With Breitbart Gone, What Becomes of His Empire? – ABC News
March 2, 2012 by Grove City Ohio Events · Leave a Comment
The death Thursday of the combative online blogger and publisher leaves open the question of what will become of a thriving colony of conservative websites for which he was owner, prolific contributor and relentless salesman.
Always the provocateur, Breitbart recently dangled the possibility that he had politically damaging videos of President Barack Obama from his early days.
He used his websites to promote a hidden-camera video with actors posing as customers that led the downfall of the liberal Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. He posted explicit photos of former Rep. Anthony Weiner that caused the New York congressman eventually to resign, but an edited video caused former U.S. Agriculture Department official Shirley Sherrod to resign over since-reversed perceptions she was a racist.
Breitbart was known for his showman instincts and waging war with liberals “but he really had a vision of the multimedia future that a lot of us do not possess,” said Republican strategist Jonathan Wilcox, who knew Breitbart and also teaches a course on politics and celebrity at the University of Southern California.
The technology and staff are in place for websites, including Big Government and Big Journalism, to continue but “the superstar is not there … and that’s going to be the challenge going forward,” Wilcox said.
Joel Pollak, a Breitbart editor, said a retooled website was in the works and would go forward. It wasn’t immediately clear who would take over the company, which once ran out of Breitbart’s basement and now employs about a dozen people. Pollak didn’t respond immediately to an email inquiring about the Obama videos.
Breitbart, 43, died after collapsing shortly after midnight during a walk near his home. He was rushed to the emergency room at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center.
He suffered heart problems a year earlier, but his father-in-law, actor Orson Bean, said he could not pinpoint what happened. Larry Dietz, watch commander at the Los Angeles County coroner’s office, said an autopsy was likely.
“It’s devastating,” Bean told the AP.
Breitbart used the Internet to ignite political scandal and expose what he saw as media bias, even if he sometimes had to edit the facts to do it. In a new media age, he argued that anyone with a laptop could reshape public discourse, and his takedown of Weiner established him as a conservative media hero.
He relished public combat with liberals — a YouTube clip last month shows him bellowing at Occupy Wall Street protesters, “Stop raping people, you freaks!” Yet conservatives and tea party activists who loved him saw a crusader against corrupt politicians and what he called the hopelessly liberal “old media guard.”
He was filled with contradictions. He was a self-avowed enemy of the mainstream media, yet subscribed to The Associated Press and admitted loving the venerable news agency’s photos that came from afar. “It’s a love-hate relationship,” he confided at a quiet moment. He pleaded with conservatives to drive relentlessly forward — walk into the line of fire, he would say — yet the final sentence from his prolific and often caustic voice on Twitter was, ironically, an apology for calling a follower a “putz,” just in case he misunderstood a message to him.
Source Article from http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/breitbart-empire-15831080
Ahmadinejad: World will witness Iranian nuclear progress – Jerusalem Post
February 11, 2012 by Grove City Ohio Events · Leave a Comment
TEHRAN – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Saturday the
Islamic Republic would soon announce “very important” achievements in
the nuclear field, state TV reported.
He was speaking on the 33rd
anniversary of the Islamic revolution. Tens of thousands of Iranians
joined state-organized rallies across the country to mark the occasion.
“In
the coming days the world will witness Iran’s announcement of its very
important and very major nuclear achievements,” Ahmadinejad told a crowd
at Tehran’s Azadi (Freedom) Square in a speech relayed live on state
television.
He gave no details.
Demonstrators
carrying Iranian flags and pictures of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei chanted “Death to Israel” and “Death to America.”
Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, who arrived in Iran on Friday for three-day trip, also spoke at the ceremony. Haniyeh vowed that the Hamas movement will never recognize the State of Israel and will continue its resistance until all Palestinian lands are liberated.
On Friday, Iran pledged to back Palestinian resistance against Israel,
saying “soon the Zionist regime will be punished for its plots and
aggression,” AFP reported Iran’s first vice-president Mohammad Reza
Rahimi as saying to Haniyeh.
“Iran will not retreat one iota from its position on defending the
rights of the Palestinian people,” AFP quoted Rahimi as saying.
Source Article from http://www.jpost.com/IranianThreat/News/Article.aspx?id=257372
U.S. deficit gauged at more than $1 trillion – Philadelphia Inquirer
February 11, 2012 by Grove City Ohio Events · Leave a Comment
WASHINGTON – The White House on Friday confirmed a report that President Obama’s new budget predicts a $1.3 trillion deficit for the ongoing fiscal year. The deficit would drop to $901 billion next year under the administration’s tax and spending policies.
In his budget submission on Monday, the president will also repeat his call to raise the top marginal income tax rate for individuals making more than $200,000 a year and families earning $250,000 to a Clinton-era 39.6 percent rate as part of $1.5 trillion in tax hikes over the coming decade. That proposal alone would raise almost $900 billion over the coming decade.
The election-year document is sure to get a brush-off from Republicans controlling the House. The White House said Monday’s budget would contain many items from a September submission to a failed congressional deficit “supercommittee,” which deadlocked over tax increases and how much to cut popular benefit programs such as Medicare.
Obama’s budget will also reflect tight caps on agency operating budgets reached in last summer’s budget and debt-limit pact between Obama and House Speaker John A. Boehner (R., Ohio). Those include a $6 billion cut in the budget for core Pentagon operations and cuts to many domestic agencies as well.
But it’s assumed presidential politics will prevent Democrats and Republicans from renewing efforts for a broader budget agreement, though negotiations on Capitol Hill continue in efforts to renew jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed and a 2 percentage point cut in payroll taxes and prevent a 27 percent cut in Medicare payments to doctors that’s the product of an outdated funding formula.
The figures were first reported in the Wall Street Journal, which viewed leaked draft budget documents.
The Journal also said Obama would propose a six-year, $476 billion highway and surface transportation bill, and $360 billion from curbs to federal health programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.
There would also be an immediate $350 billion for job-creating measures, less than presented in Obama’s $447 billion September jobs plan.
The White House said earlier this week its economic assumptions – predictions of the unemployment rate averaging 8.9 percent this year – now look too pessimistic. They were made in mid-November, before recent positive news about the economy. If the economy performs better than officially projected, it’ll mean a better fiscal performance for the government because greater growth means increased tax revenue.
“The forecast of the unemployment rate that will accompany the budget should be considered stale and out of date,” White House economist Alan Krueger said.
Source Article from http://www.philly.com/philly/news/nation_world/139136904.html
Santorum’s surge means new strategy for Romney – The Associated Press
February 11, 2012 by Grove City Ohio Events · Leave a Comment
WASHINGTON (AP) — Staggered by Rick Santorum’s surge, Mitt Romney is trying to reset his presidential campaign by defining himself as a strict conservative.
The former Massachusetts governor had focused on his business credentials and played down his ideology, four years after he failed in his attempt to win the GOP nomination by running as a social conservative.
“I was a severely conservative Republican governor,” Romney told the Conservative Political Action Committee’s annual gathering Friday. It was a speech that, advisers said, Romney viewed as an important chance to speak directly to the conservatives who rejected him in three contests last Tuesday.
He insisted that he is a conservative in both record and background, trying to convince the GOP’s skeptical right flank that he is acceptable as the party’s nominee.
“My path to conservatism came from my family, from my faith and from my life’s work,” Romney said.
He’s working to gain trust from the activists who make up the GOP base and who drive the Republican primary contest. They view him skeptically because of his past shifts on a variety of issues, including his previous support for abortion rights.
Conservatives generally view Romney’s chief rivals, Santorum and Newt Gingrich, as having views more in line with their own.
Romney’s new message comes as he’s trying to prove he can win over a broad spectrum of Republicans. He has yet to win a majority of GOP votes in any of the contests he’s won so far. And he’s looking to emerge strongly from Super Tuesday, March 6, when 10 states hold nominating contests.
In offering the defense, though, Romney drew attention to the problem he’s faced throughout the primary contest.
“I’ve never heard anybody say, ‘I’m severely conservative,’” conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh said Friday.
Romney’s conservative opposition remains divided — the former House speaker has won one state and the former Pennsylvania senator four. But Santorum is suddenly threatening Romney’s dominance in states where his team had previously felt comfortable.
This past week, Santorum won contests in Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado. While Romney’s team decided not to compete in Missouri’s nonbinding primary and acknowledged early that Minnesota might pose problems, they were much more optimistic about Colorado. Romney spent several days campaigning there ahead of the caucuses, but his team spent just $32,000 on TV ads in the state.
In a sign it’s nervous about continued losses, Romney’s team abruptly added campaign events in Maine, where results from the caucuses were to be announced Saturday. He also held a town hall in the state Friday night; it was the first event where he took questions from voters since he campaigned in South Carolina in January.
Romney’s team is preparing an aggressive push against Santorum in Michigan, where Romney was born and where Romney is a household name and where his advisers had hoped for an easy victory. Romney’s father, George, served as governor of Michigan and chairman of American Motor Corp. before mounting a failed bid for president in 1968.
Romney all but ignored Santorum ahead of this week’s contests. Advisers say that will change, with Romney taking on Santorum’s record on union issues during his time in the Senate from heavily unionized Pennsylvania.
Santorum joined a filibuster of a national right-to-work act and voted to defend legislation that sets pay for public sector workers. He defends that record as an issue of states’ rights.
Romney has also planned a more aggressive campaign schedule in Michigan in the coming weeks. He will hold events in Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids on Wednesday and stay in the Midwest through the end of the week. He’s likely to spend some time campaigning in Ohio, which holds its primary on March 6, Super Tuesday, and is the first Rust Belt state to hold a nominating contest.
Romney’s big advantage is money. He and his allies, the super PAC Restore Our Future, have spent a combined $25 million on TV ads to date, helping to drive wins in New Hampshire, Florida and Nevada. That dwarfs the $7.1 million Gingrich and his allies have spent on airtime and the $2.5 million Santorum backers have shelled out.
Still, Romney is facing a crush of primaries and caucuses on March 6, when his financial edge will be tested. But he always could add to that himself. He hasn’t said if he’ll contribute any of his considerable personal fortune to the campaign. In 2008, he spent $45 million.
Copyright © 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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