It may induce heartburn for political junkies to admit it, but elections are not decided by the hardcore, politically-minded, engaged partisans or ideologues on the Right or the Left. Sure, a motivated base is very important, but elections in our divided country are decided in the middle, by the moderates, independents, and undecideds.

So why do we tell these election-deciders, every single day, that the Liberal Democrats giving them their news are the “mainstream” ones?

What’s that make us, extremists?

Stop doing it. Stop calling “mainstream” those Liberal Democrats who are actively working to undermine everything you believe in.

Eighty percent of Americans do not identify as liberals. Liberal Democrats are, then, quite literally not the mainstream. They are the fringe.

“The Mainstream Media.” “The MSM.” Stop using these shorthand descriptions for our fringe adversaries in the media.

Yes, many of these outlets have large audiences. But that does not make the media outlet “mainstream.” Porn is far more popular than NBC or the New York Times, but its purveyors are not mainstream.

And no, the phrase is not simply too handy to change now. Seemingly overnight, we all embraced the term “death tax,” replacing that . . . other name we used to use to describe that tax. We can successfully reform our word choice again.

And it should start right now.

So what shall we now call the Liberal Democrat media institutions that include ABC, NBC/MSNBC, CBS, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times, CNN, NPR/PBS, PolitiFact and too many others?

Numerous alternate monikers are already floating out there:

The Drive-by Media. Rush’s term. Funny, but does not get at their partisan goals and ideological filter.

State-run or State-controlled Media. Also used by Limbaugh. Hilarious and true, but only makes sense when Democrats are running government. I think a term that works at all times is preferable.

Democrat-Media Complex, Democrat Media Complex, or just the Complex. Breitbart’s memorable phrasings that evoke Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex.” Given his wisdom and also for sentimental reasons, embracing Breitbart’s usage would be a smart, moving tribute to him (someone I never had the joy of meeting). Because I believe the Democrats and the Media are essentially the same institution, I would omit the hyphen; and since simply saying “the Complex” is a bit too sci-fi/insider baseball for the middle-roaders we are trying to reach, I think “Democrat Media Complex” is the best of the Breitbart formulations.

Leftist Media or Liberal Media. I like these terms and find them preferable to Mainstream Media, but they actually give these media outlets too much credit, as if their work is driven by philosophically sound underpinnings. In practice, these liberals have a much less elevated and more devastating goal: to elect Democrats in every race at all times. I believe our messaging to the moderates, independents and undecideds who decide elections should consistently remind them WHY they should be mindful of the bias in their news: because these media outlets are extensions of the Democrat Party.

The Democrat Media. This has been my preferred term. It cuts to the chase: they exist to elect Democrats.

The Liberal Democrat Media. A bit wordy, though accurate. Does allows for “LDM” to replace “MSM” shorthand.

The Elite Media. Newt’s formulation. It has some of the same problems as “Mainstream Media,” since “elite” is not always a pejorative. Princeton and Google are both elite institutions, to take two examples, but moderates feel pretty good about both (for some good reasons).

We could rebrand the Liberal Media this election cycle and make it stick. We don’t need anyone’s permission to do so. It starts the moment you and I stop using the inaccurate and self-defeating phrase “Mainstream Media” and start telling the truth about them.

So find a more accurate and more effective phrase that works for you, and just start using it. Encourage others to do the same. Will it singlehandedly save our nation? Of course not. But it’s a meaningful start that can begin RIGHT NOW.

For me, it’ll be the Democrat Media, or Democrat Media Complex, or on Twitter, where space is tight, the DMC (which sounds much like the DNC, or Democratic National Committee, but I actually see that as a feature, not a bug).

What’s it going to be for you, and why? Let’s hear it in the comments.

I am undecided so far this presidential cycle (other than pledging to work hard and vote for the GOP nominee against Barack Obama). Ronald Reagan is not running, and I am to the Right of all the major candidates. So I have left the primary battle to others and will decide for myself by April 3, the date of the Maryland primary.

But as I watch this crazy political year unfold, I am struck by some unanswered questions that supporters of Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have not adequately addressed. (I am focusing on the two frontrunners here.)

Mitt Romney

My unanswered concerns about Mitt Romney are these:

1- Romney has grown more conservative over the last 20 years. Is this political expedience or has he just grown smarter about the world? Romney supporters like Ann Coulter might say this does not matter, since the likelihood of him switching back again is remote – but I think it matters greatly in terms of selecting judges and the deals he will make with Senate Democrats (either because they are still the majority, or filibustering from the minority) on budget, entitlement and tax matters.

2- Related question: how can we be sure he will appoint conservative judges as good as Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Roberts throughout the federal courts, and put his presidency on the line to appoint such judges to the Supreme Court? If one of the Court’s current liberals creates the next Court vacancy and there is a GOP president, the entire Democratic Establishment will take this nation to the brink to protect Roe v. Wade. Union strikes, OWS/Obamaville violence, all out smears from the Democrat MSM – it will get ugly, and the pressure to “compromise” intense. We’ll need a very strong president not to cave and select a Souter in the name of domestic tranquility.

3- How can we be sure he will fight to repeal Obamacare in its entirety, and why has he persisted in his defense of Romneycare? (Did he not read Game Change, which recounts in stunning detail how Hillary Clinton’s steadfast or stubborn refusal to recant her support for the Iraq War cost her the nomination and thus the presidency?) How will Romney contrast his continued support for Romneycare against the unpopular and unconstitutional Obamacare, one of Obama’s biggest vulnerabilities?

4- After all these years running and all the money he and his allies have spent on his behalf, why can’t he seal the deal with GOP voters? What if he just does not “wear well” over time? What if he can’t energize independents this fall the way he has failed to captivate the GOP this primary season?

Newt Gingrich</strong

Something didn’t smell right. A woman with impeccable liberal credentials – Ivy League-educated, a former Slate staffer now writing for the New York Times, who lives in Brooklyn with her journalist hubby – pens a book about the Obamas’ marriage (The Obamas by Jodi Kantor). Sounds like an election year ad for The One’s re-election, right?

But then suddenly, the Democratic Media (what many folks wrongly call the “MSM” or “Mainstream Media” – 80% of Americans are not liberal, so what is “mainstream” about liberal propaganda?) began spirited attacks on the book, even before many of them had read it. The White House issued a statement criticizing the book. Most surprising, Michelle Obama herself was deployed to CBS to attack the book – and even shamefully played the race card to smear the author (did I mention Kantor quit Harvard Law to become a journalist?):

“I guess it’s just more interesting to imagine this conflicted situation here,” [Michelle Obama] said. “That’s been an image people have tried to paint of me since the day Barack announced, that I’m some kind of angry black woman.”

The over-the-top nature of the attacks seemed odd – which is why I had to read the book. Why the fury to kill this book?

It could be simply to limit the exposure of Kantor’s portrayal of this White House. As Toby Harnden of the UK’s Daily Mail noted:

[The Obamas] portrays Obama’s inner circle as riven by dissent and jealousy. Gibbs is quoted as saying that Valerie Jarrett, a long-time Obama friend who is so close to the couple that she holidays with them, was a liar and not someone he subsequently took “at all seriously as an adviser to the President of the United States”.

. . . The First Lady is portrayed as often unhappy and sullen and on occasions fiercely critical of her husband and his aides, who are fearful and unwilling to confront her.

But every White House has rivalries and dysfunction. Would they really expend the First Lady’s political capital about that? The reporting in the book is not devastating to the Obama reelection; at worst, it reinforces critiques conservatives have been making about the Obamas for years. In fact, the bulk of the book is a sympathetic portrayal of the First Couple. The author clearly admires the First Lady (and President) and conveys a strong, loving marriage.

Exploiting the Obama Family

What may have drawn the ire of the Obama White House is Kantor’s reporting that the Obama political operation intends to exploit America’s affection for the First Family to win crucial votes for a president who can’t run on his failed record.

Kantor would have to be destroyed – attacked as a racist! – and the book marginalized, then, because the White House does not want it known that Barack and Michelle Obama will mine Americans’ goodwill about them and their kids for partisan, political gain.

Of course, Beltway types will find this beyond obvious – politicians have been exploiting their popular relatives for generations: Chelsea Clinton, Barbara Bush, John John, even Checkers the dog and Pat Nixon’s cloth coat. But it’s like “Reality TV”: it works best when people believe it’s real.

Here are some other elements of the book that the Obamas do not want swing-state independents to hear.

Elitist and out of touch

A core element of the Obama myth as advanced by the Obama campaign and the “MSM” is that the Obamas are regular folks, just like you and me. She shops at Target! She gardens! They were paying off student loans just a few years ago! Whether running against the wealthy Mitt Romney, or Newt Gingrich and his past personal troubles, the idea of the Obamas as ‘regular folk’ is an irresistible narrative for Obama boosters to promote. Kantor’s book has delicious vignettes that puncture that myth.

[Of course, those who follow conservative blogs already know that the White House tipped off the Associated Press the last time Michelle went to Target - the entire visit was a staged campaign event to appeal to Jane Sixpack, with the AP a willing co-conspirator. But what percentage of swing state independents know that it was staged? For that matter, how many soccer moms know that President Obama ditched his wife and kids last month, after not seeing them for a week, for five hours of golf with buddies . . . on Christmas Eve?]

Kantor documents the elitism of the Obamas in hilarious detail. For example, she quotes Michelle Obama from a campaign speech in 2008 that received scant news media attention at the time (though National Review Online covered it and Bill Kristol actually wrote about it in his since-cancelled New York Times column):

“Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual—uninvolved, uninformed.”

Kantor also quotes Barack Obama to David Plouffe in 2006:

“I think I could probably do every job on the campaign better than the people I’ll hire to do it.”

And she quotes Obama in 2007, to a candidate to be his political director:

“I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.”

[She leaves out a similar, choice quotation from Michelle, from a Beverly Hills campaign event on June 13, 2011: "He knows more than the people briefing him."]

Their closest confidante, Valerie Jarrett, shares their view. Kantor quotes her talking to New Yorker editor David Remnick: Obama is “just too talented to do what ordinary people do.”

Kantor also writes about the Obamas’ trip for the President to accept his Nobel Peace Prize:

The trip spurred a thought the Obamas and their friends would voice to each other again and again as the president’s popularity continued to decline: the American public just did not appreciate their exceptional leader. The president “could get 70 or 80 percent of the vote anywhere but the U.S.,” Marty Nesbitt told Eric Whitaker indignantly.

And she reports on a White House breakfast Obama held for some of the Congressional Democrats who were tossed out by the voters in 2010, thanks to the Obama agenda. The group was “struck by Obama’s lack of regret.” She adds, summarizing the views of the (no doubt embittered) breakfast participants:

He seemed entirely sure he knew what was best for the country; he seemed to think that he was a better judge than the public.

Money

Another recurring theme of some of Kantor’s most damning anecdotes concerns the Obamas’ interest in money. Now, we all like nice, shiny things. The Obamas are no different. Yet, the myth perpetuated by the Obamas themselves and their “MSM” stenographers is that they are motivated by concern for others, that material things are unimportant to them.

That false narrative is how Obama could manage not to be laughed out of the room when he said in 2010: “I do think at some point you’ve made enough money.”

How many voters know that the Obamas have made more than $20,000,000 since the year 2000, including $5.5 million in 2009, the highest total ever reported by a presidential couple? More power to them, but can’t we tell the truth about it?

Michelle, meanwhile, told a crowd in Zanesville, Ohio in 2008:

“Don’t go into corporate America. . . . If you make that choice, as we did, to move out of the money-making industry into the helping industry, then your salaries respond.”

In 2005, the helping industry helped her with a salary of $316,000, and in their poorest year of the 21st century, the Obamas had to scrape by on $207,000.

But that is no longer enough. According to Kantor, they have come to love the lavish lifestyle the White House has afforded them.

Behind the scenes, aides said, the Obamas were concerned about money: the president’s books could only sell so many copies, and it would be years until he could write more and the first lady could write her own. … their lifestyle [in the White House] had grown fearsomely expensive.

Kantor mentions the time Michelle Obama wore $500 sneakers to a food bank photo op. [But she neglects to report on the $990 tote bag – tote bag! – Michelle brought along to a parent-teacher conference.]

She quotes the President, no doubt joking, but clearly reflecting how addictive the pampered lifestyle could become:

“When I leave office there are only two things I want. I want a plane and I want a valet.”

But the Obamas were living pretty nicely back in Chicago, so it can’t all be blamed on their time in the White House. How many Americans know that the Obamas had a personal chef in Chicago, and that they brought him onto the White House payroll in 2009? How about the fact that they pay their personal trainer to fly from Chicago each week for exercise sessions? (Flying the Obamas’ personal trainer in for weekly workouts will create an estimated 200 tons of carbon dioxide during Obama’s term in office, but maybe it takes a President with abs of steel to combat “global warming.”) And Kantor adds a new tidbit: Michelle Obama convinced their kids’ piano teacher to move with his wife from Chicago to Washington, DC so he could continue to give the Obama children piano lessons. It’s enough to make even Tiger Mom blush.

Again, if you have the money, great. Spend it as you like. It would just be nice if the Obamas vilified other successful people less, though one starts to suspect they find everyone’s success suspect except their own.

Women problems

Team Obama is understandably skittish about Obama’s support among women, due to the rough campaign against Hillary Clinton in 2008 and the raw feelings that created among many women, as well as the key role single women play in Obama’s political base (Obama and other Democrats increasingly have trouble getting votes from married women). Michelle and the kids are an important retaining wall to keep women from fleeing his camp in 2012.

But it was still stunning to read Kantor report that Barack Obama himself managed the pushback on the New York Times story in the fall of 2009 that the Obama White House is a boys club. Obama was “personally dictating talking points to the aides who would speak to the reporter,” she writes. (That the Obama White House is not a great place for women has since been confirmed by Ron Suskind’s book and others.)

Then, ten days after the Times story appeared, Obama consigliere Valerie Jarrett convened an unusual dinner meeting with Obama and the senior women working in the White House. The attempt to prove Obama can work with women did not go so well:

The attendees couldn’t quite tell if Obama really wanted to be there. He began by glancing at his watch . . . .

“MSM” eat their own for deviation from the (Democrat) party line

One of the most outrageous aspects of the coverage and reviews of the Kantor book (other than the First Lady’s race-baiting) has been the Democratic Media’s attacking Kantor for publishing the book without having interviewed the Obamas since 2009 – a talking point first advanced by the White House itself. Why did she not interview the First Couple after 2009? Because the Obamas strung her along then ultimately refused to grant her an interview!

Journalists should condemn, rather than parrot, the Obama White House suggestion that Kantor’s book should be ignored because she did not have a more recent interview. This is a blatant threat to journalists by the Obamas to cut off access for anyone who does not completely toe the Obama line. In any event, she conducted dozens of interviews with White House staff, as well as close friends of the Obamas. Since when can public figures block public discussion of themselves by refusing to sit for an interview?

That the “MSM” would embrace this line of attack is particularly shameful, since reporters have long decried how politicians (and other famous people) dole out access to reward lap-dog reporters and punish tough journalists.

Deppgate: the lavish Obama party kept hidden from the public

As you probably have already read (and if not, this is a great place to catch up on the story), Kantor reveals in her book that the White House held a glitzy and expensive Halloween party in 2009 that included actor Johnny Depp and director Tim Burton. White House aides, rightly concerned about how Americans might react to the over-the-top celebration as the American economy was in the toilet, decided to keep the role of Depp and Burton secret. They did not appear in the White House visitor logs, as conservative bloggers reported earlier this month; nor did the Democratic “MSM” Media report their involvement at the time.

When Kantor’s reporting about the secret party was revealed early this month, the White House responded by noting that there had been a media pool report, and even pictures, from a White House party that day that included the kids of military personnel and DC-area children. That was enough to brush back much of the media, and even fooled a writer at NRO.

But could the “MSM” have found Johnny Depp at the White House not newsworthy? Simply impossible. So either the White House or the media was covering it up. Check out this Reuters report, typical of much of the national media coverage: zero mention of Depp or the most extravagant excess of the party. Or check out the pool report, which again is focused on the wonderful outreach to area children and children of the military, but has no mention of the parts the White House wanted kept hidden from voters. The most interesting line of the pool report might be this (emphasis added):

As the pool was being ushered out, the president spoke briefly. He told the military families “We are so grateful to you,” especially those who are separated from family members. He thanked staffers and their children, at which point FLOTUS piped in, “They’re so cute!”

Maybe it was at that point, with media gone, that the real party took place.

Other random tidbits in the book

* During the 2003-04 Senate race, Michelle Obama ripped into then President Bush at an Edwardsville, Illinois campaign event, using surprising language for a would-be Senator’s wife:

. . . to hear a “rich, spoiled president” lecture about family values was insulting, she told the audience.

* Barack Obama’s staff developed a word to describe when he seemed unable to connect with regular people: “Barackward,” a combination of “Barack” and “awkward.” But Barackward is also a great shorthand for how Obama is taking our economy and our nation backward. The RNC is now trying to use it.

* Conspiracy freaks take note: Valerie Jarrett was raised in Iran!

* Kantor’s recreation of the Gibbs-Jarrett tussle is a great read. A nice summary of it is here.

* Kantor accuses former North Florida Democrat Allen Boyd of trading his vote on Obama’s jobs-killing energy bill in exchange for a visit by the First Lady to his district to try to help stave off his African-American primary challenger. (Trading your vote for personal gain is a felony, no?) Emanuel allegedly worked out the trade, and the First Lady did the event, though Kantor says Obama did not know she was being used to thwart an African-American challenger to the white Boyd. Kantor also says Michelle Obama’s staff did not tell her Rep. Boyd was planning to vote against Obamacare because “they were too afraid of how she would react.” Boyd narrowly won the primary against the challenger, and later voted for Obamacare after opposing it the first time around. But he lost the 2010 general election to GOP Rep. Steve Southerland. Boyd is now a lobbyist.

* The idea pushed by Democrats that Kantor is some sort of anti-Obama attack dog is obviously absurd. Consider this description of one of the most offensive episodes of Michelle Obama’s career, when she worked with David Axelrod to try to keep poor people of color out of her “nonprofit” hospital and push them off to local clinics, to reserve her hospital for those who could afford to pay full freight. Here is Kantor’s entire description of that scandal:

One of her big projects at the hospital had been to divert the tide of uninsured patients from the emergency room into local clinics where they could get regular primary care.

* Pathetic if true: “After an embarrassingly low bowling score became public during the presidential campaign [Obama bowled a 37 in Altoona, PA, before quitting after seven frames], he practiced in the White House basement alley, his wife poking fun at him for wanting to stay for just a few more frames.”

Kantor does not tell us if this was before or after the president went on The Tonight Show and mocked Special Olympics participants while discussing his bowling with Jay Leno.

* Michelle Obama tried to deflect Kantor’s reporting about Rahm Emanuel’s wariness of Michelle by saying that she had “never had a cross word” with him. The only problem is Kantor never suggested she had. Their battles were always conducted through third parties and over differing governing philosophies (and perhaps also stemmed from Rahm’s paranoia from having worked with Hillary Clinton when Bill was president). So her denial may be literally true, but does not contradict anything reported in Kantor’s book. Too bad CBS and other media outlets did not explain that.

* The White House spin also tried to dismiss Kantor’s book, in part, by calling it an “an overdramatization of old news.” Any time you hear the White House call something “old news” – Bill Clinton’s shop was a master at this – it means they are desperate to kill discussion of accurate information. Treat the phrase “old news” as a red flag for you to pay attention.

* There was a final, telling moment from that CBS interview with Michelle Obama designed to kill the Kantor book. After playing tape of the interview, the co-host of the CBS Morning Show, Charlie Rose, tried to ask a serious question of Gayle King, who had conducted the Michelle Obama interview. King replied that she thought Rose would ask about the First Lady’s dress. Rose ignored her idiotic comment and repeated his substantive question. King answered, but right before they went to a commercial King again brought up the dress and called out, as the shot faded, that Obama’s dress was from “J. Crew from four years ago!”

And so it goes, the Democrat Media desperately adhering to the myth, demolished by Kantor’s meticulous reporting, that Michelle and Barack are just like you and me. $500 shoes to feed the homeless? Nothing to see there, move along. Let’s talk about the 4 year-old dress and the obvious racism of any reporter who would challenge the Democrat narrative.

The attacks on Kantor appear to have worked. The book, foolishly released on January 10, while we all had unread Christmas and Hanukkah gifts sitting on our desks, had fallen to #95 on Amazon’s book sales rankings as of January 18. While some conservatives are discussing the book, Michelle’s attack seems to have killed the book’s most likely market – Democrat women. 30% of its Amazon reviews are from liberals who gave it one star (and most of whom have obviously not read it) – clearly responding to the First Lady’s messaging.

But Kantor and her publisher may have the last laugh. The paperback version is due out August 7, 2012, as the general election campaign heats up and just weeks before the Democratic Convention. Kantor, who has cause to feel embittered by how the Obamas derailed her book and suggested she is a bigot, has every incentive to pen a new foreward. What tidbits had she left on the cutting-room floor out of her respect for the First Family? What new reporting will she do between now and when the paperback version goes to press? Stay tuned. The Harvard Law dropout may yet even the score with the Harvard Law graduates in the White House.

The writer is a conservative activist and co-author of From Bailouts to Beer Summits.

As most of us were doing last minute Christmas and Hanukkah shopping last week, word spread that Daily Caller editor-in-chief Tucker Carlson had “won” in a charity auction dinner for six with Obama pals and unrepentant terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, at their home.

The meal is to occur by October 2012 and the proceeds of Carlson’s $2,500 bid will benefit the Illinois Humanities Council, a state and federally subsidized (and no doubt left-leaning) nonprofit. But lost amid the jokes urging Carlson to bring a food taster, or suggesting he bring along victims of the Weather Underground as his guests, is a serious issue about legitimizing unrepentant terrorists who targeted America. Carlson should not dine with them.

What is the case for attending? As Carlson wrote the Chicago Tribune:

“I bought the auction dinner because I support the important work of the Illinois Humanities Council,” Carlson emailed The Chicago Tribune. “Anything I can do to help.”

An articulate conservative like Carlson could certainly cause some discomfort dining with normal people who were his political opponents. Over appetizers, he could point out weaknesses in their liberal positions, then, over tofu foie gras, chide them about Obama’s failure in office.

And no doubt, this $2,500 is a sound marketing investment for Carlson’s website. Though securing the dinner days before Christmas was sub-optimal from a PR standpoint, the lead-up to the big event will offer many opportunities to drive eyeballs to the Daily Caller, much as his (admittedly gutsy) book party for disgraced felonious lobbyist Jack Abramoff probably did.

But Ayers and Dohrn are not ordinary political opponents. They are literal, not rhetorical, terrorists. Don’t take my word for it. But please, take them at their word.

How about Bill Ayers, in an interview published in the New York Times on September 11, 2001, perhaps the last thing ever read by some of the Americans in the World Trade Center that morning:

“I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.”

You see, before there was Osama bin Laden targeting Americans in terrorist attacks, there were Bill Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn. Or how about Ayers, again, writing after Obama entered politics, about Ayers’ bombing of the Pentagon on May 19, 1972:

“Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon. The sky was blue. The birds were singing. And the bastards were finally going to get what was coming to them.”

Just 23 years after that terrorist attack, Barack Obama would launch his political career at a meet-and-greet in his honor in the home of Ayers and Dohrn.

Ayers also participated in a terrorist bombing of the United States Capitol Building on March 1, 1971. (Thirty years later, Obama would accept a campaign donation from his famous terrorist pal.) And Ayers’ and Dohrn’s Weather Underground also targeted our soldiers, our police, and other targets.

Ayers even dedicated one of his manifestoes in 1974 to Sirhan Sirhan (among other, as Ayers disgustingly put it, “political prisoners”). Sirhan had gunned down Robert F. Kennedy just six years earlier in a terrorist attack that directly targeted our democracy.

(About the only thing Ayers has said that we should ignore was his famous admonition to “Bring the revolution home, kill your parents.” Much like Democrat Ted Turner, father of five, who ignored his own advice that people limit their family size to one or two kids ‘for the Earth,’ Democrat Bill Ayers was smart enough not to kill his own parents. After all, his daddy was a top dog at a coal-burning energy company, and long before he became a taxpayer-funded professor drone, Ayers needed his daddy to bankroll his violent lifestyle and later get his wife jobs. But I digress.)

Bernardine Dohrn was no less violent or contemptible in her hatred for innocent people and America. She actually served time to protect other fugitive, violent terrorists. Her moral compass can best be summed up with the only words anyone will remember of her once she passes on to Hell. I speak, of course, about her lavish praise for the Manson clan on December 27, 1969 (incidentally, 42 years ago today as I write this):

“Dig It. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, they even shoved a fork into a victim’s stomach! Wild!”

Is a witty conservative really going to make a monster like her ill at ease? Is dining with Carlson really going to make Ayers and Dohrn squirm? Believe that and you probably believe Iran’s dictators will abandon their nuclear weapons program out of a desire for “respect in the world community.”

These two are remorseless terrorists. The only reason they are not in prison right now is because liberals invented the “exclusionary rule,” which punishes innocent Americans, rather than public officials who break the law, when officials gather accurate information about violent crimes in ways that violate the Constitution. (But that’s an op-ed for another day.) Ayers and Dohrn skated because of officials’ errors and liberal-invented judicial doctrine.

But that does not mean we should treat them as normal human beings, which they are not. They are unrepentant terrorists, and terrorists should be shunned. People should not shake their hands, should refuse to sit with them on nonprofit boards, should refuse to blurb their books, should refuse to invite them to academic conferences, and yes, should refuse to dine with them.

They have made no efforts to atone for their crimes, none to compensate their victims, none to make right the wrongs they did to the American people and our great nation. Until those steps are taken, they should be outcasts, not lauded as wonderful people opening their home to a political opponent to help raise money for charity.

It looks like Carlson either has a mistaken view that sociopaths can feel embarrassment, or is partaking in a deplorable effort to generate page views for his website. More charitably, he might feel that anything that puts Ayers and Dohrn in the news before November 6, 2012 hurts Obama’s re-election prospects. But that is foolish on its face. How can a conservative’s dining with these two for charity advance the until-now-airtight argument that Obama was wrong to (among other things) launch his career in their living room and accept Ayers’ campaign donation and praise Ayers’ book on juvenile justice and serve on a nonprofit board with him (that wasted $50 million of Annenberg’s money with no improvement of Chicago’s schools)? Carlson’s stunt would undermine that truth.

Tucker, don’t dine with these terrorists. Sure, let them clean up their house, let them cook up a dinner for six (but remember how liberal Democrats treat their political opponents–see item #2), let them gussy up in their taxpayer-and-coal-burning-funded Sunday best, but then stand them up. No call. Just make them eat alone. Don’t legitimize terrorists with your presence. The page views ain’t worth it.

The writer is co-author of the 2012 Obama Calendar, From Bailouts to Beer Summits.

Remember that infamous 2008 New Jersey case against dating site eHarmony for not helping gays find dates? eHarmony folded in that battle faster than a lawn chair when the potato salad is all gone. Given that the dating site had long been associated with Christian conservatives, its decision has always puzzled me.

I recalled that capitulation today when I saw an article about settlement of litigation that will allow a gay sports league to continue to limit the number of straight players on its roster. As one who laments recent judicial evisceration of the first amendment’s free association rights, I cheer the federal district court’s pre-trial ruling in this case affirming the gay sports league’s free association rights.

It got me wondering who had given eHarmony the advice to fold in the New Jersey case. So I fired up Google, and nearly fell off my chair. The lead attorney in eHarmony’s capitulation to New Jersey in the gay dating case was none other than … Ted Olson, the conservative/libertarian lead attorney seeking to overturn California’s voter-passed Proposition 8, which blocked gay marriage in that state.

Small world.

eHarmony recently hired a former Zynga executive to be its new CEO, suggesting a possible IPO in its future. So don’t cry for eHarmony. Maybe clearing out litigation was important to prepare for a “liquidity event” – after all, a company exists to make money, not vindicate Constitutional rights. But I’d still love to know what Olson was recommending to his client back in 2008.

The writer is co-author of From Bailouts to Beer Summits, the 2012 Obama “Gaffe-a-Day” Calendar.

“We’re going to go bankrupt as a nation. Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’ The answer is yes, that’s what I’m telling you.”
–Vice President Joe Biden at an Alexandria, Virginia event to promote more government deficit spending, July 16, 2009.

Two years ago today, Vice President Joe Biden admitted the absurdity of the Obama Democrats’ position on the federal budget: we must burn down the village to save it. Or as he put it, the United States is going broke, and to fix it, we need to borrow and spend more money we don’t have.

That has been the Obama Doctrine since his election, right up through his most recent budget blueprint, which plans to add $13 TRILLION to our existing federal debt over the next decade.

Only someone who hates your kids and mine would plan to take $13 trillion more from our kids and grandkids over the next decade to spend on his pet projects.

But the sad truth is, many in the GOP establishment are not that far off from the Obama Democrats’ position in support of an endless sea of red ink.

The establishment cannot comprehend what conservative and Tea Party “wackos” find so alarming about a bankrupt US, or a generation for the first time handing over a weaker America to our kids than the one we inherited.

A significant part of the disconnect comes from politicians being so far divorced from the problems of daily life. Understand: there is no jobless/growthless recovery inside the Beltway. Here, it is morning in America. DC-area unemployment was just 5.7 % in May 2011. Forty-four states have higher unemployment than that, including 24 states with unemployment at least 50% higher; just six states have a lower rate than the DC area. The only major metropolitan area with housing prices rising over the last 12 months? The Beltway. In short, politicians live in Fantasy Land. (The Beltway is recession-proof because it takes a cut of every Federal tax dollar generously [and naively] sent here by Americans, but that’s an essay for another day.)

Living as they are in boom times, you can almost forgive politicians for not understanding that there are desolate downtown streets TODAY in York, PA, Naples, FL and San Jose, CA, to name just a few places where many people are struggling.

This creates opportunity, but also great danger for Republicans. If the GOP screws this up, they risk a credible conservative “spoiler” for the 2012 presidential race, as well as an imperiled House majority—not to mention primary defeats for some high-profile incumbents.

Nor will a phony deal protect the establishment from voter wrath. We know that “guaranteed” spending cuts promised six or more years from today are 100% fictitious; that “savings” in years 2 to 5 are mostly spurious; and that even “cuts” in years 0-2 can be gamed, as we saw in the bogus budget deal earlier this year.

There is another way. Daily, relentless truth telling to the American people that the days of eating our kids’ seed corn truly must end; that our future will be grim and jobless and growthless unless we rein in federal spending and end the war on job creators; and that everyone under 50 is going to have to save more for their own retirement.

The best hope for all of us is unleashing private sector economic growth—not phony bubbles—but real growth through innovation, increased productivity and good old hard work. We may even have to turn off the television once in a while. And we need adults in Washington who put the future of our nation ahead of their own power and greed.

That means a debt deal that cuts current spending now, not just through unenforceable and completely phony out year reductions. It also means amending the U.S. Constitution to limit federal spending to a sustainable portion of the private economy. And sure, replacing corporate welfare with pro-growth, lower corporate tax rates would be great. Who knows? Perhaps Obama’s Government Electric (GE) would even pay some U.S. taxes for a change.

Joe Biden is right about one thing. Absent extraordinary voter mobilization, “We’re going to go bankrupt as a nation.” If Obama is given a blank check now to keep weakening America with ruinous debt, we’ll retire the establishment of both parties on Election Day 16 months from now.

The writer is co-author of the page-per-day 2012 Obama Calendar, which will debut in October.

“After several meetings and phone calls, the rival legal analyses were submitted to Mr. Obama, who is a constitutional lawyer, and he made the decision.”
–The New York Times, June 17, 2011.

One of the more hilarious fictions in President Barack Obama’s biography is that of him as a constitutional lawyer, scholar, professor and expert. It was used during his first presidential campaign to give he of the wafer-thin resume some gravitas, and it will someday be used by a future Democratic President to try to get Obama on the U.S. Supreme Court.

In the meantime, it was trotted out again this week to support Obama’s decision to ignore the War Powers Act with respect to the war in Libya. The Act is supposed to limit the president’s ability to wage wars without Congressional involvement.

So what about his legal expertise? Let’s go to his friendly biographers:

“While most colleagues published by the pound, he never completed a single work of legal scholarship.”
–The New York Times on Obama’s 12 years teaching part-time at the University of Chicago Law School, July 30, 2008.

“Over the nine years that Obama’s law license was active in Illinois, he never handled a trial and mostly worked in teams of lawyers who drew up briefs and contracts in a variety of cases.”
–David Mendell, Obama: From Promise to Power (2007), p. 105.

About the only people who actually believe Obama is the law’s next Brandeis or Scalia are the Obamas. And something tells you Michelle is just repeating what she has heard from her hubby around the dinner table.

“I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.”
–Obama to a candidate to be his political director, 2007.

“Starting the first thing in the morning and going late into the night, this is a man who is hunched over briefing books. He reads every single word. He is gifted. He is able to retain, make notes, ask questions. He knows more than the people briefing him.”
–Michelle Obama at Beverly Hills campaign fundraiser at which tickets cost as much as $35,000 a piece, June 13, 2011.

(She did not mention the 73 rounds of golf he has played as President as of June 18, 2011.)

Barack Obama’s undistinguished legal career nevertheless far exceeds his record as a student of economics. His stewardship of the U.S. economy has been abysmal: high debt, high unemployment, low growth, crony socialism run amok. He summed it up best way back in 2004:

“I’m LeBron, baby.”
–Barack Obama, July 27, 2004.

Indeed he is. Lots of activity, great showmanship, high self-regard, but no titles.

####

Appendix: More from the NY Times on Obama and the War Powers Act:

President Obama rejected the views of top lawyers at the Pentagon and the Justice Department when he decided that he had the legal authority to continue American military participation in the air war in Libya without Congressional authorization, according to officials familiar with internal administration deliberations.
…
Presidents have the legal authority to override the legal conclusions of the Office of Legal Counsel and to act in a manner that is contrary to its advice, but it is extraordinarily rare for that to happen. Under normal circumstances, the office’s interpretation of the law is legally binding on the executive branch.
…
Still, the disclosure that key figures on the administration’s legal team disagreed with Mr. Obama’s legal view could fuel restiveness in Congress, where lawmakers from both parties this week strongly criticized the White House’s contention that the president could continue the Libya campaign without their authorization because the campaign was not “hostilities.”
…
After several meetings and phone calls, the rival legal analyses were submitted to Mr. Obama, who is a constitutional lawyer, and he made the decision.
…
The theory Mr. Obama embraced holds that American forces have not been in “hostilities” as envisioned by the War Powers Resolution at least since early April, when NATO took over the responsibility for the no-fly zone and the United States shifted to a supporting role providing refueling assistance and surveillance — although remotely piloted American drones are still periodically firing missiles.

###

The writer, whose legal career was every bit as undistinguished as the Obamas’ legal careers, has been researching Obama’s record for a project that will be unveiled this fall.

—–
This essay was cross-posted at TL4A.com.

By Steve Voeller and Michael Paranzino

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, March 28, 2011 will hold oral arguments in an important first amendment case that implicates public campaign financing schemes in jurisdictions across the country. So it should come as no surprise that outside groups asking the Court to rule against the first amendment interests in the case comprise a virtual Who’s Who of liberal activists.

The SEIU (the nation’s second largest union representing government workers), Ralph Nader-founded Public Citizen, former Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL), the Sierra Club and the Obama Administration have all weighed in with amicus briefs urging the Court to reject our position that the “matching funds” provision in Arizona’s “Clean Elections” law burdens the exercise of political speech that is at the core of what the first amendment to the Constitution protects.

[The case is Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett. Co-author Steve Voeller is President of the Arizona Free Enterprise Club (AZFEC).]

The “Matching Funds” Provision

Arizona’s “Clean Elections” law permits government financing of political campaigns. Candidates are permitted to decline the public financing and raise money from willing donors and spend their own money on their campaigns. The law includes a “matching funds” provision that provides additional government funds to all publicly-funded opponents of a privately-funded candidate, when that candidate, or independent groups supporting that candidate, spend more than a government-set threshold.

This punishes candidates and groups for robustly expressing their views because it provides government handouts to these speakers’ political opponents specifically in response to their amount of political speech. Thus it tries to do indirectly what it obviously could not do directly: punish speakers who speak in amounts or at times the government disapproves of.

The law also institutionalizes a pro-big government bias into election campaigns. Through its unfair regime that disfavors privately-financed candidates, the law uses state power to pressure proponents of free markets and small government into either compromising their beliefs on the one hand (accepting the government money to be competitive), or being punished if they refuse to play along and refuse the government funding. Perhaps that explains part of the enthusiasm of liberal amici in support of Arizona’s law.

Where the case stands

The Circuit Courts of Appeals are split on whether the first amendment prohibits these “matching funds” provisions. Several Circuits, as well as many commentators, believed that the U.S. Supreme Court effectively banned such provisions in its Davis and Citizens United decisions. But the 9th Circuit ruled otherwise, overturning the Federal District Court in Arizona that had ruled the matching funds provision unconstitutional.

AZFEC et al. appealed to the Supreme Court, with oral arguments in the case to occur Monday. (The Institute for Justice and the Goldwater Institute are representing AZFEC and the other petitioners in the case.)

The Supreme Court, in Davis v. Federal Election Commission (2008), struck down part of the McCain-Feingold federal campaign finance law known as the “Millionaire’s Amendment.” Federal campaign finance law limits how much individuals can contribute to candidates, but the Millionaire’s Amendment tripled these limits when a candidate’s opponent spent more than $350,000 of their own money on their campaign. In striking down the provision, the Court noted that “it imposes an unprecedented penalty on any candidate who robustly exercises that First Amendment right.” The Court also strongly rejected the government’s argument that the restrictions on speech were justified by a compelling state interest: “The argument that a candidate’s speech may be restricted in order to ‘level electoral opportunities’ has ominous implications because it would permit Congress to arrogate the voters’ authority to evaluate the strengths of candidates competing for office.”

Then, in last year’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010), the Court ruled that government may not infringe on corporate speech in the form of independent campaign expenditures.

Davis and Citizens United, then, obliterate Arizona’s effort to punish the speech of candidates and independent groups by funding these speakers’ opponents if the government decides the amount of speech has been excessive. Arizona’s “matching funds” provision violates the first amendment and must be struck down.

Under current law, AZFEC’s political speech is burdened because speaking in certain ways or amounts means the government will step in and further directly fund its opponents. (Note that in Davis, the law found unconstitutional merely permitted additional fundraising; in Arizona, the government actually hands preferred candidates additional funds.) The government cannot permissibly punish AZFEC for robustly exercising its free speech rights.

The amicus briefs of the law’s supporters are telling. One, by liberal law professors, cites more than 20 cases, but curiously ignores the Davis case that closely resembles this one.

Then there is the rich irony of the Obama Administration’s amicus brief defending a public financing scheme after the President single-handedly gutted the presidential public financing system by violating his pledge to abide by it in 2008.

SEIU’s brief, meanwhile, notes (at p. 13) “the State’s interest in reigning in campaign fundraising” and suggests the state may take steps to make public financing attractive when campaigns “generate a more-than-normal amount of political spending.” Could it possibly be consistent with the Constitution for the government to be “reigning in” core political speech at the heart of the first amendment, or deciding when the amount of political speech is “more-than-normal”?

The brief of Public Citizen, the Sierra Club, and the League of Women Voters (among other liberal groups) is also instructive, because the groups spend several pages (pp. 3-7) delicately urging the Court not to use this case to take a fresh look at the constitutionality of the entire public financing concept used by the federal presidential system and by many state and local governments nationwide. These regimes, upheld in Buckley v. Valeo in 1976 but increasingly at odds with our understanding of the first amendment and notions of equal protection, could come crashing down if the Court were to confront head-on the constitutional infirmities of government-funded core political campaign speech. Their brief also takes pains to distinguish “trigger provisions” like Arizona’s “matching funds” provision, with what the groups consider the much more benign public financing upheld in Buckley, a not-too-subtle sign that they might be throwing Arizona’s law under the bus to try to salvage other public financing regimes.

But while these liberal groups are certainly correct that Arizona’s “matching funds” law can be struck down without overturning Buckley, the fact remains Buckley is under fire for some good reasons. To cite just one of the decision’s rationales that has not stood up well to the test of time, consider this holding from that case: governments may burden core political speech without violating the Constitution to, among other things, “free candidates from the rigors of fundraising.”

On Monday, none of that need be reached to find that the Arizona “matching funds” provision violates the first amendment to the Constitution. The state of Arizona may not punish candidates and groups for robustly expressing their views. Such core political speech is at the heart of the first amendment. We look forward to Monday’s oral argument at the U.S. Supreme Court.

###

Steve Voeller is President of the Arizona Free Enterprise Club, a 501(c)(4) advocacy group not affiliated with any other organization. Michael Paranzino is an occasional consultant to AZFEC.

Fourteen of 15 killers who had their jury-imposed death sentences reversed on March 9th by Illinois Democrat Gov. Pat Quinn had murdered women and girls during their killing sprees.

Don’t expect to read that in the Democratic Media (sometimes mistakenly referred to as the “MSM”). Other facts about the Illinois Democrat hug-a-killer program you won’t learn from the media:

* The 15 convicted killers given lifetime protection by Democrat Quinn had murdered a total of 40 people, including 26 women, 7 girls and 7 men. (This 2.7 victims per killer on death row is even higher than the national figures; the U.S. average for the past 35 years is about 2.2 human beings murdered by each killer sentenced to death.)

* Some combination of rape, child molestation, mutilation and dismemberment of victims also figures prominently in at least half of the killers’ case files. Many others had prior violent felony convictions, and at least two had been previously convicted of murder, had served time, and had been released to kill again. The killers also have more than 10 additional attempted murders among them.

* The lone killer among the 15 who did not have a (known) female murder victim had tried to kill two women (in addition to the men he killed) but both women survived their gunshot wounds.

* Nationally, women are overwhelmingly more likely to be victims of murder than be killers. This, of course, is also true of children. So laws that pamper killers effectively subsidize violence by men against women and children.

* Also nationally, murder victims are more often poor or working class, and more often people of color, than in the population at large.

* Not coincidentally, lawmakers banning the death penalty and Governors commuting sentences enjoy far more police protection than the typical murder victim enjoyed in their daily lives. Gov. Quinn, for example, has access to 24-hour police protection, which might explain, in part, his inability to understand the dangers regular folks face who don’t have his taxpayer-funded security detail.

These facts are vitally important to the nation’s death penalty debate, which is precisely why the media refuses to cover them.

Conservatives and libertarians need to re-engage in the death penalty debate. We should be actively working on behalf of the truly dispossessed: crime victims and their families. These are the truly suffering, truly forgotten in America.

What’s more, these death penalty bans will lead to more innocents being killed and victimized. Even the NY Times recognized in recent years the research demonstrating the deterrent effect of the death penalty, despite Democrats’ decades-long war to undermine it:

According to roughly a dozen recent studies, executions save lives. For each inmate put to death, the studies say, 3 to 18 murders are prevented.

(And I am not quoting The Blaze: that is from the NY Times.)

What about the prison guards who help protect us from violent predators? Illinois Democrats just greatly expanded the universe of prisoners with nothing to lose by targeting prison guards for violence. All prisoners serving life sentences (rather than just the few on death row) have now been given Kill A Guard Free cards by their Democrat friends. And if one should escape from prison or feel like attacking a nurse in the prison clinic – have at it, the Democrats say, we’ll be unable to impose a further penalty. (The fact that Democrats and George Soros-funded nonprofits are simultaneously fighting to end the death penalty and to give the incarcerated the right to vote is an op-ed for another day.)

It’s also important to note that once the death penalty is banned in favor of the (often phony) “life in prison without parole,” the Soros-backed Democrat front groups do not disband: they simply move to the next battle. In 2005, these groups successfully got the U.S. Supreme Court to invent a new constitutional right: an absolute right of 17 year-olds to kill without facing the death penalty. As I predicted at the time, once that new “right” was secured, the usual suspects simply turned around and launched campaigns to ban a sentence of “life in prison without parole” for teen predators. Sure enough, in 2010, Justice Kennedy was back in another 5-4 decision, inventing yet another new constitutional right: the right for “meaningful” opportunities for release for all non-killer teen predators. (Hint for those slow to see the penumbras: extending Constitutionally-mandated parole hearings to teen killers and eventually all adult predators is coming in future years.)

Not everyone from Illinois sides with the killers. President Abraham Lincoln supported the death penalty 150 years ago. President Barack Obama supports it today. “I believe there are some crimes…so heinous, so beyond the pale, that the community is justified in expressing the full measure of its outrage by meting out the ultimate punishment,” Obama wrote about the death penalty in The Audacity of Hope. (p. 58) Sure, his support for the death penalty may last about as long as his opposition to gay marriage – i.e., it will expire on Wednesday, November 7, 2012. But it is telling, and a bit sad, that Illinois Democrats have moved to the left even of our quite liberal president in order to protect killers from facing justice.

In a disturbing piece of political rhetoric on MSNBC on February 28, 2011, Gov. Quinn condemned efforts by Republicans in Wisconsin to eliminate collective bargaining by government union workers. Quinn suggested it was an effort to kick one’s adversary and “exterminate him.” Nine days later, Quinn personally reprieved 15 men who really did “exterminate” living and breathing people—and 82% of those exterminated were women and girls. Quinn can’t muster any concern for them.

“We the people, of the people, killing our own people,” Gov. Quinn lamented about the cruelty of the death penalty. Oh, wait—Quinn did not say that one. That lament was voiced by Anthony Mertz upon returning from Terre Haute, Ind., where he had gone to stand outside the execution of Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber. In recent years, Mertz has been on death row, convicted in Illinois of the 2001 rape, murder and mutilation of Eastern Illinois University student Shannon McNamara.

On March 9, 2011, Quinn signed an order guaranteeing that his ideological brother Mertz would never face the justice imposed by a jury of his peers for his brutal extermination of Shannon. Instead, Merts gets a life of movie nights, ice cream, sunsets, and a decent chance that some future liberal Democrat Governor or judge will one day grant him the freedom to kill another young woman.

——————–
A postscript and a silver lining: one way the media skews the death penalty debate in favor of killers is to fail to tell the stories of the victims. Sometimes, incredibly, particularly once a killer’s case is on appeal, media reports will not even name the victims – let alone describe the underlying crimes in detail. So here are the names of the 40 murder victims of Pat Quinn’s Evil 15 killers, whom he lovingly protected from justice with the stroke of his pen.

Pat Quinn does not care about these 40 people. But we should:

Shannon McNamara, Juan Estrada, Janet Mena, Dipak Patel, Ambalal Patel, Amy Schulz (age 10), Robin Brandley (sometimes spelled Robbin), Julie McGhee, Mary Ann Wells, Tammie Erwin, Denise Maney, Laura Uylaki, Cassandra Corum, Lynn Huber, Henrietta Banks, Stacey Frobel, Dzeneta Pasanbegovic, Ameal Pasanbegovic, Dorota Dziubak, Yolanda Gutierrez, Jessica Muniz (age 10), Kazimiera Paruch, Rose Newburn, Alfred Evans, Laura Marson (age 16), Lonna Sloop (age 12), Catherine McAvinchey, Kate Hanson-Tsao, Jimmy Tsao, Terrance Hanson, Mary Hanson, Jerry Weber, Mary Jill Oberweis, Virginia Johannessen, Kathleen Pate, Amanda Jeffers, Donnisha Hill (age 13, an African-American girl killed by a white man), Jeanine Nicarico (age 10), Melissa Ackerman (age 7), Donna Schnorr.

Now for the silver lining: prosecutors in Orange County, California, are seeking the extradition of one of Quinn’s Evil 15, Andrew Urdiales, so he can stand trial for the murders of five women in California. The Golden State currently has the death penalty, although Jerry Brown and the state’s Democrat lawmakers do not exactly install confidence in these matters. Still, perhaps California will stand up for women in this case where Illinois has not.

###

The writer formerly ran a nonprofit called Throw Away The Key, focused on protecting the public from violent felons.

[Cross-posted: TL4A.com]

Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of GE, was responsible a number of years ago for one of the great quotations of recent decades, so I do not criticize him or GE lightly. He said: “More people will graduate in the United States in 2006 with sports-exercise degrees than electrical-engineering degrees. So, if we want to be the massage capital of the world, we’re well on our way.”

His willingness to take on the University Industrial Complex for the costly and useless degrees they hand out – while not sparing young Americans’ complacency as our nation’s leading position in the world erodes – was courageous and much-needed. Unfortunately, it was noted by Newsweak magazine and Fareed Zakaria, so no one has ever heard the line. [I'm breaking my only-link-to-Newsweak-for-Kaus-and-Will rule because the Immelt line is so good.]

But with President Barack Obama making Immelt the willing front man for Obama’s latest head-fake on jobs and the economy, and ultimately his re-election campaign, Immelt has cast GE into the spotlight and sorry, Mr. Immelt, the spotlight is incandescent, not compact fluorescent, so Americans will actually be able to see the truth about your company. It ain’t pretty.

Let’s start with jobs. The media, of course, took the bait surrounding Immelt’s new position at the helm of Obama’s “Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.” The Christian Science Monitor, to take one example, embraced the White House spin in its headline: “Obama launches new push for US jobs, tapping GE’s Immelt to help.”

But tapping GE’s top honcho to generate jobs for Americans is like the old saw about the guy who loses money on each item he sells but intends to make it up in sales volume. Newsflash for the Lamestream Media: GE has been shedding US jobs under CEO Immelt, while adding jobs overseas, notably in China.

In 2001, the year Immelt became CEO, GE had 158,000 US employees. In 2009, GE employed just 134,000 Americans. Under Obama’s guy Immelt, GE has shed 24,000 American workers, or 15% of its US workforce.

Abroad it’s a different story. In 2001, GE employed 152,000 workers abroad. In 2009, that number had edged up to 154,000. GE’s non-US workforce now exceeds its American workers. [I have heard that this trend continued in 2010 but could not find an authoritative figure by press time.]

Speaking at GE this past week, Obama said he intends, with Immelt’s help, to increase US exports. Let’s hope he was not talking about GE’s record exporting US jobs.

Where GE does clearly excel is getting the federal government to give taxpayer dollars to GE. The stimulus bill was loaded with programs for GE, and of course GE and GE Capital tapped tens of billions in bailout funds. And when they are not taking direct cash handouts from US taxpayers, GE lobbies for programs to make it billions more.

Obamacare includes mandates that are expected to make GE billions in electronic medical records and other areas. And GE even lobbied in support of the (sadly bipartisan) 2007 law that will ban the inexpensive, sometimes US-made, bright incandescent light bulb by 2014, in favor of mercury-containing, expensive, foreign-made, dim compact fluorescents. GE recently shut its last US-based light bulb factory, in Virginia, as Chinese plants churn out almost the entire supply of mercury-laced CFCs. (By the way, Speaker Boehner, it’s late January: why hasn’t the House yet passed a repeal of the “efficiency standards” that effectively ban incandescents? Call it the No Mercury for our Kids Act.)

So GE exports US jobs and aggressively sucks at the taxpayer teat. How’s it doing on our economic and national security? Not so good. GE recently inked a deal with a Chinese government-owned aviation company that will transfer advanced GE knowhow to the Chinese communist party and Chinese military – yes, the folks with nukes pointed at our cities. As the NY Times reports it:

G.E., in the partnership with a state-owned Chinese company, will be sharing its most sophisticated airplane electronics, including some of the same technology used in Boeing’s new state-of-the-art 787 Dreamliner.
… But doing business in China often requires Western multinationals like G.E. to share technology and trade secrets that might eventually enable Chinese companies to beat them at their own game — by making the same products cheaper, if not better.
The other risk is that Western technologies could help China play catch-up in military aviation — a concern underscored last week when the Chinese military demonstrated a prototype of its version of the Pentagon’s stealth fighter, even though the plane could be a decade away from production.
…
In fact, the corporate competition for contracts on the C919 became a “frenzy,” said Mark Howes, president of Honeywell Aerospace Asia Pacific. The Chinese government, he said, had made it clear to Western companies that they should be “willing to share technology and know-how.”
But the G.E. avionics joint venture, analysts say, appears to be the deepest relationship yet and involves sharing the most confidential technology. And G.E.’s partner, Avic, also supplies China’s military aircraft and weapons systems.

This is not just GE creating a future national security threat by handing advanced dual-use (civilian and military) technology to a dictatorship (Senator Reid was right on that one, bless his heart) with a soaring defense budget. GE is also eating its seed corn to goose profits today. As the Times put it:

The real concern lies further head, according to a study of China’s strategy included in a report published in November by a bipartisan Congressional advisory group, the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
The group concluded that China’s huge state subsidies for its own industry, its requirements that foreign companies provide technology and know-how to gain access to the Chinese market, along with the close ties between its commercial and military aviation sectors all raise concerns and “bear watching.”
The big aviation equipment makers say that, by now, they are experienced at grappling with matters of technology transfer in China. In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Kent L. Statler, an executive vice president for commercial aviation at Rockwell Collins, observes that his employees often ask whether the company is trading its future for immediate sales in China.

So GE is just a typical company putting short-term profits ahead of longer-term interests of itself or our country. That’s what companies do, right? That’s what GE does, except in one area. In its ownership of NBC and MSNBC, GE has consistently walked away from profits to maintain the liberal bias in its news division. In this one area alone, GE has left hundreds of millions of dollars in profits on the table over the years by keeping its news reporting slanted Left even as Americans grew more conservative and even after Fox News showed how a network devoid of liberal bias can dominate the ratings. Imagine if NBC News had ever eliminated its liberal bias. It would enjoy mammoth ratings (and bigger profits) today. But GE ignored those potential profits. Handing sensitive aviation technology to the Chinese communists for a quick buck? Sure. Eliminating liberal bias to increase profits? GE has always said no thanks. It took Comcast buying control of MSNBC just to get Keith Olbermann fired!

All of this is a reminder why it is folly to merge in one’s mind the interests of the American people with that of corporations, or labor unions, for that matter. Always look to the fiduciary duty to sort these issues out. A corporation’s duty is to its current shareholders, to maximize their profits. Their duty is NOT to America. A union’s duty is similarly to maximize its members’ wealth, NOT to help customers or make money for shareholders or to help America. It is the government’s role to protect America’s vital interests. Unfortunately, too many of our politicians believe their role is to protect favored corporations, or to protect the politicians’ own jobs. This is why our country is in so much trouble.

GE exports jobs, lobbies very well for direct taxpayer handouts and laws and regulations to further enrich itself at Americans’ expense, hands over its advanced technology to our adversaries for short term profits but to the nation’s and the company’s future peril, while protecting liberal media bias at all costs.

Yes, Jeffery Immelt is the perfect man for Obama’s jobless recovery and weak foreign policy. But both of them need to be removed from government power by the voters on November 6, 2012.

The writer is a former Congressional Chief of Staff to a GOP Member who served on the International Relations Committee.

[Cross-posted at TL4A.]