In a column published yesterday on The Daily Beast, Kirsten Powers, who is also a FoxNews analyst, calls the leftist media on their hypocrisy over the Rush Limbaugh/Sandra Fluke controversy.
Powers doesn’t want anyone to give Limbaugh a break over calling Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute.” On the contrary, she says his apology is an inauthentic attempt to keep his advertisers from abandoning him. She’s probably right. Kirsten wants Rush to grovel more and to call Fluke on the phone, just President Obama did.
While I agree that Limbaugh’s comments were inappropriate and over the top, I predict that Fluke will parlay the resulting exposure into a lucrative media career. Watch out Rachel Madow and the lefties on The View — Sandra Fluke is your new competition. If living well is the best revenge, we’ll be seeing more of Fluke gloating than we’ll see or hear of Limbaugh groveling.
Powers has nothing to worry about. Fluke is no competition for Kirsten. Kirsten has integrity.
Which is why Powers calls out Chris Matthews, Keith Olberman and a couple of misogynists lefties I’ve never heard of (I’m sure they’ve never heard of me either), in graphic detail.
What if they said those horrible things about Jews or African-Americans, Powers asks rhetorically as if the answer was obvious.
The answer is obvious, but not the one Powers was implying. If Matthews or Olbermann said something racist about a Jew, nothing much would happen. If they said something racist about an African American, they would be boycotted and/or fired. Only Whoopie Goldberg, Jessie Jackson and rappers are allowed to make money using the N-word.
Bill Maher, the “grand pooh-bah of media mysogyny” is allowed to make money using the C-word. He can refer to conservative women like Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman and Rick Santorum’s wife in sexist and sexual terms, make money and get a pass from Gloria Steinem.
Powers says that unless the left stream media starts holding their resident misogynists to account, “the fight against media misogyny will continue to be perceived as a proxy war for the Democratic Party, not a fight for fair treatment of women in the public square.”
What fight against media misogyny? Powers just laid it out perfectly in her piece. The left isn’t fighting against media misogyny. They are the media misogynists!
The right doesn’t have a media misogyny problem. Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Megyn Kelly, Sarah Palin and a great deal of the FoxNews talent, including Powers are not demeaned by male members of the media right or center right. When male members of the media right, like Bill O’Reilly for example, criticise Maddow, The View women or Nancy Pelosi, he never does it in a misogynist manner. I’m sure someone can come up with right wing media types on the fringe who are consistently misogynistic, but no one with the prominence of Maher, Matthews or Olbermann.
Limbaugh is not consistently misogynistic, like those lefties. I don’t know what is in Rush’s heart, but if he was consistently misognynistic his career would be over. And not because of the left wouldn’t tolerate it. Rush’s listeners would not tolerate such behavior.
Rush Limbaugh didn’t apologise because the the outcry from the leftist media and the Democrats. He lives for and cashes in over outcrys from the left. He apologised because of the outcry from Republicans and his right-wing advertisers.
We’ll know the left is fighting against media misogyny and that the Democratic Party truly stands for women’s rights when President Obama’s Super PAC returns the $1 million dollars that Bill Maher donated.
Powers is too smart to have the audacity to hope that happens. Otherwise she would have called for the President’s PAC to return the money. She left that task up to The Weekly Standard.
In the meantime, the “fight against media misogyny” is a “proxy war for the Democratic Party,” just like this whole fabricated contraception controversy is a proxy war for the Democratic Party.
It has taken Sen. Menendez 17 years in Washington to offer a jobs proposal. The unfortunate thing is during Sen. Menendez’ time in the U.S. Senate unemployment has skyrocketed from 4.7% to 8.3% as he voted for higher taxes, more spending and job killing regulations. His only solution is to attack the private sector, oppose energy independence and job producing projects and demand higher taxes to fix our economy.
I will fight to close the spigot on Washington spending, reform our tax code so it is friendly to the taxpayer and small businesses and pass a balanced budget amendment that forces Congress to spend within its means rather than endless borrowing of money from China. Anything less is unacceptable.
Education Funding Task Force will Recommend Common Sense Reforms to End Abuse and Manipulation of School Funding Formula
Trenton, NJ – Today, Governor Chris Christie took another important step to move forward with common sense reforms of the state’s system of education funding by convening a task force of experts to root out and eliminate well-documented instances of abuse and manipulation of the school funding formula due to fraud in the Free and Reduced Price School Lunch Program. The Education Funding Task Force, created by Executive Order, will act on the Governor’s commitment to make every education dollar count and ensure funding is not being misdirected, but actually getting to those economically disadvantaged children who need it most.
“Providing a great education that prepares every single child in our state for college or a career has been a top priority of my Administration. For this reason, I’ve proposed a budget that increases state support for education to its highest level ever and an agenda of bold reforms to turn around failing schools,” said Governor Christie. “But how we spend education dollars in our schools is just as important as how we provide them. Funding must follow the child more closely and get to the students who need it most. This Task Force will help to root out and eliminate well-documented fraud and abuse in the Free and Reduced Price School Lunch Program, which has led to the possible misdirection of tens of millions of dollars of education funding.”
The School Funding Reform Act (SFRA) is designed to distribute greater amounts of school aid to districts serving greater numbers of students who are economically at-risk and districts with less property wealth. Currently, participation in the federal Free and Reduced Price Lunch Program serves as the proxy for classifying and counting economically at-risk students. Recent studies and news reports clearly identify high levels of fraudulent enrollment in the program – undercutting the state’s ability to fairly and appropriately determine aid levels for schools. A 2011 report by the State Auditor found that as many as 37 percent of the students in the program are enrolled fraudulently.
Recognizing the importance of maintaining integrity and reliability in this program is crucial to ensuring a fair, accurate and equitable distribution of funding to schools. The Education Funding Task Force is charged with examining the state’s school funding formula and developing recommendations concerning those areas of the formula that may be susceptible to fraud or subject to outside manipulation. This includes participation in the Federal Free and Reduced Price Lunch Program as a proxy for at-risk status and the municipal tax abatement program.
The Task Force will specifically consider the following issues:
·Economically effective measures of student poverty;
·Educationally sound measures of defining at-risk students;
·Appropriate adjustments to SFRA to account for municipal property ratable bases that may be artificially deflated as a result of municipal property tax abatements;
·Identifying all aspects of the SFRA that may be susceptible to fraud, or subject to undue outside manipulation and recommendations to address these abuses; and
·All other such other matters as may be referred to the Task Force by the Governor.
The Education Funding Task Force will be composed of 7 members from inside and outside of government, each with expertise in education funding, policy, administration, governance and fiscal management. All members of the Task Force will serve without compensation.
The Task Force was first called for in the Department of Education’s Education Funding Report released last month, in a recommendation aimed at exploring the use of a new measure for at-risk students in place of participation in the Free and Reduced Price Lunch Program. The funding report outlined a series of common sense measures to improve the school funding formula and to help close the state’s persistent achievement gap by making education funding more closely follow the child.
Former Mayor Mike Halfacre’s nomination as the Director of the Division Alcoholic Beverage Control was unanimously approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee this afternoon.
In answering questions posed by members of the committee, Halfacre expressed his commitment to combat underage drinking and to run his agency has a regulatory and enforcement body, not a policy making body.
Halfacre was appointed Assistant Attorney General and Acting Director on February 6. His nomination is scheduled be voted on by the full Senate on March 15.
According to a Quinnipiac poll released this morning, Mitt Romney has erased a 10 point deficit from a February 27 poll and now leads Rick Santorum by 3 points in the Ohio GOP presidential primary which will take place tomorrow.
Four boys under the age of 10 were bound, gagged and photographed in the bathroom of a Long Branch elementary school, according to report posted yesterday on Long Branch Patch. Patch credited The Link News with breaking the story on its facebook page.
Two Gregory Elementary School janitors were suspended with pay. An Asbury Park Press report posted this morning says the suspensions are with pay.
In a statement quoted by Long Branch Patch, Long Branch Schools Superintendent Michael Salvatore said that the acts are claimed to have been made without malice and in jest. Salvatore contacted the authorities and safeguards have been taken.
