Ken Berwitz

Congratulations to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli born, Philadelphia raised, M.I.T. and Harvard educated Prime Minister of Israel.

From the BBC News:

I wish Mr. Netanyahu every success - both in aggressive defense of Israel and in any advance in peace that he can accomplish.

Ken Berwitz

From John Hinderaker of www.powerlineblog.com, regarding the alleged video of Joe Biden's daughter using cocaine:

I'm not very interested in Ashley Biden's cocaine use (assuming the woman in the video is in fact Ms. Biden). But then, I wasn't very interested in the Bush twins' underage drinking or the drug-related arrest of Sarah Palin's daughter's boyfriend's mother, either. Yet both were major news stories. Does anyone seriously believe that if there had been a video of Barbara or Jenna Bush snorting cocaine during their father's administration, the press would have refused to write about it?

It's nice that our newspapers have decided to respect the privacy of people like a Vice President's children. It would be even nicer if they extended the same courtesy to members of both parties.

Amen.

Ken Berwitz

That title is not an exaggeration.  Let me show you why, via Byron York's piece in The Washington Examiner.  Please pay special attention to the parts I've put in bold print:

Beyond AIG: A Bill to let Big Government Set Your Salary

By Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent 3/31/09

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., left, talks with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, right, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, on Capitol Hill Tuesday, March 24,2009. Frank's committee has passed a bill giving Geithner extensive control over salaries of employees working at companies receiving government bailout funds. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) It was nearly two weeks ago that the House of Representatives, acting in a near-frenzy after the disclosure of bonuses paid to executives of AIG, passed a bill that would impose a 90 percent retroactive tax on those bonuses. Despite the overwhelming 328-93 vote, support for the measure began to collapse almost immediately. Within days, the Obama White House backed away from it, as did the Senate Democratic leadership. The bill stalled, and the populist storm that spawned it seemed to pass.

But now, in a little-noticed move, the House Financial Services Committee, led by chairman Barney Frank, has approved a measure that would, in some key ways, go beyond the most draconian features of the original AIG bill. The new legislation, the "Pay for Performance Act of 2009," would impose government controls on the pay of all employees -- not just top executives -- of companies that have received a capital investment from the U.S. government. It would, like the tax measure, be retroactive, changing the terms of compensation agreements already in place. And it would give Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner extraordinary power to determine the pay of thousands of employees of American companies.

The purpose of the legislation is to "prohibit unreasonable and excessive compensation and compensation not based on performance standards," according to the bill's language. That includes regular pay, bonuses -- everything -- paid to employees of companies in whom the government has a capital stake, including those that have received funds through the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP, as well as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The measure is not limited just to those firms that received the largest sums of money, or just to the top 25 or 50 executives of those companies. It applies to all employees of all companies involved, for as long as the government is invested. And it would not only apply going forward, but also retroactively to existing contracts and pay arrangements of institutions that have already received funds.

In addition, the bill gives Geithner the authority to decide what pay is "unreasonable" or "excessive." And it directs the Treasury Department to come up with a method to evaluate "the performance of the individual executive or employee to whom the payment relates."

The bill passed the Financial Services Committee last week, 38 to 22, on a nearly party-line vote. (All Democrats voted for it, and all Republicans, with the exception of Reps. Ed Royce of California and Walter Jones of North Carolina, voted against it.)

The legislation is expected to come before the full House for a vote this week, and, just like the AIG bill, its scope and retroactivity trouble a number of Republicans. "It's just a bad reaction to what has been going on with AIG," Rep. Scott Garrett of New Jersey, a committee member, told me. Garrett is particularly concerned with the new powers that would be given to the Treasury Secretary, who just last week proposed giving the government extensive new regulatory authority. "This is a growing concern, that the powers of the Treasury in this area, along with what Geithner was looking for last week, are mind boggling," Garrett said.

Rep. Alan Grayson, the Florida Democrat who wrote the bill, told me its basic message is "you should not get rich off public money, and you should not get rich off of abject failure." Grayson expects the bill to pass the House, and as we talked, he framed the issue in a way to suggest that virtuous lawmakers will vote for it, while corrupt lawmakers will vote against it.

"This bill will show which Republicans are so much on the take from the financial services industry that they're willing to actually bless compensation that has no bearing on performance and is excessive and unreasonable," Grayson said. "We'll find out who are the people who understand that the public's money needs to be protected, and who are the people who simply want to suck up to their patrons on Wall Street."

After the AIG bonus tax bill was passed, some members of the House privately expressed regret for having supported it and were quietly relieved when the White House and Senate leadership sent it to an unceremonious death. But populist rage did not die with it, and now the House is preparing to do it all again.

This stunning lurch towards socialism is being moved along with our wonderful "neutral" media leaving it virtually unreported.

And who is behind it? 

One key ingredient is barney frank, the arrogant, pompous, incompetent whiner who was one of the major players in the sub-prime mess that brought down Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac. 

Another is alan grayson, a first-term congressperson from Florida who bought his house seat by investing over $2.6 million of his own money in the race (79% of its total funding) and getting about half of the rest from unions.  In other words, he's another rich Democratic hardliner (of which there is no shortage in the Democratic Party).

Since grayson made his fortune at IDT, I'm sure he's perfectly prepared to give back most of the money because of how excessive it was.  (And the dish ran away with the spoon.)

Not content with using his immense wealth to buy a seat in congress, grayson then had the gall to claim that Republicans who disagree with this legislation are "on the take".  Evidently, in the world of grayson, if you don't buy into socializing the corporate world you must be illegally taking money from it.  Brilliant.  Just brilliant.

Please also note that the 90% retroactive tax on AIG bonuses - the one that was so clearly unconstitutional - has quietly died and been buried by the Democratic Party and the media.

I'm not at all surprised that the Democratic Party buried it, because it was never anything but a cover-up to hide the fact that they were the ones who sanctioned those bonuses by voting for the stimulus package.  I expect full-of-crap politicians to act like full-of-crap politicians.  They are what they are.

Unfortunately, I am just as unsurprised that our wonderful "neutral" media abetted the full-of-crap Democratic politicians in burying this legislative atrocity. 

In a more equitable world I would be surprised, because media are the ones who should be exposing it.  However, since most of our media only show interest in fraud when it is perpetrated by Republicans, the fact that they have worked hand in glove with Democrats here is de rigueur for them.

Pathetic.

But listen to them squeal like stuck pigs if you call them biased.

Ken Berwitz

So it turns out that Janet Napolitano's euphemism for terrorism "man-made disaster", isn't just her being unbelievably ridiculous.  It turns out that this is something of a policy decision on the part of the Obama administration.

From www.npr.org:

Clinton: 'War On Terror' Phrase Won't Be Used

NPR.org, March 30, 2009 · Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says the Obama administration has indeed abandoned the term "global war on terror."

Clinton says that while she hasn't seen any specific orders, the new administration in Washington simply isn't using the phrase.

The term was a rallying cry for President Bush after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But the use of the term "global war on terror" is widely disliked overseas.

Reporters asked Clinton about the phrase Monday as she headed to Europe for a week of diplomatic meetings.

She said the absence of the "war on terror" language speaks for itself. Pundits have noted the absence, but top administration figures have had little to say on the subject.

If the war on terror weren't so serious, and the consequences of trivializing it so great, this would be hysterically funny.  What are Barack, Janet and Hillary going to do?  Win over the taliban and al qaeda by using a charm offensive?

Incidentally, the fact that Napolitano's alternative expression for the war on terror is gender-specific was not lost on me, nor should it be lost on you.  "Man-made disaster"?  How about "human-made disaster" or "enemy generated disaster"?  Oh, wait, maybe we're not supposed to call them enemies either. 

Evidently men, along with Whites, Christians and Jews (unless they support palestinian Arabs, that is), remain acceptable targets to the PC crowd.

Incidentally, I read a few of the responses to this article and one of them really touched me.  It is from someone using the name Dawn Millsap, and says:

This is great - the law of attraction shows that what you concentrate on comes to you - if you concentrate on war and terror, that comes to you. If we concentrate on peace and building understanding between nations, that will come to us.

Thank you Dawn!!  I never knew that.  I never knew it was all just a matter of concentration. 

For the rest of the week, I'm going to concentrate on winning the lottery, and getting a call from Angelina Jolie assuring me that she will dump Brad Pitt if I provide her with nonstop, uninhibited sex. 

I'll let you know how that works out.

Ken Berwitz

There are a lot of old sayings about statistics, and statistics don't come out well in any of them. 

One, which is generally attributed to Benjamin Disraeli, is "Lies, damned lies, and statistics".  That's pretty good.

But my favorite, which was coined by Mark Twain and used a lot by my father when I was growing up (today, at age 90, he still uses it) is "Figures don't lie, but liars figure".

With this in mind, here is an excerpt from The analysis by John Cohen and Dan Balz of the latest Washington Post/NBC poll on President Obama and his policies:

Blame for downturn not fixed on Obama

6 in 10 back his handling of the economy, new poll finds

By Jon Cohen and Dan Balz

updated 1:49 a.m. ET, Tues., March. 31, 2009

WASHINGTON - The number of Americans who believe that the nation is headed in the right direction has roughly tripled since Barack Obama's election, and the public overwhelmingly blames the excesses of the financial industry, rather than the new president, for turmoil in the economy, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

At this early stage in his presidency, Obama continues to benefit from a broadly held perception that others should bear the bulk of responsibility for the severe economic problems that confront his administration. Americans see plenty of offenders, but only about a quarter blame the president and his team for an economy that's in the ditch.

Despite the increasing optimism about the future, the nation's overall mood remains gloomy, and doubts are rising about some of the administration's prescriptions for the economic woes. Independents are less solidly behind Obama than they have been, fewer Americans now express confidence that his economic programs will work, barely half of the country approves of how the president is dealing with the federal budget deficit, and the political climate is once again highly polarized.

The percentage of Americans in the new poll who said the country is on the right track still stands at just 42 percent, but that is the highest percentage saying so in five years and marks a sharp turnabout from last fall, when as many as nine in 10 said the country was heading in the wrong direction. Fifty-seven percent now consider the nation as moving on the wrong track.

Overall perceptions about the country parallel a rapid increase in the percentage of Americans who say the economy is improving. For the first time since late 2004, the gap between the numbers saying the economy is getting better and those saying it's getting worse is in the single digits (27 percent to 36 percent).

Two-thirds of Americans approve of the way Obama is handling the country's top job, and six in 10 give him good marks on issue No. 1, the flagging economy. Those figures are little changed from last month. But he receives lower marks for dealing with the federal budget deficit after submitting a plan that would see continued huge deficits over the next decade. Fifty-two percent back Obama on his approach to the deficit, with the public split about evenly over whether belt-tightening or big increases in spending should be used to try to improve the economy.

There is now a pronounced divergence between Democratic and Republican perceptions of the economy, a bigger partisan divide than the one that occurred 16 years ago after Bill Clinton took office. In early 1993, people in both parties were about equally likely to see the economy as improving, but now the number of Republicans who say it is souring is more than double that of Democrats.

A sharp rise in optimism has occurred among Democrats, who are about three times as likely to approve of the country's course as they were just before Obama's inauguration. Independents, too, are more optimistic, with twice as many feeling positive as in mid-January. Among Republicans, there has not been significant movement in either direction.

Obama's overall approval rating among independents has dipped six points, to 61 percent, and fewer than half, 45 percent, said he is doing a good job of handling the deficit. His approval rating among Republicans has dropped seven points, to 30 percent.

Ok, let's take a look at what is being said.

We'll start with the headline.  What a dream-come-true for Barack Obama.  The economic problems are not his fault and a solid majority approves of how he's handling them.  I wonder how many people would stop reading right there, secure in the "knowledge" that it is all peaches and cream for Mr. Obama's performance?  Quite a few, wouldn't you say?

But maybe we ought to think about this just a bit.  

President Obama has been in office for a little over two months.  But the economic meltdown became known last year.  Of course he's not personally to blame for it. 

This is a classic example of taking an obvious fact and elevating it to the level of a major finding on behalf of the person it is referring to.  Nice job, guys.  Very "neutral", I'm sure.

Then, in the third paragraph, we find out that the country's overall mood remains gloomy, there are doubts about how Mr. Obama is handling things, and fewer people than before are confident that what he's doing will work.  In other words, once we get past the obvious (i.e. he didn't create something that already existed) his numbers are dropping. 

Funny, they didn't have that in the headline.  Must have been an inadvertent oversight.....

And as you read on, you realize that the good numbers for Mr. Obama are almost entirely based on Democratic support.  Independent support is dropping and Republican support (yes, a lot of Republicans initially were willing to give him a chance) is dropping even faster.

In other words, the good numbers Mr. Obama has are predominantly due to partisan support from Democrats. 

In the immortal words of Gomer Pyle, "sur-prahz, sur-prahz!!"

This, folks (sur-prahz, sur-prahz again) is what passes for political analysis in the Washington Post and on NBC these days.

What was that saying about figures and liars again?

Ken Berwitz

Here, from Ed Morrissey at www.hotair.com, is a demonstration of why he (and I) do not watch this moron:

Video: Maher salutes American troops

posted at 1:35 pm on March 30, 2009 by Ed Morrissey

I stopped watching Bill Maher a long time ago, and it’s moments like this that remind me why he’s a waste of broadcast air time. Maher complains that we need to bring home the troops from World War II by pulling out of Germany and Japan, and gives us this pithy little “salute” to American fighting forces:

Forget about bringing the troops home from Iraq. We need to get the troops home from World War II. Can anybody tell me why, in 2009, we still have more than 50,000 troops in Germany and 30,000 in Japan? At some point, these people are going to have to learn to rape themselves. [boos] I’ll ignore that.

Recall, if you will, when Maher claimed that the 9/11 terrorists had more courage than Air Force pilots and/or Navy commanders. “We have been the cowards. Lobbing cruise missiles from two thousand miles away. That’s cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building. Say what you want about it. Not cowardly. You’re right.” ABC cut ties with Maher after that statement, leading to his HBO show.

Will HBO keep Maher around after this despicable comment? Probably, unless enough people complain about it. HBO has less pressure in its subscription model; with no advertisers to boycott, HBO won’t have to worry about lost revenue in the traditional sense. If subscribers start lining up to cancel and cite Maher as a reason, however, that could have some impact.

I don’t watch the show anyway, as I said before, so I don’t really give a damn whether HBO gives him a platform or not. Maher crossed over to despicable years ago. Maybe it serves a good purpose to have a spotlight trained on him; we can find more examples of how the Left hates the military, rather than hearing them insist that they love the troops while trying their best to keep them from college campuses and recruiters out of their neighborhoods.

Update: Commenter 1GoodDaddy offers this information, for those wishing to communicate their displeasure with Maher:

How can I contact HBO to express my opinions about their programming?

You may contact HBO’s Consumer Affairs Department at 212-512-1208 Monday through Friday from 9:00 AM until 5:00 PM Eastern Time. You can also write to us using the link below.

Feel free to go at it.  I think, though, that HBO will tend to see this as an endorsement of Maher’s relevance than any threat to their business.

There you have it.  Calling our troops in Germany and Japan a bunch of rapists is what passes for humor on this moron's show. 

Speaking bluntly, anyone who thinks that is funny is as big a moron as maher.  And I certainly hope that not one reader lays claim to the title.

But why stop there?  Maybe maher would like to do some big-time yuks on how many Islamic women are raped - often by relatives - and then are killed because they have dishonored their families by being raped.  Since rape is a joke, a chance for some cheap laughs, then honor killings should be a great opportunity for him.

Don't count on hearing any of those Muslim rape jokes, though.  Why?  Because if maher ridiculed fundamentalist Islam and called its adherents rapists, he might actually have to worry about what could happen to him. 

Pissing on our troops, however, is no problem at all to the moron.  He can do it all day, and sleep like a baby all night.

If there's one thing I hate more than a coward, it's a coward with a deficient sense of humor.  And maher the moron hits for exactly that daily double. 

Ken Berwitz

The Imperial Presidency.  It's a term that has been tossed around a lot over the years.  But we've never actually seen one. 

Until now.

From www.thehill.com:

Obama didn't ask Congress about ousting Wagoner

By Ian Swanson

Posted: 03/30/09 01:53 PM [ET]

President Obama didn’t want any advice from Congress on the decision to ask GM CEO Rick Wagoner to resign, according to Carl Levin (D), Michigan’s senior senator. “He didn’t ask us about it, he informed us,” Levin told reporters in a conference call Monday afternoon. “The president said he’d already decided.” Levin said he and three other lawmakers were informed of the decision in a phone call Obama made from the Oval Office. Obama told the members of Congress that Wagoner needed to resign so that the administration could show the public it was making an effort at a fresh start with helping the auto industry, according to Levin. Levin repeatedly described the decision as “sad,” and noted that Wagoner had given a lifetime of service to GM. He praised Wagner’s willingness to voluntarily “retire” from his post, and did not say whether he disagreed with Obama’s decision. Obama formally announced Monday morning that he was rejecting restructuring plans submitted by GM and Chrysler because they would not make the two automakers viable. He also made it clear that Wagoner was asked to resign as a condition for GM getting more aid. Levin did not directly criticize Obama’s decision, but did say there is a “double standard” in the treatment of U.S. automakers and the financial industry, which has received tens of billions more in aid from taxpayers. “It’s something we’ve got to fight and overcome,” he said of Michigan lawmakers. Obama suggested both companies might need to into a controlled bankruptcy to restructure, a suggestion Levin said could hurt Chrysler and GM by lowering consumer confidence.

I hope senator Levin is enjoying his devolution to second-tier status, as King Obama I dictates policy from an oval office throne.  Remember, Carl, you supported him. 

And we lesser subjects had better get used to this as well.  Because now, for the first time, we really do have an imperial presidency. 

Maybe the king can remove that original copy of the constitution from the National Archives and use it as a cage liner when Sasha and Maliya get their new doggie.  Heck, it ought have some value to him.

Ken Berwitz

Perhaps you remember the curious case of Plaxico Burress.

Mr. Burress, is (or, at any rate, was) a tight end for the New York Giants.  He was found to be in possession of an illegal weapon - which was demonstrated by the fact that he accidentally discharged the weapon in his pants pocket and blew a hole through his leg.

Let's stop here for moment to reflect on how lucky this makes him.   If that gun had been pointing in a different direction he might have shot someone else, even killed that person.  And  it also could have been pointing at what is sometimes referred to as a man's third leg.  (I've never spoken with Mr. Burress but I sort of expect that he isn't interested in a spontaneous circumcision).

Now back to what actually happened.

Apart from the likelihood that Mr. Burress' career as a New York Giant is probably over, there is this little matter of a 3 1/2 year mandatory sentence for ciminal possession of a weapon.

But not to worry, Plaxico.  This is the New York definition of mandatory.

The New York Times explains:

Mr. Burress, 31, who caught the winning touchdown in the Giants’ Super Bowl victory in February 2008, turned himself in to the police on Dec. 1, nearly three days after he accidentally shot himself in the leg with an unlicensed handgun at a nightclub in Manhattan. Mr. Burress was charged with two counts of second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, which carry a mandatory minimum sentence of 3 ½ years in prison if convicted.

Prosecutors commonly offer reduced charges in gun possession cases, taking into consideration things like a defendant’s criminal history, the reason for carrying the gun and the circumstances surrounding an arrest.

In Mr. Burress’s case, prosecutors may consider that he had been cooperative and that he did not appear to have a dubious motive in carrying the gun. The weapon was licensed in Florida, but the permit had expired when Mr. Burress was arrested. Even if the permit were still valid, he would not have been allowed to carry the weapon in New York because the permit was from out of state. Other mitigating factors might be that the gun appeared to go off by accident, and that Mr. Burress was the only person injured in the shooting, which occurred at the Latin Quarter nightclub.

Last year, 986 cases in New York involving the same charges as Mr. Burress faces were resolved, and 90 percent of them resulted in convictions for less serious crimes, half of them misdemeanors or violations, said John M. Caher, a spokesman for the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services.

Now you know what mandatory means in New York.  986 cases with a mandatory 3 1/2 year sentence, and 90% of them are bargained down to lessor offenses.

I have nothing against Plaxico Burress.  And maybe this individual case has sufficiently mitigating circumstances to warrant a lesser charge.  But if this occurs 90% of the time, then let's be realistic enough to recognize that there is no such thing as a mandatory sentence for criminal possession of a weapon.

And let's also be realistic enough to understand that a mandatory sentence which is circumvented 90% of the time, isn't going to deter anyone.

Great job, New York.

Ken Berwitz

The New York Times, in keeping with what appears to be a tradition for this once-great "newspaper", has again rushed to print lies about the actions of Israeli soldiers and then - in far less conspicuous fashion - printed a retraction.

The folks at www.camera.org explain:

March 29, 2009

NY Times Backpedals on Gaza Atrocities Story

The New York Times has now run a follow-up article on the Gaza atrocities reports that, while far from perfect, corrects and rebuts many of the false charges that spread from Ha'aretz to news outlets around the world.

The article, which was on the Times website on Friday, was published in the Saturday paper (which has the lowest circulation of the week) on page four, not on page one above the fold like the Times' first article on the subject. Still the article admits that the alleged killing by an Israeli sniper of the mother and her two daughters was an "urban myth" that almost certainly did not occur, and quotes Israeli soldiers including Yishai Goldflam on how they tried to avoid harming innocent Palestinians and their property.

The article also quotes an Israeli academic who has studied the impact of the growing proportion of religious soldiers in the IDF and the influence of rabbis on the conduct of these soldiers. According to the professor the rabbis have had a moderating impact on the soldiers, contradicting claims in the Times ("A Religious War in Israel’s Army") and elsewhere that rabbis had called for a religious or "holy war" against the Arabs and specificaly in Gaza.

For accounts from more IDF soldiers which contradict the rumors published earlier in Ha'aretz and the New York Times, see the new Web site, "Soldiers Speak Out."

Just like with the "mohammad al-dura" story (that kid who was supposedly shot by Israelis while helpless up against a wall, hiding behind his father) in 2000....

...and just like with the "Jenin massacre" story in 2002...

...and just like with the "Israel bombed a school" story from this past December...

...we first have a rush to publish the condemnatory articles about Israel. 

And just like all three of those stories (among others), subsequently there is a "welllllllll, maybe we weren't right about that" retraction (sort of) later on, after all the damage has been done.

You would think that the New York Times must have learned from these hoaxes, all of which were created by Palestinian Arabs for propaganda purposes.  But, just like Charlie Brown with the football, it buys into every subsequent hoax from the same source;  hook, line and sphincter.

Why do you suppose?

Ken Berwitz

I rail a lot about media bias.  This is an excellent example of why.

From the Washington Post blog page:

Obama Town Hall Questioners Were Campaign Backers

Updated 7:02 p.m.
By Garance Franke-Ruta
President Obama has promised to change the way the government does business, but in at least one respect he is taking a page from the Bush playbook, stocking his town hall Thursday with supporters whose soft -- though far from planted -- questions provided openings to discuss his preferred message of the day.

Obama has said, "I think it's important to engage your critics ... because not only will you occasionally change their mind but, more importantly, sometimes they will change your mind," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs recounted to The Post's Lois Romano in an interview Wednesday.

But while the online question portion of the White House town hall was open to any member of the public with an Internet connection, the five fully identified questioners called on randomly by the president in the East Room were anything but a diverse lot. They included: a member of the pro-Obama Service Employees International Union, a member of the Democratic National Committee who campaigned for Obama among Hispanics during the primary; a former Democratic candidate for Virginia state delegate who endorsed Obama last fall in an op-ed in the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star; and a Virginia businessman who was a donor to Obama's campaign in 2008.

Here are their stories:

1. Sergio Salmeron: Self-description at the White House: "My name is Sergio Salmeron. I want to find out about health care."

Salmeron became engaged with the Obama campaign early in 2008, writing on his blog at my.barackobama.com, "We need to mobilize towards changing the trend of '2 to 1 Latinos favoring Hillary over Barack.' Let's make a resolute commitment... Let's put the facts on the table, ask the questions, until we understand how this all applies to us. Then strategize [sic] to get the word out to Latinos in America, who want change as much as everyone else."

He was a volunteer canvasser for the campaign, he told The Post, and did voter registration work and translated materials for the campaign, as well. A partner at Global Paradigm Strategies, Salmeron is volunteer "member of the Democratic National Committee" and continues to be active with the Obama campaign's successor, Organizing for America, which is how he got the White House invite, he said.

"I got a call from this woman who has been working with me for the pledge drive," he said, referring to the Organizing for America drive on behalf of the president's budget proposal. "You know, we're trying to get support out for the president's agenda."

2. Tom Sawner: Self-description: "Sir, I'm Tom Sawner. I'm a service-disabled veteran, small-business owner in Arlington, Virginia. My company, Educational Options, works with public schools."

According to Federal Election Commission records, Sawner made a $250 donation to Obama's campaign on Oct. 27, 2008. He also, as he noted Thursday, served as an adviser on Obama's educational platform committee. He said he was invited to the White House town hall through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Small Business Executive Council.

Sawner's no stranger to the White House, either; he attended President Bush's Feb. 2008 signing ceremony for that year's economic stimulus package -- another Chamber of Commerce invite. And in April 2008, he even became an anecdote in one of Bush's speeches.

"And I met a guy named Tom Sawner," the 43rd president said at a small business summit. "Now, he's an old fighter pilot, which means there's no wall he can [sic] run through. He's a doer, an achiever, and he's got him a small business called Educational Options."

But the event with Obama, Sawner said, "was a whole different look and feel" than the one with Bush. "This is a president who is into openness." And he didn't know he was going to be able to ask a question until he got to the forum, he said.

3. Carlos Del Toro: Self-description: "My name is Carlos Del Toro. I served in the Navy for 26 years, retired four years ago, and started a small business."

In 2007, Del Toro stood as a Democratic candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates, but did not win. A supporter of Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic presidential primaries, he backed Obama against McCain in the general, endorsing him in an Oct. 24, 2008 op-ed in the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star.

"As a Virginia small-business owner, veteran, and Latino, I'm voting for Sen. Barack Obama for the same reasons as millions of other Americans: because I believe this country desperately needs change. Obama will change our economic policies to help middle-class families, promote the growth of small businesses, and increase funding for veterans' affairs, so no member of our armed services goes without the medical treatment he or she needs and deserves," he wrote.

In 2008, he donated $2,750 to Virginia Democratic candidates for office, according to the Center for Responsive Politics; in 2006, he gave $1000 to the campaign of now Sen. Jim Webb (Va.), FEC records show.

He also has ties to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Small Business Council.

4. Linda Bock: "My name is Linda Bock and I'm a registered nurse just in Prince George's County, Maryland -- been there 34 years at a free senior health center. And I'm here with my fellow nurses from SEIU."

Bock, along with her chapter of the SEIU and her son and daughter, helped campaign and canvass for Obama, she said. After Obama was elected, she wrote in the Landover, Md., 1199 SEIU nurses' newsletter: "Now we have our work cut out for us -to hold our elected officials accountable. And I hope they hold us accountable too. We all have work to do to make the changes needed to restore our reputation, to heal the wounds of war, to repair our earth and regulate its resources; and, to secure our economic future. It will take sacrifice and service. It will take prayer and the grace of God. Now we have hope. We have President-elect Barack Obama. God bless America."

Her invite to the White House came through the Nurse Alliance Leadership Council, she said. And like Sawner, she didn't know until she got to the forum that it was open to the in real life participants. "I did not think we would be able to ask any questions," she said. "I wasn't personally anticipating being chosen to ask anything. We knew that the Web portion was people already lined up."

5. Bonnee L. Breese: "Hi, Mr. President. Thank you so very much for having me, a public school teacher from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, here to be with you.
THE PRESIDENT: What's your name?
Q Bonnee Breese.
THE PRESIDENT: Good to see you, Bonnee.
Q Thank you. I'm from Overbrook High School. I have to say that, because I know all the children are watching. (Laughter.)"

Breese has not donated a reportable amount to Obama, according to the FEC. She is a member of the 11,626-person Pennsylvania for Obama page on Facebook.

A supporter of the president's -- "Of course!" she said -- Breese was invited to the meeting through the American Federation of Teachers union. She sits on the executive board of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, Local 3, she said, and is known in her area for being politically engaged.

The sixth in-person presidential questioner, "Ellie" from Maryland, did not give her surname. The White House did not respond to a request for it, but noted there were roughly 100 people in the audience.

"The audience was composed of approximately 100 people, including teachers, nurses, small business owners, and community leaders -- and the virtual audience of thousands across the country who have submitted questions online," said White House spokesman Nicholas S. Shapiro. "The White House reached out to a number of community groups and the chamber of commerce and those groups invited their folks to come and participate.

In other words, the "town hall meeting" was a complete and utter fraud.  It was a set-up with Obama plants asking the questions.

Since the writer, Garance Franke-Ruta, was nice enough to insult former President Bush as a prelude to reporting this fraud, I wonder if she'll be providing some specific examples where Mr. Bush pulled a stunt like this.  I remember one incident only, and the "set-up" was not by Bush's people, but by the head of an agency who then publicly apologized for doing so (sorry, I don't remember the specifics). 

Maybe Franke-Ruta would like to compare the degree of media coverage the "Bush incident" got with how much there has been for this one.  Other than her article, did you read about it anywhere else but here?

Ken Berwitz

From the Center for Consumer Freedom (more on this group later) comes the following information.  If you are a PETA supporter, prepare to be shocked:

PETA Killed 95 Percent of Adoptable Pets in its Care During 2008

Hypocritical Animal Rights Group’s 2008 Disclosures Bring Pet Death Toll To 21,339

WASHINGTON DC – Today the nonprofit Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) published documents online showing that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) killed 95 percent of the adoptable pets in its care during 2008. Despite years of public outrage over its euthanasia program, the animal rights group kills an average of 5.8 pets every day at its Norfolk, VA headquarters.

According to public records from the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, PETA killed 2,124 pets last year and placed only seven in adoptive homes. Since 1998, a total of 21,339 dogs and cats have died at the hands of PETA workers.

Despite having a $32 million budget, PETA does not operate an adoption shelter. PETA employees make no discernible effort to find homes for the thousands of pets they kill every year. Last year, the Center for Consumer Freedom petitioned Virginia’s State Veterinarian to reclassify PETA as a slaughterhouse.

CCF Research Director David Martosko said: “PETA hasn’t slowed down its hypocritical killing machine one bit, but it keeps browbeating the rest of society with a phony ‘animal rights’ message. What about the rights of the thousands of dogs, cats, puppies, and kittens that die in PETA’s headquarters building?”

Martosko added: “Since killing pets is A-OK with PETA, why should anyone listen to their demands about eating meat, using lab rats for medical research, or taking children to the circus?”

CCF obtained PETA’s “Animal Record” filings since 1998 from the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Members of the public can see these documents at PetaKillsAnimals.com.

In addition to exposing PETA’s hypocritical record of killing defenseless animals, the Center for Consumer Freedom has publicized the animal rights group’s ties to violent activists, and shed light on its aggressive message-marketing to children.

If this is true, at the very least it bespeaks an amazing level of hypocrisy on the part of PETA -- because it is a tacit acknowledgement that euthanizing usually is the only choice. 

If the ratio of 2,124 killed to 7 adopted is true, the hypocrisy is on a far higher level, since it would seem pretty obvious that adoptiive homes for more than 7 pets a year (about 1 every two months) could be found.

I called the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services to verify these data and, after being transferred once and then given a different number to call,  I eventually was able to leave a message with what appears to be the relevant office and am awaiting a return call.  I'll update if/when I get it.

FYI:  The "Center for Consumer Freedom" (CCR) may be nonprofit, but I assure you it is not nonpartisan.  Its self-description is as follows:

The Center for Consumer Freedom is a nonprofit organization devoted to promoting personal responsibility and protecting consumer choices. We believe that the consumer is King. And Queen.

A growing cabal of activists has meddled in Americans’ lives in recent years. They include self-anointed "food police," health campaigners, trial lawyers, personal-finance do-gooders, animal-rights misanthropes, and meddling bureaucrats.

Their common denominator? They all claim to know "what's best for you." In reality, they’re eroding our basic freedoms—the freedom to buy what we want, eat what we want, drink what we want, and raise our children as we see fit. When they push ordinary Americans around, we're here to push back.

That should give you a pretty good indication of why I want the information it provides verified.    Let's both stay skeptical until we hear one way or the other.

--------------------------------------------------------------

UPDATE:  I just spoke to the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, and a very helpful lady (who I promised anonymity to) guided me to the relevant web page.

First off, the PETA data only go through 2007.  So I have no idea where CCR got their 2008 information.

Looking at 2007, it turns out that, although CCR left out significant information which puts PETA in a much more positive light than they apparently prefer, the data do confirm the point CCR is making.

In 2007,  PETA handled 8,358 "companion animals" - almost all of them dogs and cats.  Over 75% of them (6,466) were reunited with their owners (that's the part CCR left out). 

Of the remaining 1,892, however, 1,811 were euthanized and just 17 were adopted.

What this means is that PETA, despite how adamant its public position is regarding the sanctity of animals' lives, will end those lives as a matter of simple practicality.  They don't know what else to do with them.

I will leave it to you to decide whether this is different in any way - better or worse - than humanely ending an animal's life for the purpose of feeding and/or clothing humankind.

Ken Berwitz

Since Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seems to be performing independently of President Obama (see previous blog), I thought you might be interested in the quality of said performance.

Here's a glimpse, courtesy of Warner Todd Huston writing for www.newsbusters.org:

Hillary's Mexico Visit Blunders Ignored by Old Media

A special thanks to our wonderful "neutral" media for making sure that Hillary Clinton's ongoing barrage of gaffes and ignorance goes virtually unreported. 

I realize this isn't very important.  It's only the Secretary of State making an ass of herself in Mexico - as she did in Europe a couple of weeks ago when she told a European gathering, including Greece , how much longer we have been a democracy than any of them.  I mean, hey, we're talking about Hillary Clinton .  We can't be making anything of such trifling affairs when it's her, can we?

But listen to them squeal like stuck pigs if you call them biased

Ken Berwitz

This incredible story comes to us from Mark Finkelstein at www.finkelblog.com.  As you will see it is fully referenced with a verbatim transcript.  Read it and prepare to be both amazed and appalled:

Matthews: Hillary Doesn’t See Herself Taking Orders From Obama

Can this possibly be true?  Can Hillary Clinton possibly be given the latitude to override the President of the United States?  Can Barack Obama possibly be allowing his Secretary of State to operate as an unelected last word on our dealings with foreign nations?

Does Hillary Clinton report to the President, or does the President report to Hillary Clinton?

Is President Obama going to be telling foreign heads of state things like "This is my position on the issue.  But I'll have to check with Hillary Clinton to see if it's ok"?  How would a foreign head of state react to that?  How could he/she possibly deal with the President?

If you like insanity, you're going to love this arrangement. 

Ken Berwitz

Spare us from the people who intertwine their personal religious beliefs with secular politics.

In this case it is a Republican congressperson, John Shimkus of Illinois.  Read/hear it for yourself below, courtesy of Charles Johnson at www.littlegreenfootballs.com:

What, Me Worry?

US News | Sat, Mar 28, 2009 at 2:12:13 pm PDT

From the March 25, 2009 hearing of the US House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, Illinois Republican Congressman John Shimkus says we don’t need to worry about climate change, because the book of Genesis says God will decide when the world is supposed to end.

Well, that’s a load off my mind.

If congressperon Shimkus wants to believe that we have nothing to do with, no say in, the demise of the earth, that is his business.  If you believe it along with him, that is your business. 

But as a representative of a congressional district in Illinois, maybe it would behoove Mr. Shimkus to legislate with the assumption that not everyone thinks armeggedon is going to happen, regardless of what we try to do about it.

If Mr. Shimkus really believes this, I suggest that he not campaign at all when he's up for re-election next year.  After all, the result is preordained and his efforts won't affect things one way or the other. 

Might as well just kick back with a cold one and watch TV.

Ken Berwitz

We are in a war against terrorism.  Why?  Because the world is under siege by terrorists, most of whom are fundamental Islamists with the goal of taking down western civiliation and putting us all under shari'a law. 

If there ever was a time when political correctness (PC) was unwelcome, this is it.  The war against terrorism is real, it is ongoing, and if we don't fight it successfully we will be living exactly the way terrorists want us to live.

So what does our head of homeland security, Janet Napolitano, decide to do?  She decides that the war on terrorism is a great opportunity to display PC, and is now calling acts of terrorism "man-made disasters". 

An incredulous Washington Times explains in today's editorial, which I'm showing below.  Please pay special attention to the quote I've put in bold print:

"Perhaps it's only a nuance, but it demonstrates we want to move away from the politics of fear..."??????

What the hell is that?  What does it mean?  The politics of fear?  Politics?

Can Ms. Napolitano possibly be so brain-compromised, so naive, so completely committed to PC?

It is not politics to call something what it is.  It is politics NOT to call something what it is.  "Man-caused disasters" is so childishly imbecilic that I'm surprised Ms. Napolitanto didn't sing a chorus of tra-la-la's afterwards. 

Simply stated, if the person in charge of our homeland security thinks it is important to make up euphemisms so she won't have to say what we need to be secure from, she has no business in this job.

Ken Berwitz

Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is the Democratic congressperson from south Florida.

As I have made plain on several occasions, I avidly dislike both her political positions and the way she presents them.

But I have just found out that she is not at all a well woman.  Here are the specifics via excerpts from an Associated Press article:

By BRENDAN FARRINGTON – 23 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz hated relying too much on her staff, but she needed them to keep up appearances during her undercover battle against cancer.

After several major surgeries, including a double mastectomy, she couldn't even carry her own papers in the Capitol. Staff even helped her look cheerful when she hosted a fundraiser for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

"I was hooked up to drains and I had a pain pack coming out of my chest, which I hid with clothing and ingenious staff work on a purse," the Florida Democrat said, adding with a laugh, "I hugged people gingerly."

But she said protecting her children — 9-year-old boy-and-girl twins, and another 5-year-old girl — came first. She would keep it a secret from her three children, too.

"Once I heard my doctors out and what the recommended course of treatment was, I really felt like it was best for my kids that I get all the way through it, deal with it privately and then when I was done with everything I would be able to share with them why Mommy had surgery and show them that I was going to be OK," Wasserman Schultz said.

The congresswoman was diagnosed with breast cancer in December 2007. She had the lump removed, but then tests showed a genetic mutation that put her at high risk for a recurrence of breast or ovarian cancer. So she scheduled additional surgeries, including the double mastectomy and having her ovaries removed. The last surgery was in December.

"It was just like every other thing she puts on her plate — 'I'm going to do this, I'm going to get through it' — always positive," Bean said.

She scheduled her surgeries when the House was on break.

"Walking down the hall, it hurt to even carry a folder, so I had to have my staff, which I hate doing because I'm very self-sufficient," she said.

Beyond protecting her children, there was another big reason why she kept her ordeal secret.

"I just didn't want it to define me. When I'm quoted in the newspaper, I didn't want to be 'Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who's battling breast cancer,'" she said. "I wanted to be viewed as a congresswoman, as a mom, as a fighter."

Politically I still dislike Ms. Wasserman-Schultz just as much.  But I certainly wish her a 100% successful fight against cancer, and many, many more years in as good health as is possible. 

I don't know your politics, reader, but I hope you feel the same way.

Ken Berwitz

I'll let Michael M. Bates of www.newsbusters.org tell you about this one:

Name That Party: Spanking Judge Edition

See, the way this works is that if you only see party identification when it's a Republican, and you rarely if ever see party identification if it's a Democrat, you associate the actions of the people in question with Republicans, not Democrats.  From this, you develop an overall image of such people being Republicans, not Democrats.

In other words, keep 'em ignorant, and you own 'em.

A very special thank you to our wonderful "neutral" media, which provide the disinformation necessary for this to happen.  It couldn't be done without you.

Ken Berwitz

al sharpton is a racist, anti-Semitic buffoon who has become a kingmaker in the Democratic Party. 

He is also a long-time hoaxster and scam artist.  And the fact that media have given him a years-long free pass on his scams enables him to continue engaging in them.  Why not?  Who is going to stop him?

The New York Post is one of the few media venues which ever calls sharpton to account for his sorry, dissolute activities.  And it is doing so today. 

Please read the following article by Chuck Bennett and Lois Weiss.  See for yourself :

REV. AL'S HALF-PRICE DEAL ON $1.8M TAXES By CHUCK BENNETT and LOIS WEISS March 28, 2009 -- The Rev. Al Sharpton owed at least $1.8 million in back taxes before striking a sweetheart deal with the feds last summer that chopped the bill almost in half and kept him out of the slammer, The Post has learned. A series of federal liens -- the most recent of which was filed earlier this month -- provide a window into the massive tax debts the firebrand activist incurred since 2002 as he remade himself into a millionaire media personality, newly released documents show. Treasury Department officers say Sharpton owed $351,798 from 2007, according to a document filed March 3 with the New York County Register Office. This unpaid balance -- a potential mix of back taxes and penalties -- comes on top of a federal lien filed last Nov. 13 for $1,367,521 covering tax years 2005 and 2006. All the liens are filed as "1040" or personal income tax and listed his address as 680 Madison Ave. -- the uber-swanky Helmsley Carlton House where Sharpton resides. Last July, Sharpton cut a deal with federal prosecutors in Brooklyn to end a longstanding criminal probe of his finances that reportedly encompassed his personal fortune, his quixotic 2004 presidential campaign spending and the National Action Network, his advocacy group. Sharpton said he'd personally pay back $1 million, including $500,000 upfront, as part of the settlement. But, the liens show his debts ran much deeper. "Rev. Al Sharpton is meeting his tax obligations with the IRS through an agreement that was completed in late summer of 2008. Since that time, he has made substantial payments and continues to do so. Any federal tax liens that have been filed are inclusive of all years included in the agreement. As those payments have been made, tax liens have been released," said longtime Sharpton attorney Michael Hardy. So far, only two additional liens worth $90,753 were released since the settlement, records show. IRS protocol allows tax debtors to immediately remove paid debts from their record by calling a toll-free 800 number. Liens, which are a claim on property to cover a debt, are the last step the IRS will take before seizing a debtor's assets. Sharpton also was hit with a $19,914 lien filed on Dec. 31, 2008, from unpaid taxes in 1996. Meanwhile, Sharpton also owes the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, which was not part of the July settlement, $884,669, according to two liens covering years 2002 through 2006. Hardy said those debts are being addressed. Sharpton reportedly earns $750,000 a year hosting a syndicated radio talk show. He also collects anywhere from $15,000 to $20,000 per lecture and $2,000 per church sermon. On top of that, Sharpton does "consulting" work for corporations.

And let's remember that the article deals only with sharpton's financial scams.  It doesn't talk about the Tawana Brawley hoax, the Crown Heights riots, the Freddy's Fashion Mart torching and other events sharpton has been directly involved in.  

If this sack of excrement were a Republican, do you think for one second that he would be getting away with any of them? 

Well he isn't, so he is. 

Thank you to our wonderful "neutral" media for aiding and abetting him.

Ken Berwitz

Suppose I told you that the Obama administration is floating the idea of releasing "enemy combatants" (is it still legal to use that term?) into the United States - and to give them a head start by handing them taxpayer money?  Would you think this could be even remotely possible?

Well, it isn't just possible, it is under serious consideration.  I swear this is not a satire of some kind with a funny punch line.  It is real. 

And one of the prime movers in favor of this sick joke is Dennis Blair, the malevolent imbecile who appointed anti-Israel, anti-Jew, anti-Chinese freedom, anti-Tibet charles w. freeman, Jr. as head of the National Intelligence Council.  As you may remember, freeman had to withdraw when his sorry, inexcusable, history became known.

Here are the particulars, from Scott Johnson at www.powerlineblog.com.  Please pay special attention to the part he has italicized:

Support your local terrorist

DNI Dennis Blalir held his first press conference on Thursday (transcript here), and he even managed to make news. The Associated Press buries the news in a story headlined "Official: Mexico not in danger of collapse." The AP blandly attributes the assessment of Mexico to an "official" because nobody knows who Dennis Blair is.

Not yet anyway. If you consume your news on the Internet, you might know Blair as the "official" who appointed the Saudi/Manchurian candidate to head the National Intelligence Council. Ben Smith reports that Blair blamed Freeman's withdrawal on "powerful bloggers" who managed to scuttle the appointment.

As Director of National Intelligence, Blair is one of the senior officers in the United States government. He will become better known in time. It won't take long if he continues to share the Obama administration's thinking on the release of Guantanamo detainees in the United States. Here was Blair at his press conference on Thursday:

QUESTION: On the disposition of the prisoners at Gitmo, you've got some options, and none of them are really great. You give them to governments overseas who may jail them or release them, and we've seen some of what's happened there. There's some talk about releasing, or putting some in U.S. jails.

DIRECTOR BLAIR: Right.

QUESTION: Possibly releasing some inside the United States, the Justice Department talked a little bit about perhaps releasing the Uighurs in the U.S., or at least some of them. What criteria are you using to make those determinations, and what - if anyone is released into the U.S., what kind of follow-up will you do with them for security and what kind of assistance would you give them to sort of get them started in our country?

DIRECTOR BLAIR: I probably couldn't describe the process any better than you just did. We are building dossiers on each of the detainees in Guantanamo that puts together all of the information we have about them. We're developing a process to make an evaluation of what can be done with them, given the options that we have.

And in the case of each of those - each of the, those options, we are in fact thinking through the additional measures that have to be taken, some of which you cited. If they are sent to another country, we have to be sure that that country will treat them in a humane fashion. So that's part of the - that's part of the consideration. If they are to be detained in the United States after some sort of process that determines that they are too dangerous to let out, or have committed offenses that merit punishment, we have to worry about where they're put and what the effect is on the - what that effect might be on the place where they're placed.

If we are to release them in the United States, you can't just sort of, as you said, put them on the street and there, but we need some sort of assistance to them to start a new life and not return to some of the conditions that may have inspired them in the first place. So all that is a work in progress. It's under intense timeline because a year is not a very long time to go through that complexity. So all that's in process.

Not perceiving that assistance to our misunderstood friends at Guantanamo might be something of a bombshell, the reporters apprently let Blair leave it there. Tom Joscelyn has four follow-up questions:

1) Does this mean that the Obama administration is planning on giving some freed Guantanamo detainees a stipend? It sure appears that way. So, not only is the Obama administration planning on freeing some detainees on U.S. soil, it is also going to pay them to live here. Amazing. Who would have thought that we would see the day when detainees who were once labeled enemy combatants would be receiving welfare?

(2) The Uighur detainees are cited, over and over again, as the types of detainees who can be safely released into the U.S. This conclusion has been reached through a combination of specious reasoning and ignorance.

None of the 17 Uighurs are master terrorists on par with the likes of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. They were mostly new recruits at the time of their capture. However, as I have argued before, they are all affiliated with and/or members of a designated terrorist organization, received training at a training camp in the al Qaeda/Taliban stronghold of Tora Bora, and have admitted that they were trained by two known terrorists. And, on top of that, the group that trained them threatened to attack the Olympic Games in China last year.

Even if you don't think that we should lock them up and throw away the key, do we really want to pay them to live on U.S. soil?

(3) The AP says the United States can't find a country to take the Uighurs, other than China, which may treat them harshly. But that really remains to be seen. Ireland, for example, has apparently offered to take some Guantanamo detainees. Other European nations have been somewhat more reticent.

(4) Is the Obama administration considering paying other Guantanamo detainees to live in the U.S. as well?

All good questions and observations. On welfare for Guantanamo detainees, I'm surprised Blair didn't adopt the formulation of reporter Kevin Chapelle at Obama's press conference this past Tuesday. Chappelle cited a report to the effect that "1 in 50 children are [sic] now homeless in America." Chapelle vividly worried about children sleeping in tents and under bridges during the current recession. We don't want those released terrorists sleeping in tents and under bridges, do we?

This is literally insane.

Why stop at handing them some of our money and releasing them into the population?  Why not give each of them a sub-prime loan to buy a house in the suburbs too?   Barney Fudd would approve it in a Newton, Massachusetts minute.  The only stipulation should be that the house is on dennis blair's block.

And where are our wonderful, "neutral" media?  Is it conceivable that they would bury a story as explosive as this to protect Barack Obama? 

Well, Scott showed you how the AP "reported" it.  Now, remembering that this press conference took place on Thursday, in time for that evening's nightly news, or any time at all on Friday, have you seen or heard about it? 

It is hard to tell who is screwing us more;  the Obama administration or the media which we expect to inform us of what the Obama administration is doing.

Ken Berwitz

From Bill Gertz of the Washington Times:

Afghanistan debate

The Obama administration has conducted a vigorous internal debate over its new strategy for Afghanistan, expected to be unveiled by the president in a speech Friday.

According to two U.S. government sources close to the issue, senior policymakers were divided over how comprehensive to make the strategy, involving an initial boost of 17,000 U.S. troops.

On the one side were Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Deputy Secretary of State James B. Steinberg, who argued in closed-door meetings for a minimal strategy of stabilizing Afghanistan that one source described as a "lowest common denominator" approach.

TWT RELATED STORIES:
• U.S. boosting force in Afghanistan
• EXCLUSIVE: $5 billion for Afghans still unspent
• NATO gains commitment, but not for Afghanistan

The goal of these advocates was to limit civilian and other nonmilitary efforts in Afghanistan and focus on a main military objective of denying safe haven to the Taliban and al Qaeda terrorists.

The other side of the debate was led by Richard C. Holbrooke, the special envoy for the region, who along with U.S. Central Command leader Gen. David H. Petraeus and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton fought for a major nation-building effort.

The Holbrooke-Petraeus-Clinton faction, according to the sources, prevailed. The result is expected to be a major, long-term military and civilian program to reinvent Afghanistan from one of the most backward, least developed nations to a relatively prosperous democratic state.

According to one defense official close to the debate, the key to success in Afghanistan remains eliminating terrorist safe havens and training camps, which are no longer in Afghanistan but in Pakistan.

The key to any strategy remains Pakistan and its border regions, which remain terror safe havens, said the official, who, like the other sources, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.

Additionally, Gen. Petraeus made sure the Afghan strategy sought to borrow from the successful counterinsurgency strategy and tactics used in Iraq. According to one official in Afghanistan, many of the Afghans are not "hateful against the West."

A White House spokesman and an aide to Mr. Holbrooke declined to comment on the strategy or the debate over it.

So let me get this straight: 

-We are going to increase our troops in Afghanistan with the expectation that we can extend what would pass for democracy there beyond its capital of Kabul and a few other "cities"?   

-We're going to do this in a country with virtually no assets, virtually no infrastructure, and an undeducated, hostile population, most of which considers the west a bunch of infidels who should be either converted to Islam or dead? 

-We're going to do this in a country comprised mostly of impossibly desolate, destitute, lawless terrain, where no government structure of any kind, democratic or otherwise, has any chance whatsoever of functioning?

This is the great Obama plan for Afghanistan? 

And what happens if (when) it doesn't work?  Are we going to send more troops in?  Keep adding to the troop count? 

Where will we get the troops from?  Iraq? 

We were able to achieve success in Iraq because it actually operates as a country.  It has infrastructure, it has a reasonably educated population, it has real cities, real industry and, of course, its almighty oil reserves.  Are we going to jeopardize that success for an impossible, losing situation in Afghanistan?

President Bush knew better than to do this.  He understood that, beyond Kabul, Kandahar and a couple of other "population centers", there was nothing that the US or anyone else could do there. 

Mr. Bush's objectives were to remove the taliban government and to prevent Afghanistan from being used as a vast training center for bin laden and his al qaeda murderers.  He accomplished both.  But neither Bush nor anyone else could ever have removed all taliban and al qaeda entirely.  They are too entrenched in too many places where no one rules except the local warlord.  Despite this fact, Bush was villified daily by the lunatic left for not making them both disappear, as if it were some simple, doable task. 

Now here is Barack Obama acting as if he, in fact, can.  How does he think this will happen?  What will he do, make a great speech to them? 

If you liked the land war in Vietnam, you're going to love his Afghanistan policy.

Ken Berwitz

Perhaps you've heard the name lovelle mixon recently.  He the subhuman with an extensive record of criminality and parole violations who killed four Oakland police officers earlier this week, and was finally shot to death.

You'd think that the citizens of Oakland would be thrilled to be rid of someone like this.  And I have no doubt many of them are.  But it may interest you to know that some of them aren't.    Watch these two videos provided by www.breitbart.com and see for yourself:

‘He Is the Hero’: Anti-Police Oakland Rally Supports Killer of Cops on Eve of Officers’ Funeral
KGO-TV: Demonstrators say Lovelle Mixon was fighting back against what they see as an oppressive police force. "I don't condone what he did, but karma comes around. What goes around comes around," said a man speaking to the crowd.

It should be noted that Oakland was also a hotbed of support for "ebonics" - which is a euphemism for pretending that ghetto slang is no better or worse than proper english.  Or, put another way, it is a surefire prescription for keeping Black people at the bottom of the ladder.

Maybe, just maybe, Black people in Oakland deserve better.  I wish some of the more vocal of them understood that.

Ken Berwitz

Here, from Agence France-Presse, is a story about life in Pakistan these post-Musharraf days:

Suicide bomb in Pakistan mosque kills at least 50

by Saad Khan Saad Khan – Fri Mar 27, 9:53 am ET

JAMRUD, Pakistan (AFP) – A suicide bomber blew himself up during Friday prayers at a packed Pakistani mosque, leaving more than 50 dead and scores wounded in one of the bloodiest recent attacks in the nation.

Blood-soaked caps, shoes and shirts lay around the flattened mosque, where dazed survivors looked on as rescue workers plucked bodies out of the rubble, splashed with pools of blood.

It came just hours before US President Barack Obama was to announce a new offensive against terror havens in Afghanistan and nuclear-armed Pakistan, in the hope of dealing a fatal blow to Al-Qaeda more than seven years after the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States.

The on the weekly Muslim day of rest went off in Jamrud, a town in the restive northwest Khyber tribal region that is located on a key road used to ferry supplies to Western troops across the border in Afghanistan.

"More than 50 people were killed and over 100 others were wounded in the attack. Twenty five of the wounded are in a critical condition," Fida Mohammad Bangash, a senior administration official in Khyber, told AFP at the scene.

Only two minarets were left intact at the mosque, which is frequented by tribal police and paramilitary officers fighting against the Taliban and other Islamist militants in Khyber.

"The whole of the mosque collapsed and only two pillars remain. ," said Waheed Khan, a tribal policeman who was on guard duty across the road at the time.

"I haven't seen such devastation in my life," he told AFP.

"At the same time that the imam said 'Alluh Akhbar (God is greater), the suicide bomber exploded. It was a huge explosion. Even the vehicles standing outside the mosque were damaged."

Tariq Hayat, the top official in the semi-autonomous tribal district, had earlier put the death toll at 48 but warned that many others could be still be trapped under the rubble after the roof of the mosque caved in.

"More than 70 people were wounded. There may be many more dead," he said.

President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani "strongly condemned the suicide attack" and vowed the perpetrators would be brought to justice, according to separate government statements.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.

It was the deadliest bombing in Pakistan, a frontline state in the US-led "war on terror", since 60 people died in a suicide truck bomb at the five-star Marriott Hotel in Islamabad last September.

US officials say northwest Pakistan has degenerated into a safe haven for Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants who fled Afghanistan after the US-led invasion of late 2001 and have since regrouped to launch attacks on foreign troops in that country.

Pakistani security officials said that they suspected Friday's bombing was to avenge operations against Taliban fighters and other Islamist militants to secure NATO supplies into Afghanistan.

The bulk of supplies and equipment required by NATO and US-led forces who are battling a Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan is shipped through Pakistan, and the fabled Khyber pass is the principal land route.

Extremists opposed to the Pakistani government's decision to side with the United States in its "war on terror" have carried out a series of bombings and other attacks that have killed more than 1,600 people in less than two years.

The unrest has fanned international fears about deteriorating stability in the country, where Obama has said extremists -- like in Afghanistan -- pose a grave threat.

To win a war which aides said was "adrift," Obama plans to dispatch 4,000 extra troops to train the Afghan army, on top of 17,000 deployments that have already been authorized.

Obama also will stump up billions of dollars of extra aid to help Pakistan secure its democracy, senior administration officials have said.

But...but...President Bush is gone and the USA is now led by President Obama.  Wasn't that supposed to calm things down and discourage al qaeda, the taliban and their kindred spirits in the Muslim world from such attacks?

Weren't we assured that, with Barack Obama as President, the hate level would diminish and those "moderate elements" in the taliban and al qaeda - you know, the 95% of taliban who aren't incorrigible according to Joe Biden - would see things in a different light?

Maybe it's just me, but this looks very much like the same light they were seeing things in under President Bush.....

Ken Berwitz

I don't know if this letter is real.  Let's just say it could have been written by Rush Limbaugh:

Dear Mssrs Emanuel, Carville, Begala and Stephanopoulos;

I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for working so hard to demonize me over the past month.  I am enormously grateful for two reasons: 

One is that it didn't work.  Republicans have not been hurt at all by your attempt to simultaneously define me as the voice of the Republican Party and run a hate campaign against me personally.  According to Rasmussen, President Obama's approval index (strongly approve minus strongly disapprove) exactly one month ago was +15% (41% - 26%).  Today it is +5% (35% - 30%).  Hahahahahahahaha.

The other is that, because you have put my name out there so intensely, my ratings have literally gone through the roof.  Here, from www.radioequalizer.blogspot.com, is a sampling of what you've done for me:

While these numbers reflect February's results, they could go even higher in March, as the White House anti-Rush effort was still in high gear going into this month.

Some specifics:

In New York City, WABC has experienced huge gains during Rush's noon- 3pm timeslot: from 4.6 to 6.7 overall (12 and older) share, good for first place overall in the nation's largest market. Rush's Big Apple listenership is now estimated at 693,000.


In the second-largest market, Los Angeles, KFI-AM has surged into the number one position (all listeners 12 and older) from 9am to noon, with 618,000 listeners, a 4.6 to 6.0 audience share increase over three months and an even bigger males 35-64 (4.6 to 6.3) move, to take first place there as well.


Chicago, saw another huge move, with Rush affiliate WLS also taking first place during his timeslot (12 and older), from 5.2 share to 6.9 and a total local listenership of 396,700 in the third-largest market.

KSFO / San Francisco saw similar results, despite the extreme-left bent of the Bay Area: 4.7 to 6.0 share, now ranking second overall and with men aged 35-64. Total audience: 346,000.


In Dallas - Fort Worth, 4.8 to 6.4 men 35-64 and fourth overall (12+), 3.5 to 4.5. Cumulative audience: 250,000.


Houston's results were truly blockbuster: 6.0 to 9.8 overall, ranking number one with a bullet and audience of 382,300. Men 35-64: number one again, from 8.6 to 12.2 over three months. Adults 25-54: first place, 4.6 to 8.7. Women 25-54: 3.7 to 8.3 again good for a top ranking.


DC's WMAL also saw Rush-related growth: 4.1 to 6.7, good for third overall and an audience of 155,300. Men 35-64: number one with a staggering 6.4 to 13.4 move.


In Atlanta, Rush has helped WGST fend off an enormous competitor, WSB-AM, with a similar 4.0 to 6.2 upward move, good for fifth place overall and a total audience of 473,500. The results are better in the male 35-64 demographic, surging from 5.5 to 8.0 share.


Bucking Detroit's recent Democratic voting trend, Rush's performance on WJR-AM has been more significant than ever, moving into first place with a 5.8 to 9.6 jump. Men 35-64: number one and 11.6 share. Total audience: 253,000.

Given this blockbuster data, will the White House think twice before targeting Rush again?

Keep in mind that these numbers don't even include Limbaugh's strongest markets, medium-sized cities such as Reno, Albuquerque, Boise, Fresno, Bakersfield and hundreds of others where his program dominates local radio.
_________________________________________

UPDATE: Rush's surge has also led to overall, full-day gains at most of these stations, with WABC/ New York moving into fifth place overall, ahead of many music stations. That's its best showing in at least a year.

KSFO/ San Francisco also rose overall, grabbing sixth place, while WLS/ Chicago now ranks second, a stunning feat.

I have been the longest running #1 radio personality in the history of the medium.  I did that without your hate campaign against me.  But now that you've put your bullseye on my back?  I'm so far ahead that I'll be likely to extend this record to where no one will ever break it!!

Like I said before:  Hahahahahahahaha.

Thank you, guys.  Thank you so much!

Oh, one last thing:  Hannity asked me to tell you that, since you've stopped trying to destroy me, he is dying to have you do it to him next.  He would kill for this kind of ratings boost!!

Love,

Rush Limbaugh

Ken Berwitz

How do you feel about racist idiots?

Well, to help your thinking process, I'll show you one:  luiz inácio lula da silva.   Unfortunately, da silva is also Brazil's head of state. 

Here are the particulars, from London's Financial Times:

Here's something for da silva to think about (assuming he is capable of thinking, that is):  If he blames "White people with blue eyes" for the banking meltdown and feels that White people with blue eyes - presumably all of them - should pay for the consequences, will da silva also compensate "White people with blue eyes" for the benefits of that banking system all those years until now? 

Will he be tossing in a commission on all of the infrastructure, and medicine, and agriculutural advances, and technology that "White people with blue eyes" have created, and which Brazilians enjoy every day?

See, this is the problem with racist idiots like da silva.  They make their racist, idiotic comments without one second's thought about the corollary arguments they are inherently making as well.

But, then again, why would we expect more from racist idiots?

Ken Berwitz

On March 21, I posted a blog about the mobs that were going after individual AIG employees who got bonuses.  At that time I said:

I just watched a news story on NBC-TV New York about AIG employees and the bonuses they received.  The newsperson dispassionately told viewers that protestors are going to take their anger "right to the doorsteps" of the AIG employees who got bonuses.

The congress of the United States - the same congress that voted in favor of legislation which allowed these bonuses - has just spent the last week screaming out the most vile, angry, provocative statements about AIG employees who dared to accept the bonuses they were contractually entitled to....

....My question is this:  Now that this incompetent bunch of house members who - let me repeat -  VOTED IN FAVOR OF THE BONUSES, has put so many citizens in a frenzy, and the news media have been so happy to push the envelope by reporting each new expression of outrage as if it were perfectly acceptable.....

What happens if AIG employees are assaulted, maybe even killed, by one or more of the mob-rule nutcakes that congress and the media have created?  Who will they blame?

That's worth thinking about.

Today Michelle Malkin is not only thinking about it, she's writing about it.  Here is her column:

The New Vigilantes and their Unaccountable Enablers

Michelle Malkin
Friday, March 27, 2009

If you think there are no consequences to hysterical, anti-corporate grandstanding in Washington, pay attention to what's happening across the pond: "This is just the beginning."

So warned a public letter signed this week by a vigilante group called "Bank Bosses are Criminals." The thugs claimed responsibility for vandalizing a former financial executive's home and car in Edinburgh, Scotland. The bank official, Sir Fred Goodwin, was excoriated by U.K. politicians for refusing to give up company pension benefits dubbed "obscene," "grotesque," "unjustifiable and unacceptable." The vigilantes were stoked by a former newspaper editor, one Max Hastings, who wrote a diatribe exhorting citizens to violence:

"The time has come to address the entire robber banker culture. Investment banks have been run not for the benefit of society, customers or even shareholders, but exclusively for the advantage of the bankers themselves. … This is why we must stand outside their homes throwing rocks through the windows until they do."

This is no marginal movement. Some 3,000 protesters from around the world are expected to wreak havoc on the G20 summit next week in London. What happened at Sir Fred's house is a mere dress rehearsal. Bankers are being told to dress down to disguise themselves and avoid becoming riot targets.

Demonstrators are threatening to hang effigies. Protest organizer and university professor Chris Knight vowed worse: "We are going to be hanging a lot of people like Fred the Shred from lampposts on April Fools' Day, and I can only say let's hope they are just effigies. To be honest, if he winds us up any more, I'm afraid there will be real bankers hanging from lampposts, and let's hope that that doesn't actually have to happen."

How soon before we see this same kind of anarchic domestic terrorism on this side of the Atlantic? It's already here.

Animal-rights terrorists have firebombed researchers' homes, Molotov cocktail-bombed their cars, and been convicted of inciting threats, harassment and vandalism against employees of a private company engaged in animal research. Environmental terrorists have set private real estate developments on fire. Self-proclaimed "bank terrorist" Bruce Marks of the government-supported Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America, whom I reported on last March, has been threatening bank employees in their homes and harassing their children for years. And last weekend, of course, the radical ACORN mob and its corporate shakedown allies chartered a bus -- with twice as many outrage-stoking mainstream media photographers in tow -- to menace AIG executives at their homes.

Democratic Rep. Barney Frank shrugged off testimony from AIG CEO Edward Liddy concerning death threats leveled against the company's employees. GOP Sen. Charles Grassley recklessly called on executives who accepted retention bonuses to commit hara-kiri. Left-wing billionaire George Soros' ground troops in the ANSWER coalition waved signs decrying, "CAPITALISM IS ORGANIZED CRIME! STOP AIG!" And 85 House Republicans, led by Minority Whip Eric Cantor, abetted the demagoguery by voting for the retroactive 90 percent bonus tax.

Pundits on both sides of the aisle demonized the business people whose sin was continuing to work for a company that accepted taxpayer funding from Chicken Littles in Washington who forked it over in a blind frenzy. Washington scribe Mort Kondracke joked about boiling the execs in oil. But the families who received the following threats through AIG's website can't afford to be so glib. Among the vile messages disclosed this week in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by Hearst Newspapers:

-- All you motherf***ers should be shot. Thanks for f***ing up our economy then taking our money.

-- I don't hope that bad things happen to the recipients of those bonuses. I really hope that bad things happen to the children and grandchildren of them! Whatever hurts them the most!!

-- If the bonuses don't stop, it will be very likely that every CEO @ AIG will have a bull's-eye on their back.

-- We will hunt you down. Every last penny. We will hunt your children and we will hunt your conscience. We will do whatever we can to get those people getting the bonuses. Give back the money or kill yourselves.

-- All the executives and their families should be executed with piano wire around their necks -- my greatest hope.

-- Watch your backs because someone will come to get you, you can be sure.

Federal authorities are investigating and will take action against warped vigilantes. But when will the enablers on the Hill, in newsrooms and on TV sets be held to account?

Ms. Malkin may be a lot younger  and a lot more attractive than me.  She may have a different set of plumbing than I do (I sure hope so).  But as you can see, when it comes to seeing the danger our wonderful "neutral media and our lying, incompetent, CYA congress has created for AIG employees, whose "crime" is expecting that their contracts be honored, we are very much the same.

I will end here the way I did in the earlier blog:

What happens if AIG employees are assaulted, maybe even killed, by one or more of the mob-rule nutcakes that congress and the media have created?  Who will they blame?

That's worth thinking about.

Ken Berwitz

There's a holdup in The Bronx,

Brooklyn's broken out in fights,

There's a traffic jam in Harlem

That's backed up to Jackson Heights,

There's a scout troop short a child,

Khrushchev's due at Idlewild,

Car 54, where are yoooouuu?

That is the theme song from the classic 1950's comedy, "Car 54 Where Are You?"  Please keep its lyrics in mind as you read Ralph Peters' rundown of how Mr. Obama is doing foreign policy-wise.  Then you can speculate, as I do, when the rest of our wonderful "neutral" media will start talking about it:

O'S FOREIGN FAILURES

I don't necessarily agree with every point that Mr. Peters is making.  But I agree with most of them. 

Personally, Mr. Obama's suckup to Iran was the one that most angered me.  Maybe your personal favorite is different, I don't know.  But can we agree that, diplomatically, he comes across as a flyweight who will be easy to take advantage of?

Ken Berwitz

Yes, another Obama nominee has had to withdraw his name because of personal impropriety.  At rough estimate, this is the 4,728th such loser...er, valued potential administration member who has had to do so.

From Josh Gerstein at www.politico.com:

Nominee for EPA No. 2 spot withdraws By JOSH GERSTEIN | 3/25/09 7:24 PM EDT

President Barack Obama's nominee to be the No. 2 official at the Environmental Protection Agency, Jon Cannon, withdrew Wednesday after it was disclosed that he was on the board of a nonprofit group faulted for mishandling federal grant money. “Today I am voluntarily removing my name from consideration to be Deputy Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency," Cannon said in a statement released by EPA. "It has come to my attention that America’s Clean Water Foundation, where I once served on the board of directors, has become the subject of scrutiny. While my service on the board of that now-dissolved organization is not the subject of the scrutiny, I believe the energy and environmental challenges facing our nation are too great to delay confirmation for this position, and I do not wish to present any distraction to the agency.” A 2007 EPA inspector general's report on the foundation alleged a variety of irregularities involving $25 million in federal grants to assess water quality problems, including those at farms and pork processing facilities. The problems with accounting, improper cash advances and similar violations stretched from 1998 to 2005, according to the report. The foundation dissolved in 2006 and all directors resigned, the report said. Cannon's nomination was formally sent to the Senate on March 12. During the Clinton Administration, he served as EPA's general counsel and as an assistant administrator of the agency. Since 1998, Cannon has been a professor of environmental law at the University of Virginia. “I’m disappointed that Jon Cannon will be unable to serve as deputy administrator, and I thank him for his many years of dedication to the EPA," sadi the agency's newly confirmed administrator, Lisa Jackson, said.

If this were President Bush, the media would gleefully be providing a tally of how many nominees have had to withdraw. 

keith olbermann would do another "booooshed" routine and chris moutthews would talk over his guests about how inept the Bush administration is (as opposed to talking over his guests about something else).

But this isn't the Bush administration.  This is the Obama administration.  And no matter how many nominees have to withdraw, there won't be any conclusions by those same media about Mr. Obama's ineptitude.  keith olberman won't do an "obammmmmma'ed" routine and chris moutthews won't lose the tingle up his leg (which I hope, for his sake, ends at the top of the leg in question).

But listen to them squeal like stuck pigs if you call them biased.

Ken Berwitz

The hypocrisy level is breathtaking.

As President Obama and the Democratic congress - who voted in favor of giving out those AIG bonuses - now try to cover it up by literally extorting the money back, we find out that Mr. Obama's chief of staff glommed onto over $300,000 of Freddy Mac money for doing next to nothing.

Here is the sorry, dissolute story, excerpted from an article in today's Chicago Tribune.  The bold print is mine:

Rahm Emanuel's profitable stint at mortgage giant

Short Freddie Mac stay made him at least $320,000

By Bob Secter and Andrew Zajac | Tribune reporters

March 26, 2009

The White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel listens as President Barack Obama delivers remarks to open the White House Forum on Health Reform in the East Room of the White House. (Tribune photo by Zbigniew Bzdak / March 5, 2009)

Before its portfolio of bad loans helped trigger the current housing crisis, mortgage giant Freddie Mac was the focus of a major accounting scandal that led to a management shake-up, huge fines and scalding condemnation of passive directors by a top federal regulator.

One of those allegedly asleep-at-the-switch board members was Chicago's Rahm Emanuel—now chief of staff to President Barack Obama—who made at least $320,000 for a 14-month stint at Freddie Mac that required little effort.

As gatekeeper to Obama, Emanuel now plays a critical role in addressing the nation's mortgage woes and fulfilling the administration's pledge to impose responsibility on the financial world.

Emanuel's Freddie Mac involvement has been a prominent point on his political résumé, and his healthy payday from the firm has been no secret either. What is less known, however, is how little he apparently did for his money and how he benefited from the kind of cozy ties between Washington and Wall Street that have fueled the nation's current economic mess.

Though just 49, Emanuel is a veteran Democratic strategist and fundraiser who served three terms in the U.S. House after helping elect Mayor Richard Daley and former President Bill Clinton. The Freddie Mac money was a small piece of the $16 million he made in a three-year interlude as an investment banker a decade ago.

In business as in politics, Emanuel has cultivated an aggressive, take-charge reputation that made him rich and propelled his rise to the front of the national stage. But buried deep in corporate and government documents on the Freddie Mac scandal is a little-known and very different story involving Emanuel.

He was named to the Freddie Mac board in February 2000 by Clinton, whom Emanuel had served as White House political director and vocal defender during the Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky scandals.

The board met no more than six times a year. Unlike most fellow directors, Emanuel was not assigned to any of the board's working committees, according to company proxy statements. Immediately upon joining the board, Emanuel and other new directors qualified for $380,000 in stock and options plus a $20,000 annual fee, records indicate.

On Emanuel's watch, the board was told by executives of a plan to use accounting tricks to mislead shareholders about outsize profits the government-chartered firm was then reaping from risky investments. The goal was to push earnings onto the books in future years, ensuring that Freddie Mac would appear profitable on paper for years to come and helping maximize annual bonuses for company brass.

The accounting scandal wasn't the only one that brewed during Emanuel's tenure.

During his brief time on the board, the company hatched a plan to enhance its political muscle. That scheme, also reviewed by the board, led to a record $3.8 million fine from the Federal Election Commission for illegally using corporate resources to host fundraisers for politicians. Emanuel was the beneficiary of one of those parties after he left the board and ran in 2002 for a seat in Congress from the North Side of Chicago.

The board was throttled for its acquiescence to the accounting manipulation in a 2003 report by Armando Falcon Jr., head of a federal oversight agency for Freddie Mac. The scandal forced Freddie Mac to restate $5 billion in earnings and pay $585 million in fines and legal settlements. It also foreshadowed even harder times at the firm.

Many of those same risky investment practices tied to the accounting scandal eventually brought the firm to the brink of insolvency and led to its seizure last year by the Bush administration, which pledged to inject up to $100 billion in new capital to keep the firm afloat. The Obama administration has doubled that commitment.

Freddie Mac reported recently that it lost $50 billion in 2008. It so far has tapped $14 billion of the government's guarantee and said it soon will need an additional $30 billion to keep operating.

Like its larger government-chartered cousin Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac was created by Congress to promote home ownership, though both are private corporations with shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange. The two firms hold stakes in half the nation's residential mortgages.

Because of Freddie Mac's federal charter, the board in Emanuel's day was a hybrid of directors elected by shareholders and those appointed by the president.

In his final year in office, Clinton tapped three close pals: Emanuel, Washington lobbyist and golfing partner James Free, and Harold Ickes, a former White House aide instrumental in securing the election of Hillary Clinton to the U.S. Senate. Free's appointment was good for four months, and Ickes' only three months.

Falcon, director of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, found that presidential appointees played no "meaningful role" in overseeing the company and recommended that their positions be eliminated.

John Coffee, a law professor and expert on corporate governance at Columbia University, said the financial crisis at Freddie Mac was years in the making and fueled by chronically weak oversight by the firm's directors. The presence of presidential appointees on the board didn't help, he added.

"You know there was a patronage system and these people were only going to serve a short time," Coffee said. "That's why [they] get the stock upfront."

Will Emanuel give the money back?  Since he has gotten immensely rich as a political hatchetman I'd think that $320,000 or so would be little more than a drop in the bucket for him.

Will his cronies do the same?  Look at what they did to Freddy Mac (and Fanny Mae) while taking their ill-gotten fortunes from the companies.

Do you think this congress will vote to retroactively tax Mr. Emanuel and the rest of them at 90%, the way they did with AIG employees? 

If you said "yes" to any of those questions I have another one for you:  Are you on drugs?

Ken Berwitz

This comes to us from the Associated Press.  Make of it what you will:

There is no truth to the rumor that, when coaxed away from the vacuum, Mr. Savage's penis was 31 inches long....and 1/8th of an inch in circumference.

Ken Berwitz

If you thought the previous blog was chilling, try this one on for size.  It comes to us via an editorial in today's Washington Examiner:

Expanded Americorps has an authoritarian feel

By Examiner Editorial
- 3/26/09

With almost no public attention, both chambers of Congress in the past week advanced an alarming expansion of the Americorps national service plan, with the number of federally funded community service job increasing from 75,000 to 250,000 at a cost of $5.7 billion. Lurking behind the feel-good rhetoric spouted by the measure’s advocates is a bill that on closer inspection reveals multiple provisions that together create a strong odor of creepy authoritarianism. The House passed the measure overwhelmingly, while only 14 senators had the sense and courage to vote against it on a key procedural motion. Every legislator who either voted for this bill or didn’t vote at all has some serious explaining to do.

I don't know about you but, to me, this concept is unsettlingly like 1930's nazi Germany and 1960's maoist China.

What is going on here? What is happening to our country?  And who will stop it before it's too late?

Ken Berwitz

Irwin Stelzer is the director of economic-policy studies at the Hudson Institute.  He also writes about economics issues for the New York Post. 

 Here is today's column, which is a genuinely grim warning for us about President Obama's so-called "recovery" policies:

CHINA'S DOLLAR JITTERS

LOSING PATIENCE WITH OBAMA

Last updated: 6:17 am
March 26, 2009
Posted: 2:47 am
March 26, 2009

IF you think you have reason to worry about this recession, consider poor Chinese premier Wen Jiabao, who's sitting on $1.2 trillion of our government's IOUs. Wen said a few weeks ago that he's "a little bit worried" that America might cheapen the dollar so much that he will end up cashing in those Treasury bills and notes for dollars that won't buy very much.

If he was a little bit worried a few weeks ago, he must be very worried now. The Fed plans to buy at least $300 billion of Treasury IOUs in the next six months, pour $1.45 trillion into the mortgage market one way or another and keep interest rates close to zero for an "extended period." And there's more in the Fed's "do whatever it takes" arsenal -- all of which means the presses will be working overtime turning out pictures of American presidents printed on green bits of paper.

The Fed's decision to pump trillions into the money markets comes on top of President Obama's proposal to drive the federal deficit to an astonishing 13 percent of GDP, quadruple what it was in the last Bush budget. He needs to borrow trillions to fund his so-called stimulus package, universal health care, a green energy system and the rest of his wish list.

Not to worry, says Obama: America will never default on its debt. But it now costs seven times as much to buy insurance against such a US government default as it did only a year ago.

And a default isn't the only risk: America can always inflate its way out of its obligations.

Obama claims the economy will soon be racking up growth rate of around 4 percent a year. Along with the tax hikes he'd impose on the top 2 percent of earners, the billions he'd charge for carbon-pollution permits and his reductions in age-related entitlements, he sees that growth driving the deficit down to a sustainable level.

Unfortunately, 2 percent of earners can't or won't carry the entire burden, the carbon-permit program might not produce the predicted revenues after Democratic congressmen from coal states chop away at it and Congress has told the president that any proposal to reduce the massive entitlement payments due the aging baby boomers will be DOA -- dead on arrival.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office shook up everyone, including congressional Democrats, with a study showing that even if the economy grows as Obama predicts, his budget will pile up deficits of $9.3 trillion over the next decade, with the deficit coming to 13.1 percent of GDP this next fiscal year and remaining at astonishing and unsustainable levels right through 2019.

That is a lot more red ink than the president is predicting.

Democrats know that if the widely respected CBO is right, we're in for an inflationary binge of the sort that sent Jimmy Carter back to his peanut farm.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke says he can drain all of the extra dollars he is printing out of the system when the time comes, and the Democrats say they'll trim the Obama budget. But Bernanke is haunted by his studies that show that the Great Depression was prolonged when the Fed tightened money too soon. So he'll stall. And the Democrats in Congress are led by Nancy Pelosi, Charlie Rangel & Co. -- the same crew that delivered a budget for the rest of this year so laden with pork that the president signed it in private, no press allowed.

Meanwhile, poor Tim Geithner will try to peddle the trillions in Treasury IOUs needed to fund the Obama deficits and the Fed's programs. But China needs to keep more money at home to cope with its rising domestic needs.

Beijing will still buy some of our IOUs, because it has to do something with all the dollars it gets for the stuff you see on Wal-Mart shelves. But, at the first whiff of runaway inflation, Wen will press hard to get us to sign onto his new plan: We give up the dollar for some international currency.

At his press conference on Tuesday, the president, in one of his few unequivocal answers, said he wouldn't go along with any such plan. But he is the man who assured us he'd never approve earmarks -- then signed a budget with 9,000 of those congressional gifts to constituents.

China's patience with Obama's borrow-and-spend is plainly running short. If Wen decides that he'll continue lending to us only if we pay a higher interest rate, he will drive up rates here on mortgages, car loans and the like. That would nip our recovery in the bud.

Obamanomics, in short, might prove to be the worst thing to happen to us since Jimmy Carter.

Add to this the frightening spector of terminating the US dollar that Timothy Geithner, Mr. Obama's Secretary of Effing Up Our Economy, has floated, and realize just how scary this is becoming.

How many of us are sitting by with complete equanimity, as our country is being transformed from the world's only superpower to a second-tier "one of the guys" entity?  Are you?

Can you possibly be happy about what the Obama administration is doing?  How much debt it is running up and the policies - economic and social - that it is ramming through the Democrat-dominated congress?

Ken Berwitz

From www.thebigfeedblog.com:

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

I disagree.  Geithner is not a dangerous, dishonest liar.  He is a dangerous, dishonest liar and, apparently, an incompetent who doesn't know what he's saying from one minute to the next.

He has to go.  Now.

Ken Berwitz

patrick oliphant is an editorial cartoonist currently employed by several media venues, including the Washington Post. 

This is his position on Israel's action against Gaza.  .

Do you agree with this? 

Gaza, is run by hamas, a terrorist organization committed in writing to destroying Israel and killing its Jews, which fired thousands of rounds of artillery into Israel before it retaliated.  Do you liken it to a little helpless woman with a child? 

Do you think Israel is some kind of mindless monster for, at long last, doing something about the attacks? 

Well, as you can see, that is patrick oliphant's position.

On behalf of anti-Semitic colostomy bags everywhere, I would like to thank Mr. oliphant.  His work will no doubt grace their publications for years to come.

Ken Berwitz

Ed Schultz is a conservative Republican who suddenly became a liberal Democrat when there was some serious coin in it for him.  Although his ratings are tiny compared to Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity, Schultz currently is the most successful liberal talk show host in the country.

And since MSNBC is all liberal-left all the time, the network is considering adding Schultz to its lineup.

Brian Maloney of www.radioequalizer.blogspot.com thinks MSNBC would be making a big mistake to do so, because of Schultz's sometimes uncontrollable temper, and his argument is pretty persuasive. 

Here it is.  See if you agree.

MONSTER IN THE MAKING

Will Schultz's Ego, Temper Sink Cable Talk Prospects?

As NBC's corporate suits ponder whether to add liberal talk show host Ed Schultz to their weeknight lineup, how much do they really know about his track record?

In anticipation of his hiring, the usual mainstream media subjects are busy cooking up Maddow-style fawning press coverage. Will this come back to haunt them, however?

Already, industry blog TVNewser is calling him "MSNBC's next potential star".

Forget digging into his personal background, however, it isn't necessary to go any further than what has gone out over the airwaves, in addition to some other questionable public antics. From his hot temper to rapidly-expanding ego and sometimes muddled stances on key issues, network execs may be getting more than they've bargained for in Schultz.

From October 21 2008, for example, here's Ed Schultz mistreating a fellow liberal who dared to politely challenge Big Eddie's position. Note how the caller remains calm and reasonable while an unhinged Schultz channels the ghost of Sam Kinison in Back To School.

This meltdown occurred just a few days after Schultz walked off the set in the middle of a Fox News Channel interview:

CALLER RODNEY (Hour Three, 44:40): I'm going to have to call you out on what your response was to Congressman (Robin) Hayes (R-NC), who I do not know. I live in western North Carolina close to Asheville, I hope to see you next Wednesday night. But we cannot accomplish getting Barack Obama elected in this coming election by stooping to the level of some of the other talk show hosts. And when you came back with your comment concerning Representative Hayes a while ago and making fun of his accent, talking about that you think they want to start a civil war, I think you're taking a chance of alienating a lot of folks that are still on the fence down here in North Carolina and Obama needs North Carolina. We can't stoop to their level.

ED SCHULTZ (45:28) (with exaggerated Southern accent): Well, first of all, Rodney, you have your opinion and I have mine. The conservative movement in this country, in my opinion, completely out of material and now in the arena of being vile. For a United States congressman to claim that there actually is a political movement in this country known as liberals that *hate* real Americans, now Rodney, if you want to let that go, fine.

CALLER (crosstalk): No, I don't want to let it go, Ed, I did not say that at all. I am a liberal, I am a supporter, but there are a lot of people that are going to respond to your ...

SCHULTZ (interrupting): Well let 'em freakin' respond to it! Rodney, Rodney, let them respond to it! Let 'em respond to it! Come to the freakin' town hall meeting and respond to it! I'm not apologizing!

CALLER: I'm not, well, I guess ..

SCHULTZ: God! I mean, it amazes me, it absolutely amazes me how many experts there are out there in talk radio! You can't say this because this might happen. You can't say that because that might happen. You can't do any of that because that might happen. You know what something, Rodney? You don't know your ass from third base!

CALLER: Wait a minute now, Ed ...

SCHULTZ: No, no, no, wait a minute, you don't! How do you, what do you know what to talk about?!

CALLER: What do I know what to talk about ...?

SCHULTZ: What do you, how do you know what to talk about?! How do you know what strikes the passion of the people? Have you traveled the country? Have you talked to people in market after market? Have you looked in their eyes and seen the frustration with the conservative movement in this country?

CALLER: OK, but when you start doing things that take away from ....

SCHULTZ: That's your freakin' opinion!

CALLER: Well, and evidently you have a very strong one, but I'm concerned about your ...

SCHULTZ: Well, you shouldn't be concerned about it, Rodney! Why don't you just get off your ass and start working!

CALLER: (crosstalk) ... in North Carolina for the first time in a presidential race, it could be a very important part of this campaign, and the success of this campaign. That's my concern. It's not defending Robin Hayes. It's despicable what he said, I'm embarrassed by it.

SCHULTZ: Well, why didn't you start out with that? But instead it's an attack on me (cross talk) I mean, you started this, Rodney, I can't deal with you, you don't want a conversation. You don't want a conversation.

In addition to mild criticism of his on-air style, another way to set off our hotheaded friend is to mention the success of Rush Limbaugh's program as opposed to the continuing struggles of Schultz and other libtalkers to attract ratings and revenue. From February, here's one example that includes audio.

Far worse, in 2007, Schultz actually got into a physical conflict in a Minnesota bar when a patron mistakenly believed Big Eddie was still a conservative Republican. Schultz's sudden conversion, which coincided with the advent of syndicated liberal talk radio, has long been the source of suspicion on both the left and right. It happened so fast that many listeners were caught by surprise.

Ed has attempted to bolster his left-wing credentials through extreme rhetoric, such as calling Rush Limbaugh and other conservatives "nazis".

During another 2007 incident, Schultz made racially insensitive remarks regarding Barry Bonds and other ballplayers, including Babe Ruth. Only liberal talk radio's obscurity saved him from a Don Imus-like "nappy-headed hos" fate.

In April of last year, Schultz embarrassed Barack Obama on the campaign trail by calling John McCain a "warmonger". To prevent damage to his campaign, Obama quickly repudiated Schultz's remarks.

Ultimately, however, Schultz's anti-Hillary screeds were noted by the Obama campaign, which rewarded the talker with a front-row seat at one of Barack's press conferences. Rather than boosting Big Eddie's public standing, however, it led to public criticism and a defensive tone from the man himself. Worse, it seemed to boost his already pumped-up ego to unbearable levels.


While NBC's executives are obviously free to hire whomever they choose, we thought they might like to first consider the baggage that comes with a potential Ed Schultz television show. Is he worth it?

Yikes.  This guy is a ticking time bomb.

On the other hand, a network that is comfortable with keith olbermann's nightly hate-fest and rachel maddow's nightly smirk-fest will probably take the plunge.  Get ready for Schultz

Ken Berwitz

It isn't by much, and the pollster, a Democrat, tries to put a smiley face on it as best he can, but there it is.

From John Zogby:

President Barack Obama's approval rating continues to slide, but the drop since Election Day isn't dramatic, said pollster John Zogby.

A Zogby International poll out Tuesday shows that 49 percent of Americans rate the president's job performance as excellent or good and 50 percent judge his job performance as fair or poor. Obama won 53 percent of the vote in November.

"It's pretty remarkable that anybody's at 50-50 with how bad things are right now," Zogby said in an interview.

To John, whom I met and discussed politics with at the ARF (Advertising Research Foundation) convention last year, I would like to say "nice try". 

Mr Obama's performance in the polls isn't remarkable at all, given that he has relentlessly blamed the economy on former President Bush -- as opposed to, say, the Democrats who were instrumental in forcing lending practices that took down Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac.  

What's remarkable is that his ongoing series of mistakes, large and small, accompanied by his insane spending of trillions of dollars we do not have, hasn't resulted in even lower poll numbers. 

Expect them.  Soon.

Ken Berwitz

As John Hinderaker of www.powerlineblog.com shows us, Barack Obama lied to our faces with his claims about the deficit. 

Here is the proof:

Obama said, in his introductory statement:

At the end of the day, the best way to bring our deficit down in the long run is not with a budget that continues the very same policies that have led us to a narrow prosperity and massive debt. It's with a budget that leads to broad economic growth by moving from an era of borrow and spend to one where we save and invest.

This is entirely disingenuous. Obama's budget plan multiplies the federal deficit far beyond what it has ever been, in any prior administration. So how is he "moving from an era of borrow and spend"? It's a lie, pure and simple, as this chart shows (note that it begins before the Bush administration and reflects Obama's budget projections that go beyond his maximum possible term): 

When a politician is capable of this sort of bald-faced lie, an alarm bell has to go off every time he opens his mouth. Obama likewise delivered this highly misleading assessment of AIG:

Now, understand that AIG is not a bank. It's an insurance company. If it were a bank and it had effectively collapsed, then the FDIC could step in, as it does with a whole host of banks, as it did with IndyMac, and in a structured way renegotiate contracts, get rid of bad assets, strengthen capital requirements, resell it on the private marketplace.

So we've got a regular mechanism whereby we deal with FDIC- insured banks. We don't have that same capacity with an institution like AIG. And that's part of the reason why it has proved so problematic.

I think a lot of people understandably say, "Well, if we're putting all this money in there, and if it's such a big systemic risk to allow AIG to liquidate, why is it that we can't restructure some of these contracts? Why can't we do some of the things that need to be done in a more orderly way?"

And the reason is, is because we have not obtained this authority.

But there is, in fact, a widely used mechanism to deal with non-bank financial institutions like insurance companies that may become insolvent. It's called bankruptcy. In bankruptcy, contracts are renegotiated, bad assets are gotten rid of and good assets are sold into the private sector. That system exists, and would have worked perfectly well for AIG if it were not for the federal government's desire to funnel payments to AIG's counterparties--most notably, European banks--without taking responsibility for doing so. Under Obama's proposal, every time an insurance company becomes insolvent it will be another opportunity to expand federal power.

Any questions?

Ken Berwitz

This just came to me from my increasingly bizarre west coast pal Russ.  Be sure to have an air sickness bag close by when you read it, and maybe a smidgen of baking powder.

Please join me in remembering a great icon of the entertainment community. The Pillsbury Doughboy died yesterday of a yeast infection and trauma complications from repeated pokes in the belly. He was 71.

Doughboy was buried in a lightly greased coffin. Dozens of celebrities turned out to pay their respects, including Mrs. Butterworth, Hungry Jack, the California Raisins, Betty Crocker, Hostess Twinkies, and Captain Crunch. The grave site was piled high with flours.  

Aunt Jemima delivered the eulogy and lovingly described Doughboy as a man who never knew how much he was kneaded.  Doughboy rose quickly in show business, but his later life was filled with turnovers. He was not considered a very smart cookie, wasting much dough on half baked schemes. Despite being a little flaky at times, he still was a crusty old man and was considered a positive role model for millions.  

Doughboy is survived by his wife Play Dough, three children: John Dough, Jane Dough and Dosey Dough, plus they had one in the oven. He is also survived by his elderly father, Pop Tart.  The funeral was held at 350 for about 20 minutes.

Ken Berwitz

Here is a truly excellent analysis of what Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. (what a name!!) characterizes as "The Real AIG Disgrace".  Mr. Jenkins lays out the facts bluntly and unsparingly.

Read it and see the truth, in a way most mainstream media will never present it to you:

The Real AIG Disgrace

By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR.

The stock market was intoxicated with the Obama administration's toxic asset plan. Whatever its contempt for the upper middle class that acquires wealth through salaried work and bonuses, Team Obama still has eyes for the hedge fund class, which will be ladled out taxpayer dollars to make one-way bets on problematic bank assets.

AP

Andrew Cuomo and Tim Geithner.

Yet the AIG bonus episode, the administration's one true disgrace so far, will not soon be forgotten.

Tim Geithner is rightly on the hot seat for saying he didn't know about the bonuses until just weeks ago -- because he should have quelled this furor before it ever got started. Instead he played dumb and climbed aboard the outrage bandwagon -- and let Mr. Obama do the same.

There is not a shred of justice in the hysteria that followed. As AIG chief Ed Liddy explained on the Hill last week, the people receiving retention bonuses were not the same people who launched AIG's unhedged housing bets that brought the company down. Those people were gone. Their pay is already being clawed back.

Those who remained had been asked a year ago to stay and work themselves out of a job. In accepting the terms offered to them, they committed no offense (say, failing to pay taxes). Their only crime was possessing marketable knowledge -- all the more marketable because of the opportunity for hedge funds and other counterparties to profit from AIG's distress. Had the company submitted to Chapter 11 rather than a government takeover, a bankruptcy judge might well have authorized identical incentives to minimize losses and maximize recovery for legitimate stakeholders.

The Washington Post, which has consistently distinguished itself with its reporting about the real antecedents of this "scandal," yesterday followed up by detailing "months of assurances to Financial Products employees that the insurance giant would honor those contracts, according to numerous internal AIG e-mails and memos . . . ."

Whether Mr. Geithner knew the specifics is unimportant. The retention plan was known to his staff. The details had been disclosed over and over in public filings. As far back as October, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo had summoned the Treasury-appointed Mr. Liddy to hammer out a deal on AIG's pay practices. Said Mr. Cuomo in a statement afterward: "These actions are not intended to jeopardize the hard-earned compensation of the vast majority of AIG's employees, including retention and severance arrangements, who are essential to rebuilding AIG and the economy of New York."

The voluble Rep. Elijah Cummings had been railing about AIG retention bonuses almost continually, on air, in the print media, and in publicly released letters to Mr. Liddy, since Dec. 1.

On March 3, Mr. Geithner himself was quizzed during a congressional hearing in detail about the AIGFP retention plan by Democratic Rep. Joe Crowley -- a week before Mr. Geithner now says he heard of the plan.

It may be that the full picture was kicked up to him only when a political decision was needed, but by then his one decent choice was to insist on the bonuses' legality. However politically inopportune the bonuses may be, the president only dirtied himself by authorizing a feel-good, bipartisan hate storm aimed at innocent AIG employees. And it's hard to believe Mr. Obama would have done so, or the subsequent spectacle would have unfolded as it did, without Mr. Geithner's seminal prevarications (and we say this fully acknowledging that he's had a rough ride in an inhumanly difficult job).

Barney Frank, who doesn't have the excuse of being stupid, was last seen bullying Mr. Liddy to do what on any other day Mr. Frank would flay Mr. Liddy for doing -- violating the privacy rights of his employees. Charles Grassley? His early bloviating about the duty of AIG executives to kill themselves almost begins to look like a grace note, since it alerted the public to the hyperbolic playacting about to come.

Paul Kanjorski, before running off to host a hearing, proclaimed on CNBC that AIG's Mr. Liddy would be responsible if Congress now failed to summon the political courage to take necessary steps to address the financial crisis.

Pause to let it sink in. Mr. Liddy, who is doing his job with grit and personal sacrifice, is blamed in advance if Congress proves too cowardly to do its own job.

But the biggest lesson here is the old one that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance -- beginning with insistence on the rule of law. Americans clearly cannot trust their elected officials to defend their rights and interests, or care whether justice is served, when the slightest political risk might attach to doing so.

Which brings us back to Mr. Cuomo, whose office has been implicitly threatening to publish names of AIG employees who don't relinquish pay they were contractually entitled to.

Mr. Cuomo is a thug, but at least he reminds us: It can happen here

Ken Berwitz

From the Associated Press:

 POSTED: Monday, Mar. 23, 2009

Ok.  The article names a U.S. Senator, a house member and a lobbying firm founded by a former aide to a house member.  But it doesn't say what party any of these people belong to.

Now it's your turn to....Guess That Party!

So, what did you guess?  Is there any doubt in your mind about which party it is?

In case you have any doubts, Patty Murray, Norm Dicks and John Murtha are Democrats.  By contrast, does the AP (or countless other media venues) hesitate one second to name the political party when it's a Republican.

But listen to them squeal like stuck pigs if you call them biased.

Ken Berwitz

A few quick notes on the Obama press conference:

-He read his opening statement from a large teleprompter placed in the middle of the room.  He read the names of people he called on from a list in his hand.  His answers to a number of questions were clearly rehearsed.  Can this man do anything spontaneously -- other than insulting Special Olympics participants?

-As usual, his answers were too long and too professorial.  No one expects Mr. Obama to compete with Gallagher or Chris Rock as an entertainer, but there is something between that and being ennui on legs. 

-Mr. Obama gets points for taking questions from a wide range of news sources, both liberal and conservative.  He also risked incurring disfavor from the New York Times and Washington Post, both of which were shut out of the questioning.

-Mr. Obama demonstrated his short fuse several times - most notably when Ed Henry of CNN asked why it took him so long to become outraged over the AIG bonuses.  His answer, "It took us a couple of days because I like to know what I'm talking about before I speak", was unpleasant and uncalled for.  It was also a pile of baloney.  How many days did he need to be outraged?  How many days did you need?  How many minutes did you need? 

Lucky Mr. Henry didn't follow up by asking why, if he felt that way, he didn't veto the stimulus bill that exempted those bonuses, thus allowing them to be paid.  He might have lost a couple of teeth.

-Mr. Obama lied to us about the economy.  Claiming you'll halve a deficit that you are raising in the first place is another pile of baloney.  Suppose someone owed you $100, and said "I can't pay you the $100.  But if you give me $900 more, I'll have $1,000 of your money.  Then I can pay back $500 and halve the debt".  Would you fork over the $900?

-Mr. Obama also displayed alarming ignorance of how taxes work.  When he complained that it wasn't fair for a rich guy to get a 39% tax deduction for charitable contributions because a bus driver gets less, he somehow overlooked the fact that the only reason the rich guy gets a 39% tax deduction is that he pays 39% in taxes. 

I would have loved it if someone followed up by asking him whether he would consider resolving the disparity by taxing the rich guy at the same level as the bus driver.  Not surprisingly, no one did.

Additionally, the premise that increasing taxation on charitable deductions won't adversely affect the donations charities receive is, at best, naive and, at worst, lying to our faces.  How much contempt for our intelligence must Mr. Obama have to say this with a straight face and believe we will buy into it?  Plenty.

All in all, a poised, workmanlike, boring, unpersuasive, often dishonest performance.

Ken Berwitz

I periodically put up the cable news ratings, so you can see how the networks and individual shows are making out.

Today's the day.  Here are the latest data, from last night:

The Scoreboard: Monday, March 23

25-54 demographic: (L +SD)

Total day: FNC: 376 | CNN: 169 | MSNBC: 162 | HLN: 157

Prime: FNC: 726 | CNN: 257 | MSNBC: 368 | HLN: 310

	5p:	6p:	7p:	8p:	9p:	10p:	11p:
FNC	Beck:	Baier:	Shep:	O'Reilly:	Hannity:	Greta:	O'Reilly:
	616	473	556	965	747	457	463
CNN	Blitzer:	Blitzer:	Dobbs:	Brown:	King	Cooper:	Cooper:
	195	176	176	222	239	310	255
MSNBC	Matthews:	Shuster:	Matthews:	Olbermann:	Maddow:	Olbermann:	Maddow:
	148	158	200	436	408	259	219
HLN	Prime:	Prime:	VMitchell:	Grace:	Dobbs:	Grace:	Showbiz:
	97	135	214	385	192	368	248

Data by Nielsen Media Research. Live and same day (DVR) data.


Total Viewers: (L +SD)

Total day: FNC: 1253 | CNN: 623 | MSNBC: 461 | HLN: 340

Prime: FNC: 2596 | CNN: 946 | MSNBC: 1038 | HLN: 770

	5p:	6p:	7p:	8p:	9p:	10p:	11p:
FNC	Beck:	Baier:	Shep:	O'Reilly:	Hannity:	Greta:	O'Reilly:
	2094	1900	1951	3513	2483	1773	1450
CNN	Blitzer:	Blitzer:	Dobbs:	Brown:	King	Cooper:	Cooper:
	905	695	756	782	1098	957	599
MSNBC	Matthews:	Shuster:	Matthews:	Olbermann:	Maddow:	Olbermann:	Maddow:
	723	515	713	1239	1156	718	566
HLN	Prime:	Prime:	VMitchell:	Grace:	Dobbs:	Grace:	Showbiz:
	262	314	544	1031	490	825	475

Data by Nielsen Media Research. Live and same day (DVR) data.

As per usual, Fox News dominates overall, in every time slot, and among the key 25-54 year old group.  It is doing so despite (actually, maybe because of) a recent lurch to the right. 

For years the left accused Fox of being far-right when, in reality, it did a reasonably good job of presenting both sides.  But now, with Hannity flying solo and the additions of Glenn Beck and Mike Huckabee, Fox really has moved firmly to the right.  Put another way, it has grown (or regressed depending on your point of view) to what the left always said it was anyway.

Looking at individual talent, Bill O'Reilly remains the king of them all, with over 3.5 million viewers. 

Sean Hannity is well ahead of the competition, but his numbers have dropped somewhat from where they were immediately after Alan Colmes' departure -- and I suspect they'll drop some more.  The show sorely misses Colmes and, in his absence, should have been continued with a different liberal/left counterpart to Hannity's take-no-prisoners conservatism.  That's still a good idea.

Rachel Maddow has fallen off considerably from her early numbers and, though she still does very well, is now fighting the 175 year old (or so it seems) Larry King for second place to Hannity.

keith olbermann, who jumped upward quite a bit for a short period during last year's election, is right back down the crapper at about one-third of O'Reilly's total viewership and less than half his 25-54 level.  I'm sure that the dropoff will not change olbermann at all.  He will continue to have his daily hissy fit about O'Reilly and all those other conservative demons, as he stares up enviously from his basement flat to O'Reilly's penthouse.

And Chris Moutthews?  olbermann looks like a wonder winner by comparison.  Moutthews is a poor third place in both his 5PM and 7PM time slots.

Ken Berwitz

From UPI:

Madoff number yields lottery payout

NEW YORK, March 24 (UPI) -- A New York man who used fraudster Bernie Madoff's prison number to play the lottery said he won $1,500 from the ticket.

Ralph Amendolaro, 50, a construction worker, said he noticed Madoff's prison number -- 61727-054 -- on the front page of a newspaper the day after the Ponzi schemer pleaded guilty, the New York Daily News reported Tuesday.

"I'm going to be a winner with this guy even though everyone lost money with him," Amendolaro recalled thinking when he bought the lottery ticket March 13. "Somebody had to get a little lucky with him."

Amendolaro said he won $1,500 when 054 popped up in the daily drawing.

Lottery officials said 501 people played the winning number on the same day as Amendolaro.

"It's pretty common when you have a number that hits the public," said lottery spokeswoman Jennifer Givner. "A lot of people are very superstitious."

What can you say?  Not only did Amendolaro win on madoff's prison number, but the amount is exactly ten times the 150 years he's going to be sentenced to.

Maybe when madoff goes to the big house they can give him a 12 digit number.  Maybe someone will hit the mega-millions jackpot.

Ken Berwitz

Here is Steve Gilbert of www.sweetness-light.com, brilliantly taking apart the shameless hypocrite, Andrew Cuomo, and his "triumph" in getting back some of the AIG bonus money:

AIG Execs Cave, Will ‘Hand Over’ Bonuses

March 24th, 2009

Mr. Gilbert is 100% correct.  He couldn't be more spot-on.

These phony, fraudulent hypocrites caused this problem.  And now, with a complicit press running interference for them, they are pretending to be the avengers for what they themselves caused.

It is a pathetic, sick joke, and all too many people are allowing it to be played on them.

Ken Berwitz

What is happening to our government under Barack Obama and his Democratic congress?  How far and how fast are we traveling away from what we are and have always been? 

You won't find a better analysis than George Will's, from today's New York Post.  Here it is (the bold print is mine):

Ken Berwitz

As of this morning, it is being reported that about one third of the $165 million bonus dollars to AIG employees have been given back.  The TV newspeople happily told me that the government and the protestors they've featured for days on their newscasts were pleased that this was happening, and made it eminently clear that they were pleased too.

Let me tell you why I'm not.

First of all, please notice that my first paragraph did not use the word "voluntary" though, in theory, every one of the AIG executives could have kept every penny of the bonuses.  That is because while, in a legal sense, the give-backs were voluntary, in a very real sense they were coerced.  And the coercion has featured the worst kinds of fear tactics by the government.

Bonus recipients were threatened in the vilest language on the floor of the house.  They were called everything but axe murderers for the crime of expecting that their contracts would be honored. 

Then the house passed a flat-out bill of attainder - a 90% tax that singled out the specific people getting such bonuses.  This was so clearly unconstitutional that even a few embarrassed Democrats were going on the talk shows acknowledging that it could not stand legal scrutiny.

But what it did do was scare the excrement out of a lot of executives at AIG and other companies.NOT just the ones who got huge bonuses, but the ones who got smaller bonuses and the ones who didn't get any bonuses but might get one in a future year. 

Then there were the protestors.  Groups of lunatics were going to individual bonus recipients' residences, screaming insults and demanding the money back. 

These executives are not in government.  They don't have a security force protecting them or their families.  Neither they nor their neighbors have any protection against this kind of invasion of their privacy or the implicit threats it brings along for the ride.

Maybe one or more of the mob would decide to go further than just treating the bonus recipients like subhuman felons.  Maybe he/she/they would decide to get the money back some other way.  That is how homes are torched.  That is how people are shot. 

And before you dismiss this as overstatement, what has "ELF" (the Environmental Liberation Front) done to property it decided was unacceptable?  How many millions of dollars' damage have they caused?

And what about Freddy's Fashion Mart in Harlem?  After days of sickeningly racist protests, and a pep talk by a human snake called sharpton, one of the protestors took matters into his own hands and torched the store.  Eight people died because someone was motivated to take matters into his own hands.

That is why the money is being given back.  Out of stark fear .  Are you comfortable with this?

I wonder what some of these congresspeople have to say about the House Unamerican Activities Committee and Joe McCarthy.  I wonder if they realize how much they have in common with what the HUAC and McCarthy were accused of.

And now we come to the real reason this is happening.  The reason I did not hear on the TV news this morning.

FACT:  The "stimulus package" that bailed out AIG did not have any provision for disallowing these bonuses, and the final bill, which President Obama happily signed, specifically exempted them.

I'm going to say that again, nice and loud:

FACT:  THE "STIMULUS PACKAGE" THAT BAILED OUT AIG DID NOT HAVE ANY PROVISION FOR DISALLOWING THESE BONUSES, AND THE FINAL BILL, WHICH PRESIDENT OBAMA HAPPILY SIGNED, SPECIFICALLY EXEMPTED THEM.

Now that I've got your full attention, here are a few more facts:

-The Democratic Party wrote every word of the stimulus package bill.  It specifically shut Republicans out of the process;

-The final bill, some 1,000 pages of it, was presented to congress late at night, with a vote scheduled the next day.  Not one congressperson in either house could possibly have read its contents before voting on it.

-Since President Obama did not sign the bill until FIVE DAYS LATER at a major rally in Denver, congress could have been given days to pore over its contents.  The fact that they were not given that available time, proves that they were deliberately prevented from reading what they were voting on.

-Not one of the 178 house Republicans voted for the "stimulus package".  Only 3 of the 41 senators did.  In total, therefore, about 99% of all Republicans voted against it.

This means that the bonuses given to AIG executives are 100% on the heads of Democrats, and 0% on the heads of Republicans.  Democrats wrote the bill, every single word of it, and Democrats passed the bill.

Which brings us to the real reason for this modern-day witch hunt against AIG executives.  It is being conducted by Democrats in a desperate attempt to divert you from the fact that they are responsible for the AIG bonuses. 

The more Democrats scream out insults and threats, the more illegal bills they pass to punish AIG executives, the more protestors our wonderful "neutral" media show you, the further you are diverted from the fact that Democrats are responsible for the bonuses being paid.

It is a coverup by Democrats to hide their responsibility for the bonuses.  And, like the earlier paragraph, this is worth repeating louder too:

IT IS A COVERUP BY DEMOCRATS TO HIDE THEIR RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE BONUSES.

One last thing, which I urge you to think long and hard about:

The AIG executives are the easiest of easy targets.  Who would have any sympathy for well to do people getting huge bonuses while their company is being handed billions of tax dollars to bail it out?  Just about no one.  It's like shooting fish in a barrel.

But now a precedent has been set. 

If government can pull this on AIG executives, it can pull this on others.  Maybe tomorrow the precedent will be used to unilaterally take away something you have, whether it is a bonus, other types of compensation, or even your personal property. 

And if you complain about it and assure them you're no AIG executive, they will shrug their shoulders and tell you that the law is the law.

What goes around comes around.

Now you know why the bonus give-backs are not pleasing me.  Do they please you?

Ken Berwitz

From Mike McGraw of the Kansas City Star:

Stimulus? U.S. to buy Chinese condoms, ending Alabama jobs

By Mike McGraw | Kansas City Star

I had two really funny lines ready to go here.  But I am not going to put them up because, while the subject matter may seem funny, the issues are not.

Hundreds of US jobs are going to be lost because a US agency can buy condoms cheaper from China than it can from the US.  Maybe it would be a good idea to think about why.

Here are a couple of reasons:

-The workers are being paid a living wage.  

-The condom manufacturer has to abide by a dizzying array of regulations and procedures that China doesn't even think about.  They include OSHA, workman's comp, accounting costs, regulations on everything from EPA standards for the factory to packaging, to who knows what else, along with accounting issues, legal issues, etc. etc, etc. etc. etc.

What's really happening here is a microcosm of why we no longer have a manufacturing base in the USA.  Manufacturers have endless rules and regulations, ranging from benign to insane, that drive up the cost of goods we produce.  Then they are expected to compete against countries like China with no regulations and slave-labor wages.  No wonder the domestic jobs vanish.

It's bad enough we can't sell to the rest of the world because of this.  Do we have to screw our own workers? 

Yeah, condoms cost less from China.  So let's even the playing field.  We'll eliminate all the regulations and pay the workers $14.17 a day without benefits, (that's the 2007 average for urban Chinese employees -- rural workers get less).  Now we can compete in price.

Is that ok with the US Agency for International Development?  Because it sure as hell isn't ok with me.

Either change the rules to make us more competitive, or pay the difference and buy from Alabama, so that a few hundred of our own people can earn a decent living and work in a decent environment.  OK?

Ken Berwitz

You know you've been insulted when an ignoramus calls you an ignoramus. 

yugo chavez (I call him yugo instead of hugo because his performance is so similar to that of the car) has just called President Obama an ignoramus.  I'd think of that as incredible coming from most people, but when the source is a sorry little anal cavity like Chavez I suppose you can expect just about anything.

From Reuters:

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez said on Sunday his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama was at best an "ignoramus" for saying the socialist leader exported terrorism and obstructed progress in Latin America.

"He goes and accuses me of exporting terrorism: the least I can say is that he's a poor ignoramus; he should read and study a little to understand reality," said Chavez, who heads a group of left-wing Latin American leaders opposed to the U.S. influence in the region.

Chavez said Obama's comments had made him change his mind about sending a new ambassador to Washington, after he withdrew the previous envoy in a dispute last year with the Bush administration in which he also expelled the U.S. ambassador to Venezuela.

Anyone who reads this blog knows I have major problems with Barack Obama.  But he is my President.  And I very deeply resent another head of state talking about him this way. 

The fact that the head of state is yugo chavez, makes it even worse.

yugo chavez accusing someone of ignorance is like Michael Corleone accusing someone of being connected to organized crime.

As far as chavez not sending an Ambassador to the US?

Ooooooohhhhhh, we're crushed.  Honest.

Ken Berwitz

From my west coast pal Russ:

Dear President Obama,

Thank you for helping my neighbors with their mortgage payments. You know the
one's down the street who in the good times refinanced their house several times
and bought SUV's, ATV's, RV"s, a pool, a big screen, two WaveRunners and a Harley. 
But I was wondering, since I am paying my mortgage AND theirs, could you arrange for
me to borrow the Harley now and then?

Richard Ford, Queen Creek

P.S. They also need help with their credit cards, when do you want me to start making
those payments?

P.P.S. I almost forgot - they didn't file their income tax return this year. Should I go ahead
and file for them or will you be appointing them to cabinet posts?

.

Ken Berwitz

Do you like editorials that are blunt and to the point?

Try this one on for size.  It comes to us from the New Haven Register, and is about Chris Dudd, a senator the Register has had plenty of good words to say about in the past.

EDITORIAL: Dodd lied about AIG bonuses

Friday, March 20, 2009 6:23 AM EDT

We’re not going to mince words. Chris Dodd is a lying weasel. It is hard enough to swallow that the senator had no idea that he got preferential treatment on his home mortgages that saved him thousands of dollars. Or that, simply out of friendship, a wealthy New York man, who was later convicted in a huge stock swindle, picked up much of the cost of a condo Dodd bought in Washington; or that the stock swindler’s business partner out of a love of Ireland did the same for Dodd when the senator bought a waterfront house in Ireland.

Now, Dodd flat-out has lied about his role in legislation that is allowing employees of American International Group to receive $400 million in bonuses despite receiving $173 billion in taxpayer money to keep the failed financial giant alive.

We praised Dodd on March 9 for authoring an amendment to the $787 billion stimulus bill that barred the top executives and highest-paid workers at companies that took government bailout money from receiving bonuses. Sharply down in opinion polls, Dodd was riding the wave of public anger at Wall Street’s greed.

What Dodd did not reveal at the time was that there was a provision in his amendment that exempted any bonuses, including AIG’s, in contracts dated prior to Feb. 11. The exemption was cited by Obama administration officials as the reason they were powerless to stop AIG’s payment of the bonuses.

CNN, the cable television news channel, Tuesday asked Dodd about the loophole. Dodd told CNN it was not in the bill when it left the Senate. "I can’t point a finger at someone who offered a change at all," Dodd said. Asked if he later determined how the loophole was added, Dodd said, "I really don’t know."

Wednesday, Dodd was forced to admit to CNN that he was responsible for the loophole after the Treasury Department said it had asked Dodd for the change. Dodd had the good grace to apologize for his Tuesday lie; but, he tried to shift some responsibility to his staff, claiming it, not he, had spoken with Treasury officials.

Dodd claims he was unaware of the AIG bonuses when he changed the language of his amendment to allow them. Dodd, however, is more than familiar with AIG. Its Financial Products unit, which helped drive AIG to the brink of bankruptcy, has headquarters in Wilton. As a member and now chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, which has jurisdiction over AIG’s industry, Dodd has received more campaign money, $281,038, from AIG than any other member of Congress.

Dodd’s lie about the bonus loophole should haunt him next year when he seeks re-election. He has broken a bond with voters who expect honesty from their elected officials.

I welcome The Register to the real world of Chris Dudd.  Calling him a lying weasel is hitting the nail on the head.  Because that's what he is, and has been for some time.

Now grow old waiting for the Boston Globe to do the same for Dudd's counterpart in the house of representatives, Barney Fudd. 

Fudd and Dudd are not only liars, they are, arguably, the two most culpable members of congress when it comes to the collapse of Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac.

The good news is that there is a very real chance Dudd will be gone from the senate after the next election (in 2010).  The bad news is that Fudd will continue in the house forever.  He owns Newton, MA lock, stock and liberal sensibilities. 

George Bush has a better chance of being asked to head moveon.org than Barney Fudd has of being called to account for his disastrous dishonesty and incompetence.  I'm sure Newtonians are proud as peacocks.

Ken Berwitz

John Hinderaker, at www.powerlineblog.com, offers us the latest in what has become a torrent of evidence suggesting that man-made global warming is a myth.  I'm posting his commentary without the half dozen or so supporting charts.  You can see them all by clicking below:

Dispelling the Global Warming Myth

Earlier this month, the Heartland Institute sponsored the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change in New York. The Conference differed from most such events in that it was devoted to science, not politics or propaganda. Heartland has now made the materials presented at the conference available online, here. You can review the agenda, watch videos of the keynote presentations, read transcripts of some of the speeches, and see the Power Points that were presented by the speakers. More information will be posted as it becomes available.

SEE THE KEY GLOBAL CLIMATE CHARTS BY CLICKING HERE

Due to the efforts of Heartland and others, the public is beginning to catch on to the cosmic scam that Al Gore, James Hansen and others--mostly not scientists--have been perpetrating. Meanwhile, the Obama administration, seemingly determined to inflict the maximum possible damage on the economy in the shortest time, is trying to ram a cap-and-trade carbon tax through Congress before opposition can be mobilized. It's easier to do that, of course, when you know that Congressmen won't read the statute before they vote on it. So our only hope is an informed citizenry.

Is man-made global warming a scam?  Mr. Hinderaker thinks so.  I'm not 100% convinced but I'm close, and getting closer.

How about you?

Ken Berwitz

Timothy Geithner is a liar, a fraud and has no business being anywhere near Treasury, let alone heading it.

I've already blogged about his absolute lie regarding when he knew of AIG's retention bonuses -- complete with video of him being TOLD about them in so many words by a Democratic senator, during a ways and means committee hearing, a week and a half before Geithner claims he first knew about them.

That alone should be enough to have him removed.

But the article in today's Wall Street Journal, by Michael E. Phillips and Sudeep Reddy, so completely blows the lid off of Geithner's lies that his continuation in this position is untenable.  He must go and he must go now.  Today.

Here are excerpts from the article:

MARCH 23, 2009

Geithner Aides Worked With AIG for Months on Bonuses

By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS and SUDEEP REDDY

WASHINGTON -- Since the fall, senior aides to Timothy Geithner have closely dealt with American International Group Inc. on compensation issues including bonuses, both from his time as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and as Treasury secretary.

The extent of their involvement, which wasn't widely known, raises fresh questions about whether Mr. Geithner could have known earlier about AIG's $165 million in bonus payments. When the bonuses sparked a political firestorm last week, Mr. Geithner said he learned about their full scope in early March, just days before they were paid.

Treasury officials say the department's staff kept Mr. Geithner in the dark until March 10. "Secretary Geithner, who has been actively engaged in shaping and executing the president's broad economic agenda, takes full responsibility for not being aware of these programs" before that date, Treasury spokesman Isaac Baker said Sunday in a written response to questions.

After Edward Liddy took over as AIG chief executive, the company hired consultants to look at its payment plans around the world. One of Mr. Geithner's top bank supervisors at the New York Fed, Sarah Dahlgren, became the government's lead overseer of AIG. She sat in on AIG board meetings, joined at times by other top Fed staffers, and also participated in compensation-committee meetings. It isn't clear whether the issue rose to the board level until this month.

In early November, the Fed, outside auditor Ernst & Young and AIG officials began examining through a committee the bonuses set to be paid to AIG's financial-products division, including those that sparked last week's furor. The committee concluded that the bonuses, which were in contracts signed before the government takeover, couldn't be legally blocked, according to a person familiar with the matter. The Obama administration has since agreed with that legal interpretation.

AIG cited the retention plan in a public filing in early November, and Fed officials were aware AIG planned to pay $55 million in bonuses to financial-products employees the next month. Mr. Geithner remained involved in major AIG matters, seeking updates from Ms. Dahlgren and other top Fed staffers. He recused himself from dealing with aid to specific companies around the time of his Nov. 24 nomination as Treasury secretary.

Lawmakers were also scrutinizing AIG's operations. Some raised the matter of the AIG bonuses at a hearing in December where they grilled Neel Kashkari, a Bush Treasury official who remains at the department.

In late January, news outlets reported that AIG planned a total of $450 million in bonuses to help retain employees winding down the complex trades in the unit at the heart of the company's collapse. In the weeks that followed, Mr. Liddy and other AIG officials briefed some lawmakers about the retention payments and other aspects of the AIG rescue.

On Feb. 28, as government officials worked on a fourth AIG bailout, the New York Federal Reserve Bank emailed Stephen Albrecht, a Treasury lawyer, laying out the AIG bonus issues and promising further detail, according to two people familiar with the email. Mr. Albrecht did not return a call seeking comment.

It was an intense weekend, as Treasury and Fed officials frantically prepared to close the AIG deal. "When we heard there was this executive compensation thing floating out there, we thought, 'We'll deal with this later,'" said one Treasury official.

On March 2, AIG announced both record losses and $30 billion in fresh Treasury aid.

The following day, Mr. Geithner appeared at a hearing of the House Ways and Means Committee. Rep. Joseph Crowley, a New York Democrat, asked the secretary about more than $160 million in bonuses that AIG would be paying to financial-products employees "in the coming weeks."

Treasury officials say the AIG problem didn't register with Mr. Geithner at the hearing amid the other issues he faced. Mr. Baker, the Treasury spokesman, acknowledged that information about the financial-products bonuses was "in the public arena...for many months." But, he said, it wasn't until March 10 -- five days before the big batch of retention payments were due -- that department staff spelled out the situation for the secretary.

Liar.

Fraud.

Geithner, will you please, for the good of the country and what's left of your shredded reputation, get out -- and good riddance?

Mr. Obama, will you please, for the good of the country and what's left of your increasingly shredded reputation, make it happen?

Ken Berwitz

The Obama smirk. 

We saw it whenever he was challenged throughout the election campaign and now we're seeing it whenever he is challenged as President.  So there it was, when Steve Kroft asked him about the financial mess we're in and what, if anything, his policies will do to alleviate it.

Did you see the movie "American Gangster", starring Denzel Washington as drug kingpin Frank Lucas?   He used that exact same smirk when he softly, deliberately, insinuatingly said, "my man....".  The two are so identical that I wouldn't be surprised if Mr. Obama deliberately copied it.

The Lucas character meant it as an understated threat.  Barack Obama, I think, means it as a deflection.  Something to intrigue, warm and delight us so that we don't notice him ducking the question.

But it doesn't do any of those things to me.  To me, it drips with arrogance and contempt.  And I suspect increasing numbers of people who voted for him would tell you the same thing. 

Here is an excerpt from the article by Craig Gordon and Jonathan Martin of www.politico.com which describes his interview.  Please be sure to look at the accompanying video:

Kroft to Obama: Are you punch-drunk? By CRAIG GORDON & JONATHAN MARTIN | 3/22/09 6:55 PM EDT  Updated: 3/23/09 8:36 AM EDT :

President Barack Obama said he believes the global financial system remains at risk of implosion with the failure of Citigroup or AIG, which could touch off “an even more destructive recession and potentially depression.” His remarks came in a“60 Minutes” interview in which he was pressed by Steve Kroft for laughing and chuckling several times while discussing the perilous state of the world’s economy. “You're sitting here. And you're— you are laughing. You are laughing about some of these problems. Are people going to look at this and say, ‘I mean, he's sitting there just making jokes about money—’ How do you deal with— I mean: explain. . .” Kroft asked at one point. “Are you punch-drunk?” Kroft said. “No, no. There's gotta be a little gallows humor to get you through the day,” Obama said, with a laugh.

How telling is that smirk?  What does it say about Mr. Obama?  What does it say to you?  

Well, whatever it says, I hope you enjoy it.  Because you'll have it for almost four more years, maybe eight.

Ken Berwitz

Governor Dimwi...er, David Paterson, the Governor-by-accident of New York, is lying about his intention to tax "the rich".  Why not?  He lies about everything else.

Here are the particulars, from Fred Dicker of the New York Post:

GOV PLOTS SECRET TAX HIKE ON RICH

What a lying dope.  I won't call him a lying snake because I consider a snake devious and competent.  I do not have any reason to believe Governor Paterson is competent, certainly not enough to successfully be devious.

The idea itself is very salable to voters.  Hey, they're RICH, get the money from THEM.  We hate those rich SOB's anyway.  So they'll only eat caviar 350 days a year instead of all 365.

The reality is a bit different.  The more you tax people, the more you drive them out of the place where they are being taxed.  The more you tax people, the more you incent them to shelter and/or hide the money you draw taxes from. 

You can do the math and figure out approximately what a tax increase will yield all you want.  But that number is never realized, because the higher the tax, the more ways people people find - legal and otherwise - to avoid paying it.

There is a point where government is spending so much that even the greatest amount of taxes it can scare up will not cover the expenses.  New York has blown past that point.

Here's a novel idea that might work:  Spend less. 

Let me say that again.  Spend less.

Can you hear me, Governor Paterson?

Ken Berwitz

From Jonathan Kaye of Canada's National Post.  No comment necessary:

Here, in a nutshell, is the difference between Israel and the terror-worshiping cultures that besiege it. When terrorists kill Israeli women and children with bombs or missiles, they regard it as a triumph worthy of celebration; sweets are passed out; the terrorists themselves are venerated as martyrs. When Israeli soldiers deliberately kill Arab women and children, on the other hand, most Israelis regard it as a disgusting aberration, and a legal investigation is launched.

Last week, the director of an Israeli military institute leaked unproven testimonials from soldiers who claimed they'd engaged in — or been urged to engage in — reckless and inhumane tactics during the recent Gaza campaign. In one instance, it was claimed a sniper had shot an elderly woman. In another, an Israeli gunman was alleged to have killed a woman and two children. All four of the victims, the testimonials allege, were killed because they approached Israeli positions or violated Israeli battlefield orders, despite the fact they posed no military threat. Other accounts leaked from the same military institute, all taken from a taped discussion among Gaza war veterans, feature claims that Israel had recklessly destroyed Gazan property; and that militant Israeli Rabbis had distributed unsettling propaganda to the soldiers prior to Israel's incursion.

None of the accounts have been verified. But no one should be surprised if some turn out to be true. No army — even one serving a humane, democratic nation such as Israel, tragically well-practiced in the art of counter-terrorism — is staffed by unbroken legions of angels. There are always bad apples. Thousands of Israeli soldiers fought in Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009. No doubt, a few of them fell under some of the lunatic and sadistic impulses that have been known to grip soldiers in times of war. (We should be far more skeptical of the related claim that Israeli units actually were commanded to maraud Gazan civilians and their homes. If that were true, the civilian death toll in Gaza would have been orders of magnitude higher than it actually was.)

What is more remarkable is how this all has been handled in Israel itself. As soon as the allegations surfaced, Israel's military advocate general launched an investigation. As with the United States following Abu Ghraib in Iraq, and Canada following the Airborne Regiment scandal in Somalia, the sadists will be identified and, where justified, punished. Israel is an open society in which ordinary soldiers often discuss their combat experiences in op-ed articles, blogs and radio programs. Indeed, this whole story was originally broken by Israeli newspapers. The prospect of a cover-up is remote.

Nevertheless, we all know how Israel's enemies and critics will play this news. From the opening days of the Gazan campaign, the blood-libels of "massacre" and "genocide" have flown thick and fast. From the moment this story appeared on the front-page of Thursday's New York Times, it was obvious that the Israel-Apartheid crowd had found its latest talking point. (It doesn't help matters that some Israeli soldiers are playing up the sadistic motif for gallows humor, with t-shirts bearing the image of dead Arabs and the like. Sometimes, Israel is own its worst PR enemy)

Well, here's another talking point worth considering. In April, 1979, a Lebanese terrorist by the name of Samir Kuntar murdered a 31-year-old Israeli father and his 4-year-old daughter — dispatching the latter by smashing her head against a rock. (A 2-year-old sister also died — from suffocation, as her mother tried to quiet the toddler's screams so as not to alert Kuntar to their presence.) Kuntar's crimes are now 30 years old. But recent events suggest they remain instructive to this day: Last year, after spending three decades in an Israeli jail for the killings, the murderer was sent back to Lebanon in exchange for the remains of two Israeli soldiers. Upon his return, Arabs greeted Kuntar with confetti and applause. The head of Al Jazeera's Beirut office called the man a "pan-Arab hero," and feted him at a special party. A few months later, in Nov. 2008, the Syrian president gave Kuntar his country's highest medal.

Such a sick spectacle could never unfold in Israel, of course: In the case of the soldiers alleged last week to have killed Gazan civilians, the reaction from Israelis has been what one would expect in a civilized culture that values human life: outrage, disgust, and a legal investigation. It is this contrast — not the isolated outrages alleged to have been performed by Israeli soldiers — that tell us all we need to know about the moral gulf between the Jewish state and its terrorist enemies.

Ken Berwitz

I love Whole Foods and wish there were a store closer to where I live.

But, to tell you the truth, this story, from Fox News, isn't giving me any warm fuzzies.  Please pay special attention to the parts I've put in bold print:

'World's Deadliest Spider' Found in Whole Foods Produce Section

Friday, March 20, 2009 

Unbelievable.

The good news, Mr. Jones, is that you have the best erection of your life, and it will last for hours.  The bad news is that YOU won't last for hours.  You've got 25 minutes to use it.

But if you're going to, can you get out of the produce section? 

Ken Berwitz

From of Todd Huston of www.newsbusters.org:

SF Chron Reports 'Massive' Anti-War Protest, Completely Ignored Equally Large Cincy Tea Party

Thanks to the San Francisco Chronicle for so clearly showing us how agenda-driven its "news coverage" actually is. 

And, being Jewish, I offer particular thanks for turning the Palestinian Arab/Jewish confrontation on its ear.  Nice touch, making it seem as though Jews were the aggressors but then backing off after leaving that indelible first impression.

But listen to them squeal like stuck pigs if you call them biased.

Ken Berwitz

My previous blog mentioned the great Boston Globe columnist (and really good guy) Jeff Jacoby.

Jeff's latest column laughs off the ridiculous claim that President Obama's first 100 days are the most difficult that any President has faced in the history of the country.

Here it is:

'The most difficult first 100 days'? Not quite

by Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
March 22, 2009

"WHEN the stock market crashed," Joe Biden told Katie Couric in a CBS interview last fall, "Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the princes of greed. He said, 'Look, here's what happened.'" Katie didn't embarrass her guest by pointing out that there were no TV broadcasts when Wall Street crashed in 1929 and that the president at the time was Herbert Hoover -- though she would surely have pounced had Sarah Palin committed such a howler.

Last week the vice president brought up FDR again, telling a Democratic audience that President Obama "has inherited the most difficult first 100 days of any president, I would argue, including Franklin Roosevelt."

Perhaps that generated some quizzical looks, for Biden continued: "Let me explain what I mean by that. It was clear the problem Roosevelt inherited. This is a more complicated economic [problem]. We've never, ever been here before -- here or in the world. Never, ever been here before."

If nothing else, Biden's comment was at odds with the administration's new line on the economy: Whereas last month the president was saying we were in a "crisis as deep and as dire as any since the Great Depression," now he declares that things are "not as bad as we think they are" and his adviser tells "Meet the Press" that the nation's economic "fundamentals are sound." Apparently Biden didn't get the memo to stop bad-mouthing the economy.

Faces of the Depression: A destitute family in Alabama, 1935 (Library of Congress)

Talking points aside, does Biden's claim have merit? Is Obama faced with grimmer, more formidable conditions than any incoming president has ever known? Were FDR's first 100 days notably less challenging than Obama's?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported earlier this month that unemployment has reached 8.1 percent for the first time since 1983. When Roosevelt took the oath of office on March 4, 1933, more than 25 percent of American workers were unemployed. "Those fortunate enough to have work," historian Anthony Badger writes in FDR: The First Hundred Days , "had seen their income fall by a third in three years. Farmers had been crushed by catastrophic price falls, drought, and debt. A thousand homeowners a day were losing their homes. No region, no industry, no class escaped the Depression."

Since the beginning of 2008, 42 US banks have failed. But as FDR came to power, banks were failing by the thousands, wiping out the life's savings of countless American families. Tens of thousands of other businesses had also gone under, turning once-bustling city centers into near-ghost towns. Between 1929 and Roosevelt's inauguration, national income had been cut in half; industrial output had plummeted just as much.

The recession we are in now is painful. American households have lost 18 percent of their wealth, and millions fear for their jobs. No one knows for sure what the next few years will bring. But at least this much is clear: Conditions today are nowhere near as desperate as they were in 1933, a reality for which all Americans, including their vice-president, should be grateful.

Even apart from FDR, Obama is hardly the first president to take office amid bleak or threatening circumstances. When Ronald Reagan assumed the presidency in 1981, he inherited a "misery index" of 19.5 percent -- the impact of 12 percent inflation combined with 7.5 percent unemployment rate. Mortgage rates were at 15 percent and climbing; the prime rate had reached 20 percent. Today inflation is at one-half of 1 percent, while mortgage rates are at historic lows. Biden may insist that "we've never, ever been here before." The data tell a different story.

And what of the non-economic challenges new presidents have had to confront? When Harry Truman succeeded FDR in 1945, the United States was fighting a world war on multiple fronts. The Battle of Berlin raged in Europe; B-29 bombers were pounding Tokyo. Nearly 200,000 American lives had been lost, and new casualties were averaging 900 per day. Truman had no background in foreign policy, and was shocked to discover how little national-security intelligence Roosevelt had shared with him -- including the imminent development of the atomic bomb. No wonder he told reporters he felt as if "the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me."

But even Truman had it easy next to Abraham Lincoln, whose election had prompted most of the South to secede from the Union and form the Confederacy. For his inauguration, the 16^th president had to enter Washington in disguise, so serious were the threats to his life. Five weeks into Lincoln's presidency, Confederate batteries attacked Fort Sumter, triggering the Civil War -- the worst and bloodiest calamity in American history.

No, these are not the worst of times. Americans have come through graver crises. Biden should be focused on helping the nation get through this one, instead of trying to paint it as the most daunting we've ever faced.

(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.)

Thank you, Jeff, for so clearly showing that this claim is self-serving nonsense.

Simply stated, the administration's PR machine has floated the "most difficult 100 days" BS in an effort to elevate Mr. Obama.  It is designed to create the illusion that he is some kind of superman overcoming uniquely difficult circumstances.

Pathetically, some people are going to buy into this BS.  I'm hopeful that, after reading Mr. Jacoby's column, you won't be one of them.

Ken Berwitz

I didn't blog about it yesterday, but Paul Krugman, the left wing economics guru of the New York Times, wrote a genuinely scathing criticism of what President Obama and his people are doing. 

His key paragraph:

Why am I so vehement about this? Because I’m afraid that this will be the administration’s only shot — that if the first bank plan is an abject failure, it won’t have the political capital for a second. So it’s just horrifying that Obama — and yes, the buck stops there — has decided to base his financial plan on the fantasy that a bit of financial hocus-pocus will turn the clock back to 2006.

That's pretty remarkable commentary from someone who, along with the rest of the Times crew, has been so completely in the bag for Mr. Obama. 

But today we have Frank Rich, if anything even harder-left than Krugman, attacking President Obama just as scathingly.  Here is an excerpt of his commentary:

Has a ‘Katrina Moment’ Arrived?

Barry Blitt

I assure you that neither of these two columnists would agree with my assessment of what Mr. Obama is doing wrong.  But, whatever our reasons, we all agree that it is wrong.  Egregiously wrong.

And if Mr. Obama is wrong, then it necessarily follows that the Democrat-dominated congress, which is passing his legislation, must be just as wrong. 

And that means, whether Mr. Krugman or Mr. Rich will say it in so many words, that the Democratic Party is wrong.

And if Krugman and Rich are saying it any way at all, you can be sure that somewhere in the bowels of the Times building, a new overall position on Mr. Obama has been taken.

Why?  Maybe it has something to do with what effect the legislation will have on the New York Times company (that's right, it's not just a newspaper, it's a company; a big one) and its executives. 

Today's lead story in the Times talks about how Mr. Obama is looking to regulate the compensation paid to executives at banks and other financial institutions -- but that the regulations might be expanded into other areas.  Do you think Pinch Sulzberger and his inner circle might have a worry or two about that?

Whatever the reason, I will now expect a significantly more critical view of President Obama by the Times and its sister paper, the Boston Globe.

My pal Jeff Jacoby, the Globe's house conservative, should be pleasantly surprised by this turn of events.  I'll contact him, ask what he thinks about this and let you know what he says.

Ken Berwitz

Suppose you were a state legislator, and a racist group proposed a resolution to honor, exalt and glorify someone you disagreed with.  Would you vote for it?

Here is an excerpt from an AP article published in  USA Today which describes just that.  The bold print is mine:

Ga. Republicans block resolution honoring Obama

The Georgia Legislative Black Caucus?  What's that?  Is it an organization that you cannot join unless you are Black? 

If not, it has an amazingly misleading name.  If so, it is a racist organization.  Obviously.  It restricts membership based specifically on skin color. (As regular readers know, I've written this about the congressional Black caucus too)

The fact that a Black caucus exists at all is appalling.  The fact that it proposes a resolution that makes Barack Obama out to be some kind of quasi saint on earth is ludicrous.  Half the legislature is from the opposition party.  They don't feel that way about him, so why would they vote for a resolution that characterized him this way?

The comparison with voting to commend President Bush on his efforts regarding hurricane Katrina is just as ludicrous.  Commending someone for his or her work on a specific disaster is not the same thing as saying he has an "unimpeachable reputation for integrity, vision and passion", or that "no one could be more worthy of special honor and recognition"

I suggest that Republicans in the Georgia state legislature try floating a resolution that uses those exact words about former President Bush or any other Republican, and see if all the Democratic legislators come running to to pass it.

I don't suggest, however, that the White members of the Georgia state legislature form a Georgia Legislative White Caucus.  Someone just might think of it as a racist group. 

Maybe even Calvin Smyre.

Ken Berwitz

I have talked at length about the "education" given to Palestinian Arab children in Gaza and Judea/Samaria (the west bank).  I have pointed out that it is not education at all, but indoctrination to a specific belief system - in their case, one of hate, violence and amazing counterproductivity.

With that in mind, look at what is going on in Texas, under its lunatic board of education chairman Don Mcleroy. 

From www.littlegreenfootballs.com:

Texas School Board Chairman Endorses Book Calling Pro-Evolution Parents 'Monsters'

Sci/Tech | Fri, Mar 20, 2009 at 6:35:55 pm PDT

We’ve had several posts about the chairman of the Texas State Board of Education, Don McLeroy, a dentist and young earth creationist who is doing his best to drag science education in Texas back into the Dark Ages, with help from the deceptive propagandists at the Discovery Institute. In an especially Orwellian touch, they’re calling this effort “academic freedom.”

This week the Texas Freedom Network revealed another McLeroy outrage, a glowing recommendation of a completely insane creationist tract: What Does Don McLeroy Really Want to Teach?

Scientists are “atheists.” Parents who want to teach their children about evolution are “monsters.” Pastors who support sound science are “morons.”

Is that the sort of message Chairman Don McLeroy and his cohorts on the State Board of Education have in mind for Texas science classrooms if they succeed in their campaign to shoehorn “weaknesses” of evolution back into the science curriculum standards? That’s certainly the message of a new book McLeroy is now endorsing.

Dr. McLeroy – noting his position as board chair – recently wrote a glowing recommendation of Sowing Atheism: The National Academy of Sciences’ Sinister Scheme to Teach Our Children They’re Descended from Reptiles by Robert Bowie Johnson, Jr. (The new book is self-published.) The chairman clearly likes what he reads:

In critiquing the National Academy of Science’s (NAS) missionary evolution tract—Science, Evolution and Creationism, 2008, he identifies their theft of true science by their intentional neglect of other valid scientific possibilities. Then, using NAS’s own statements, he demonstrates that the great “process” of evolution—natural selection—is nothing more than a figure of speech. These chapters alone are worth the reading of this book.

Curious to know what Johnson envisions - and McLeroy endorses - as a proper science education? You can read the full tome for yourself online. Or if you don’t have the time (or the stomach) to explore the full treatise, we have compiled a few choice selections that give you the flavor. Remember, this could well be coming soon to a public school science class near you if evolution opponents on the state board get their way next week.

This nutjob heads the board of education?  What is he doing near a school altogether?  That someone with his agenda should be in charge of educating children is a crime against humanity. 

I have no problem with anyone's believe in creationism. 

I have no problem with the tenets of creationism being taught in the schools, along with the tenets of any other religion and the tenets of atheism -- so long as the purpose is to teach children what each belief system is about, NOT as a means of proselytizing them.

But a hardline advocate for one particular religious belief who a) is in charge of the educational system and b) is aggressively promoting that system?  An absolute outrage.

Today is as good a day as any to get rid of McLeroy.  I urge Governor Perry to do so.  And if he complains, just tell him the firing is a learning experience.

Ken Berwitz

For whatever it's worth:

Rasmussen research does a three day rolling average on Presidenrt Obama's approval ratings.  That means today's data are the combination of Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.  Tomorrow's will be the combination of Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and so on.

Here is the progress of Mr. Obama's approval ratings, from his first full day in office (January 21) to today:

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Date	Presidential Approval Index	Strongly Approve	Strongly Disapprove	Total Approve	Total Disapprove
03/21/2009	+4	36%	32%	55%	44%
03/20/2009	+4	35%	31%	55%	43%
03/19/2009	+7	37%	30%	56%	43%
03/18/2009	+7	37%	30%	57%	42%
03/17/2009	+5	37%	32%	56%	43%
03/16/2009	+4	36%	32%	56%	43%
03/15/2009	+6	37%	31%	56%	43%
03/14/2009	+8	37%	29%	57%	41%
03/13/2009	+9	38%	29%	57%	42%
03/12/2009	+9	37%	28%	58%	41%
03/11/2009	+6	37%	31%	56%	43%
03/10/2009	+6	38%	32%	56%	43%
03/09/2009	+6	38%	32%	56%	43%
03/08/2009	+8	39%	31%	56%	43%
03/07/2009	+8	39%	31%	56%	43%
03/06/2009	+15	42%	27%	58%	40%
03/05/2009	+14	41%	27%	59%	40%
03/04/2009	+16	42%	26%	60%	38%
03/03/2009	+13	40%	27%	60%	39%
03/02/2009	+10	39%	29%	58%	41%
03/01/2009	+8	38%	30%	58%	40%
02/28/2009	+10	39%	29%	59%	39%
02/27/2009	+15	41%	26%	60%	40%
02/26/2009	+16	41%	25%	60%	40%
02/25/2009	+14	39%	25%	59%	40%
02/24/2009	+14	39%	25%	60%	39%
02/23/2009	+11	38%	27%	58%	40%
02/22/2009	+11	38%	27%	58%	41%
02/21/2009	+10	38%	28%	57%	41%
02/20/2009	+12	38%	26%	59%	40%
02/19/2009	+13	38%	25%	60%	39%
02/18/2009	+14	38%	24%	61%	38%
02/17/2009	+15	38%	23%	61%	37%
02/16/2009	+10	36%	26%	60%	39%
02/15/2009	+11	37%	26%	60%	39%
02/14/2009	+13	39%	26%	60%	39%
02/13/2009	+17	41%	24%	60%	38%
02/12/2009	+19	43%	24%	61%	37%
02/11/2009	+19	42%	23%	60%	38%
02/10/2009	+15	39%	24%	60%	38%
02/09/2009	+14	38%	24%	60%	38%
02/08/2009	+11	36%	25%	59%	39%
02/07/2009	+14	37%	23%	60%	38%
02/06/2009	+17	38%	21%	61%	36%
02/05/2009	+19	39%	20%	62%	36%
02/04/2009	+18	39%	21%	62%	36%
02/03/2009	+15	37%	22%	61%	36%
02/02/2009	+17	41%	24%	60%	38%
02/01/2009	+21	44%	23%	63%	34%
01/31/2009	+23	45%	22%	63%	34%
01/30/2009	+21	43%	22%	63%	36%
01/29/2009	+22	42%	20%	62%	36%
01/28/2009	+22	42%	20%	62%	36%
01/27/2009	+23	42%	19%	62%	36%
01/26/2009	+21	41%	20%	60%	37%
01/25/2009	+22	42%	20%	60%	36%
01/24/2009	+26	44%	18%	61%	33%
01/23/2009	+29	45%	16%	62%	29%
01/22/2009	+30	44%	14%	64%	29%
01/21/2009	+28	44%	16%	65%	30%

As you can see, Mr. Obama started out with 65% approval to 30% disapproval; a +35% difference.  His "approval index" (strongly approve minus strongly disapprove) was +28% (44% - 16%)

It is two months after those data were reported.  Look at what the same poll says today:

Now Mr. Obama's overall approval is 55% - 44%.  That's about a 2/3 drop in the difference we saw on January 21.  And his approval index has dropped from +28% to +4%.

Personally, I put very little stock in political polls.  Anyone who reads this blog would know that.  But I put stock in movement within the same poll from wave to wave (which, in this case is day to day).

Mainstream media, however, are not as skeptical of political polls as I am.  They love putting them up and talking about them.  And it was an obsession with them when Mr. Obama's numbers were at their highest.

Now, tell me:  Have you seen these data anywhere but on the Rasmussen web site or here?  Why do you suppose they are not being reported by a media that is utterly obsessed with reporting polling data?  What's the most likely answer?

But listen to them squeal like stuck pigs if you call them biased.

Ken Berwitz

I just watched a news story on NBC-TV New York about AIG employees and the bonuses they received.  The newsperson dispassionately told viewers that protestors are going to take their anger "right to the doorsteps" of the AIG employees who got bonuses.

The congress of the United States - the same congress that voted in favor of legislation which allowed these bonuses, has just spent the last week screaming out the most vile, angry, provocative statements about AIG employees who dared to accept the bonuses they were contractually entitled to.

One imbecile, earl pomeroy of what should be the throroughly embarrassed state of North Dakota, screamed that they were "disgraced professional losers".  He didn't scream "thank you to AIG for the $2,000 in contributions you gave me last year", though. 

Another imbecile, this one chairing the committee, was barney fudd.  Edward Liddy, who was appointed CEO after the company's collapse and took this unbelievably thankless job for $1 a year, told fudd that the list of employees should be kept confidential due to death threats against them.  fudd disdainfully refused the request.

My question is this:  Now that this incompetent bunch of house members who - let me repeat -  VOTED IN FAVOR OF THE BONUSES, has put so many citizens in a frenzy, and the news media have been so happy to push the envelope by reporting each new expression of outrage as if it were perfectly acceptable.....

What happens if AIG employees are assaulted, maybe even killed, by one or more of the mob-rule nutcakes that congress and the media have created?  Who will they blame?

That's worth thinking about.

Ken Berwitz

This is what happens when we elect a President with no qualifications for the job, but an ego as big as the sky.

Barack Obama knows that the way to deal with countries we have a problem with is to talk out our differences.  That's what you learn in school, and that's what reads so well in the NY Times, the moveon.org web site, and dailykos.com, huffingtonpost.com, etc.

So now that he's President, it's a piece of cake.  Just show that you're willing to have a sit-down, make the most nominal statement about how civilized countries behave, and wait for the warmth to be returned.

Here's how that worked out.  The story comes to us from (Obama-loving) MSNBC:

Iran supreme leader dismisses Obama overture

Khamenei: ‘We haven't seen any change’ in U.S. policy toward government

Video

Obama wants new beginning in Iran March 20: In his videotaped message to Iran's leaders, President Barack Obama did not concede any ground on the issue of nuclear weapons, but his tone was conciliatory as he made what amounted to a significant diplomatic overture. NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports.  Nightly News

Video

Obama breaks with Bush on Iran March 20: NBC’s John Yang explains how President Obama plans to make a break from the Bush administration regarding relations with Iran. MSNBC

msnbc.com news services

updated 4:25 a.m. ET, Sat., March. 21, 2009

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei dismissed on Saturday overtures from U.S. President Barack Obama, saying Tehran did not see any change in American policy toward its government.

Khamenei's comments Saturday were the first top level reaction to Obama's video message to Iran on the occasion of Nowruz, the Persian new year.

Speaking to tens of thousands of people in the holy city of Mashhad, Khamenei asked how Obama could congratulate Iranians on the new year while the United States continues to accuse the country of supporting terrorism and seeking nuclear weapons.

"They give the slogan of change but in practice no change is seen. ... We haven't seen any change," Khamenei said.

‘New beginnings’
On Friday, Obama released a video to coincide with the Iranian festival and said the United States was prepared to end the strained relations if Tehran tones down its combative rhetoric.

"So in this season of new beginnings, I would like to speak clearly to Iran's leaders," Obama said in the video. "We have serious differences that have grown over time. My administration is now committed to diplomacy that addresses the full range of issues before us, and to pursuing constructive ties among the United States, Iran and the international community."

Obama has signaled a willingness to speak directly with Iran about its nuclear program and hostility toward Israel, a key U.S. ally. At his inauguration, the president said his administration would reach out to rival states, declaring "we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist."

It's been a rough start for Obama.

Khamenei has criticized Obama as merely a continuation of President George W. Bush's policies toward Tehran's enemy, Israel. Khamenei has called Israel a "cancerous tumor" that is on the verge of collapse and has called for its destruction.

In his message Friday, Obama had a warning for Tehran: "This process will not be advanced by threats. We seek instead engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual respect."

Mutual respect
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said Iran would welcome talks with the United States — but only if there was mutual respect. Iranian officials have said that means the United States needs to stop accusing Iran of seeking to build nuclear weapons and supporting terrorism, charges Tehran has denied.

Israeli President Shimon Peres also sent his own rare greeting to the Iranian people.

But Peres' audio message took a tougher tone. He praised the people of Iran and said they would be better off without their hard-line leadership.

"I think the Iranian nation will topple these leaders — leaders that do not serve the people. In the end, people will understand this," Peres said.

Peres lauded Iran's ancient culture, calling it a noble nation and urging its "return to its rightful place among developed nations."

Peres spoke in Hebrew for most of the blessing, but then ended his address with a traditional Persian holiday greeting: "May your Nowruz be a victory, and every day be Nowruz!" The greeting was broadcast on the Voice of Israel's Farsi-language station, which is beamed to Iran.

'Constructive message'
Obama and his foreign policy team are looking for opportunities to engage Iran and help reduce tensions between the two countries, which increased during Bush's time in office.

"You, too, have a choice. The United States wants the Islamic Republic of Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations," Obama said. "You have that right, but it comes with real responsibilities, and that place cannot be reached through terror or arms, but rather through peaceful actions that demonstrate the true greatness of the Iranian people and civilization."

European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana urged Iranian officials to accept the U.S. president's outstretched hand.

"It's a very constructive message," he said Friday at an EU summit in Brussels. "I hope that will open a new chapter in relations with Tehran."

Solana added, "I hope very much that Iran will act intelligently" and accept the U.S. offer.

How lovely.

Mr. Obama humbles the United States before the feet of the hate-filled terrorist nation of Iran and tells its leaders that we will talk to them with virtually no conditions.

They look back, see a spineless European-diplomat-wannabe they can push around, and treat him, thus us, like dogs. 

WE don't have conditions?  Well, THEY do.  We have to ignore their nuclear program and pretend they aren't terrorists.  Then maybe we can talk.

Mr. Obama may be unqualified, ego-driven and ignorant of the realities we face in foreign policy, but he's not stupid.  Maybe, just maybe, this teaches him something.

Then again, with that ego, and a hardline Democratic congress joining the left wing web sites in cheerleading him on, maybe it doesn't teach him at all.

Ken Berwitz

Why did Natasha Richardson die? 

The medical reason has been very well reported.  Ms. Richardson died from blunt impact to the head, which caused an epidural hematoma -- i.e. bleeding between the skull and the brain that causes swelling and pressure.  It must be relieved or (obviously) it can cause death.

But here's what else Ms. Richardson died of:  Quebec has no emergency helicopter system.  Please read that again.  NO emergency helicopter system.  I'm not saying there aren't enough helicopters and I'm not saying the ones they have are not as good as they could be.  I am saying there aren't any at all.

Because of this, Ms. Richardson had to be driven by ambulance - first to a hospital that had no capability to treat her, and then to a second hospital which did.

Elapsed time?  Four hours. 

According to the Calgary Herald (bold print is mine):

The death of actress Natasha Richardson, following a ski accident in Quebec, is raising questions about the province’s emergency medical system. The actress had to be driven in an ambulance from a hospital in Sainte-Agathe to a Montreal trauma centre because unlike most provinces, Quebec has no emergency helicopter system. The trip took about an hour while a helicopter ride would allowed her to be in Montreal in 15 minutes. Paramedics and trauma experts have been warning of the problem for years, saying it could lead to unnecessary deaths. “This is like not having a fire department in a community,” said Dr. Tarek Razek, head of the trauma team at the Montreal General Hospital.

Quebec’s chief coordinator of air-ambulance services says the provincial government wants to put in place a new helicopter service to provide quicker transport of trauma patients to hospitals in Montreal and Quebec City.

André Lizotte, air medical officer for the ministry of health, acknowledged in a telephone interview this afternoon that Quebec has no helicopter service feeding trauma centres in hospitals.

While he said he couldn’t comment specifically on the Natasha Richardson case, he said the government wants to see the Montreal General Hospital get a helicopter pad, and wants to see the province equipped with its own helicopter transport service. Such service is relatively common outside Quebec.

“A serious analysis is underway within the ministry on these questions,” he said.

A serious analysis is underway to determine whether an entire province of a major Western country needs a single emergency helicopter?  This is an issue to them?

The sad truth is that in all likelihood Natasha Richardson would be alive today, recuperating and on her way to full recovery, if that helicopter existed.  But in nationalized health care, money is allocated by bureaucrats.  And one or more bureaucrats decided it wasn't fiscally prudent for Quebec province to have an emergency helicopter.

That is beyond incredible.  Quebec, with 7,500,000 - 8,000,000 people and a land area of almost 600,000 square miles (about 1/6th the entire country) does not have even one emergency helicopter.

If I were a family member or friend of Natasha Richardson, that fact would haunt me for the rest of my life.

And if you think this is some kind of anomaly, that it doesn't truly reflect the quality of Canadian health care, read the following from www.parapundit.com.  It was written about 4 years ago (and may have been good news compared to the situation today):

The total waiting time for patients between referral from a general practitioner and treatment, averaged across all 12 specialties and 10 provinces surveyed, increased this year; rising to 17.7 weeks in 2003 (from 16.5 weeks in 2001-02).

“Canadians are waiting almost 18 weeks for essential medical care. And these lineups have almost doubled over the past ten years. The standard solution -- throwing more money at the problem -- is just not working. The federal and provincial governments are still failing to act in the face of international evidence that increasing patient options for private care reduces waiting times,” said John R. Graham, the Institute’s director of health and pharmaceutical policy research.

The waiting time between referral by a GP and consultation with a specialist rose to 8.3 weeks, an increase of 14 percent over last year (7.3 weeks).

The shortest waits for specialist consultations were found in British Columbia (6.7 weeks), Manitoba (6.9 weeks), and Saskatchewan (7 weeks). The longest waits for specialist consultations occurred in Newfoundland (12.6 weeks), New Brunswick (11.8 weeks), and Alberta (10 weeks)

I end with a few questions:

-Have you been fed a line all these years about how wonderful Canada's health care is? 

-If so, do you still think nationalizing health care is a good thing? 

 -Do you hope that Barack Obama and his administration are successful in forcing nationalized health care on the US?, I suggest you read, and reread, this blog.

If you answer "yes" to one or more of those questions, I strongly urge you to reread this blog another time.

Ken Berwitz

You can't make this stuff up.  Mr. Transparency has done it again. 

From the LA Times:

What is going on here?  How much more bizarre are the actions of this administration going to be?

And when do some of the media who were shut out by Mr. Obama unmesmerize and start talking about it?  Maybe this is the final jolt they'll need.

Ken Berwitz

Just how bad has it gotten? 

Toby Harnden, the US Editor for London's Daily Telegraph has already put together a "top 10 gaffe" compilation for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

Here it is.  Either enjoy it or be appalled.  Your call:

.