Weekly Top Long Reads

   By Donna Cole

 MediaPolitical tries to avoid politics as much as possible on the weekend and do my long form reading on other subjects I find interesting. These are the better articles, reviews and essays I came across last weekend, and I thought I'd start sharing them. Some of the stuff linked here is borderline political, and it's all lefty stuff, but I like to understand how my adversary thinks. So, if you see something here that might interest you and have time for a long read, give it a shot. Remember: Read, it makes you smart. Read stuff out of your normal comfort zone and it makes you even smarter.

Benghazi Facts and Fiction

    By Donna Cole


  The Washington Post's "Fact Checker" Glenn Kessler looks at the most recent Benghazi hearings and tries to dig out what is new and what is not. While Kessler is one of the better fact checkers in the media, many times what are facts can be quite subjective when put in the wrong person's hands. So, what did Kessler find out? And what does it all mean?

Goodbye Jodi

   By Donna Cole


 I am SO glad this Jodi Arias trial is over. My husband won't admit it, but he loves Nancy Grace on Court TV (or whatever they call that channel now). I tease him about it and talk about what a wacko she is, and that is an insult to other wackos, but she gets ratings by saying holier than thou over the top nonsense. That aside, I knew nothing about this trial, other than it was going ON and ON and ON, and Nancy was ranting and raving for what seemed forever.

I knew this would happen.

  By Donna Cole 


 Wait a minute. The way I understood things when Obama's Pentagon decided to let women into full combat rolls, being in the infantry, like Marines or 101st  Army Airborne, was that the deal was they had to carry the same load, hack out the same training, and at the end of the day be just as bad ass as the men.

Love, Egyptian Style

   By Donna Cole


 Luckily, I have never had the need for marriage counseling, but if I did I would hope to get better advice than what passes for counseling in Egypt today. When the so called Arab Spring spread from Tunisia to Egypt the liberal media fawned over what they believed was a flowering of democracy in the autocratic nation. The same liberal media that bends over backwards not to be critical of Muslim society. President Obama remained silent and offered no support for America's long time loyal ally, Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak, as his secular regime fell.


  The American left falsely believed some sort of liberalization was happening in Muslim society, and held up what was a relatively peaceful transition to a democratic process in Egypt as proof this was happening in the Islamic world. Those on the right were more skeptical of what democracy might bring for those countries, warned to be careful what you wish for, and questioned just how democratic those elections were. Tunisia is no better than before, Libya is a mess that we all know about, Syria is a bloodbath, and Egypt is, well, you can decide.

Government Funded Fraud

   By Donna Cole


 "Doctors at the prestigious John Hopkins Medical School have breakthrough genetic research that could lead to a quantum leap in cancer treatment published in the esteemed scientific journal Nature." That headline sounds like the makings of a Nobel Prize winner, and it probably had a good chance for one except for the fact that the research is fraudulent. In other words, the books were cooked.

MediaPolitical 2.0

   MediaPolitical Editor in Chief, Donna Cole

The past explains the present, and the future.

   By Donna Cole


 Many on the right thought that due to the dismal state of the economy that had shown no improvement under President Obama's leadership, and his failed policies leading to a bleak future outlook, the Republican candidate would win the 2012 election. No president had ever won reelection with such terrible economic numbers and after four years voters would no longer blame former President Bush is what they believed. While I had high hopes, and my prediction was that it was really possible for Romney to win, I knew it was a long shot and wouldn't be surprised or stunned if Obama won. And I wasn't.

Like Noonan, Like Parker, Like RINO

   By Donna Cole


 In her latest Washington Post op-ed, Kathleen Parker proves again what I have long said of her, "She is a Peggy Noonan Republican." That would be the former Reagan speech writer and current somewhat liberal for a conservative Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan. Parker's column is on the new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and the outrage over her decision to end telecommuting (working from home) by telling workers they have to come into the office and do what they get a paycheck for at the place that signs those paychecks. The people most upset, and thus most vocal, about this are work at home moms.

Zielinski Unglued

 By Donna Cole                                                                                                                

    This morning it was announced that the two and a half year long politically motivated John Doe Witch Hunt investigation of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker by the over zealous liberal Democrat Milwaukee County D.A. John Chisholm finally ended with no witches being found. Gov. Walker was cleared, and said to have done no, or been involved in any, wrong doing. This after D.A. Chisholm wasted millions of the county taxpayer's funds dragging in so-called witnesses before his not so secret grand jury, then allowing those witnesses names to be leaked to the Milwaukee Journal, which had it's own political motivations, and smeared on the this rag's pages.

Eat your peas. NOW!

   By Donna Cole


 First Lady Michelle Obama has taken to the pages of The Wall Street Journal with an op-ed telling the business world that it is good business to sell healthy food if you know what is good for you because she would hate for anything to happen to this nice business you have here.

ACU's Wisconsin Congressional Ratings

   By Donna Cole


 The American Conservative Union (ACU) has released it's yearly Ratings of the United States Congress (pdf) leading into next months Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) beginning March 14th. These rankings are for last year, 2012, the second session of the 112th Congress. ACU uses a 100 point scale, and ranks members based on their voting record. The higher the number, the more conservative the member is.

Lt. Gov. Kleefisch discrimination accusations; Answers and more questions

   By Donna Cole

 Last Friday (Jan.25th), Milwaukee Journal political watchdog reporter Dan Bice broke a story on his No Quarter blog that Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch's ex-chief of staff, Jeanne Tarantino, accused her former boss of age and sex discrimination. The accusation came in Waukesha County court, under oath, while being questioned by the lawyer for Mrs. Tarantino's ex-husband back on Dec. 28th, 2012. Upon review of the court documents, the case is all part of long drawn out divorce with money and support as the central issue.

May The Force be with you.

   By Donna Cole

 Yesterday, it was reported by several media outlets that someone had created a new petition on the White House website "We the People." On this site folks can start a petition and if they get more than 25,000 signatures supposedly President Obama will address the issue. This new petition called on the government to build a Death Star, like the one in the movie Star Wars. They said it would be good because the project would create a lot of jobs (among other things).

MediaPolitical Predictions and other election stuff you need to know

   By Donna Cole


 Last week, Charles Krauthammer summed up what this presidential election is about in one nice tidy sentence, "At stake is the relation between citizen and state, the very nature of the American social contract." While every four years we hear "this one" is the most important ever, this election is special because with an Obama victory the relationship Krauthammer wrote about will be fundamentally and forever changed. Taking this into account, let's take a look at the state of the race and what MediaPolitical knows, believes, thinks, or doesn't think, will happen. (Yes, some simple math is involved, you have been forewarned.)

MediaPolitical's thoughts on MSNBC's post debate coverage

   By Donna Cole

 My first analysis of tonight's debate from watching the post debate coverage is that the liberals at MSNBC are beyond excuse making, or hair on fire, they are angry. Public displays of anger is one of the hallmarks of liberalism, and they are publicly showing their rear ends tonight. As a pundit, MediaPolitical is embarrassed how they are behaving.

Red Meat

   By Donna Cole


 After the fire had just died down to a smolder over Mitt Romney's comments on President Obama's response to the attack on our Libyan consulate the left wing media's hair is ablaze again over what he said to a donor at a private $50,000 a plate fundraiser about the 47% of Americans who pay no federal income tax. They are high with delight and giddy with glee over their latest big gotcha.

Obama the War Criminal ? No, it can't be.

   By Donna Cole


  MediaPolitical found an interesting little editorial in Saturday's New York Times. It seems the Obama administration has tried to deny some prisoners at Guantanamo Bay access to their lawyers and a Federal Judge smacked down the Constitutional lawyer who also happens to be our President.

What was learned from the Democratic National Convention?

   By Donna Cole


 Thursday night, President Obama delivered his less than awe inspiring pitch for re-election and the 2012 Democratic National Convention came to an end. The liberal pundits were certainly for the most part let down with the President's speech, their reactions to it went from the speech was a dud, to the president was modest in his goals and didn't want to over promise, to it was adequate and this was a safe speech by a man confident he has re-election in the bag. But by all accounts, this speech will probably not be on Obama's greatest hits album, if it is, maybe the ninth tune on the B side.

Some thoughts on the Wisconsin senate race.

   By Donna Cole


 In May I wrote a column supporting Mark Neumann in the Republican senate primary. As time has gone on and we get closer to the primary, I must admit I have wavered somewhat in my support of Neumann. The reason is because I have gone from supporting the candidate I personally like the most to asking which one can beat Tammy Baldwin ?

Your future is trash.

   By Donna Cole


 Want to see the our economic future ? You don't need a crystal ball, just look in the garbage. Actually, you need to look at the number of rail carloads of garbage hauled as calculated by the Association of American Railroads. Economist Michael McDonough produced the following chart showing the correlation between waste carloads and GDP growth, and he used this methodology to predict the near 4% growth rate in 2010. (Credit to The Fix as my original source for this chart.)

Polls with a little psychology thrown in.

   By Donna Cole


 MediaPolitical has been digging through some recent polling data on the presidential race looking for interesting trend shifts and we found a few things worthy of deeper examination. The main two sets of data I am using are from the most recent Washington Post/ ABC News poll from 7/8/12 and the New York Times/ CBS News poll from 7/11-16/12.

Democrat Economics 101

   By Donna Cole


 It seems I have caught Ezra Klein at Wonkblog telling a fib. You know Ezra, the liberal economic wunderkind, Democrat business expert (who has never actually worked a day in the business sector), and sometime fill in host for Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show.


 We at MediaPolitical always find it humorous that the only so-called experts on economics, business and regulatory policy, that liberals can put forth are ones who never actually worked in the fields they are supposed to be experts in. They all come from academia, journalism, or some political background. Klein himself has a B.A. in political science, and besides working for Howard Dean's failed presidential bid in 2003 his whole career is in liberal biased journalism and left wing punditry.

So, you want to be like France ?

    By Donna Cole


 The NY Times' Paul Krugman was on CNBC's Squawk Box yesterday (7/11) talking about his ideas of what the government should do to fix the economy (video, runs just over 13 minutes). Krugman is probably the loudest voice of Keynesian economic theory in America, if not the world. He advocates things like massive government spending in times of economic trouble with governments taking on massive amounts of debt in order to get the cash to spend, then worry about that debt later when the economy improves, and high levels of taxation to support a welfare state. Keynesian economists always have this pay it later attitude, or as Keynes himself famously said, "In the long run we are all dead." He was basically saying not to worry about debt.

Dependency Day

   By Donna Cole

 Even though President Obama and Congressional Democrats claimed their Obamacare legislation was not a tax, we now know from the Supreme Court's ruling that it is in fact a tax. Of course the Democrats knew this all along, they just couldn't call the law a tax because they would have never been able to pass it. But Obamacare is more than a tax, and now that it has been ruled as Constitutional liberals have no problem calling it what it really is. Like calling it a tax, they would have never said these things before.

Racine Voter Fraud Exposed

   By Donna Cole

 Let's examine some of the known questionable things that happened in the 21st district recall election of Republican Sen.Van Wanggard, who was challenged by Democrat former state Sen. John Lehman.

The effects of Obamacare and Obamatax on you and me.

   By Donna Cole


 Now that 5 liberal judicial activists on the Supreme Court have ruled the government cannot mandate you to buy things but can tax you for not buying it, with those taxes going to subsidize those who cannot afford the tax on this non mandated item (I admit that is confusing, but it is how the Court ruled), you should get used to paying for other people's stuff. Insurance today, electric cars and solar panels tomorrow. But, let's talk about how this mandate will effect you and me with regards to health insurance. I will be rather candid in using my personal situation as an example.

The New Dixiecrats

   By Donna Cole

 For years and years the Democrat Party dominated southern politics, the Republican Party in the south was just a small side note. With the coming of the civil rights movement and efforts to end segregation in the south, many southern Democrats who opposed these things came to be known as Dixiecrats. These racists were obviously on the wrong side of history.

Andrea Mitchell reports her own liberal media bias

    By Donna Cole


 The story of NBC News' Chief Foreign Affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell running a highly edited clip of Mitt Romney on her MSNBC show, "Andrea Mitchell Reports", to make Romney look like an out of touch doofus has been widely reported on, but I wanted to also weigh in it.

Political Polarization, Liberal products and Liberal lies

   By Donna Cole


 Moving into this fall's election cycle, one of the key campaign arguments that President Obama, Congressional Democrats and their proxies in the liberal media are making is that all the hyperpartisanship in government, and the nation, is a product of the political right. The Democrats are presenting themselves as the reasonable ones and that the Republicans have become too conservative. It is these unreasonable Republicans who are stopping the President from moving forward with his policies and creating a polarized hyperpartisan environment, not only in Washington D.C., but in the nation as a whole.

Some free advise for Mitt Romney

   By Donna Cole

 The latest NY Times/ CBS News poll shows a full 68% of Americans want the Supreme Court to strike down Obamacare, with only 24% in favor of the Court allowing it to stand. The poll also shows 8% of Americans have no clue what planet they are on. (Don't know, no answer) These 8% of clueless folks always show up in national polls.

WaPo liberals try to spin the Wisconsin recall election

   By Donna Cole

 It appears to MediaPolitical that some of the liberal opinion writers at the Washington Post have now decided to start spinning what the Gov. Walker recall election is about. They want to add the reasoning of the recall to their mythology that all the polarization in politics comes from the political right and of course all fairy tales need monsters.