Katie Couric Voted ‘The Worst Reporter in History of Man’

Published October 1, 2012 | By Iowadawg

(CNSNews.com) – At the Media Research Center’s 25th Anniversary Gala in Washington, D.C., on Thursday night, former CBS News anchor Katie Couric was voted “The Worst Reporter in the History of Man.”

Couric barely edged out fellow former CBS News anchor Dan Rather.

A crowd of more than 1,000 people attending the gala chose Couric for the honor. The other nominees were Rather, Bryant Gumbel and Brian Williams. The crowd made its choice known through a voice vote–which required a second-round run-off between Couric and Rather.

Couric won the distinction as part of the MRC’s at annual “Dishonors Awards.” The awards were presented at the Media Research Center’s (MRC) sold-out 25th Anniversary Gala dinner, which was held at the National Building Museum in downtown Washington, D.C. The MRC, founded in 1987 by Brent Bozell, is dedicated to holding the liberal media accountable for promoting a left-wing agenda. CNSNews.com is a division of the MRC.

In addition to “The Worst Reporter in the History of Man Award,” the other “Dishonors” awards presented at the gala included “The Obamagasm Award (for drooling over Democrats),” “The Vast Right-Wing Knuckle Draggers Award (for biased campaign coverage),” “Damn Those Conservatives to Hell Award,” and “The Barbra Streisand Political IQ Award for Celebrity Vapidity.”

While “The Worst Reporter in the History of Man Award” was determined by a voice vote of the gala attendees, the other “Dishonor” award winners were picked by a panel of 12 judges, among whom were Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs, Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin.

The Obamagasm Award for drooling over Democrats went to MSNBC’s Chris Matthews for saying of President Barack Obama on the July 17, 2012 edition of “Hardball:” “This guy’s done everything right. He’s raised his family right. He’s fought his way all the way to the top of the Harvard Law Review, in a blind test becomes head of the Review, the top editor there. Everything he’s done is clean as a whistle. He’s never not only broken any law, he’s never done anything wrong. He’s the perfect father, the perfect husband, the perfect American. And all they do is trash the guy.”

The Vast Right-Wing Knuckle Draggers Award for biased campaign coverage went to MSNBC daytime anchor Thomas Roberts, who on Sept. 23, 2011 said of a Republican presidential debate the previous night:”I get out of all of these things that many of these candidates would rather take legislation to build a time machine and go back in time to where we had, you know, no women voting, slavery was cool. I mean, it’s just kind of ridiculous.”

The Damn Those Conservatives to Hell Award went to NBC’s “Today” co-host Ann Curry for saying to Rep. Paul Ryan in an April 10, 2012 interview: “The Center of [sic] Budget and Policy Priorities, says 60 – you’re smiling because you know about this, says 62% of the savings in your budget would come from cutting programs for the poor.That between 8 and 10 million people would be kicked off of food stamps. That you would cut Medicare by 200 billion, Medicaid and other health programs by something like 770 billion. Where is the empathy in this budget?…Do you acknowledge that poor people will suffer under his budget, that you have shown a lack of empathy to poor people in this budget?”

The Barbra Streisand Political IQ Award for Celebrity Vapidity went to actor Sean Penn who on Oct. 4, 2011 told CNN’s Piers Morgan: “You have what I call the ‘Get the N-word out of the White House party,’ the Tea Party….At the end of the day, there’s a big bubble coming out of their heads saying, you know, ‘Can we just lynch him?’”

President of the Future

Unfortunately the rest of us have to live in Obama’s present.

One of the reasons why Barack Obama is regarded as the greatest orator of our age is that he’s always banging on about some other age yet to come — e.g., the Future! A future of whose contours he is remarkably certain and boundlessly confident: The future will belong to nations that invest in education because the children are our future, but the future will not belong to nations that do not invest in green-energy projects because solar-powered prompters are our future, and most of all the future will belong to people who look back at the Obama era and marvel that there was a courageous far-sighted man willing to take on the tough task of slowing the rise of the oceans because the future will belong to people on viable land masses. This futuristic shtick is a cheap’n’cheesy rhetorical device (I speak as the author of a book called “After America,” whose title is less futuristic than you might think) but it seems to play well with the impressionable Obammysoxers of the press corps.

And so it was with President Obama’s usual visionary, inspiring, historic, etc., address to the U.N. General Assembly the other day: “The future must not belong to those who bully women,” he told the world, in a reference either to Egyptian clitoridectomists or the Republican party, according to taste. “The future must not belong to those who target Coptic Christians,” he added. You mean those Muslim guys? Whoa, don’t jump to conclusions. “The future must not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam,” he declared, introducing to U.S. jurisprudence the novel concept of being able to slander a bloke who’s been dead for getting on a millennium and a half now. If I understand correctly the cumulative vision of the speech, the future will belong to gay feminist ecumenical Muslims. You can take that to the bank. But make no mistake, as he would say, and in fact did: “We face a choice between the promise of the future or the prisons of the past, and we cannot afford to get it wrong.” Because if we do, we could spend our future living in the prisons of the past, which we forgot to demolish in the present for breach of wheelchair-accessibility codes.

And the crowd went wild! Well, okay, they didn’t. They’re transnational bureaucrats on expense accounts, so they clapped politely, and then nipped out for a bathroom break before the president of Serbia. But, if I’d been one of the globetrotting bigwigs fortunate enough to get an invite — the prime minister of Azerbaijan, say, or the deputy tourism minister of Equatorial Guinea — I would have responded: Well, maybe the future will belong to those who empower women and don’t diss Mohammed. But maybe it’ll belong to albino midgets who wear pink thongs. Who knows? Que sera sera, whatever will be will be, the future’s not ours to see. But one thing we can say for certain is that the future will not belong to broke losers. You’re the brokest guy in the room, you’re the president of Brokistan. You’ve got to pay back $16 trillion just to get back to having nothing, nada, zip. Who the hell are you to tell us who the future’s going to belong to?

The excitable lads around the globe torching American embassies with impunity seem to have figured this out, even if the striped-pants crowd at Turtle Bay are too polite to mention it. Obama is not the president of the Future. He is president right now, and one occasionally wishes the great visionary would take his eye off the far-distant horizon where educated women and fire-breathing imams frolic and gambol side by side around their Chevy Volts, to focus on the humdrum present where the rest of us have the misfortune to live.

In the America over which Barack Obama has the tedious chore of actually presiding, second-quarter GDP growth was revised down from 1.7 percent to 1.3 percent — or, in layman’s terms, from “barely detectable” to “comatose.” Orders of durable goods fell by 13.2 percent — or, as Obama would say, the future must not belong to people who own household appliances. Growth of capital stock (which basically measures investment in new equipment and software — or, as Obama would put it, investment in “the future”) is at its lowest since records began. There are 261,000 fewer payroll jobs than when Obama took office — in a nation where (officially) 100,000 immigrants arrive every month. A few weeks ago, an analysis of government employment data by the nation’s oldest outplacement firm, Challenger, Gray & Christmas, discovered that, of the 4,319,000 new American jobs created since January 2010, 2,998,000 — or about 70 percent — went to people aged 55 or older. This is a remarkable statistic, even in a land of 31-year-old schoolgirls like Sandra Fluke. You’d almost begin to get the vague, unsettling feeling that the future does not belong to Americans aged 54 and younger.

No Decency of Candor

Ambassador Stevens died of “smoke inhalation”? No. He was mauled to death by animals.

Reading some political obituaries these days is a little like watching someone die twice — a kind of tombstone ricochet. The Christopher Stevens obit that appeared in the 12 September 2012 edition of the Washington Post is an example. Anne Gearan’s take is more about mythologizing a failed foreign policy than it is about an ambassador’s life. Hard to believe that facts would be spun in a death notice — and yet, Ms. Gearan’s take on the deceased gives a whole new dimension to metaphors like “spinning in the grave.”

Start with the headline, which reads: “US ambassador to Libya dies at age 52.” If you read only the bold print you might believe that Mr. Stevens died from a bad oyster or Foggy Bottom flu. In fact, the American representative was killed by Arab terrorists. “Murdered” would be a more accurate word. People “die” from natural causes, like old age or disease. Getting killed by religious cowards is another variety of death altogether — different enough to deserve the decency of candor.

And yes, the more you read, the worse the spin and apologetics become. First comes the tale of the Stevens’ welcome to Benghazi by a rainbow coalition of infidel-lovers.

“When he and his American colleagues reached the rebel-held city, they were greeted by a group of Libyans carrying U.S., British, French and Qatari flags in the courthouse square.”

Such images are an obscene echo of the Tripoli welcome received by the Gaddafi-era terrorist, Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, just one of the culprits in the Pan Am 103 massacre. Recall that Mr. Megrahi was pardoned by the United Kingdom. Now, that tragedy is mocked by an American president who claims the Benghazi Islamists will be brought to justice. How about those Libyan jihadists who killed 259 Americans over Scotland? Is there a statute of limitations that excuses Gaddafi-era slaughter? Or will NATO be content with a little more oil and gas?

Ambassador Stevens was killed by the same variety of Libyan religious thugs who beat Moammar Gaddafi to death. Street justice in Tripoli or Benghazi…what’s the difference? A summary execution is summary execution. Allahu, allahu akbar!

Ms. Gearan goes on to speculate that Stevens probably died of “smoke inhalation,” suggesting again that Stevens was collateral damage instead of yet another terror target. Photo evidence puts the lie to such nonsense. In one LA Times cover shot, the ambassador, with blood smeared and gashed head, is being pulled along by the armpits; in another image, he is slung over someone’s shoulder like a sack of loot. Ms. Gearan’s spin may have been a transparent attempt to mimic early State Department damage control.

Alas, Mrs. Bill Clinton was the early apologist. The State talking points had three chestnuts: the deed was done by a random mob, the motive was a film clip that no one saw, and some enlightened Benghazi citizens tried to save Stevens. Between apologies to Muslims worldwide, Mrs. Clinton even rhapsodized about Stevens as the savior of Benghazi. If Stevens had so many Benghazi friends, if Stevens helped bring democracy to Libya, why is he dead? And how is it that Islamist mobs and militias still roam and rule on the “democratic” streets of Libya?

If you read between the lines, Ms. Gearan raises another question unanswered by Mrs. Clinton. Was Stevens brutalized because he was an American diplomat — or because he was gay? Or, as a gay American diplomat, was Stevens just vulnerable, or burdened, with triple-jeopardy by any posting to any Arab country? (Before the air gets thick with cries of bias, it should be noted that Stevens was “outed” by friends and a former roommate.) God forbid that Mrs. Clinton might have used her bully pulpit to condemn brutal and murderous homophobia in the Muslim world!

In spite of what we have heard from the president, the secretary of state, or the Washington Post, the death of Christopher Stevens was not a national tragedy, a death for a noble cause. Indeed, too much of the Muslim world lacks nobility, pride, or honor these days. The real tragedy of Ambassador Stevens is that he died in vain. There is little that is noble about Libya’s recent past or promising about its likely future.

The Arab quislings, who tolerated Moammar Gaddafi for 40 years and celebrated attendant atrocities like the massacre of several hundred Americans over Lockerbie, are not the material from which civil democracies are made.

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10 Ways the Obama Administration Is Hurting America’s Energy Economy

One of the few bright spots over the past few years in America’s economy has been energy production, but this has occurred largely in spite of this Administration’s energy policies, not because of them.

And the simple fact remains that our energy economy could be even brighter, but egregiously burdensome regulations have stifled energy projects or threaten to dim the lights on the successful energy endeavors that have created jobs and increased supply to put downward pressure on prices. The President has doubled down on wasting billions of dollars to subsidize politically preferred energy sources. Although he has aimed to save or create jobs, in the energy sector he is destroying jobs, threatening to destroy jobs, or failing to create them.

Here are 10 of the most troubling energy and environmental regulations implemented or proposed by the Obama Administration.

Finish reading HERE.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — A typical middle-income family making $40,000 to $64,000 a year could see its taxes go up by $2,000 next year if lawmakers fail to renew a lengthy roster of tax cuts set to expire at the end of the year, according to a new report Monday

Taxpayers across the income spectrum would be hit with large tax hikes, the Tax Policy Center said in its study, with households in the top 1 percent income range seeing an average tax increase of more than $120,000, while a family making between $110,000 to $140,000 could see a tax hike in the $6,000 range.

All told, the government would reap more than $500 billion in new revenue if a full menu of tax cuts were allowed to expire. The expiring provisions include Bush-era cuts on wage and investment income and cuts for married couples and families with children, among others. Also expiring is a 2 percentage point temporary payroll tax cut championed by President Barack Obama.

“It’s just a huge, huge number,” said Eric Toder, one of the authors of the study.

Economists warn that the looming tax hikes, combined with $109 billion in automatic spending cuts scheduled to take effect in January, could throw the fragile economy back into recession if Washington doesn’t act. The automatic spending cuts are coming due because of the failure of last year’s deficit “supercommittee” to strike a bargain. The combination of the sharp tax hikes and spending cuts has been dubbed a “fiscal cliff.”

“The fiscal cliff threatens an unprecedented tax increase at year end,” says the report. “Taxes would rise by more than $500 billion in 2013 — an average of almost $3,500 per household — as almost every tax cuts enacted since 2001 would expire.”

Cumulatively, the country would see a 5 percentage point jump in its average tax rate, which works out to taxes on the top 1 percent jumping by more than 7 percentage points and about 4 percentage points for most people earning below $100,000 a year.

Put another way, people in the $40,000-$64,000 income range would see their average federal tax rate jump from 14 percent to 17.8 percent — or an increase in their overall federal bill of 27 percent.

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What Does the Obama Administration Have Against Cheap Vegetables?

The Obama Administration’s Commerce Department recently took a preliminary position in favor of ending a 16-year-old trade agreement governing tomatoes imported from Mexico.

The Florida Tomato Exchange asked the Administration to end the agreement because it doesn’t want to compete with low-priced tomatoes grown in Mexico. This announcement took Mexico by surprise, and both advocates and opponents of the agreement are up in arms.

It isn’t just the Administration that has stepped into this fray. In Florida, 17 politicians have aligned themselves with the Florida Tomato Exchange and against Americans who like to eat tomatoes.

The dispute dates back the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which removed tariffs on Mexican tomatoes—but not for long. When American consumers started buying more Mexican tomatoes, U.S. tomato producers filed complaints that their Mexican competitors were “dumping” tomatoes on the American market. The resulting 1996 agreement set a minimum price at which Mexican producers could sell tomatoes in the U.S.

This interference in the market was accepted by Mexican producers as a better alternative to the possibility of protectionist anti-dumping duties being imposed on their tomatoes by U.S. bureaucrats. However, U.S. tomato growers now think that the price dictated by the current agreement, renewed in 2008, is too low.

Half of all tomatoes consumed in the U.S. come from Mexico. New tariffs would penalize U.S. consumers, and Mexico would almost surely retaliate by imposing duties on competitive U.S. exports.

Finish reading HERE.

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