Media Hit Piece on Glenn Beck

Oh the irony.

Time magazine's hit piece on Glenn Beck, asking if he is bad for America, was released last week, just as the ACORN videos hit the airwaves. Even more ironic is that the authors of the smear are just as guilty as Beck when it comes to trying to garner readers and attention.

Time considers Beck to be a populist who's cashing in on the frustration of America. At least that much they got right. He is. That being said, I'm glad he's doing it. Someone has to.

There was nothing stopping the leftist media from investigating ACORN, Van Jones, the Lies about the Health Care proposals in Congress, the Czars, the Bailouts, TARP funds, and the rest of the corruption swirling around Washington.

The shame is that Time wastes its time asking if Beck is bad for America, rather than asking if Obama's policies and advisors are bad for America. Or ACORN. Or the Marxists in Congress. Isn't that their job?

Although the leftist media has openly mocked Beck, O'Reilly, Hannity, bloggers, radio talk show hosts and every American who has openly expressed concern over the policies of this administration, we've been effective. The White House and Congress are starting to realize they can run roughshod over ever ideal America holds dear without consequences.

No wonder Time thinks Beck is dangerous. He's dangerous to their agenda. It's no wonder they are going after bloggers. They are cutting into Time's profit margins.

Read more...

Size Isn't Everything: Update

A couple of days ago, I blogged about the size of the crowd on the Washington D.C. mall this past weekend "protesting" excessive government.

The Leftist Elite Media reported numbers ranging from 30,000 to 75,000. Even Bill O'Reilly quoted the figure 75,000 because a Washington city official cited that figure as an unofficial "guess" while at the same time saying that the city does not guestimate crowd sizes or release those numbers.

Left wing blogs downplayed the rally, claiming the numbers were small. The Leftist Elite Media (NBC, ABC, CBS, NYTimes, etc) said the crowd was "a few thousand" people.

Well, now more accurate numbers are available. A number of websites are citing sources that have done extensive research of video and photos of the event and those sources are now saying that about 325,000 people were involved in the march and as many as 500,000 to 600,000 were present at the Mall protest.

While there are no "official" numbers, and never will be, these numbers appear to be the most accurate. These numbers also eclipse the best estimates of the "million man march," which probably involved closer to 100,000 African Americans.

As I said before, size isn't everything, but I think the way the numbers are being reported is an interesting side story in and of itself.

Read more...

The Blogosphere Strikes Again

When the nation was young and small, the individual had a voice. A letter to the editor of a newspaper, a published tract or a pastor's sermon could have an effect on the nation's policy decisions.

As the nation grew, both geographically and demographically, the individual's voice was drowned out. Yes, you could still send a letter to the editor of one of the nations' hundreds of major newspapers. An if it gets published, there is a chance that some of that paper's ever smaller number of readers might read it.

That has started to change with the internet. Today, anyone can create a blog (or comment on one) and express whatever opinion he or she might like to express. Granted, most blogs have a small readership, but at least your voice can be heard. Not only that, but you can connect with others who have similar opinions and raise your voice together.

The other thing that the internet does is report news stories that don't find their way into the MainStreamMedia. The media has traditionally set the agenda on what gets reported and what doesn't. And since the beginning of radio and TV, more and more of the news audience has been exposed to fewer and fewer varying ideas.

Again, the internet changes that.

These changes were highlighted today. A news story that should have been discovered and reported by the MainStreamMedia, was reported by blogger Gateway Pundit. Apparently Van Jones, the White House Green Jobs Czar (and admitted communist revolutionary) is a truther. He has signed a petition asking for an investigation of the Bush administration to look into what they believe is the administration's role in planning and executing the 9/11 attacks.

The story has since been picked up by major media outlets, and they of course are trying to downplay it. The Washington Post, for example, is calling this story an intentional distraction orchestrated by conservatives.

This is egg on the face of the Obama administration. This is bad. Really bad. 9/11 truthers are absolute loons. Kooks. Anything that comes out of this guy's mouth is now suspect.

Many pundits are now calling for Jones' head. They are predicting that his job will not last the weekend.

It shouldn't.

This administration is making one blunder after another. Some of those blunders are matters of opinion. This one isn't. Anyone with any horse sense at all understands that this is beyond reason. Reasonable people don't believe this crap. You can't have a White House Czar being someone who lacks basic reason and logic.

Here's where the MainStreamMedia has failed us. They are in bed with Obama. The job of the media is to hold the feet of government to the fire. A job they did quite well in the eight years prior to January of this year. It's a job they have now left to the bloggers.

Read more...

Times Touts Economic Momentum

The front page of the New York Times is filled with hope about the nation's economic situation. The lead story, "Job Losses Slow, Signaling Momentum for a Recovery," reporting a decline in the unemployment rate from 9.5 percent in June to 9.4 percent in July, begins by declaring that, "The most heartening employment report since last summer suggested on Friday that a recovery was under way -- and perhaps gathering steam."

"Employers are no longer in a panic," one expert tells the Times. The paper reports that Obama administration officials "credited the stimulus package" for the improvement, and "some said" job losses would be far worse had the $787 billion stimulus not been passed. The paper quotes President Obama saying his administration has "rescued our economy from catastrophe."

Put that together with earlier data that the economy shrank at a one percent annual rate in the second quarter, and the Times reports that the news has "convinced many forecasters that when the history of the Great Recession is written, these summer months will be the big turning point, when the economy started to grow again." Of course, there's some "unsettling information" in the new economic data, but overall, the message of the Times story is: Good news -- the recovery is underway.

The Times hasn't always been so optimistic when it comes to one-tenth-of-a-point declines in the unemployment rate. On this very day in 1992, in the midst of the presidential campaign between George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, the government also reported that the unemployment rate ticked downward by one tenth of a point, and the Times' treatment was far more restrained.

"Jobless Rate Dips a Notch to 7.7% in Mixed Showing," was the front-page headline of the August 8, 1992 Times. "The nation's jobless rate improved marginally last month, edging down to 7.7 percent from 7.8 percent," the Times reported. "But the improvement was not enough to signal a stronger economic recovery or to help President Bush as he heads into the Republican National Convention." Even though the number of jobs actually went up in July 1992 (as opposed to the decline of 247,000 jobs in July 2009), the 1992 Times reported that the economic news "gave no suggestion that the economic recovery was breaking out of its painfully slow pace or, more important, that the job growth was picking up enough to push the unemployment rate down significantly before the election in November." Pollster Peter Hart told the paper that, "There couldn't be worse political news for George Bush."

Under the sub-headline "Stagnant Period Seen," the Times reported that "most forecasters" predicted "more of the same: an economy that is just muddling along." The Times looked deep into the data to find "disappointing" numbers everywhere; many of the new jobs were in the service sector, there weren't enough construction jobs, some of the improvement was the result of a government program. (The Times appeared less enthusiastic about government stimulus back then.)

As it turned out, the one-tenth-of-a-point drop in the unemployment rate in July 1992 signaled the end of the increase in the jobless rate. Looking at this table from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, you can see that at the very moment the Times was declaring a period of stagnation, the unemployment rate was in fact beginning a long decline that would extend through the Clinton years.

Of course, the Times' editors and writers didn’t know that then, and they stressed the negative aspects of the economic news. But they don't know what's going to happen now, either, and they're filled with hope. Quite a difference.

Read more...

CNN's Dobbs Problem Gets Bigger

After CNN President Jon Klein reportedly called Lou Dobbs' coverage of conspiracy theories about Obama's birth certificate a "legitimate" story on Friday (July 24), Media Matters for America President Eric Burns sent an email to its thousands of online activists asking for their help. They want to publicly pressure CNN to call off Lou Dobbs.

While Media Matters claims to be a watchdog group, they are actually a leftist organization with an agenda to use the MainStreamMedia to further a leftist agenda, while discrediting any media outlet that does not agree with that agenda.

In the email, Burns writes: "Klein's caving to Dobbs raises a serious, troubling question: Who is really calling the shots at CNN?"

You know how those guys at CNN are all after Obama!

Read more...

Work It, Girl

There were a lot of high profile, potentially world-changing stories that came across the news wires this week. The stories ran the gamut from the sublime to the ridiculous. In Iran, people have been taking to the streets in protest of their presidential election shenanigans. Many of them have been murdered. After the 2000 American presidential election, the worst example of “protest” was Al Gore growing a beard. In North Korea, resident madman Kim Jong Il is threatening to launch a nuclear war, because it is much more important to rattle a saber instead of say, feeding your people. Oh, and President Barack Obama fired an Inspector General who was investigating one of his supporters. Nothing to see there.

Naturally, one would think that the above stories would be of utmost importance. However, one would be wrong. See, there is a much more pressing issue that affects each and every person on this big blue marble we call Earth.  At least according to many media sources, which buried the stories mentioned above but highlighted the one mentioned below.

The Council of Fashion Designers of America held its annual awards on Monday night. Who is the Council of Fashion Designers of America? Members of the Council are like the Jedi Council, but instead of lightsabers, they wield hatpins. They protect and defend the rights of clothes-wearing citizens everywhere. In short, they are the fashion police.

Most of the awards were bestowed upon the giants of the industry. Apparently, the CFDA believes that First Lady Michelle Obama is one of these giants. That’s right; Michelle Obama – the woman who wore the curtain from the old Merv Griffin Show to the Inauguration – is being recognized as a fashion icon.

Michelle Obama, are they kidding? Last week, this woman was seen wearing something from the Cyndi Lauper Collection: a white top with multi-colored fabric wrapped around her stomach. It was an abomination that even Peg Bundy would not be caught in at her insane, inbred family reunion. What’s next for the First Lady, feathered boas?

(For more, including pictures, see this previous post.

Read more...

Obama and Media Laugh Together

At the 65th Annual Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner this week, President Barack Obama bragged about his "celebrity status" and joked about being in bed with the media who gave him that status. In a tasteless joke, Obama said after "tossing and turning" he "rolled over and asked Brian Williams what he thought."

Our president is joking about being in bed – literally – with the anchor of NBC News. Ha ha. That's hilarious. And the state-run media laughed on cue.

But not everyone is laughing. Despite the love affair the media has with Obama that inspired the editor of the San Francisco Chronicle to suggest they "get a room," and Newsweek's editor calling him "god," Rasmussen reports that the media-made celebrity has finally fallen out of favor with America – more of whom strongly disapprove of him than approve.

Maybe some of those who are awakening are, uh – were – owners of car dealerships before Obama came in and took them over. Wasn't it hysterical how the "powerful celebrity" Obama joked about giving everyone a car company under their chair? "Ha ha. Look at how powerful I am, watch me take over the free market and laugh about it." And the "watchdog" media howled.

Then Obama asked himself: "WWLD?" What would a wise Latina do? Ha ha. Racism. Isn't that funny? His nominee for the Supreme Court is a racist. But because she downgrades white men and non-Latina women, she gets a free pass to the highest court in our land.

Then he joked about how Sonia Sotomayor wants to rip off the blindfold of justice and make her policy from the bench by way of empathy (but he understands how we feel about that.) Empathy. Emotion. Bias. Just what you want when it comes to the rule of law. Rule in favor of the one for whom you feel most sorry.

That's a lot like the Senate Judiciary Committee, which wants to give their favorite politically correct people more legal protection than the rest of us. In a hearing this Thursday, watch the Democrats as they clamor to give homosexual activists and other sexual deviances – itemized in an APA list of "sexual orientations" that's 547 long – special favor. Forget about equal protection. Forget about free speech. Their goal is to give more legal protection to the ones the Democrat majority likes the most. The ones they must reward for their campaign contributions.

Barack Obama wants to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. So much for standing for marriage between one man and one woman as he promised during the campaign. And while marriage is under attack, in the Midwest and especially in the Northeast many are asking, "What can we do"

Now, Obama and the Democrats are trying to ram through socialized medicine to take our minds off the trillions they've already added to the national debt.

Nothing takes your mind off credit card debt more than going shopping!

Maybe Obama's poll numbers will fall even more when doctors see an end to their freedom of conscience as this administration tries to turn them into executioners by forcing them to perform abortions or leave medicine. Maybe they'll drop even further when America waits in long lines for health care like they do government cheese.

And now ABC is moving into the White House to film an infomercial to help force Obama's multi-trillion dollar socialized medicine down our throats.

After Obama's own personal "Saturday Night Live" Routine, not surprisingly, the media stood to give Obama a standing ovation, just like they do every day with the news they "report." It was a chance for them all to sit back and laugh at America.

But this isn't funny any more.

Read more...

NYT/CBS Poll "Generated" to Show Americans Want Health Care

In a not-so-surprising story, newsbusters uncovered the following (which should be a scandal, but won't be):

Realizing that Barack Obama's healthcare initiative has hit some roadblocks in Congress, the good folks at CBS News and the New York Times figured they'd help it along by creating a new poll on the subject that WAY oversampled people who voted for Obama.

Although the then junior senator from Illinois received 53 percent of the votes last November, NYT/CBS surveyed almost twice as many Obama voters as McCain voters.

Americans overwhelmingly support substantial changes to the health care system and are strongly behind one of the most contentious proposals Congress is considering, a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

The poll found that most Americans would be willing to pay higher taxes so everyone could have health insurance and that they said the government could do a better job of holding down health-care costs than the private sector.

Actually, as Bruce Kesler cleverly discovered, what the poll really found was that most Obama voters support substantial changes to healthcare and are willing to pay higher taxes for a government run system:

[A]ccording to the actual poll data, of the 73% of respondents who said they voted in 2008 only 34% voted for McCain and 66% for Obama.

As can be plainly seen on page 7 of the poll's data, only 73 percent of respondents divulged who they voted for last November. 48 percent said Obama, 25 percent McCain.

What this means is this poll surveyed 66 percent Obama supporters versus 34 percent McCain.

As the final tally last year was 53 percent to 46 percent, this poll WAY oversampled Obama voters.

And you wonder why the survey found so much support for Obamacare?

Honestly, stuff like this should be illegal and any news organization found doing it should be significantly fined.

In any industry you could name, such deception of the public would meet with very serious consequences. 

Why are so-called news outlets allowed to get away with such obvious deceit with total impunity?

Read more...

The Fix Is In

President Obama has been saying for months that you can’t fix the economy without first fixing healthcare. Originally a supporter of single-payer government healthcare, Obama states that he now believes private insurance should remain, but in competition with a public government-run option. Obama has a very interesting partner in pushing his plan: ABC (aka: All Barack Channel).

On June 24, if you tune in to ABC, the news will be broadcasting from the White House, followed by a primetime special “Prescription for America.” This program will be a townhall style question and answer session with the President. ABC claims this program will present both sides of the healthcare debate. However, the only party who will be answering questions and using prime network time to sell his views will be Barack Obama.

Faced with a seemingly one-sided sales event for Obama’s healthcare agenda, Ken McKay,Chief of Staff for the Republican National Committee wrote to the head of ABC News. He requested the opportunity to share the Republican’s healthcare reform ideas. He was rebuffed.

ABC News claims that the audience who will question Obama on his healthcare agenda will be chosen exclusively by ABC. ABC suggests that this will somehow present both sides of the issue. ABC fails to realize that asking a challenging question of the President is not the same as having the opportunity to answer that question and the time to persuade Americans that government healthcare is what we need.

Considering the government takeover of GM and the President’s desire to expand the Fed to take over companies whose survival it deems necessary, it should come as no surprise that the media, already carrying water for Obama since day one, now seems to be serving as his propagandists.

The fix is in, folks. The Dems control both houses of congress and the White House. The media is in the tank. The only public debate going on is on Fox News and on Talk Radio, and both of those venues are primarily "preaching to the choir." We will have National Health Care. The only questions are (1) What form will it take (i.e. complete takeover vs. gov't funding, etc);  and (2) When will we actually be considered a third world country?

Read more...

One of the Largest Muslim Nations in the World? I Don't Think So.

Isn't it funny that liberals have spent years falling all over themselves to protest when people call this a Christian nation, but now -- we now have the most liberal President in our nation's history declaring that we're a Muslim nation.

The reason this has been called a Christian nation is because it was originally populated by Christians seeking religious liberty, since it was founded by Christians, and since the population is still heavily Christian.

The reason we're now a Muslim country? Ehr...hard to say. We don't have an accurate count of how many Muslims we have in this country, but the number is generally thought to be under 3 million and many of them are from the Nation of Islam, which most real Muslims consider to be heretical.

Yet...

As President Obama prepared to leave Washington to fly to the Middle East, he conducted several television and radio interviews at the White House to frame the goals for a five-day trip, including the highly-anticipated speech Thursday at Cairo University in Egypt.

In an interview with Laura Haim on Canal Plus, a French television station, Mr. Obama noted that the United States also could be considered as "one of the largest Muslim countries in the world." He sought to downplay the expectations of the speech, but he said he hoped the address would raise awareness about Muslims.

God bless the Muslims who are here in this country, but just to be crystal clear, we're not "one of the largest Muslim countries in the world" nor are we ever going to be "one of the largest Muslim countries in the world."

We're also not one of the "largest Muslim countries in the world" even if you count the Muslims in the nation of Islam. Here's a list of the world's largest Muslim populations:

Indonesia: 204 million

Pakistan: 164 million

India: 154 million

Bangladesh: 128 million

Turkey: 76 million

Egypt: 74 million

Nigeria: 73 million

Iran: 65 million

Morocco: 34 million

Algeria: 33 million

Afghanistan: 32 million

Saudi Arabia: 28 million

Sudan: 28 million

China: 27 million

Iraq: 27 million

Ethiopia: 27 million

In other words, this is typical Obama. He says whatever he thinks his audience, which in this case is the "Muslim world," wants to hear with no regard to facts or logic.

Since he's giving a big speech in Egypt, America is "one of the largest Muslim countries in the world." If he thinks you're concerned about spending, he's the guy you need to cut spending. If you want lots of expensive, new government programs, he's the man for that, too. If you're anti-war, he's the guy to reverse Bush's policies! If you're not, he's the guy who'll be smart enough to quietly keep them in place.

He gets away with this because the mainstream media has his back. When he makes the sort of mistakes they'd harp on for weeks with a Republican, they either give it a brief, perfunctory mention while spinning for him as best they can or they just ignore it entirely. When he breaks his campaign promises, and he does that constantly, the media shrugs and moves on. When he makes huge gaffes, they yawn and pretend to be disinterested. Essentially, Obama's playing the role of an incompetent, batty Soviet premier while the media is playing the role of Pravda.

That's a big part of the reason why the MSM is going out of business ever more rapidly and why Obama has been such a historical disaster as President, because he's constantly being given free passes on these huge screw-ups.

Read more...

Illegal Takeover? They Don't Report; You Decide

The Obama administration’s arguably unconstitutional and potentially illegal makeover/takeover of General Motors and Chrysler hit a legal road block on June 8, when Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg issued a stay preventing Team Obama’s plan to sell Chrysler to the Italian automaker Fiat. This speed bump was a great opportunity for the media to pay attention to objections to the White House’s reckless executive-branch manipulation of the auto business.

Or not.

President Bush and his team were regularly savaged by the media elite if they so much as sniffed a hint of evasion over the rule of law and the bounds of constitutional authority in fighting terrorism. So why is President Obama’s unprecedented intervention in the auto industry, including a TARP-fund bailout expressly ruled out by Congress, all but ignored?

Even with the Supreme Court order, the nightly news shows of CBS and NBC gave the decision just a few seconds of air time, the equivalent of a stifled yawn, and never went anywhere near describing the strange bankruptcy proceedings the Obama administration has cooked up to manipulate the industry to its liking.

Read more...

Media Falls For Phony Jobs Claims

Tony Fratto is envious.

Mr. Fratto was a colleague of mine in the Bush administration, and as a senior member of the White House communications shop, he knows just how difficult it can be to deal with a press corps skeptical about presidential economic claims. It now appears, however, that Mr. Fratto's problem was that he simply lacked the magic words -- jobs "saved or created."

"Saved or created" has become the signature phrase for Barack Obama as he describes what his stimulus is doing for American jobs. His latest invocation came yesterday, when the president declared that the stimulus had already saved or created at least 150,000 American jobs -- and announced he was ramping up some of the stimulus spending so he could "save or create" an additional 600,000 jobs this summer. These numbers come in the context of an earlier Obama promise that his recovery plan will "save or create three to four million jobs over the next two years."

Mr. Fratto sees a double standard at play. "We would never have used a formula like 'save or create,'" he tells me. "To begin with, the number is pure fiction -- the administration has no way to measure how many jobs are actually being 'saved.' And if we had tried to use something this flimsy, the press would never have let us get away with it."

Of course, the inability to measure Mr. Obama's jobs formula is part of its attraction. Never mind that no one -- not the Labor Department, not the Treasury, not the Bureau of Labor Statistics -- actually measures "jobs saved." As the New York Times delicately reports, Mr. Obama's jobs claims are "based on macroeconomic estimates, not an actual counting of jobs." Nice work if you can get away with it.

And get away with it he has. However dubious it may be as an economic measure, as a political formula "save or create" allows the president to invoke numbers that convey an illusion of precision. Harvard economist and former Bush economic adviser Greg Mankiw calls it a "non-measurable metric." And on his blog, he acknowledges the political attraction.

"The expression 'create or save,' which has been used regularly by the President and his economic team, is an act of political genius," writes Mr. Mankiw. "You can measure how many jobs are created between two points in time. But there is no way to measure how many jobs are saved. Even if things get much, much worse, the President can say that there would have been 4 million fewer jobs without the stimulus."

Mr. Obama's comments yesterday are a perfect illustration of just such a claim. In the months since Congress approved the stimulus, our economy has lost nearly 1.6 million jobs and unemployment has hit 9.4%. Invoke the magic words, however, and -- presto! -- you have the president claiming he has "saved or created" 150,000 jobs. It all makes for a much nicer spin, and helps you forget this is the same team that only a few months ago promised us that passing the stimulus would prevent unemployment from rising over 8%.

It's not only former Bush staffers such as Messrs. Fratto and Mankiw who have noted the political convenience here. During a March hearing of the Senate Finance Committee, Chairman Max Baucus challenged Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on the formula.

"You created a situation where you cannot be wrong," said the Montana Democrat. "If the economy loses two million jobs over the next few years, you can say yes, but it would've lost 5.5 million jobs. If we create a million jobs, you can say, well, it would have lost 2.5 million jobs. You've given yourself complete leverage where you cannot be wrong, because you can take any scenario and make yourself look correct."

Now, something's wrong when the president invokes a formula that makes it impossible for him to be wrong and it goes largely unchallenged. It's true that almost any government spending will create some jobs and save others. But as Milton Friedman once pointed out, that doesn't tell you much: The government, after all, can create jobs by hiring people to dig holes and fill them in.

If the "saved or created" formula looks brilliant, it's only because Mr. Obama and his team are not being called on their claims. And don't expect much to change. So long as the news continues to repeat the administration's line that the stimulus has already "saved or created" 150,000 jobs over a time period when the U.S. economy suffered an overall job loss 10 times that number, the White House would be insane to give up a formula that allows them to spin job losses into jobs saved.

"You would think that any self-respecting White House press corps would show some of the same skepticism toward President Obama's jobs claims that they did toward President Bush's tax cuts," says Mr. Fratto. "But I'm still waiting."

Read more...

So Unbelievably Amazing

NBC anchor Brian Williams has never been shy about how amazed he is by Barack Obama. In fact, he is so enamored with Obama that he finds it "UNBELIEVABLE!" when Obama walks by munching on M&Ms.

"To be in the hallway when the president walks by with a handful of M&Ms, popping them in his mouth as he goes to visit his chief of staff -- it was unbelieveable! I don't think the expression 'took up residence' is hyperbolic."

Remind me to never invite Brian Williams over. He'd probably pee his pants if he saw me eat a Snickers bar.

Read more...

Buy Black Movement Going Nationwide

Maggie and John Anderson of Chicago vowed four months ago that for one year, they would try to patronize only black-owned businesses. The "Empowerment Experiment" is the reason John had to suffer for hours with a stomach ache and Maggie no longer gets that brand-name lather when she washes her hair. A grocery trip is a 14-mile odyssey.

"We kind of enjoy the sacrifice because we get to make the point ... but I am going without stuff and I am frustrated on a daily basis," Maggie Anderson said. "It's like, my people have been here 400 years and we don't even have a Walgreens to show for it."

So far, the Andersons have spent hundreds of dollars with black businesses from grocery stores to dry cleaners. But the couple still hasn't found a mortgage lender, home security system vendor or toy store. Nonetheless, they're hoping to expand the endeavor beyond their Chicago home.

Plans are under way to track spending among supporters nationwide and build a national database of quality black businesses. The first affiliate chapter has been launched in Atlanta, and the couple has established a foundation to raise funds for black businesses and an annual convention.

"We have the real power to do something, to use the money we spend every day to solve our problems," Maggie Anderson said recently at a meet-and-greet in Atlanta. "We have to believe that black businesses are just as good as everybody else's."

Now, the Andersons are following up with 4,000 people who signed up for the experiment on their Web site to gauge their commitment and set up online accounts to track their spending. Hundreds have also joined the experiment's Facebook page, Maggie Anderson said.

Gregory Price, chairman of the economics department at Morehouse College, said black visionaries like Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey made similar calls to action.

"The idea is a sound one, given that black Americans are still underrepresented in the ranks of the self-employed and that entrepreneurship is a key component to wealth," Price said.

There are one million black businesses in the United States accounting for more than $100 billion in annual sales, according to the National Black Chamber of Commerce. The latest U.S. Census numbers report that blacks have more than $800 billion in expendable income each year.

While I have no problem with how these people spend their money, and what businesses they chose to patronize (that should be a freedom that all Americans have), I do question how this might have played in the MainStreamMedia, if the word "white" were substituted for the word "black" in the story. My guess is that their web site would be shut down and they would be castigated as racists and supremacists.

Read more...