The Media’s Top 10 Economic Myths of 2007

10. Airlines are solely to blame for the unfriendly skies.
Media myth: Blame the airlines for all those flight delays; never mind the obsolete government-run agency creating the gridlock.

9. Consumer spending is the be-all, end-all of the economy.
Media myth: Without excessive consumer spending – especially at Christmastime – the U.S. economy will collapse.

8. The stock market is trouble, whether it goes up or down.
Media myth: One day the stock market can’t sustain growth; the next, we’re just one drop away from another crash.

7. Anyone who ‘denies’ global warming shouldn’t be taken seriously.
Media myth: Global warming could cause a ‘century of fires,’ just as it has created allergies and ended winter fashion. If we don’t do something now (i.e. spend hundreds of billions of dollars), it’s only going to get worse.

6. You’d better not eat/drink that!
Media myth: Forget the right to eat as you please; the nanny-state knows better.

5. Most Americans are losing their homes.
Media myth: Americans everywhere are losing their homes to foreclosure, and the housing bust is going to ruin the economy.

4. “Going Green” is good for America and business.
Media myth: Businesses are much better off if they go green, and that’s what people really want anyway.

3. Lenders are responsible for everyone’s debts.
Media myth: Drowning in red ink isn’t your fault; blame the guy who loaned you the money.

2. Free health care would be great!
Media myth: To save our children and the 47 million uninsured Americans, and to keep up with the rest of the world, we must have government-run health care.

1. The U.S. Economy is in recession.
Media myth: The U.S. economy is nearly in, or is in, a recession.

See The Truths:
Read The Full Article From the BMI

Clinton adviser: Obama drug use concern

A top adviser to Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign said Wednesday that Democrats should give more thought to Sen. Barack Obama's admissions of illegal drug use before they pick a presidential candidate.

Obama's campaign said the Clinton people were getting desperate. Clinton's campaign tried to distance itself from the remarks, and the adviser said later he regretted making them.
Bill Shaheen, a national co-chairman of Clinton's front-runner campaign, raised the issue during an interview with The Washington Post, posted on washingtonpost.com.

Shaheen, an attorney and veteran organizer, said much of Obama's background is unknown and could be a problem in November 2008 if he is the Democratic nominee. He said Republicans would work hard to discover new aspects of Obama's admittedly spotty youth.

"It'll be, 'When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?'" said Shaheen, whose wife, Jeanne, is the state's former governor and is running for the U.S. Senate next year.

"There are so many openings for Republican dirty tricks. It's hard to overcome," Shaheen said.
Clinton's campaign said it had nothing to do with his comments, and Shaheen said later he regretted them.

"I deeply regret the comments I made today and they were not authorized by the campaign in any way," Bill Shaheen said in an e-mail released by the campaign.

A campaign spokeswoman, Kathleen Strand, earlier had said "Senator Clinton is out every day talking about the issues that matter to the American people. These comments were not authorized or condoned by the campaign in any way."

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said in response to Shaheen's remarks:
"Hillary Clinton said attacking other Democrats is the fun part of this campaign, and now she's moved from Barack Obama's kindergarten years to his teenage years in an increasingly desperate effort to slow her slide in the polls. Senator Clinton's campaign is recycling old news that Barack Obama has been candid about in a book he wrote years ago, and he's talked about the lessons he's learned from these mistakes with young people all across the country. He plans on winning this campaign by focusing on the issues that actually matter to the American people."

Obama wrote about his teenage drug use in his memoir, "Dreams from My Father." His rivals have largely remained silent on the subject.

"Junkie. Pothead. That's where I'd been headed: the final fatal role of the young would-be black man," Obama wrote. Mostly he smoked marijuana and drank alcohol, he wrote, but occasionally he would snort cocaine when he could afford it.

Speaking to Manchester high school students earlier this month, Obama said he was hardly a model student and had experimented with drugs and alcohol.

"You know, I made some bad decisions that I've actually written about. You know, got into drinking. I experimented with drugs," he said. "There was a whole stretch of time that I didn't really apply myself a lot. It wasn't until I got out of high school and went to college that I started realizing, 'Man, I wasted a lot of time.'"

New polling shows Clinton and Obama basically tied in New Hampshire. A CNN-WMUR-TV poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire shows Clinton at 31 percent support, Obama at 30. The same poll had Obama trailing by 20 points in September.

Clinton's campaign has distributed its first flier that criticizes Obama's health care plan for leaving 15 million people without insurance. TV ads following the same theme also have been prepared.

"This is not the time to go back to the same old politics of, 'now I'm going to smack you over the head with a baseball bat and call into question your character,'" Obama co-chairman Ned Helms told reporters in a conference call earlier Wednesday, decrying what he said was Clinton's negative campaign.

In Iowa, Democratic presidential rival John Edwards said of the comments: "I reject it. I reject it, and I want nothing to do with that kind of politics."

By PHILIP ELLIOTT, Associated Press Writer
Posted on Yahoo News

Revisit the Clinton Record?

One of the Man from Hope's consistently amazing lines is that the press doesn't offer the Clintons enough credit for all their good works. The latest example came on the trail in Keene, N.H., where the Associated Press found him whining about how the press hasn't underlined the vast chasm in experience between his wife and Barack Obama. "Bill Clinton said Tuesday that if reporters covered the candidates' public records better, his wife's presidential bid would be far ahead of her rivals," reported the AP.

Clinton obviously believes his presidency was a Golden Era, a time when peace and prosperity graced America. The Clintons want the press to replay a sort of glowing Harry and Linda Thomason propaganda movie about The Way They Were, with a soundtrack by Barbra Streisand.

Oh, baloney. The last thing Bill or his wife want is for the press to scrutinize their public records. The media have been absolutely AWOL on this front for 15 years. He knows it, just as he knows that his bellyaching about the press will also succeed in keeping them at bay.

How easy it would be to make a list of all the things the press could do to clear the cobwebs with thorough investigations (as opposed to the infrequent and incomplete spurt of a few negative stories). Reporters could draw up a quick list of "old news" about Hillary Clinton's record of public malfeasance that Bill knows full well have never been resolved:

1. Hillary ordering around the White House staff to fire seven workers in the White House Travel Office for financial mismanagement, with Billy Dale accused of embezzlement. Hillary then lied to a grand jury about how she was not really involved in the firing scheme, even though staffers were writing there would be "hell to pay" if they didn't do Hillary's bidding. Billy Dale's life was ruined. Two years later, it took a jury two hours to acquit him of all charges. Why did she do that? What would voters think, Mr. President?

2. Hillary making a mysterious $100,000 profit off a $1,000 investment in cattle futures with Tyson Foods lawyer Jim Blair making her trades. Was this a bribe for the governor's wife? It certainly didn't fit Hillary's first fairytale explanation: that she made the trades just reading the Wall Street Journal. Would more focus on this still-unresolved scandal help Hillary's campaign, Mr. President?

3. Hillary's staffers rifling through Vince Foster's office for documents in the hours after Foster's death in Fort Marcy Park. One man seen leaving the scene with documents was White House aide and Hillary protege Craig Livingstone. What was he taking away? Why won't anyone in your administration give an honest answer, Mr. President?

4. Hillary's Rose Law Firm records "disappeared," only to reappear in the White House residence after years of requests for documents from the independent counsel investigating her lawyering for her corrupt business partner Jim McDougal. What were they doing right outside Hillary's private office, Mr. President?

5. Hillary demanding the need for a White House database of friends and enemies. The Clinton White House was found to be in possession of over 1,000 FBI files of Republican White House employees. At the center of the controversy again: Craig Livingstone, who told friends he was Hillary's hire. Why were they there? How were they used?

In each of these cases -- and so many more! -- the Clinton-adoring media pulled a collective hamstring and retired before the scandal was ever resolved.

According to the AP, Clinton also said "his wife's bipartisan work in the Senate proves she can accomplish her campaign's message of change, and that records matter more than rhetoric." But Hillary couldn't even get her massive health-care plan through a Democratic House and Senate. In Carl Bernstein's biography, he reported Hillary made enemies among Senate Democrats like Daniel Patrick Moynihan by threatening to "demonize" them if they didn't swallow her health plan whole. Does that sound like a formula for bipartisan rule in 2009?

Looking at Hillary's public record would also mean taking a serious look at her very liberal Senate voting record. She has a perfect 100 pro-abortion score with NARAL Pro-Choice America. Except for "gay marriage," she's pretty much perfect with the gay Human Rights Campaign lobby. She gets an F from the National Rifle Association. On fiscal issues, she gets an F from the National Taxpayers Union, a 14-percent score from Citizens Against Government Waste, and only a 6.7 percent score from Americans for Tax Reform. Her lifetime American Conservative Union rating is 9 percent.

At every turn, whether it is scandalous behavior or a scandalously liberal voting record, Bill Clinton knows full well that if the press were really focusing "like a laser beam" on Hillary's past, her poll ratings would be dropping, not skyrocketing.

By Brent Bozell III
Townhall.com

American Girl Dolls Made In China

They're marketed as the all-American girls, each representing a different period in American history. But CBS 11 found the American Girl dolls that teach our heritage aren't really American.

Susan Mobley has purchased several American Girl dolls over the years for her daughter, Heather. But the Mobleys recently discovered these dolls are only American in name. If you look closely, you'll see a tag on the box that says "Made in China."

"To have an American Girl doll made in China sounds like a contradiction, does it not?" said Dr. Daniel Howard, professor of Marketing at the SMU Cox School of Business.

He says it's all about cost. It's more expensive to manufacture the dolls in the U.S., which means the price of the $87 dolls would be even higher.

"I believe that there are many American consumers who would pay it simply for the knowledge, simply for the comfort of knowing that this doll was made in the good ol' U.S. of A," Dr. Howard said.

Nan Moon owns Plano-based American Joe Apparel. It's a product which is American in name and in it country of manufacture. Every supplier and every manufacturer is American.
"The cotton is being grown in either Texas or Georgia," she says. "The yarn is being made in South Carolina, and the fabric is made in Missouri."

Moon says it does cost more, but the quality is better. She says using the word "American" in a product but manufacturing it in another country can give consumers the wrong idea.
"I think it's misleading the public, but then again, we all have the capability to look and see where that product was made," she says.

Some moms we talked to outside the American Girl Boutique and Bistro at the Galleria were surprised about the dolls' true origin. But others we spoke to weren't surprised at all, and say they'll still buy American Girl dolls.

"It doesn't bother me as long as they continue to provide the kind of quality items my girls will enjoy," said shopper Wendy Bates.

Susan Mobley and her daughter say they're disappointed the dolls aren't American-made, but say the message the dolls represent should still be celebrated.

"I'm not pleased with where they're made, but I'm not going to stop buying them... I have to admit," Mobley said.

American Girl sent us this statement regarding the dolls' origin:
"Like the majority of the world's toys, American Girl products are manufactured in China, in addition to 18 other countries. All the design and conception work is done at the company's headquarters in Wisconsin."

And by the way, in case you're wondering, we did have a doll and its accessories tested for lead. Experts say the doll and its toys are perfectly safe.

By Ginger Allen
Dallas CBS 11 News

Huckabee, Romney, Church and State

By David Limbaugh

The surfacing of the "religion question" in the Republican presidential primary campaigns of both Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee has raised important issues and exposed much public confusion about the intersection of religion and politics.

Secularists feign sympathy with Romney for having to address the Mormon question in response to alleged anti-Mormon bigots but condemn him for failing in his speech to expressly include nonbelievers among those whose religious liberty he would safeguard.

This particular attack on Romney by the secularist bigot patrol reveals their own religious bigotry, their ignorance or their disingenuousness. It goes without saying that robust religious liberty includes the freedom to believe in any religion or not to believe at all.

But the secularists' attacks on Huckabee are more serious. They have taken him to task for identifying himself as a "Christian leader" in Iowa, with some saying he was exploiting Romney's Mormonism and also violating the spirit of the constitutional prohibition on requiring religious tests for public office.

In a campaign ad, Huckabee says, "Faith doesn't just influence me. It really defines me," and he identifies himself as a "Christian leader."

It's one thing to read the First Amendment Establishment Clause as prohibiting the slightest government endorsement of the Christian religion (while not demonstrating similar angst over government promotion of secular humanism, New Age-ism, Islam or Native American spirituality). But it's taking it to an entirely new level to say that it precludes public officeholders from allowing their Christian worldview to influence their policy preferences or governance.
Public officials cannot separate their worldview from their governance without gutting themselves into ciphers. Their policy agenda will necessarily reflect their value system. Voters in turn properly base their decisions on candidates in part on their respective values and how closely they resemble their own.

Cont... Townhall.com

ANOTHER CASE OF GUNS SAVING LIVES

OK - We have all just been made aware via the news media that several church goers were killed recently by a gun wielding teenager. The bigger story from my perspective as the "PA Citizen" is the story of lives saved because the church had the uncanny foresight to have an armed "Security Team" that took quick action and killed the mentally unbalanced gunman. How many lives were saved will never be known, but when you measure it against other similar occurrences when unarmed, helpless victims waited for assistance from law enforcement the difference may be drastic. Since response time by our boys in blue is sometimes hampered by distance, procedures they must follow once on the scene, and a fear of making a bad situation worse, another alternative must be considered. In my opinion, that alternative is "the right to carry a concealed weapon". Someone on the "inside" seeing what is going on, can save lives. This is the real story that is being ignored regarding the church shootings and the Heroes on the Church Security Team. Hats off to some real americans.

PA Citizen is a Blogger for In Defense of America

A Year Later, Signs of Progress Around the World

The world looks safer, friendlier, more hopeful than it did as we approached Christmastime last year.

Then, we were on the defensive, perhaps on the verge of defeat, in Iraq. The Europeans' attempts to persuade Iran to renounce nuclear weapons seemed to have failed. Hugo Chavez was using his near-dictatorial powers and the oil wealth of Venezuela to secure the election of opponents of the American "empire" in Latin America.

Today, things look different. And they suggest, to me at least, that the policies of the Bush administration, pilloried as bankrupt by the Democrats after their victory in congressional elections in November, have served American interests better than most Americans then thought.

Start with Iraq. The surge strategy, opposed by almost all Democrats in Congress and the party's presidential candidates, has clearly worked. Violence has sharply decreased; Iraqi Sunnis have turned against al-Qaida and toward the Shiite-dominated government; bottom-up reconciliation has gone forward in apparently all areas of the country. Polls show that despite minimal coverage in the mainstream media for many months, most Americans are coming to understand that the surge is working.

True, majorities still say that we should not have gone into Iraq in the first place. And George W. Bush's job rating has rebounded only a little, if at all. There is room for criticism of his record: If the surge has been so successful, why didn't he order it some months or even years earlier? But the prospect of a non-dictatorial Iraq, friendly to the United States, growing economically and peaceful enough to nurture civil society, is now within sight -- as it wasn't a year ago.

Then go to Iran. The National Intelligence Estimate unveiled Dec. 3 stated that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program back in 2003. But it also noted, though this didn't make the headlines, that the mullahs' regime is continuing its enrichment of uranium. Uranium enrichment is the single hardest part of making a deliverable nuclear weapon, and the NIE also stated that the mullahs could resume their nuclear weapons program anytime soon.

In the short run, the NIE will probably make it harder for us to persuade Russia and China, and perhaps the Europeans, to impose tougher sanctions on Iran. And it forecloses any possibility of a U.S. military attack, although my own not totally uninformed opinion is that there was no prospect of George W. Bush ordering one in any case. But note the date on which Iran allegedly stopped the weapons program: What happened in 2003? Is it possible that the major military action in Iraq and the capture of Saddam Hussein, which motivated Muammar Qaddafi to cancel Libya's nuclear weapons program, had the same effect on Iran's mullahs? If so, it was not as much of a blunder as so many Americans thought a year ago.

And then there's Venezuela. Hugo Chavez asked voters to make him president for life and give him the power to seize all private property. They declined by a 51 percent to 49 percent margin. The brave students who monitored voting sites might have prevented him from stealing this referendum.

We can be reasonably sure that Chavez will make more mischief in Latin America and undermine the vibrant democracy of next-door Colombia, and it's possible that by rejecting the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, congressional Democrats will do the latter, as well. But the rejection of Chavez's plan by the people in whose name he claims to speak is a shattering blow to his prestige that will resonate all across Latin America. It will amplify the words King Juan Carlos I, who has done more than anyone else to advance freedom and democracy in Spain and the Spanish-speaking world, addressed to him at a recent conference: "Why don't you just shut up?"

Not all these favorable events are the work of George W. Bush and the United States. Iraqi Sunnis started turning against al-Qaida even before the surge began, the mullahs (assuming the NIE is correct) may have moved partly out of fear that their own people would rise up against them, and the Venezuelans who rejected Chavez's referendum acted without much encouragement from the United States. So if the world does seem safer, American voters might forget that we still have many vicious enemies determined to inflict great harm on us and install a president who believes we can resume the holiday from history we seemed to be enjoying in the 1990s. But as Christmas approaches, we have more to be thankful for than we did this time last year.

By Michael Barone
Townhall.com
Photo by Caspar inc.