BREAKDOWN OF AMERICA

Chicago Teachers Asking for a 30% Raise over 2 Years

Robert — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 20:15:41 +0000

Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis wants a 30% pay increase for Chicago’s unionized teachers. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/education/ct-met-ctu-proposals-0217-20120217,0,6829485.story

New Voter Fraud Study Shows Problem Much Bigger than the Media Admits

pvadmin — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 17:41:59 +0000

When Project Veritas released our latest investigation into the shocking ease with which voter fraud can be committed in America, the mainstream media from Al Sharpton to Keith Olbermann immediately fell all over themselves claiming that voter fraud could never occur in numbers large enough to influence elections. They were wrong.

Project Veritas Investigates Voter Fraud In Minnesota 24 hours in Advance of today’s Presidential Caucus

pvadmin — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:48:06 +0000

In advance of the 20120 Presidential Caucus, Project Veritas' investigators visited the Land of 10,000 lakes yesterday and inquired with voter registration officials if they could register on behalf of others . . .

. . .including the names of today's NFL star quarterbacks:

Diabetes Warriors, Steve Cooksey, and the future of low-carb diets… VIDEO

admin — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:26:07 +0000

what does “giving nutritional advice” really mean and should a person who is not a Doctor be prevented from sharing it? What do you think? Are you too stupid to make up your mind on who you want to get advice from? Should they silence people so you don’t have a choice? Thoughts?!

I have been recently following the controversy surrounding Steve Cooksey and his website Diabetes-Warrior.net with great interest. If you do not know, Steve Cooksey is being investigated by the North Carolina Board of Dieticians for giving nutritional information on his website without a license.This is obviously a complex issue, but the more I look into it, it is also not simply a legal issue either, where a person is accused of allegedly giving advice he shouldn’t have been giving. In my opinion, it is a political one which invokes several important topics regarding the popularity and success of low-carb dieting and the abject failure of conventional dietary guidelines that are promulgated by government bodies.Specifically, as I see it, the ‘Cooksey Affair’ is a referendum in regards to the conventional wisdom of bodies like the American Diabetes Association and other dietary boards which have suggested and recommended over and over again that a diet that is based on a large amount of complex carb and a large amount of whole grains is healthy for diabetics. It is not.

via Diabetes Warriors, Steve Cooksey, and the future of low-carb diets… | Midwest PRS: Hand & Plastic Surgery.

VA House of Delegates Gives Me a Headache

Stephen Monteith — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:28:00 +0000

The House wants to change the rules of the GOP Primary to allow write-ins, due to the fact that only two of the candidates were willing to put in the work required to get on the ballot: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/virginia-politics/post/house-passes-bills-to-allow-primary-write-ins-change-primary-date/2012/02/02/gIQAlgu4kQ_blog.html Whether this move has been orchestrated by the Gingrich campaign or not, I don't care; it remains preposterous. Not only does the legislature have no business interfering in the state GOP's nominating process, to do so at the last minute smacks of bias and impropriety. I'll be investigating whether my own delegate was involved, and if so, then I'll be voting for someone else in the next election.
I sent a letter to Governor McDonnell through his website: http://www.governor.virginia.gov/ I advise each of you who cares about the integrity of the process to do the same, regardless of who you support in the primary (or the general, for that matter).
Re: Emergency Change to GOP Primary
The House of Delegates seeks to change the rules at the last minute. I'm sure you know the story, the backstory, and all the gory details. Governor, I have been a supporter of yours from the beginning, and no one has as much respect for you as I do. I was a "Blogger for McDonnell" during your campaign, and I was pleased with your recent endorsement of Mitt Romney for President. I'm sure you want to avoid the appearance of impropriety, but I want you to veto this rule change if it should pass the House and Senate. It's abominable, it's inexcusable, and it's blatantly partisan. Moreover, the legislature has no business changing the state party's rules for it. As Governor of Virginia and RGA Chairman, it is your duty to prevent this measure from going into effect, no matter who you've endorsed. Thank you for your time, sir.
Sincerely,

Stephen Monteith

(This post originally appeared on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/notes/stephen-mark-monteith/va-house-of-delegates-gives-me-a-headache/10150633978946083 )

Apparently, it didn’t matter …

Stephen Monteith — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 13:26:00 +0000

... that Mitt Romney won both New Hampshire and Florida with larger totals and larger percentages than the 2008 winner; or that he finished second in South Carolina, a state where he was expected to bomb, with more votes than 2008's winner; or that his win in Florida was not just in total number of votes, but also among nearly every demographic; or that he's been endorsed by Tea Party groups and activists in multiple states, as well as numerous conservative pundits and public servants. Some people still are making the ludicrous claim that he lacks broad appeal. There's a fallacy in thinking just because someone doesn't break 50% in a contest, especially if it's not a two-person race, it's evidence he's an unpopular figure.

... that Rick Santorum has stayed in the primary. Despite Newt Gingrich's assertion that conservatives can't coalesce behind a "Not Romney" candidate if there are multiple alternatives, it didn't make a difference in either South Carolina (where Gingrich won) or in Florida (where both Gingrich's and Santorum's totals combined still fell a good 18,000 votes short of Romney's total). There's a fallacy in thinking someone's failure to capture a particular group of voters, such as conservatives, is due to the presence of another candidate who also appeals to that group of voters; sometimes, it's because they're just not popular enough.

... that Romney "went negative". Despite the fact that Gingrich had already gone negative in South Carolina and won as a result, quite a few people tried to "warn" Romney (through various media outlets) that he would lose Florida, or perhaps even the general election, if he went negative. And yet, Romney won with an overwhelming margin. Also, for months now, the knock against Romney was that he was perceived as not aggressive enough, that he wouldn't be able to stand up to Barack Obama. But as soon as Romney fights Gingrich's fire with his own fire, his critics call it negative. Even if there is a difference between aggressive and negative campaigning and even if Romney did cross that line, there's a fallacy in thinking this will somehow hurt him in the general election when it has served both him and Gingrich so well in the primaries.

... that Sarah Palin and Herman Cain both endorsed Gingrich. Romney, as I mentioned before, had his share of conservative endorsements as well, though none are quite as ... recognizable as Palin is. I, personally, agree that the process should continue. The more victories he has over the rest of the field, the less room for doubt there will be in the minds of those who would dismiss his eventual nomination as unearned. On the other hand, Palin's endorsement of Gingrich, however unofficial it may be, has done more harm to her than it has done good to him. Romney did just as good among self-described conservatives in Florida as Gingrich did, and he certainly did better among women, two constituencies among whom Sarah Palin's endorsement should have helped Gingrich; but it didn't. As Romney's loss in South Carolina demonstrated, there's a fallacy in thinking a well-known conservative female governor's endorsement will count for much among conservative female voters.

... that Gingrich won South Carolina. In the ten days between that primary and Florida's, Gingrich's numbers in the latter state received the winner's bounce and then dropped back to their previous level. As we've seen throughout this election season, every candidate has a floor of support, some lower than others. A phantom swell of support has been granted to each candidate in turn: Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum. Ron Paul and Romney, perhaps by virtue of their previous primary runs, were immune to the phantom bounce, which seems to be the product of a group of voters who latched on to unfamiliar candidates for exactly the amount of time it took to get to know them and then abandoned them. Romney and Paul both rose in the polls as well, but they never fell because their rises weren't artificial. They both lost, technically, in Iowa and South Carolina, but they also improved on their previous runs (or at least didn't do any worse). Gingrich has now risen and fallen twice. I suspect his second rise, in South Carolina, came at Santorum's expense. I also suspect he won't have another. Since Romney's floor has always been higher than Gingrich's, "phantom voters" won't be enough in the future. There's a fallacy in thinking the nebulous popularity of one candidate will overcome the groundwork (and hard work) of another; especially when that other has already soundly outperformed the one in three out of four contests.

We've seen a lot of conventional wisdom countered in this race. The hyperinflated number of debates has been derided by nearly everyone, and yet it has helped even the score among the candidates, to an extent. Endorsements, both positive and negative, have proven less important than in previous years, perhaps because voters insist on making up their own minds moreso than before. And though the two frontrunners, Romney and Gingrich, have both been endowed by the Vocal Minority with unearned labels (Gingrich the Outsider and Romney the Liberal), the voters have largely ignored those narratives. But one thing hasn't changed: Organization matters. Iowa showed us that relying on either retail, Internet, or organization produced approximately equal results among the top three finishers. In later contests, the victory went to the master of all three. It would be a fallacy to assume the same advantage won't hold in the upcoming contests; especially the caucuses.

Rick Santorum in Las Vegas – Video

admin — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:40:48 +0000

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

James O’Keefe Sues the New Jersey Star-Ledger for Defamation after New Hampshire Voter Fraud Exposé

pvadmin — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 18:10:05 +0000

PARAMUS, NEW JERSEY- On New Hampshire Primary Day, Project Veritas, while violating no laws, exposed the ease in which voter fraud can occur in states lacking voter identification requirements.

Project Veritas' work has been praised New Hampshire's legislative leaders, yet the reaction also includes articles by large media organizations that stated false and defamatory statements and articles.

VIDEO: Jeopardy Contestants have no Idea Who Rachael Maddow is

Robert — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 23:38:39 +0000

Ballot-Box Zombies

pvadmin — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:48:19 +0000

National Review's Deroy Murdock covers Project Veritas' latest investigation on Voter Fraud:

James O’Keefe — the conservative video journalist whose hidden-camera sting operation doomed ACORN — struck again during the New Hampshire primary. O’Keefe’s organization, Project Veritas, dispatched three videographers to the Granite State. On January 10, they visited precincts in Manchester and Nashua and asked poll workers, one by one, if their voter rolls bore the names of several deceased people. Believing that O’Keefe’s collaborators were those registered, the poll workers handed out 10 ballots, never once asking for photo ID.