the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge.
Two programming notes for you guys:(1) I’m going to fill in for Neal Boortz today on his nationally syndicated program. You can listen live from 8:30 a.m to 1:00 p.m. today by going to http://wsbradio.com. You can also call in at 1-877-310-2100.
(2) We’re going to be off for the 4th of July and if I really enjoy my vacation, I may sleep through the 5th as well. Have a wonderful Independence holiday.
1. The Third World Oscar Mayer Wiener
2. Best Workforces Are In Right-To-Work States, Survey Finds
3. Fourth of July: REPUBLICAN BREEDING GROUND!!!!!
4. Michele Bachmann: Don’t Forget Obamacare
5. A Union Card Only Goes So Far as UFT & NAACP Throw 7,000 Kids Under the Bus
6. The Delusion of Indispensability
7. George Soros Gives Little Lee Fang His Comeuppance
1. The Third World Oscar Mayer Wiener
t looked to me to be some sort of joke they intended to play on the producers. On yesterday’s Morning Joe, Time magazine’s Mark Halperin, asked his take on Barack Obama’s Wednesday press conference, said the President came off like a “dick.” That’s his word, not mine.
He said they might need a delay. The production crew may have been asleep at the switch. They did not delay it. It got out there on live television. Halperin apologized. MSNBC suspended him “indefinitely.” He said what a growing number of Republicans, Democrats, and people in the media think.
It’s a problem for Barack Obama.
But another problem is shaping up on the floor of the United States Senate. Marco Rubio, who is rapidly becoming one of the most impassioned champions for opposing the debt ceiling increase, said that Barack Obama’s class warfare soliloquy was not the rhetoric of the President of the United States, but of a third world leader.
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2. Best Workforces Are In Right-To-Work States, Survey Finds
This may just be a coincidence but, out of the 50 states, there are 22 states that do not force people to pay union dues as a condition of employment. Workers in these states are often viewed derisively by union extremists as being somehow inferior to their union counterparts. However, a new study published by CNBC may blow that myth out of the water.
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3. Fourth of July: REPUBLICAN BREEDING GROUND!!!!!
I suspect that the Democratic party probably doesn’t want to ever see this sentence from a Harvard statistical survey appear in a news story:
“Taken together, the results indicate that Fourth of July celebrations in the United States shape the nation’s political landscape by forming beliefs and increasing participation, primarily in favor of the Republican party.”
…for fairly obvious reasons . Short version: going to Fourth of July celebrations (using a statistical rule of thumb* of good weather = participation) as a child results in an increased possibility of voting Republican as an adult (it apparently doesn’t move the needle at all when it comes to voting Democratic). Oh, and progressives are why the Fourth became a public secular holiday in the first place**. Lastly: if you want to zap your kids into patriotism and/or Republicanism, the key dates to get them to a parade are from 7 to 10 for later partisan identification, and 15 to 18 for increased voter participation.
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4. Michele Bachmann: Don’t Forget Obamacare
The most effective proposal for dealing with the debt ceiling vote that has the backing of conservatives is the Cut, Cap, and Balance plan brought forth by the RSC. Accordingly, virtually every major conservative organization has coalesced around a pledge forcing all members of Congress to support the plan as a condition to raising the debt ceiling. The presidential candidates are also being recruited to sign the pledge, with Jim DeMint promising to support only those who sign to it.
Yesterday, Mitt Romney announced his support for the pledge, joining every other announced Republican candidate except Jon Huntsman and ….Michele Bachmann?
While Bachmann is a strong supporter of the RSC plan, she is still tepid about signing the pledge. CNN is reporting that Bachmann told DeMint she is still contemplating her support for the pledge because she wants it “to go a little further.” Bachmann said at a town hall in South Carolina that she would like to add the defunding of Obamacare to the pledge as another precondition to raising the debt ceiling.
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5. A Union Card Only Goes So Far as UFT & NAACP Throw 7,000 Kids Under the Bus
According to the union-member mom in this video (she also comes from a family of union members) she is not anti-union. However, this proud union member is a mother first and, in New York, there is a union that is trying to hurt her children.
Both the United Federation of Teachers and NAACP have filed a lawsuit that puts her children’s future education (and the future of 7,000 other New York children) in dire jeopardy–just as schools are set to open in a few more weeks. Last month’s lawsuit seeks to stop New York from closing 22 horribly failing schools and allowing for 17 charter schools to operate.
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6. The Delusion of Indispensability
There is something about political office that either drives many men to infidelity — and the belief that the old rules don’t apply to them — or attracts the sorts of men prone to infidelity and a belief in their own exemption from the rules. Just the last few years have been remarkable for the wave of public men confessing (or being found to have) a complete inability to keep their pants on around women other than their wives.
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7. George Soros Gives Little Lee Fang His Comeuppance
One of the most genuinely stupid and embarrassing things to ever appear at Think Progress — and that’s saying something — was a recent supposed takedown of the evil Koch Brothers by their supposedly nemesis, Little Lee Fang the ankle biting blogger.
Little Lee Fang tried to make a mountain out of something sinister called contango, a concept about which he clearly knew nothing and tried to make it into everything. Steve Maley picked it apart here.
Little Lee Fang’s “contango” moment was one of those times when even the media sympathetic to Think Progress had to sit back and utter a collective, “Damn, that was stupid.”
Well, Media Research Center has obtained hidden footage from inside the Center for American Progress of George Soros, Little Lee’s benefactor, giving him his comeuppance.
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