Anderson Cooper Still Has His Mouth Full

When I read on TVNewser that Anderson Cooper had apologized for his tea bagging comment, I was heartened. I thought that maybe a good journalist had figured out that he had stepped over the line and was trying to correct a mistake.

I was wrong.
Start here, with the original comments made by Cooper:

Anderson Cooper says "Its hard to talk when you're Teabagging."
It was a dumb joke. I have to point out that MSNBC was the first organization that I heard using that term to refer to the Tea Party protestors. But other news organzations, like CNN, followed suit.
The problem with all of them is that they suggested that the Tea Party protesters were referring to themselves with this term.
I was there in Chicago. They were not.
I Googled to try to find a Tea Party organization referring to themselves with this term. Its possible that someone did, but if they did, they didn't get much news coverage.

Which brings us back to the journalists like Anderson Cooper, and his 'apology.' This is what he said, you can watch his comments here.

Pardon the fact that I can't embed it. The guy who posted it on YouTube disabled embedding. He's been very defensive of Cooper.

Anderson Cooper clearly didn't believe that he was wrong. He blamed his teabagging comments on the protesters, and said, basically, that it was their fault for not knowing what it meant.
Which would be cool if they were actually referring to themselves in that way.

I love good journalism. I abhor bad journalism.
I have a lot of problems with Anderson Cooper, but my current one is that I can't understand what he's saying with that thing in his mouth. And I mean, of course, his foot.

David Pflouffe's "Swiftboat" fundraising

For those of you who don't know, David Pflouffe was David Axelrod's other hand in getting Obama elected.
So its important to understand the background on Pflouffe. According to SourceWatch, David raised a record $95 million for the DCCC in 1999-2000 for democrat candidates who were running for the house.
Keep that in mind, while you read this:

David Plouffe, the man who ran Obama's historic and ultimately successful run for the White House, wrote in a fundraising e-mail to Obama's massive supporter e-mail list that the same operatives behind the swiftboat campaign that helped end Sen. John Kerry's (D-Mass.) quest to unseat President George W. Bush are regrouping to target Obama's healthcare efforts.

Now what does it sound like he wants to do?
Let's get specific:

In his e-mail through Organizing for American, Obama's semi-dormant campaign operation at the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Plouffe asked supporters to donate money and organize to urge Congress to act on legislation.

He wants money.
And he's willing to sell you any type of fear to get you there... even by threatening that Republicans are going to (cue spooky music) Swiftboat Health Care.

NOTE: Swiftboating is to offer a completely different opinion then what a Democrat says.

On the other hand, trying to scare people into giving you money? That's cool. Right David?

Gore caught in an "Inconvenient Truth"

Gore never quite got over the fact that he lost the election.

To prove it, recently, he argued that Cheney had no right to criticize Obama this early in his term. Suddenly, its not right for the former VP to criticize the current president.
Gore argued that he waited 2 years to criticize Bush. But wouldn't you know, he couldn't even get that right?

The Weekly Standard, doing the kind of journalism that would sell newspapers, nails him to the wall here. One such quote:

USA Today, 4/15/2002: "Gore's speech was the emotional peak of the convention. With practiced skill, humor and a passion some delegates said they did not see during the campaign, Gore denounced virtually every element of Bush's domestic policy." (Headline -- "Gore's fiery speech raises questions of plans")

It makes you wonder why no 'mainstream' outlet did this basic 'Google' type of research. Its not like Gore's statements are made in private. Or like its hard to find an article in USA Today.

Anyway, its all good. You can still believe what he said about the Polar Bears dying off.

Victor Davis Hanson Nails Palin :)

Victor Davis Hanson is fast becoming one of my favorite columnists. Here, he writes about the first 100 days of Sarah Palin's Presidency. A sample, to get you to go there:

IT'S THE MATH, STUPID!
“Well,” lectured Paul Krugman, again in the Times, “we were worried that they didn’t teach math at Idaho U., and now we know for sure they don’t. Is it $1.6 trillion, $1.7 trillion, or $2 trillion in red ink this year? Are we supposed to be impressed that she offers ‘fiscal sobriety’ by cutting 0.003 percent of the budget? She gives out money to those who don’t pay taxes and calls it a tax cut. And now Queen Sarah tells us that in four years she’ll ‘halve’ the deficit, as if she hasn’t borrowed another $5 trillion in the meantime.

VDH is brutal in his writing... and if life were fair, he'd get a Pulitzer for that opinion piece. Presuming, of course, that the committee understood great satire.

Fact Checking Biden

Thanks to the AP for doing the basic research. When Biden tried to recently portray an economy on the rebound, they did the number checking and printed the actual facts.
More importantly, they challenged the administration on the basis for its claims:

To visualize that disconnect, consider this: The administration has promised to create or save 600,000 more jobs in the next 100 days. Even if the nation loses another 5 million jobs during that span (a highly unlikely prospect) the White House could still claim success.

This has been my problem with the administration from the beginning. They will say that they 'succeeded' in creating/saving jobs, because they thought about it. And thinking, in this administration, is doing.

White House Prediction: no job growth

After nearly 2 TRILLION of spending... how much job growth do you think that the WH is predicting?
None.
No kidding.

President Obama's chief economics forecaster said on Sunday that the country was not likely to see positive employment growth until 2010, even if the economy began to grow later this year.

Now let's pause and consider this for a moment. Let's say that this was Bush, not Obama, who did this. Do you think that the press would go after him for spending so much without any result until 2010?

9/11 Family member on Obama

Debra is the sister of Charles F. Burlingame III - the pilot of American Airlines 77 - which was flown into the Pentagon by terrorists on 9/11.

She was invited, along with others, to meet with the president. Her passionate editorial appeared in the Wall Street Journal on May 8th. A small portion of it:

Given all the developments since our meeting with the president, it is now evident that his words to us bore no relation to his intended actions on national security policy and detainee issues. But the narrative about Mr. Obama's successful meeting with 9/11 and Cole families has been written, and the press has moved on.

The Obama team has established a pattern that should be plain for all to see. When controversy erupts or legitimate policy differences are presented by well-meaning people, send out the celebrity president to flatter and charm.

I can't post her entire editorial, because I don't want to violate copyright. But I hope you'll go there and read it. She details what this administration has done, point by point, including a proposed release of detainees and the possibility of making them eligible for welfare support. Its absurd, but welcome to the Obama administration.

Something completely different

Joe Cocker, subtitled, appropriately.
Go there if you need to smile.

Obama popular among Muslims

According to Reuters...

Of those surveyed, 33 percent had a favorable view of the United States, 43 percent had a negative view, 14 percent were neutral and 10 percent said they did not know, Ipsos said.

In contrast, Obama received favorable ratings averaging 48 percent in the region as a whole.

I'm okay with people in the Middle-East having a bad opinion of "us." We're talking about countries that stone a woman to death simply for being seen with a man, alone. The woman gets murdered in cold blood, while the man gets... well, we're not sure. But he doesn't get stoned to death.

I find it interesting that Obama has such a positive rating by those people. You have to wonder what it is that they see.

Obama cuts $17 BILLION!!!

...from the deficit. Leaving it hovering at around 1.8 TRILLION.

President Barack Obama urged Congress to cut almost $17 billion in programs, including tax breaks for oil and gas companies, while seeking an $81 billion increase for his domestic agenda.

Ugh.

Even with the proposed cuts amounting to only about one- half of 1 percent of the total budget, Obama is confronting resistance to them in Congress and from interest groups seeking to keep alive favored programs.

The good news is that Republicans are starting to listen to the Tax Protesters, and they are making loud objections to Obama's plans...

“The administration’s proposed cuts, while welcome, don’t go far enough, and they appear to be a diversionary tactic -- an effort to change the subject away from the unprecedented debt this budget heaps on future generations,” House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio said in a statement.

Thank you, Mr. Boehner, we appreciate it!

"New Era Of Responsibility"

That's what it actually says on the White House Home page, next to their 2010 budget.

I'm about to violate my new promise to myself, about using inappropriate language on my blog.

What the fuck?
How do you add 50 cents of debt for every dollar of spending and then have the Audacity of Spending to use the phrase "A New Era Of Responsibility" near your budget?

If that's responsible spending... what the heck does Obama think is irresponsible spending?

"No. That's MY photo of Obama!"

Just when I think that the cultists can't go any farther, from Cincinnati.com:

Marla Anderson wanted that Barack Obama picture. So much so that Wyoming police say she walked into a Grove Avenue home Friday to take it.She struggled with the owner, who called police for help.

C'mon people.
There are enough photos of Obama to go around. Trust me on this. Its not worth it. No really. Its not worth it.

I'll prove it. Go here and print one out for yourself. Feel better?

50 cents of debt for every dollar of spending

Its almost unfathomable to me that people aren't getting this. From AP, with thanks to Andrew Taylor for putting this in terms that everyone can easily understand:

The government is currently adding 50 cents of debt for every dollar that it spends.

Let me see if I can put that into perspective.
Let's say that you make $30,000 a year.
This year, you spend $45,000. In one chunk. That's this year alone.
If you did that, and had nothing appreciable to show for your spending, what would you call yourself? Irresponsible? Reckless? Dumb?

The fact is that our deficit... not our debt, but our deficit... is 1.8 TRILLION dollars this year. Our spending? Roughly twice that.
How did we get here, folks?

By deciding that everything is a necessity for the government to get involved in.
By nodding our heads when the government says "Do you want us to buy you this?"

We got here by never having the common sense to realize that we are still going to have to pay for it.

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ear; or at least half of your current income in debt. Because that's what we are doing... today, in our government. And its going to drown this country.

We just confronted the fact that there were too many individuals buying homes that they couldn't afford.
The solution to this, by the current government?
Spending that increases the debt by 50 cents, for every dollar we spend.
That is not cool.

And the right is called the party of hate?

I found this courtesy of the Telegraph in the UK:



Yikes.
There is something very frightening about seeing the president laughing when a comedian refers to Rush Limbaugh as the 20th hijacker.

I have to remind myself that the Democrats are not the party of hate... that we are.

Fed 'Stress Test' wasn't?

The idea of the "stress tests", put out by the Fed, was to give a fiscal report card on the health of major banks.

Only... they let the banks 'negotiate' their financial standing. The WSJ, via Reuters:

The Federal Reserve reduced the size of capital deficits facing several banks before releasing the results of stress tests on the financial institutions, according to a story in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday.

This means that either the Treasury's initial report was completely wrong, or the Treasury department caved to pressure from the banks, and put out a report card that was not accurate.
Which is kinda how we got here in the first place.

-John

"Grants.gov"

While wandering around Recovery.gov, I found Grants.gov.
It shouldn't be confused with Change.gov, or any of the multitude of .gov websites that the Obama administration has branded.

But it does have one thing in common: a desire from the government to give away cash.

Grants.gov runs in a way that only the government could run.
If you were running a business, you would figure out what you needed, and then try to find businesses that could provide those items or services.

Grants.gov works the other way around.
It asks the person applying what they are going to provide in return for the money provided.

Some examples:
Recovery Act Limited Competition: High-End Instrumentation Grant Program (S10)

"Purpose. The NCRR High-End Instrumentation Grant (HEI) program encourages applications from groups of NIH-supported investigators to purchase a single major item of equipment to be used for biomedical research that costs at least $600,000. The maximum award is $8,000,000."

It then lists basic categories of 'possible' spending. Note, these seem to be just suggestions of the kind of things that the person applying for the grant COULD provide: structural and functional imaging systems, macromolecular NMR spectrometers, high-resolution mass spectrometers, cryoelectron microscopes and supercomputers.

Note; about $160 MILLION is being set aside for such mystery purchases.
Only in America do we provide money, and then ask people what they will give us for the money.

NEA Access to Artistic Excellence FY2010

An organization may submit only one application through one of the following FY2010 Grants for Arts Projects categories: Access to Artistic Excellence, Challenge America: Reaching Every Community Fast-Track Review Grants, Learning in the Arts for Children and Youth.The Arts Endowment's support of a project may start on or after June 1, 2010.

You can get up to $150k for that one.

The point is, there are literally thousands of grants on those pages.
They are all offers from the government to give you money... but you have to tell them what you are using it for.
Which is like me going to the store, and telling the clerk: "I have $150. What are you going to sell me in the category of groceries."

Grants.gov is a way to make it easier for the government to give that money away.

Recovery.gov is a PR tool

Again, I need to remind everyone that when the president announced "Recovery.gov", he said that it would be a tool for us to track every last penny of spending.

What he didn't tell us was that, according to his people, they don't have the data capacity to get it up and running until October.

They also didn't tell us that Recovery.gov is a place where everyone can go to get money.
Here's an example:

Want to see what kind of federal grants are available? Federal agencies offer more than 1,000 grant programs and access to approximately $400 billion in annual awards. Note that federal grants are not federal assistance or loans to individuals. Rather, organizations can search and apply for grants from 26 different federal agencies through the Grants.gov site. For grant opportunities related to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, use the Find Recovery Act Opportunities option on Grants.gov.

I added my own emphasis in red.
This is what I hate about government: they are so completely anxious to give away my money. But its not even my money. Its the money of our kids.
And its nothing short of a crime that Obama isn't legally required to tell you that every time he comes up with another pork bill.

More on Acorn

According to Review Journal.com:

A voter registration drive last year illegally required canvassers to meet quotas to keep their jobs and resulted in thousands of “garbage” registrations gumming up Clark County voter rolls, officials said Monday as they released a criminal complaint against the drive’s organizers.

Yet, people continue to argue that ACORN is blameless in all of this.
If it is, then its an 'innocent' organization that just happened to attract dozens of bad people.

Cliff Asness, on Obama's Chrysler's reorganization

Cliff Asness is a hedge fund manager. You may know that the Obama administration criticized Hedge fund managers for not going along with his plan for reorganizing Chrysler.
As one of the targets of the Obama administration, he obviously has a stake in all of this.
Cliff gave his argument on "Zero Hedge". I'm including a large portion of it, because he makes a great point:

Here's a shock. When hedge funds, pension funds, mutual funds, and individuals, including very sweet grandmothers, lend their money they expect to get it back. However, they know, or should know, they take the risk of not being paid back. But if such a bad event happens it usually does not result in a complete loss. A firm in bankruptcy still has assets. It’s not always a pretty process. Bankruptcy court is about figuring out how to most fairly divvy up the remaining assets based on who is owed what and whose contracts come first. The process already has built-in partial protections for employees and pensions, and can set lenders' contracts aside in order to help the company survive, all of which are the rules of the game lenders know before they lend. But, without this recovery process nobody would lend to risky borrowers. Essentially, lenders accept less than shareholders (means bonds return less than stocks) in good times only because they get more than shareholders in bad times.

The above is how it works in America, or how it’s supposed to work. The President and his team sought to avoid having Chrysler go through this process, proposing their own plan for re-organizing the company and partially paying off Chrysler’s creditors. Some bond holders thought this plan unfair. Specifically, they thought it unfairly favored the United Auto Workers, and unfairly paid bondholders less than they would get in bankruptcy court. So, they said no to the plan and decided, as is their right, to take their chances in the bankruptcy process. But, as his quotes above show, the President thought they were being unpatriotic or worse.

That's all true. The president favored the United Auto Workers above the people who invested in the company. That's not fair. The company would not be there if it wasn't for investors.

House Democrats seek MORE money... what???

As if quadrupling the deficit in 100 days was not enough...

Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives will seek passage in coming weeks of $94.2 billion in emergency money for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other programs, including $2 billion more to prepare for an influenza pandemic.

Pork, pork, pork pork pork.
Say it with me. Pork.