Rev. Wright: Obama threw me under the bus

In other headlines, Obama isn't really religious. From AP:

In his strongest language to date about the administration's 2-year-old rift with the Chicago pastor, Wright told a group raising money for African relief that his pleas to release frozen funds for use in earthquake-ravaged Haiti would likely be ignored.

Really? But... its for Haiti? Why would they ignore Wright's words?
Oh yeah...

"I am 'radioactive,' Sir. When Obama threw me under the bus, he threw me under the bus literally!" he wrote. "Any advice that I offer is going to be taken as something to be avoided. Please understand that!"

Yep. Of course, it took the president a while to understand that Wright was, you know... offensive. And even then, the president pleaded with us to 'understand' why Wright said the things that he did. But since then, the president has gotten religion. Well, no, not real religion. The kind of religion that reminds you that as a politician, you shouldn't touch racist preachers. Or be seen with them. Or call them your preacher.

How do you 'mispeak' several times about your action in Vietnam?

Blumenthal is an asshat.
So is everyone who didn't call him out on this earlier. Kudos to the New York Times for doing so. It seems that Blumenthal spoke many times about his non-existent service in Vietnam:

There was one problem: Mr. Blumenthal, a Democrat now running for the United States Senate, never served in Vietnam. He obtained at least five military deferments from 1965 to 1970 and took repeated steps that enabled him to avoid going to war, according to records.

What an asshole.
What a world class asshole. I can't believe that anyone would tell crowd after crowd of veterans about serving in Vietnam when he hadn't. What kind of asshole does that?
Well, the democrat who is trying to take Chris Dodd's vacant seat. That kind of asshole.

More on the White House PR

After the oil rig disaster started, the WH went into full spin mode:

Within hours, it was cranking out a sustained barrage across the broad spectrum of modern media — statements, reports, e-mails, tweets, photos and videos — all punctuated by a high-profile presidential visit to the Gulf followed by an incendiary speech at the White House and a video recap with exclusive behind-the-scenes views of Obama in "West Wing Week," the White House's new online program at www.whitehouse.gov.

When you produce videos, yourself, showing what your politician is doing.... you may very well be the most manufactured president alive.
I wonder if Aaron Sorkin writes this one too?

Here's another article on the new video blog offered by the White House:

Organized chronologically, it's a mishmash of this and that -- the president inspecting factories and farms, talking with people in diners, meeting dignitaries in the Oval Office, making major policy speeches. The blog doesn't break any news. It also doesn't show the president as anything less than presidential in word and deed; each week's video highlights Obama's efforts to address another crisis or major policy issue, such as the government's response to the Gulf Coast oil disaster or his initiative to reform the financial sector.

ugh.
At least the press is offering a little resistance?

News photographers have also been peeved by the White House's practice of barring photojournalists from events and offering its own pictures as a substitute, said Caren Bohan, a Reuters reporter and correspondents' association board member.

It literally pains me to see the press just kind of taking this type of propaganda, and not shouting out about it more often.

What AP didn't find

Parts of the report seemed to be whited out?

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by AP, the agency has released copies of only three inspection reports — those conducted in January, February and April. According to the documents, inspectors spent two hours or less each time they visited the massive rig. Some information appeared to be "whited out," without explanation.

Hmmmm... that sounds suspicious.

Press "Freedom"

There are certain headlines that you can only get in the way, if you try to comment on them:

Press Freedom, Sure. But No Questions.

Kudos to Chip Reid of CBS for pointing it out. It seems that the White House was celebrating the Press Freedom's Act, which is a lot less interesting then it sounds. All it does is tell the State Department that when they issue their annual report on Human Rights, it should include a statement on the Freedom of the Press in that country.

Naturally, the press in this country wanted to use the opportunity to question our president about things like the disaster in the gulf. This isn't one of the president's bright spots. He doesn't know what the hell to say about it, since he was the biggest recipient of donations from BP.
It makes him a little camera shy when it comes to the gulf spill.

It might also be why the WH is pushing back so hard every time the oil spill comes up, and why they want to blame "Republicans" for the spill. (Note: no matter how long the president is in office, whatever happens will always be the fault of Republicans.)
But you won't see the president taking questions anytime soon.

Kagan's paper on Socialism

There are an awful lot of people in the Obama administration that seem to have socialist tendencies.
But when Obama nominated Elena Kagan, who would have guessed that she had written her thesis entitled "To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City 1900-1913", when she attended Princeton?

Doug Ross gives a great 'best of' highlight breakdown of her paper. It is true that there is nothing in her paper that says that socialism is awesome. However, I think that Doug's blog gives you a good idea of how her thesis makes it sound like she's a fan.

Left Coast Rebel does a good job of summarizing what she wrote in one paragraph.

I also love reading her actual editorials. You see, Kagan used to be an editor for her college newspaper. So you can get a feel for what she felt by reading her editorials from the time.
Or you can actually read this editorial that she wrote:

The real contests for Congress and the state legislatures occurred in early September, when the Democratic primary was held. And the people who won those races and who then took the November elections with some 80 per cent of the vote were real Democrats — not the closet Republicans that one sees so often these days but men and women committed to liberal principles and motivated by the ideal of an affirmative and compassionate government.

Gag. Me.
To her credit, she was a dumb college student at the time.

All Kagan, all the time

Just some background research on Elena Kagan, for people who are interested.

The Washington Post is keeping a running index on stories about Kagan, previous stories about her, and her writings.
It includes the official, White House blog video interview with Kagan, that I'm including here in the interest of fair play and propaganda.



Its always nice for the WH to present an interview with their nominee that has been scripted instead of, you know, putting them out there for an actual interview.

Of course, it wasn't that long ago that Obama said that a judicial nominee that has no judicial experience should be subject to extreme scrutiny.

One last piece of interest: John Bonifaz is a little bit of a nut. He wrote a book called "The Case For The Impeachment Of George Bush", and started "After Downing Street"; the organization which believed that the Downing Street memos implicated the Bush administration.
Anyway, Kagan donated cash to his campaign... which might give you some insight into how left leaning she is.

Kagan vs. Miers

I've become curious about how Harriet Miers was covered, as opposed to how Kagan is being covered.
With that in mind, here is my thumbnail research.

You might wonder what Think Progress said about Miers. Well, I did:

Harriet Miers, Bush’s next pick for the Supreme Court, is currently White House Counsel and once served as Bush’s personal lawyer. She has never been a judge.

Now what do you suppose they said about Kagan?

Another criticism conservatives are throwing at Kagan is over the fact that she has never been a judge. Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) said that she was "a surprising choice because she lacks judicial experience." Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) called her "the least qualified [nominee] in terms of judicial experience in 38 years." Of course, during the Bush administration, these same conservatives were saying that having experiences outside of the judicial monastery were a plus. "[R]ight now you have people who've been federal judges, circuit judges most of their lives, or academicians," said Cornyn in 2005. "And what you see is a lack of grounding in reality and common sense that I think would be very beneficial." Kagan would be in good company. Louis Brandeis, Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter, William Rehnquist, and others all served as justices without lower federal court experience. "Of the 111 justices who have served on the Supreme Court, 41 came in without judicial experience."

Hilarious. Now, not being a judge is not a big deal... and how dare Republicans bring it up when they were suggesting that nominees didn't need to be one years ago. (Neglecting to mention that Harriet Miers nomination was shot down.)

What did HuffPo say about Miers? Well, they hated her so very much, that they compared Sarah Palin to her!

As you all probably remember, in 2005, George W. Bush nominated his White House Counsel, Harriet Miers to replace Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court despite the fact that she had no judicial experience whatsoever and seemed completely wrong for the part in every other way but her gender.

Wow! That's pretty brutal. Oh wait. Uhmmm... Kagan has no judicial experience whatsoever too. I wonder what HuffPo says about that? Let's start with this interesting primer:

For decades, Republicans have been the party of coordinated talking points and overwhelming organization with respect to judicial nominations.

Really? Huh. Well, I'm glad that the left hadn't all talked about how Miers had no judicial experience then.
Back to HuffPo:

As Darling and others sees it, the message discipline will come with time, mainly because the attacks on Kagan -- both for lacking adequate judicial experience and, more specifically, her decision as Dean of Harvard Law to bar military recruiters from the school's campus (in protest of the military's "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy) -- are natural and effective. Whether one group or several drive them is of secondary importance, so long as they are driven.

Okay... so according to HuffPo, the 'attacks' are 'natural and effective'.
Rather then, you know... true.
Here's another HuffPo article that sidesteps the issue as a Republican attack tactic:

It won't be all about Obama. Kagan's resume has particular areas that Republicans view as vulnerable. Her refusal to allow military recruiters on Harvard's campus (in protest of Don't Ask Don't Tell) is one. The dearth of judicial experience is another.

Uh huh. By the way, that article suggests that opposition to Kagan is just because Republicans hate Obama.


A lot of blogs have used the White House talking point about there being 40 Supreme Court justices that have had no bench experience. In case you were wondering, this list gives the complete run down. You'll note that Renquist was the last one nominated without bench experience, and that it was Nixon who did it in 1972, in the same year that he nominated another man without experience to the bench.
You won't find very many Democrats arguing that Obama is being Nixonian in his nomination.

The New York Times said this about Miers at the time:

Ms. Miers, 60, a longtime confidante of the president's, has never been a judge, and therefore lacks a long history of judicial rulings that could reveal ideological tendencies. Her positions on such ideologically charged issues as abortion and affirmative action are unclear.

Interesting. What did they say about Kagan? The Times starts her bio with all of her other credits:

In settling on Ms. Kagan, the president chose a well-regarded 50-year-old lawyer who served as a staff member in all three branches of government and was the first woman to be dean of Harvard Law School. If confirmed, she would be the youngest member and the third woman on the current court, but the first justice in nearly four decades without any prior judicial experience.

That lack of time on the bench may both help and hurt her confirmation prospects, allowing critics to question whether she is truly qualified while denying them a lengthy judicial paper trail filled with ammunition for attacks. As solicitor general, Ms. Kagan has represented the government before the Supreme Court for the past year, but her own views are to a large extent a matter of supposition.

To their credit, they at least mention that she was never a judge... but they say it might 'help' her nomination.

How to make bad news seem positive

Someone at AP practically went down on the administration in this article:

The economy got what it needed in April: A burst of hiring that added a net 290,000 jobs, the biggest monthly total in four years. It showed employers are gaining confidence as the recovery takes deeper root.

But people who had given up on finding jobs are gaining confidence, too, and are now looking for work. That's why the unemployment rate rose from 9.7 percent to 9.9 percent and will likely go higher.

Now in the world can you report that unemployment is going up to 9.9%, and make it sound like things are getting better?

You need to work for AP in order to do that.

Redacted material seems to connect Obama to Blago

Its been a few days, and this story isn't getting any traction. That bothers me, because the story would seem to connect the president to the scandal with Blagojevich.

Yes, I understand that is exactly what Blago is trying to do. But what the article suggests is that Blago is not entirely wrong... that there were efforts made by the Obama administration to deal with Blago in his effort to sell a senate seat.

I hope the media will follow up on this soon.

The GAO warning us of financial disaster

The GAO isn't exactly a radical organization. They are one of the few parts of government that I tend to trust, because their entire job is to keep an eye on the rest of government.
They recently wrote this, with my emphasis in red:

The economic recession and the federal government’s unprecedented actions intended to stabilize the financial markets and to promote economic recovery have significantly affected the federal government’s financial condition. The resulting substantial investments and increases in liabilities, net operating cost, the unified budget deficit, and debt held by the public are reported in the U.S. government’s consolidated financial statements for fiscal year 2009. Because the valuation of these assets and liabilities is based on assumptions and estimates that are inherently subject to substantial uncertainty arising from the uniqueness of certain transactions and the likelihood of future changes in general economic, regulatory, and market conditions, actual results may be materially different from the reported amounts. Further, the ultimate cost of these actions and their impact on the federal government’s financial condition will not be known for some time.
More significantly, the federal government faces long-term challenges resulting from
large and growing structural deficits that are driven primarily by rising health care costs and known demographic trends. This unsustainable path must be addressed soon by policymakers. The longer actions are delayed, the more difficult adjustments are likely to become.

Its really important that we listen to what they are saying. This is the treasury department sending up a flare. Please don't ignore it.

Why is our president such an asshole?

Real Clear Politics has a video from CNN, of Obama saying this.

"I do believe, at a certain point, you've made enough money"

What a complete jag.

More Tea Party Polls

What would happen to the earth if the NY Times suggested that Tea Party members were, you know, smart?

I'm just suggesting that maybe that volcano wasn't about to erupt on its own:

A New York Times/CBS News poll of backers of the emerging Tea Party movement shows that its supporters are more affluent and better educated than the general public.

What?
Better educated?
How'd that happen?

Tea Party members tend to be married more often, retired, and are conservative. They are more likely to vote and own guns. They prefer civil unions over gay marriage. A clear majority like Glenn Beck and GWB. They think that the economy is very bad and getting worse.

76% want congress to work on reducing the deficit.
85% do not believe that the government should require everyone to have health insurance.
88% disapprove of the job that Obama is doing.
91% disapprove of the way that he's handling the economy.
93% disapprove of how he's handling health care.

...and 92% of Tea Party members believe that we are headed towards socialism.

Read the full report. Its pretty comprehensive.

"Proud" taxpayer?

Have you ever been "proud" to pay your car payments?
How about when your mortgage comes due? Do you feel "proud" then?

Say Hello to Gail Collins, who thinks that we need to be "proud" every time we pay taxes:

Paying a lot of taxes should be a badge of honor. It proves you made it into the league of big money-makers, not to mention the fact that you’re supporting the upkeep of the Grand Canyon. If the I.R.S. had been doing its marketing properly, little kids would dream of growing up to become really big taxpayers.

Gail is clearly the type of person who claps every time after signing a check and cheers "Yay!" Her entire column is about how we don't realize how little taxes we are paying, and how if we knew how little we were paying, we'd be happy.

Gail is in that rare, bold category of denial where she should be wearing a helmet. She believes that if she doesn't see the tax, then it doesn't exist or affect her. I'm sure Gail wonders, quietly, what all of those extra charges are on her cell phone bill. Or why she has to pay extra fees on her electric bill. I'm pretty sure she doesn't grasp how many invisible taxes we all pay.

Because if she did... she would be cheering and clapping constantly.

Tea Party Activists, and race

I was at the Tea Party in Chicago.

One of the more fascinating things to me was walking around and listening to what the press was asking Tea Party members. One lady was interviewing a couple when she tried to get them to 'admit' that race was a factor in the protests. She started out by asking them if they thought that race was a factor. They shook their head 'no' and looked confused. The reporter pointed to the crowd around them, and said "look around, you don't think that there is a racial aspect at work here?"

Sidenote: I took journalism classes in college. I know the difference between finding the story and creating one. Finding the story is when you ask the right questions and get to the heart of the matter. Creating a story is when you ask leading questions to get the answer you want, that will match your storyline.
When you create a story, you'll use phrases like "Don't you think..." or "Wouldn't you agree..."
Finding a story involves open ended questions like "What do you think?", or even "Do you agree or disagree with the following statement?"

Anyway, with all of this in mind, I saw this story in Reason, and I had to link to it. Its about the Tea Party and race.

More "extremist" painting

This time, it was former president Clinton trying to do it... making allusions that compared the Tea Party movement with Tim McVeigh:

"What we learned from Oklahoma City is not that we should gag each other or that we should reduce our passion for the positions we hold - but that the words we use really do matter, because there's this vast echo chamber, and they go across space and they fall on the serious and the delirious alike. They fall on the connected and the unhinged alike," he said.

"One of the things that the conservatives have always brought to the table in America is a reminder that no law can replace personal responsibility. And the more power you have and the more influence you have, the more responsibility you have."

Clinton made the remarks at events sponsored by the Center for American Progress Action Fund on the upcoming anniversary of the bombing.

He mentioned the rancorous fight over President Barack Obama's health care overhaul. Passage of the law elicited threats against some lawmakers.

Words have meaning.
Check.
The more influence you have, the more responsibility you have.
Check.
Of course, you were the same guy who used a 22 year old intern to cheat on his wife when he was President of the United States. I still remember how you let your entire staff call her nutty and tell us that Monica was obsessed with you. That wasn't irresponsible of you in the slightest.
But thanks for reminding us that "words have meaning", guy who the phrase "it all depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is". Because when you used that phrase, it felt to me like you were trying to make sure that words didn't mean anything.

I'm sure that you no longer cheat on your wife, and that you have given your daughter the best example of what kind of a husband she should be looking for.

Look, this is simple: you don't take responsibility lectures from a guy who basically defined irresponsible behavior in the 90s.
There's a simple reason that the left is trying to paint the Tea Party movement as extremist: they are getting clobbered in the polls by the criticism that is hitting the mark.

When the LA Times headlines a story "Myth Busting Polls", and gives the following information:

The Tea Party adherents broke down 28% independent, 17% Democrat and only 57% Republican.

Then you are in trouble. That means that almost a fifth of your base is joining the tea party movement. That's huge. And its why Markos and the president are trying to discredit it.

Markos continues to be an asshat

In the running for asshat of the week, DailyKos founder and rabble rouser Markos Moulitsas. Markos was being interviewed by lord God king asshat and recent defender of everything government, Keith Olbermann, when he said this.

Just a week or two ago, Democrats said that it was Republicans who were throwing around the Hitler comparisons. But this week, there is no doubt that its Democrats who are accusing Republicans of being genocidal.

I guess that post-health-care-bill polling hit that they are taking is getting to them. The only way that democrats know how to react to being called an extremist is to say, "no, you're an extremist!"

The asshat who created "Crash The Tea Party"

I'm completely for counter protesting.

I think when its done well, its one of the finest art forms around. No one in the world has done this better then the Protest Warriors. What they did was brilliant. They would go into left-wing protests with signs that would take their dumb ideas to the logical extreme to show how dumb they were.

Here is a sampling of their signs.
The big thing about Protest Warriors that I loved was that it was always clear who they were. It was brilliant satire, and not at all subtle.

Compare that to Jason Levin.
Jason is a media teacher at Conestoga Middle School in Beaverton. Big surprise there. Jason is the guy who started crashtheteaparty.org
Now as I said, I'm big on counter protesting. But this is what he wanted to do, according to the Fox News story:

Levin has said he would seek to embarrass Tea Partiers by attending their rallies dressed as Adolf Hitler, carrying signs bearing racist, sexist and anti-gay epithets and acting as offensively as possible -- anything short of throwing punches.

Embarrass them how???

Jason, let's just see if I can follow your hypothetical Ralph Wiggum choo-choo train of thought here. You felt so strongly that the Tea Party was racist, sexist, and homophobe, that you wanted to be as offensive as possible to embarrass them...?

But... if they are racist and sexist... why would they be embarrassed?
Wouldn't they just be, you know, happy to see a racist sign? Heck, if they were racist, would you have to bring signs that were racist? Would you have to bring your own signs? Couldn't you just borrow one of theirs?
Its this type of 'logic' that drives me nuts about the left. In absence of racism, the left decided to bring racism along to... paint... the... Tea Party members... as... racist.

Uh huh.
Jason, at any time did you stop to think about what you were doing? Did it ever occur to you that if you needed to bring racist signs, then maybe you were wrong about the Tea Party members? That maybe, possibly, bringing racist signs said more about you then about them?

Congratulations, Jason. You get my asshat award for the week.

Americans prefer Hillary to Barack

You have to lean pretty far left in order to get this to happen. According to the LA Times , via CNN:

And a new CNN/Opinion Research Poll has just revealed that even today Americans like that other Democrat more and dislike that other Democrat less than they do the incumbent Democratic president.

Click here if you want to see the complete breakdown.

Florida doctor 'refuses' Obama patients

I'm writing this to make sure people get the story right.
On the door of his office, Jack Cassell, a urologist, put this sign:

If you voted for Obama, seek urologic care elsewhere. Changes to your healthcare begin right now, not in four years.

The left has since gone nuts about this one doctor putting that sign on his door. So its important to note what the original article said about the doctor:

Cassell told the Orlando Sentinel on Thursday he wasn't questioning patients or refusing care, because that would be unethical.

If you notice that a member of the left calls him names, and accuses him of violating his oath, please point that out to them.