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David Letterman Owes Palin and All Thinking Americans an Apology
Tweet Share on Facebook June 12, 2009 Comment (115)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.
Gov. Sarah Palin says comedian David Letterman owes the young women of this country an apology for making an off-color (and unfunny) joke about one of her daughters getting "knocked up" by New York Yankee third baseman Alex Rodriguez while she was traveling with 14-year-old daughter Willow to New York:
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New Poll Shows Democrats' Gender Gap Advantage Is Broad and Deep
Tweet Share on Facebook June 12, 2009 Comment (8)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.
Ah the gender gap! It has waxed and waned in the 30-some years since its discovery, but remained pretty solidly in the Democratic camp since it was first noticed by pollsters that women voters were more liberal than their male counterparts. Today the Gallup polling organization reaffirms that fact with a new poll showing:
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Round Up Hate-Promoters Now, Before Any More Holocaust Museum Attacks
Tweet Share on Facebook June 11, 2009 Comment (138)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.
Three incidents and counting.
If yesterday's Holocaust Museum slaying of security guard and national hero Stephen Tyrone Johns is not a clarion call for banning hate speech, I don't know what is. Playwright Janet Langhart Cohen appeared on CNN yesterday right after the shooting, as she wrote a play that was supposed to have been debuted at the Holocaust Museum last night. Her play is about Emmett Till, whose lynching helped launch the Civil Rights Movement, and Ann Frank, whose diary told the story of Holocaust victims in hiding in the Netherlands during World War II.
She said something must be done about ridding the Internet and the public dialogue of hate speech. I agree. Not only have we had three hate crime murders within the last two weeks (Mr. Johns, as noted above, Dr. George Tiller a week ago last Sunday, and Pvt. William Andrew Long by an American-born Muslim convert outside a recruiting station just before that.)
Now we have this quote from the so-called Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who used to be President Obama's pastor. Hate comes from among all peoples and all religions. He said this about his lack of communication with Barack Obama since he's been elected president, according to the AP:
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Obama Will Raise Your Taxes, Despite Campaign Promise
Tweet Share on Facebook June 11, 2009 Comment (8)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.
New numbers from Rasmussen Reports show few Americans believe their taxes will go up under the Obama administration. One wonders, what are these people thinking? Data released yesterday show only 36 percent of Americans believe their personal taxes will rise under President Obama. Guess they drank the campaign Kool-Aid when candidate Obama pledged he would raise taxes only on families with incomes above $250,000.
I blogged recently about proposals to fund the Obama healthcare reform program with taxes levied on other peoples' company sponsored health insurance. Hello, America: This means new taxes on benefits that are not taxed and it could hit working Americans at all levels of pay. The idea is not law yet--just a proposal. But if anyone but the poorest Americans believes he or she will be paying less in taxes by the end of this administration than at its beginning, that person needs to spend more time reading news reports.
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Obama's List of Flip-Flops Grows and Grows
Tweet Share on Facebook June 10, 2009 Comment (8)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.
President Obama is compiling a long and growing list of increasingly important flip-flops on critical U.S. policies. But this week's is a doozy among doozies. He is now urging passage of a law enacting PAYGO as a budgetary requirement some four months after sending Congress the most oversized budget ever amassed by a president.
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Another Hillary Clinton Basher Eats Crow
Tweet Share on Facebook June 10, 2009 Comment (12)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
I point you to the interesting but misguided meanderings of former Hillary Clinton foe Michelle Goldberg, who now believes Secretary of State Clinton is doing a bang-up job.
But if you read Goldberg's semi-apologia, you must also read Larry Johnson's brilliant take on how Goldberg exemplifies the beginning of the left wing's whitewash for "underestimating" Hillary Clinton.
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Sex-based Discrimination in Medical Trials Needs to End
Tweet Share on Facebook June 9, 2009 Comment (23)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.
This not just about health, it's also about politics: gender politics. A new major survey of government-funded and private clinical cancer trials shows women are not represented fairly in research published in the world's most prestigious medical journals. And if we're underrepresented in those trials, it's a safe bet we're not any better represented in less influential research trials.
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If Obama Taxes Healthcare Benefits, He's Finished
Tweet Share on Facebook June 9, 2009 Comment (20)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich spent most of his speech last night to the GOP's Senate & House dinner event (in Washington, D.C.) explaining how history will soon prove the Obama administration's policies are "disastrous."
President Obama has perhaps six months, if that, before we know whether his stimulus package will have revived the economy. It will take years before we know whether paying for his spending plan is better or worse for the economy than former President Bush's reckless stewardship.
But President Obama's copious public support will drop precipitously, I predict, when and if Congress decides to take middle-class taxpayers' health care benefits to pay for insurance for Americans who are too poor or too disorganized to provide it for themselves. His aides' double-speak on this issue has been incredible. From the AP:
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Is Harassment Lawsuit Why New York Mayor Bloomberg's Kissing Up to Women?
Tweet Share on Facebook June 8, 2009 Comment (1)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
New York City women: beware. Yes, Mayor Michael Bloomberg pro-choice. Yes, he's been a great dad to his two daughters (one of whom, Georgina, seems well on her way to becoming an Olympic equestrian). And yes, he's spending a small fortune running ads reminding female New York voters that he's their advocate on everything from choice, to ending domestic abuse, to improving education. But there's also this, from Newsday:
Bloomberg is cozying up to women at a time when his financial information company, Bloomberg LP, is being sued for discrimination. The mayor gave a deposition last month to answer questions related to the suits that allege the company discriminated against more than 80 women. Bloomberg left the company to run for mayor in 2001 and is not a defendant; the company has said the claims have no merit.
Hizzoner appears to have had nothing to do with the behavior that launched the lawsuit, but he also settled another lawsuit by one of his top executives that accused him of making repeated offensive remarks while he was still running Bloomberg LP. Stay tuned...
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Obama's True Colors: Appointee Opposes Abortion and Birth Control
Tweet Share on Facebook June 8, 2009 Comment (14)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.
Women's rights stalwart Frances Kissling questions why President Obama has appointed a woman as head of the Department Health and Humans Services's Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives who, according to Kissling, believes abortion should be illegal and opposes birth control--even for married couples. Assuming Ms. Kissling is correct about Alexia Kelley's views, it doesn't surprise me at all. Mr. Obama, aka, "I try to make everyone happy and in the process make no one happy," is merely feeling comfortable enough to show his true self, rather than staying true to promises he made to his supporters prior to being elected:
Bonnie Erbe
Bonnie Erbe is a contributing editor at U.S. News & World Report and hosts PBS's weekly news analysis program, To the Contrary with Bonnie Erbe. She also writes a weekly syndicated newspaper column for Scripps Howard News Service.
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