Harvard and Lefty Elizabeth Warren, Senate Dem Hopeful, Played Indians at College Together?

A recipe for trouble

Liz Warren’s latest little lies

By HOWIE CARR     at the New York Post

Boston So Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic candidate for Ted Kennedy’s former Senate seat in Massachusetts, is not an Indian — just a plagiarist.

The bloodlines aren’t “faint”; they’re nonexistent. You may still hear that her claim to be one-thirty-second Cherokee is merely “dubious”; in fact, it’s false.

Harvard Law School’s “first woman of color,” as the Fordham Law Review put it, is whiter than Ivory Snow.

Yet much of the media continues to look away from a scandal that would have driven any Republican from the race weeks ago.

When national Democrats handpicked her to unseat freshman Republican Scott Brown (who is, it should be noted, a white man), Warren’s credentials seemed impeccable; she claimed last fall to have provided the “intellectual foundations” of the Occupy movement.

J.C. Rice

Cooking up a storm: Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren contributed allegedly plagiarized recipes to a Native American cookbook.

 

Oops.

The 62-year-old “Okie” (as the Native American emeritus now describes herself) began checking the box, as they say, back in 1984 — and her academic career immediately took off. The newly minted minority catapulted from the University of Texas to the Ivy League, first Penn (where her name was boldfaced in faculty directories to indicate her minority status) and then Harvard.

If Warren hadn’t decided to run for the Senate, she’d still be an Indian. But three weeks ago, it got out that Harvard had been bragging about her as a “minority” hire as far back as 1996. This led the newspapers to ask the New England Historic Genealogical Society to trace her roots. A day or so later, their top researcher reported finding a 2006 family online newsletter, that mentioned an 1894 application for a marriage license in Oklahoma that supposedly listed her great-great-great grandmother as a Cherokee. Thus, the one-thirty-second claim.

The next day, Warren’s greatest cheerleader, The Boston Globe, breathlessly announced that “an 1894 document” had been “unearthed.” Maybe she could have brazened it out — but then Warren stumbled into her own personal Little Big Horn.

In a press release, she touted both the supposed 1894 document and an obscure 1984 Indian cookbook, “Pow Wow Chow” (edited by her late cousin), as proof of her tribal origins.

Then a Breitbart researcher, Michael Patrick Leahy, called Logan County in Oklahoma, where the document would have been filed. The county clerk told him that in 1894 there was no such thing as a marriage-license application — only a license, with no box to check off for race.

Cherokee spokesmen called for her to release her law-school job applications, but Warren stonewalled. Asked why she had claimed Indian heritage, she cited an old photograph of her “papaw,” her grandfather, who “had high cheekbones, like all the Indians do.”

As for claiming Native American status in minority law-school directories, she said she’d done it simply in hope of being “invited to a luncheon . . . with people like me.” Right.

Then the Breitbart blogger got a copy of “Pow Wow Chow,” supposedly a compilation of “special recipes passed down through the Five Tribes families.”

Five recipes came from “Elizabeth Warren — Cherokee.” At least two were plagiarized — lifted verbatim from The New York Times. They’d been developed by “60-minute gourmet” Pierre Franey as chef at Le Pavillon, the mid-century center of haute cuisine in Manhattan.

One of them — for cold crab omelet — Franey wrote in 1979, was a particular favorite of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and composer Cole Porter.

The French-recipe story broke Friday morning, and the mother of Occupy Wall Street was suddenly an international punchline:

* “Funny, she doesn’t look Siouxish.”

* What’s Liz Warren’s favorite kitchen utensil? The crockpot.

* Her favorite meal? Cooked goose or macaroni and Cochise.

Warren is trying to stop the hemorrhaging with a $1.6 million TV buy featuring a photo of her with President Obama. She now grants interviews only to in-the-tank media, like MSNBC.

Count on much of the press to stick by Warren as she trudges down her personal Trail of Tears. This weekend, a Times columnist dismissed her fraudulent ethnic claims as a “tragicomic . . . whim” more deserving of “sympathy than scorn.”

Presumably, that goes for the lifted Times recipes, too.

Howie Carr is a Boston Herald columnist.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/recipe_for_trouble_FjE51f7qZJ9SUIZmF6pX1H#ixzz1w1stEwrY

Pray Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker Defeats the Thugs of Labor

Barrett, Walker bring sharp tone to debate

by Jason Stein  and  Bill Glauber   at the Journal Sentinel:

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and Gov. Scott Walker on Friday brought the sharp tone of the last year in Wisconsin politics to the first of two debates in the state’s historic recall election.

With polls showing a tight race led by the GOP governor, his Democratic challenger sought to gain ground by taking the offensive. At the debate, sponsored by the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association at Milwaukee Public Television studios, Barrett said the June recall is “not a rematch or do-over” of his 2010 loss to Walker but a referendum on Walker’s polarizing tenure as governor.

“You decided to use a budget crisis to try to divide and conquer this state. That’s what happened. That’s what led to all of this,” Barrett said, often looking at the governor as he spoke.

Walker said the recall was about the bold methods that he used to balance a $3 billion shortfall in the state budget over two years by focusing on spending cuts rather than tax increases. He said that voters wanted to “move on” and “move forward” and declined to put a question to Barrett as allowed by the debate format, saying the public didn’t want to see candidates bicker with each other.

“Our reforms are working. That’s why our opponents don’t talk about them any more,” Walker said. ” . . . We’re turning things around. We’re moving in the right direction.”

The gubernatorial recall – the first in Wisconsin and just the third in the nation’s history – was sparked by Walker’s successful effort to all but end collective bargaining for most public workers.

Barrett said that despite Walker’s criticisms of the recall process, the governor had become Mil waukee County executive in 2002 in part because of the possibility of a recall. He said that he believed the governor in the past had signed recall petitions against U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl and former U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold.

Walker didn’t respond directly to that statement, saying instead that recalls were costly and that he opposed recalling politicians solely because of their policies rather than ethical failings. His campaign spokeswoman, Ciara Matthews, said she did not know whether Walker had signed the petitions.

The candidates also sparred over a secret John Doe investigation of Walker’s aides going back to his time as county executive. Charges have been issued against three former aides to Walker, one of his former appointees and one of his donors.

The investigation being conducted by Democratic Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm has focused on a range of issues, including allegations that Walker aides were doing campaign work while being paid by county taxpayers.

“When he found out about it, did he call for an investigation? No,” said Barrett, charging Walker was more concerned with whether the problems would become public.

Barrett called on Walker to publicly release emails sent on a secret system using a private router in the county executive’s office and urged the governor to disclose which campaign donors are funding his criminal defense fund.

Walker said that he does not believe he is a target of the investigation and that he has had high integrity since childhood. The governor pushed back, saying Barrett and his allies were raising the issue to distract voters from Barrett’s failed record as mayor.

“They want to distract attention because they’re desperate,” Walker said.

Barrett also argued the economy has faltered because Walker strayed from his promise to focus on jobs and instead sparked a “civil war” with his union legislation. He pointed to a string of monthly jobs reports that says Wisconsin lost about 34,000 jobs last year, making it the worst in the nation.

Walker called those jobs reports unreliable and pointed to more complete jobs numbers released by his administration earlier this month that he says show the state actually gained jobs – about 23,000 of them – last year.

Most economists agree the quarterly figures are more reliable, though normally those figures are released by the federal government after the Bureau of Labor Statistics has reviewed them. The quarterly figures were not slated to be released until three weeks after the June 5 recall election, but Walker’s administration last week decided to release the data used to compile them.

Walker criticized Barrett’s tenure as mayor, noting that taxes went up on his watch and that unemployment also increased. Barrett countered that unemployment rose even more during the time Walker was Milwaukee County executive.

In response to a question about gay marriage, Barrett said he supported “marriage equality” and Walker said that he supported the state’s constitutional amendment limiting marriage to between a man and woman.

Barrett also accused Walker of seeking to be a “rock star” to the far right, saying he was more focused on grooming that image and making undisclosed out-of-state fundraising trips than serving as governor.

Walker has raised an unprecedented $25 million since January 2011, with 59% of his donations of $100 or more coming from out of state. Barrett has raised 12.5% of his donations of $100 or more from out of state, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, which tracks campaign donations.

“There is something wrong when a sitting governor raises 60 to 70 percent of his money from out of state,” Barrett said.

Walker said he was able to gain support from Wisconsin and around the country because he had protected the interests of families in this state.

“I stood up and took on the powerful interests,” Walker said. ” . . . I put the power back in the hands of the taxpayers.”

Walker said Barrett hasn’t said enough about what tough choices he would have made to balance the state budget and what choices he would make going forward in the next budget.

“We don’t really know what Barrett’s going to do,” Walker said. ” . . . He hasn’t told the voters. He doesn’t have a plan.”

The candidates also debated the impact that the repeal of most collective bargaining for most public employees has had on the state.

Barrett said he would stand up for workers but wouldn’t buckle to the unions that had sought to elect former Dane County executive Kathleen Falk – the candidate that the mayor defeated in the May 8 primary.

“Let’s face it. I was not their first choice,” Barrett said of the unions. “The real test of leadership is whether you can say no to your friends.”

Walker said the law change has led to savings for taxpayers – his administration has pegged those at more than $1 billion from workers having to pay more for benefits and schools being able to rebid insurance contracts.

“The facts are the facts. Our reforms are working and putting more people to work,” Walker said.

Journal Sentinel reporter Patrick Marley contributed to this report.

Barry Babe’s Record as Marxist ‘Investor’

Video: DWS flummoxed on public-equity layoffs

in auto industry

 by Ed Morrissey  at HotAir:

It’s fair to say that The Blaze and CNN contributor Will Cain wins the Internet today.  When pressed on CNN to answer charges of hypocrisy for Barack Obama’s attack on Mitt Romney for his record at Bain Capital as a private-equity executive while actively fundraising from the same industry — in fact, fundraising from the same company, with a Bain Capital exec as a bundler — DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz insists that the comparison isn’t just apples to oranges, it’s “apples to coconuts.”  Taking money from private-equity firms isn’t at all the same as voting for someone who thinks that rescuing companies involves laying off a whole bunch of people.

That’s where Will makes the real “apples to apples” comparison, which Wasserman Schultz refuses to answer, via Daniel Halper at The Weekly Standard:

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/05/25/video-dws-flummoxed-on-public-equity-layoffs-in-auto-industry/

Yet a little later in the interview she was stumped. “Let’s compare apples to apples,” the other CNN host said to the DNC chair. “It seems to me the criticism you’re offering is that Mitt Romney went into businesses and laid people off. But wouldn’t the apples to apples comparison be that’s exactly what Barack Obama did when he touts the auto industry as a feather in his cap, didn’t the federal government and Barack Obama go in and layoff thousands of autoworkers to save that industry?”

Wasserman Schultz then ducked by changing the topic.

She didn’t just duck — she explicitly refused to answer Will’s question.  It’s entirely on point, though, especially after bailout IG Neil Barofsky reported that many of the dealership closures and layoffs were unnecessary, and the decisions to close them weren’t based on sound economics, either, at least in GM’s case.  In a private-equity arrangement, these kinds of problems would have investors voting with their feet.  In public-equity decisions, such as the GM case, there is no such feedback loop.

Marc Thiessen made the same comparison yesterday in the Washington Post:

Since taking office, Obama has invested billions of taxpayer dollars in private businesses, including as part of his stimulus spending bill. Many of those investments have turned out to be unmitigated disasters — leaving in their wake bankruptcies, layoffs, criminal investigations and taxpayers on the hook for billions. Consider just a few examples of Obama’s public equity failures:

● Raser Technologies. In 2010, the Obama administration gave Raser a $33 million taxpayer-funded grant to build a power plant in Beaver Creek, Utah. According to the Wall Street Journal, after burning through our tax dollars, the company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2012. The plant now has fewer than 10 employees, and Raser owes $1.5 million in back taxes.

● ECOtality. The Obama administration gave ECOtality $126.2 million in taxpayer money in 2009 for, among other things, the installation of 14,000 electric car chargers in five states. Obama even hosted the company’s president, Don Karner, in the first lady’s box during the 2010 State of the Union address as an example of a stimulus success story. According to ECOtality’s own SEC filings, the company has since incurred more than $45 million in losses and has told the federal government, “We may not achieve or sustain profitability on a quarterly or annual basis in the future.”

Worse, according to CBS News the company is “under investigation for insider trading,” and Karner has been subpoenaed “for any and all documentation surrounding the public announcement of the first Department of Energy grant to the company.”

● First Solar. The Obama administration provided First Solar with more than $3 billion in loan guarantees for power plants in Arizona and California. According to aBloomberg Businessweek report last week, the company “fell to a record low in Nasdaq Stock Market trading May 4 after reporting $401 million in restructuring costs tied to firing 30 percent of its workforce.”

No wonder DWS won’t answer the question.

Does Obama Realize He is Lying nearly All the Time? Selling himself as a fiscal Conservative is “Whopper of the Year!” to Krauthammer

Kratuhammer at realclearpolitics videos explains Obamalie:

“That is what makes it whopper of the year,” syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer says of a report that federal spending, under the Obama administration, has risen at the lowest pace in 60 years. “This is an unbelievable distortion of the truth. If you compare it to what was spent in the Bush years, particularly if you take out the emergency spending that the two administrations agreed on in the end — the bailouts — then you have an 8% increase, which is historic. You had it in 2009 alone, increases in the agencies of 20% and 50% in some of the agencies. Historically high and Obama increased it year after year.”

“So what he is talking about really is a false impression. There was no intention ever by any administration of repeating the bailouts that you have to have in September, October, and November of 2008 and then the beginning of 2009. And if you count it in it’s deliberately distorting the facts. And I’m not sure if there is anybody who believes it because it’s so obvious, If an administration starts with the largest stimulus spending bill in galactic history, it obviously is not cost-cutting administration,” he said.

Do the facts mean nothing to professor Obama?  View the video from realclearpolitics by clicking below:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/05/24/krauthammer_obama_claim_of_fiscal_discipline_is_whopper_of_the_year.html

Peggy Noonan: “It’s been a good week for Mitt Romney”

Noonan: Mitt Romney’s Moment

The GOP nominee explains why he thinks America is at an ‘inflection point.’

by Peggy Noonan    at the Wall Street Journal:

 

It’s been a good week for Mitt Romney. The polls are up, he’s just off a two-day swing through Connecticut and New York where he hauled in big donors and hard money, and he swept the GOP primaries in Kentucky and Arkansas.On Tuesday Texas will put him over the top and make him, formally and officially, the Republican nominee for president.Not everything worked—his big education speech Wednesday was wan and pallid—but he’s having a moment. In a telephone interview, he reflected on the campaign, tracing his candidacy’s upward momentum to an increased sense among voters that the country is on the wrong path and, perhaps, a growing sense that he’s proved himself: “I can tell you that we went through those 37 or 38 contests and won the must-win states, and in some cases we started off 10 points behind. And we hustled, worked hard, and convinced the voters.” This produced “the kind of track record that people say, ‘You know, I think if Mitt can keep that up, in November we’re going to see a new president.’”Candidates on a campaign van look out the window and see America go by. They meet with people, talk. I asked Mr. Romney the difference between the America he saw in 2008 and the one he sees now. “A much higher degree of anxiety today. People much less confident in the security of their job, less confident in the prospects for their children.”Four years ago, the economic downturn hadn’t occurred. “In my primary, the central issue was Iraq.” Now it is the economy.

Before rallies and town meetings, Mr. Romney always tries to have private, off-the-record meetings with voters. “I sit down with five or six couples or individuals and just go around the table, and I ask them to tell me about their life. And the stories I hear suggest a degree of anxiety which is not reflected in the statistics.”He is struck, he said, by the number of people who are employed but in legitimate fear of being let go. He is struck by the number of people who’ve made investments for their retirement—real estate, 401(k)s—and seen them go down.He keeps a campaign journal on his iPad: “Now this is going to make my iPad a subject of potential theft!” He used to speak his entries, but now he types them on an attached keyboard. “I’ve kept up pretty well, actually.” He writes every two or three days, so that 10 years from now he can “remember what it was like,” but also to capture “the feelings—the ups the downs, the people I meet and the sense I have about what’s going to happen. It’s kind of fun to go back and read, as Ann and I do from time to time.”Does he love politics—the joy of it, the fight of it? “What I love are the political rallies and town meetings. I love the interchange with individuals that are probing and pushing.”But the game of politics? “I like competition, and I think the game is like a sport for old guys. I mean, you know, I can’t compete in competitive sports very well, but I can compete in politics, and there’s the—what was the old ABC ‘Wide World of Sports’ slogan? ‘The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.’ The only difference is victory is still a thrill, but I don’t feel agony in loss.”Do you wake up in a good mood, or do you have to work your way into it? “Depends on the day.” He laughs. “Depends on the issue. The only time I’m unhappy is if I’ve done something that hurt the prospects for the success of our effort.”When was the last time you woke up unhappy? He says he doesn’t recall. Then: “Sometimes you’re disappointed, but it’s mostly disappointment with myself that causes me to be most concerned. This for me is not my life, meaning I don’t have to win an election to feel good about myself.” He’s achieved success in business “beyond my wildest dreams.” He’s “hoping to make a contribution and go to Washington and go home when it’s over. . . . Who I am has long ago been determined by my relationship with the people I love, and with my success in my professional career.”All great political families have myths, stories they tell themselves about how history happened. The great story about Mr. Romney’s father, George, is that one word—”brainwashed”—did in his presidential candidacy in 1968. People have hypothesized that Mitt is careful with words and statements, that he edits his thoughts too severely, because of the power of that myth.

“I don’t think my father’s comment figures into my thinking at all,” he says. It’s his own mistakes “that make me want to kick myself in the seat of my pants,” that “cause me to try and be a little more careful in what I say. . . . I’ve had a couple of those during the campaign, which have haunted me a little bit, but I’m sure before this is over will haunt me a lot.”

Asked for an example, he mentions “I like to be able to fire people.” He meant, he says, those, such as health-insurance companies, that provide inadequate services. “I have to think not only about what I say in a full sentence but what I say in a phrase.” In the current media environment, “you will be taken out of context, you’ll be clipped, and you’ll be battered with things you said.” He says it is interesting that “the media always says, ‘Gosh, we just want you to be spontaneous,’ but at the same time if you say anything in the wrong order, you’re gonna be sorry!”

What about historic parallelism—the people who say, “This election is 1980 all over again,” or, “No, it’s 1996″? What year is it?

“It’s 2012.” He laughs. History sometimes repeats “its lessons,” but “history does not repeat itself identically. This is a different time than any other time before it.”

“I think there have been inflection points in American history where the course of the nation has changed, where culture, industry, even military strategy have changed.” The Civil War was one such time, the turn of the last century another.

He believes we are in one now: “I think America is going to decide whether we will put ourself on a path toward Europe—whether we will become another nation dominated by government, where citizens are dependent on government for the things they want in life, where opportunity is sacrificed, where military strength is depleted to pay for government promises, where unemployment is chronically high and wage growth chronically low. That, in my view, is the course the president has put us upon.” If Barack Obama is re-elected, “it will be very difficult to get off that path. If I’m elected, I will usher in a period of economic vitality” that will leave the world “surprised.”

Not only the world: “America is going to see a vitality we had not expected.”

Comment:

 

Obama Marxist Victory on the American Indian Front Meets Opposition

Speaking of Injuns. . .

by John Hinderaker    at   PowerLine:

So while we’re on the subject of Indians Native Americans, have a look at a news story in today’s Wall Street Journal on how political correctness is backfiring on the Left.  It seems the sensitivistas of Oregon have banned Indian names and Indian mascots from all high schools, at the penalty of having state aid cut to any school that does not comply.  But some people are protesting—real, honest-to-God indigenous Indian tribes.  Turns out one of the team names banned by the regulation is for a public school located on an Indian reservation.  And the Indians want to keep their team name, “The Warriors.”

Several Native American Indian tribes have figured out that suppressing images of Indians will probably lead to less consciousness about Indian heritage.  Does it really matter whether Indian images are accurate or convey the fuller story of Indians in America?  (Does Santa Clause or the Easter Bunny derive from the Bible, or relate seriously to Christian theology?  Well, maybe we’ll get back to the War on Christmas as soon as the War on Women is won.)  A lot of Indians like and are proud of Indian mascot names and warlike images.  And why should this expression of diversity be banned by guilt-stricken white liberals?  Let them do that in their own lilly-white suburban schools (which I assure you Oregon suburban schools surely are).  By the way, I’ve known several Indians Native Americans who prefer to be called “Indians.”  (Conversely, I sometimes call myself a “native American” because I was born here.)

Here’s my favorite bit from the story:

“It is the opinion of the Siletz Tribe that this ban does nothing to address the real issues of racism,” read a letter released by Diane Rodriguez, a Siletz spokeswoman. “For the Siletz Tribal community, this action has a negative impact on our students and our community. We will be forced once again to succumb to the misguided intentions of people who have no knowledge of Indian communities.”

Insensitivity!  It’s enough to give a liberal the vapors.  But then, when has “lack of knowledge” ever stopped a liberal?  There’s a reason why many Indians have long referred to the Federal Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) as the “Bureau of Ignorance and Arrogance.”