry girlie. The post stays because just like the disclaimer on every page says, all e-mails sent to this domain are considered for publication.

Oh, and I think I speak for all of us when I say Congratulations on your upcoming wedding, Annah. I’m proud to be the top search result on Google for your name!

[tags]annah boyer, lifegem[/tags]

WASHINGTON (AP) – In a congressional election-year repudiation of President Bush, a House panel dominated by Republicans voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to block a Dubai-owned firm from taking control of some U.S port operations. Democrats clamored for a vote in the Senate, too.

By 62-2, the House Appropriations Committee voted to bar DP World, run by the government of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, from holding leases or contracts at U.S. ports. The landslide vote was the strongest signal yet that more than three weeks of White House efforts to stunt congressional opposition to the deal have not been successful.

Bush has promised to veto any such measure passed by Congress. But there is widespread public opposition to the deal and the GOP fears losing its advantage on the issue of national security in this fall’s elections.

The White House said the president’s position was unchanged.

“This is a national security issue,” said Rep. Jerry Lewis, the chairman of the House panel, adding that the legislation would “keep America’s ports in American hands.”

American ports should be in American hands. Lewis is 100% right. Let’s not forget that DP World actually enforces an embargo of Israeli goods in the Middle East. Frankly, any company that’s a party to such an agreement or action is not fit to do business in this country (don’t bring up the Cuban or Iraqi embargo; those aren’t embargoes set up because we don’t believe that either country has a right to exist in the first place, mmmmkay?)

Lots on the left are all offended by this sudden outpouring of what many have deemed jingoism, pointing out that there was no opposition to a UK firm operating the ports before DP World took them over. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I can speak for myself when I say I had no idea that any of our ports were controlled by foreign companies, and had I known, I wouldn’t have liked it then either. It’s not about UK, Arab (the buzzword flying around the left wing of the blogosphere and even some more soft-bellied right-wingers), or anything else that can be generated here, it’s a very simple concept that Jerry Lewis put into very simple words.

Keep American ports in American hands.

It really isn’t much more complicated than that.

[tags]Dubai Ports World, homeland security, ports, congress[/tags]

Yahoo! unbans Allah!
Thank god for that!
By John Oates
Published Wednesday 22nd February 2006 15:47 GMT

Yahoo! has reversed its decision to stop people registering Yahoo! IDs which include the letters “allah”.

The Reg was contacted yesterday by a reader – Ed Callahan – who was having trouble registering his mum – Linda Callahan – for a Verizon email address – provided through a Yahoo! portal.

But Yahoo! got in touch with us this morning to say it is now accepting Yahoo! identities which contain the letters “allah”. The Callahans will be overjoyed.

Yahoo! said in a statement: “We continuously evaluate abuse patterns in registration usernames to help prevent spam, fraud and other inappropriate behavior. A small number of people registered for IDs using specific terms with the sole purpose of promoting hate, and then used those IDs to post content that was harmful or threatening to others, thus violating Yahoo!’s Terms of Service.

“‘Allah’ was one word being used for these purposes, with instances tied to defamatory language. We took steps to help protect our users by prohibiting use of the term in Yahoo! usernames. We recently re-evaluated the term ‘Allah’ and users can now register for IDs with this word because it is no longer a significant target for abuse. We regularly evaluate this type of activity and will continue to make adjustments to our registration process to help foster a positive customer experience.”

Very interesting.

I wonder if they’ve ever yanked Jesus, God, Jehovah, Yahweh, Adonai, Hashem, or anything else to protect their respective religions and create a positive customer experience?

Hat tip to Jeff for pointing this one out.

[tags]allah, yahoo[/tags]

[tags]cyclopes, kitten[/tags]

Via Newsday:

Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan was roughed up at a Union Square rally on Monday, not by police officers who broke up the event, but by one of her own supporters.

Sheehan — whose eldest son, Army Spc. Casey Sheehan, 24, was killed in Iraq last year — was ending a speech when a group of officers surrounded 100 or so people attending the event.

As police officers arrested the event’s organizer, several of Sheehan’s assistants rushed to pull her out.

“I was speaking and someone grabbed my backpack and pulled me back pretty roughly,” said Sheehan…

Now… How many of the folks who jumped all over that story do you think are gonna print this followup?

On a related side note, Indymedia was sure to whip out the “repression” tag for this story and created the impression that it was police brutality and so on. So far, no corroborating evidence of these “facts” exists.

Why should we ponder a lie? Abortion rates were steadily declining until Bush came into office. See here.

To which I aptly responded that the data presented in that piece was not conclusive. It didn’t count a large sample of states, and couldn’t make projections for years we don’t have data for. Well, Factcheck.org, the liberals’ favorite site when it comes to proving everyone wrong has dissected that sample from that same opinion piece and found it sorely lacking as well…

The Birth of a Bad Statistic

The claim that abortions are rising again can be traced back to an opinion piece by Glen Harold Stassen, an ethics professor at Fuller Theological Seminary. His article originally appeared in a web and e-mail publication of Sojourners, a Christian magazine, in October 2004. Several other outlets, including the Houston Chronicle, also ran a similar piece co-authored by Stassen and journalist Gary Krane. The articles generated a good deal of discussion on a number of both liberal and conservative blogs.

Describing himself as “consistently pro-life,” Stassen reported that he “analyzed the data on abortion during the Bush presidency” and reached some “disturbing” conclusions. “Under President Bush, the decade-long trend of declining abortion rates appears to have reversed,” he said. “Given the trends of the 1990s, 52,000 more abortions occurred in the United States in 2002 than would have been expected before this change of direction.”

Stassen’s broad conclusion wasn’t justified by the sketchy information he cited, however. Furthermore, a primary organization he cited specifically as a source for historical data now contradicts him, saying abortions have continued to decline since Bush took office. More about that later.

Hark! What’s this, I see?

Cherrypicking Data

A close reading of Stassen’s article makes clear that he didn’t even pretend to have comprehensive national data on abortion rates. He said he looked at data from 16 states only — and didn’t even name most of them.

Stassen said that in the four states that had already posted statistics for three full years of Bush’s first term, he found that abortion was up. Twelve more states had posted statistics for two years of Bush’s term – 2001 and 2002 – and here the picture was mixed. According to Stassen, “Eight states saw an increase in abortion rates (14.6 percent average increase), and five saw a decrease (4.3 percent average).” A version of the piece in the Houston Chronicle reported instead that four saw a decrease with a 4.3 percent average.

That’s very interesting. A close reading makes that clear? Not to Barefoot Paul, it doesn’t!

This has nothing to do with Bush although indications are that the trend of declining abortion rates is reversing itself under his watch. It’s still nowhere near where it was prior to Clinton. You’ve already been given 2 cites with the hard numbers. A simple Google search of “abortion rate decline” will provide plenty more.

I was surprised when I first saw the article I referenced and spent quite a bit of time vetting it myself. If you really care about this issue, it would be wise to do the same.

Obviously not enough time. After the posting (at 9:26am) I shot it down a mere 17 minutes later with the same argument Factcheck.org is using in this very piece. But they don’t rely merely on vague “inconsistencies” in their piece. They continue to dissect this piece that Barefoot spent so much time vetting because this issue meant so much to him:

Besides the fact that Stassen claimed to have data only from 16 states, the Guttmacher Institute said it is likely that many of the states Stassen picked have higher abortion rates historically, have a higher concentration of population subgroups that tend to have more abortions, and see abortion rates rise more quickly when they do go up. Stassen himself named only Kentucky, Michigan, Pennyslvania and Colorado among the 16 states he says he studied, but his co-author on the Houston Chronicle article listed each state in a separate article posted on the Internet.

The Guttmacher Institute found that two of the states Stassen used had unreliable reporting systems. In Colorado , for instance, where Stassen claimed that rates “skyrocketed 111 percent,” the reporting procedure had been recently changed in order to compensate for historic underreporting. Guttmacher also found Arizona had an inconsistent reporting system.

So much for that… Ahh, but the final nail in the coffin comes here:

The Guttmacher Institute announced its findings May 19. Guttmacher analyzed available government data “as an interim measure until another provider census can be conducted” according to a news release. The interim study analyzed data from 43 states determined to have reliable state reporting systems.

What it found was that the number of abortions decreased nationwide – by 0.8% in 2001 and by another 0.8% in 2002. The abortion rate , which is the number of women having abortions relative to the total population, also decreased 1% in 2001 and 0.9% in 2002. That’s not as rapid a decrease as had been seen in earlier years, but it is a decrease nonetheless.

Now we know why Barefoot Paul is barefoot. He has to keep his shoes off lest his feet not fit in his mouth. Just a piece of advice to those willing to comment here. Don’t say something stupid or make a claim you can’t back up because I never forget what’s said in the comments section and I will smack you around with the truth whenever it comes out.

Source: Factcheck.org

As it turns out, the state has decided that the woman who complained needs to just cope because the plate is 100% legal:

The Department of Licensing yesterday dismissed a complaint against a vanity plate imprinted with “JOHN316.”

“The plate is not offensive under our rules and was never in danger of being canceled,” said Licensing Department Director Liz Luce.

And that’s that. I guess there’s hope for common sense after all. I wonder how the plaintiff in that case feels? Maybe we should just pray for her to come to her senses. She’ll love that.

Source: Seattle Post Intelligencer

The way Rep. Sanders has reacted to the revelatons, we think, indicates that he realizes how the situation looks. He claims the story was a lie, although the information came from public government records and was confirmed by his own staff, and he does not refute any of the facts in our report.

If Rep. Sanders believes the payments are on the up and up, a completely acceptable practice, he should come out and say so, instead of threatening not to speak with the media.

Yep. But he knows they’re shady and underhanded, they look bad, and he’s caught red-handed. So instead, he accuses everyone, including the public records which are filed by him, and his staff whom he has on the payroll.

One more paragraph of interest from the editorial appears at the top, and is really at the heart of Sanders’ problem:

None of this is illegal. The story did not state, or imply, that Rep. Sanders broke the law by hiring family members. An Associated Press story in Thursday’s paper points out that employing relatives is common practice among the nation’s lawmakers. It says about four dozen senators and representatives have hired family members for their campaign and political groups.

Of course, just because something is common practice and doesn’t break the law, doesn’t mean it’s totally kosher.

Which is what they actually said last week, but in his heart of heart, Sanders knows what he did doesn’t look right so he just calls it a lie (which it isn’t) and threatens to stop talking to the press.

Not exactly the actions of a guy with a clear conscience, are they?

Source: The Bennington Banner