Breakfast Scramble

Two Americas, Fred Barnes,Weekly Standard:

John Edwards was right. There are two Americas, just not his two (the rich and powerful versus everyone else). The real divide today is, on one side, the 20 million people who work for state and local governments and the additional 3 million who’ve retired with fat pensions. On the other, the rest of us, roughly 280 million Americans. In short, there’s a gulf between the bureaucrats and the people.

The coming battle is not between the haves and the have nots, but rather the wills and the will nots.

Mock Mohammad Day, May Twentieth has been designed “”Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.”   Allah Pundit, Hot Air, likes the idea:

Cue the predictable media squealing that “you’ll only antagonize them!”  Antagonism, actually, is an idea straight out of the Hirsi Ali playbook: Her point to Anderson Cooper in the clip I posted earlier was that only by sharing the risk of retaliation for blasphemy can the public help protect her, Parker, Stone and other insolent infidels.  If each threat produces more blasphemers than it silences, then threats suddenly become counterproductive.  Or at least, they do to rational minds.  (A flaw in the theory?)

Professor Althouse does not:

[L]et me say that I disapprove of “Everybody Draw Mohammed” Day, which he seems to be promoting. (Hot Air, Dan Savage, and Reason are actively delighted by the idea.)

I have endless contempt for the threats/warnings against various cartoonists who draw Muhammad (or a man in a bear suit who might be Muhammad, but is actually Santa Claus). But depictions of Muhammad offend millions of Muslims who are no part of the violent threats

Maddy Albright once opined that killing an estimated half million children in Iran was a fair price to pay to support B.J. Clinton’s sanctions.   If Albright can live with killing half million children, I can live with the idea of offending several hundred decent Muslims.   Can you?

Gone with the Wind, twenty minute version.   If spent four hours watching Gone with the Wind, you saved three hours and forty minutes.    Fausta has the short version.   Alas no Clark Gable.

Chicago Way is a two way street, from John Kass, Chicago Tribune:

It’s no secret that some in journalism get offended when anyone dares mention that the president was involved in Chicago politics. But the filing is not only a legal document, it’s a political message from Blagojevich to Obama. So allow me to translate the Chicago Way

File under ratricide.

Obama Care,  is a one way street to pay more, neutral analysis of Dim Won’s medical turd, Ricardo Alonzo-Zaldivar, Associated Press:

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul law is getting a mixed verdict in the first comprehensive look by neutral experts: More Americans will be covered, but costs are also going up.

Economic experts at the Health and Human Services Department concluded in a report issued Thursday that the health care remake will achieve Obama’s aim of expanding health insurance — adding 34 million to the coverage rolls.

But the analysis also found that the law falls short of the president’s twin goal of controlling runaway costs, raising projected spending by about 1 percent over 10 years. That increase could get bigger, since Medicare cuts in the law may be unrealistic and unsustainable, the report warned.

Obama Care comes crashing down on vulnerable House democrats. Jim Geraghty, National Review, notes the number of House democrats who publicly bet that Obama Care would bring down the cost of health care,  and lost.   Now the only thing Obama care is likely to bring down, is Mrs. Pelosi’s regime as Speaker.

Oh by the way, Allah Pundit, Hot Air,  links that Jon Stewart thinks the very term Obama Care is derogatory.   Sobeit.  So how long before the MSM deems the term racist as well?   Should I feel slighted that Stewart didn’t mention my term Dumbo as well?

Professor Jacobson is shocked Legal Insurrection:

The Numbers Were A Lie All Along

The gloss is off the Obamacare rose, if it ever were there. The Office of the Actuary of Medicare has released a report which finds that Obamacare will increase, not decrease, health care costs, and … (wait for it because you never would have guessed) … the financial assumptions were unrealistic!

Shocked, shocked.

Circus Wars, Chuckles bites Dumbo, Dim Won’s b/k/a Barack Obama, Middle East peace policy is insane, and now even Chuckles the Clown, b/k/a Senator Charles Schumer, says so, via Allah Pundit Hot Air:

I told the President, I told Rahm Emanuel and others in the administration that I thought the policy they took to try to bring about negotiations is counter-productive, because when you give the Palestinians hope that the United States will do its negotiating for them, they are not going to sit down and talk. Palestinians don’t really believe in a state of Israel, they, unlike a majority of Israelis, who have come to the conclusion that they can live with a 2-state solution to be determined by the parties, the majority of Palestinians are still very reluctant, and they need to be pushed to get there. If the U.S. says certain things and takes certain stands the Palestinians say, “Why should we negotiate?”…

Chuckles finally remembers that in the Empire State, Jews still vote.

Dead white male, to wit George Carlin, destroys anthropogenic global warming alarmist.  Ace notes this lunacy from the Network of Lunacy, b/k/a CNN:

Yes, CNN is actually pushing the Global Warming Causes Earthquakes and Volcanoes “theory.”

Anyone notice that whatever Vengeance of the Goddess calamity befalls us, a “consensus scientist” informs us it’s all due to Global Warming within a week?

Well I see your  scientist and raise you back a comic.

Not safe for work, or if you mother is within the sound of your voice.  This is George Carlin.  So be warned, video:

Hat tip: Jammie Wearing Fool

The latest liberal meme is to equate skepticism of the Obama administration with a tendency toward violence. That takes me back 15 years ago to the time President Bill Clinton accused “loud and angry voices” on the airwaves (i.e., radio talk-show hosts like me) of having incited Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. What self-serving nonsense. Liberals are perfectly comfortable with antigovernment protest when they’re not in power.

Rush Limbaugh, Wall Street Journal.

Double standard on gods,   a twit judge in Wisconsin ruled the National Day Prayer is somehow unconstitutional.   So while praying to the God of Abraham is unconstitutional,  we can pray to silly Earth Goddess, from Ryan J. Foley, Associated Press:

MADISON, Wis. — The Obama administration said Thursday it will appeal a court decision that found the National Day of Prayer unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb in Madison ruled last week the National Day of Prayer that Congress established 58 years ago amounts to a call for religious action.

In a notice filed Thursday, the Justice Department said it will challenge the decision in the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago. The notice came after about two dozen members of Congress condemned the ruling and pressed for an appeal.

If the state can not promote a particular religious belief, the the state has no business promoting Earth Day, a rather silly and totally religious holiday.

Eric Cartman v Prophet Mohammed, granted the humor of South Park is juvenile.  If you don’t like South Park, don’t watch it.  Any how for South Park two hundredth the shows producers have pitted Eric Cartman versus the Prophet Mohammed.    This seems to upset some camel jockeys.   What I think is that if Hohammed can’t handle Cartman, Islam isn’t much of a religion.

Comedy Central wimps, Allah Pundit, Hot Air:

As InstaGlenn says, this is actually the perfect ironic conclusion to the media’s post-Tax Day binge of hyperventilating about tea party extremism.  Cranks holding up “Impeach the Kenyan!” signs at a right-wing rally are grist for a thousand NYT op-eds about Oklahoma City, but have jihadis intimidate the parent company of one of the most highly regarded comedies on television into blacking out its shows and it’s essentially a curio for the TV beat.

If the Muslims can’t handle Eric Cartman, a mere cartoon character, it is little wonder they can’t handle pig, scantly dressed women and Jews.

Blagojevic’s Six Secrets, Tom Bevan, RCP:

Mary Katharine Ham

Where’s the civility, I ask you? Was it not just this weekend that former President Bill Clinton warned that words have power, and that in voicing dissent, we should be careful not to get out of hand? And yet, here we have a group of protesters registering their discontent with the government within close physical proximity of the actual president of the United States. With the current political climate and all the threats we’ve heard so much about, can these citizens really think that this kind of conduct is appropriate

Mary Katherine Ham, Weekly Standard.

The Civil Rights Movement that culminated in the 1960’s was an important movement towards the advancement of equality for all Americans.  While artificial and fundamental hatreds will likely always exist between disparate people groups, the relative harmony that has been experienced in this country over the last forty years is likely unprecedented in the history of the world.  To create equality of opportunity for all of a society’s individuals and to simultaneously provide an environment free of the expression of abusive power of one group of people over another is a seldom seen accomplishment.  America has been a place where these goals are thought by many to actually be within reach.

Last week, the former President, Bill Clinton, made comments linking the Tea Party Movement to the worst act of domestic terror that has ever been experienced in our country’s history.  The Oklahoma City bombing was a tragedy of massive proportion.  Apparently, Mr. Clinton believes that the same ideological forces that motivated the bombers of the Federal Building are those that now motivate those that gather under the Tea Party banner.  To consider this comment reckless and irresponsible is to understate its vitriolic intent.  It is almost impossible to adequately underscore the complete disconnect between the former President’s “I feel your pain” tone with his real message. Farcical messages delivered with a level of alleged caring are amongst the most dangerous.  It is reminiscent of the initial tempting of mankind in the Garden of Eden.

The reason the Civil Rights Movement emerged was that a people group was being treated unfairly and were being oppressed by a system that stood for a higher principle than was being observed.  And there were those who at the time “stood up” and said that what was happening was both immoral and evil.  Most people of conscious knew that this situation needed to be fixed, with the only differences of opinion coming in terms of the appropriate means to that agreed-upon end.  We humans are endowed with a sense of justice that transcends both our group distinctions and our distorted modern media coverage.  We know injustice when we see it.  The only question is whether we “stand up” and voice our disaffection.  Mr. Clinton must certainly understand this attribute of a liberal democracy such as ours, as he was a societal product of the 1960s.

The only difference between the Tea Party Movement and the Civil Rights Movement is the nature of the oppressor.  The driving force behind each of the movements is the same.  In both cases a minority group is passionately expressing a very heartfelt concern that their individual liberties are being violated and that their freedoms are being abused by a tyrannical oppressor. In the 1960s the oppressor was a racial group.  In 2010 the oppressor is the Federal Government and the Obama Administration. Both movements were asking for something quite simple: just treat us with fairness.  To believe that one of the movements was racial and the other ideological, and that they are therefore different, is to miss the obvious common factor.  It is a distinction without a difference.

Can the evils of an oppressive system cause certain rogue individuals to take actions that are legally inappropriate and even reprehensible?  The answer is obviously yes.  But that is not the point, and the former President knows it.  The Civil Rights Movement created some very ugly scenes. For purposes of this discussion, let’s remember the situation in Detroit in the summer of 1967.  Would Mr. Clinton ever think to link Civil Rights and Detroit?  No.  He does not cast himself in the role of oppressor in either situation.  He rather sees himself as a liberator.  And in his self-analysis is his error.  Until the liberal left comes to see themselves as the real oppressors, we will continue to hear the same insulting and condescending rhetoric.  Funny thing: Vladimir Lenin didn’t see himself as an oppressor either…he saw himself as a liberator.

The Day Obama Care died. Barack Obama does not care about anybody except himself and he doesn’t hide it.

What pay gap? Christina Hoff Sommers, American:

The claim that American women as a group face systemic wage discrimination is groundless.

Today is Equal Pay Day. Feminist groups and political leaders have set aside this day to protest the fact that women’s wages are, on average, 78 percent of men’s wages.

[…]

Excuse me for interrupting, but this holiday has no basis in reality. Even feminist economists acknowledge that today’s pay disparities are almost entirely the result of women’s different life choices—what they study in school, where they work, and how they balance home and career. This is not to deny that some employers will try to pay Jill 78 cents and Jack $1.00 for an identical job. But our strict laws give Jill the right to take that employer to court. The claim that American women as a group face systemic wage discrimination is groundless.

Blogging Heaven, Bookworm Room:

UPDATE:  Welcome, Instapundit readers!  As you may know, for a conservative blogger, being Instalanched is pretty much the blogging equivalent of going straight to Heaven, without any stops in between.

UPDATE II:  Is it too late to say welcome to Rush Limbaugh listeners?  Ironically, I was away from my computer while this whole excitement was going on, and never got the chance to say hello.  I’m back now, and I’m still pretty darn excited.  I hope those of you who stopped by come and visit again

There is a reward for good blogging.

None dare call this freedom, video:

Hat tip: Fausta.

Allah Pundit, Hot Air asks:

We certainly don’t want to accuse a president who’s peeved at gay-rights protesters and who’s known for excluding the media from traditional press opportunities of quashing unfavorable coverage without good reason.

Exit question: On a scale of one to 10, where would this rate on the Crushing-of-Dissent-o-meter if it had happened under Bush? (Exit answer: Eight!)

IT quite obvious that Dumbo, a/k/a Dim Won, b/k/a Barack Obama has large ears,  a slow brain and thin skin,

Mrs. Clinton defends protest, video:

Hat tip: Nice Deb

Mrs. Clinton is short, shrill and stupid, but even the “Smartest Woman in the World’ can’t be wrong all the time.

.

“We are here to affirm that when Americans stand up and speak their minds and say America can do better, that is not a challenge to patriotism; it is the heart and soul of patriotism.”

John “French” Kerry, 2004, via James Taranto, Wall Street Journal and Nice Deb.

Frenchy is not very bright and his only consistency is his inconsistency.   However Frenchy was for the Tea Parties before hie was against them.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7608153/New-speed-cameras-trap-motorists-from-space.html

From the article:
The cameras, which combine number plate reading technology with a global positioning satellite receiver, are similar to those used in roadworks.

So, GPS combined with the plate reading technology could essentially be used to watch you all the time. When couple with database technology, your wherabouts could be captured and stored indefinintely. Does this really seem like a good idea?

I Won blind to Tea Party grievances, Brit Hume, Fox News:

The president says the Tea Partiers ought to thank him because many if not most of them got a tax break courtesy of his stimulus package. In his condescension, the president seems not to grasp that the Tea Partiers see the mountains of debt piling up under this president and Congress as a threat not only to their own prosperity but even more so to their children and grandchildren’s. They see huge tax increases ahead and who can blame them

Maybe everybody in the Tea Party should change their name to Hussein and start toting Koran so thet the Dim Won will take them seriously.

Bitsblog  Echo Syndrome(BES),  no I will not take credit for this.  Howsomeever, I find the narrative amusing, from Mickey Kaus:

Do Obama and Boxer realize they are on the wrong side of a tsunami of voter discontent with a government run by and for the public employee union?

They smarter, more articulate and blacker than Keith Olbermann, from Reason TV:

Out

Hello and welcome to yet another edition of the most intense nightly read anywhere on the World Wide Web; the BitsBlog Nightly Ramble.

• THE CLIMATEGATE WHITEWASH CONTINUES: Myron Ebell explains. Today’s must read.
• FOX CAVES? It certainly appears so.  Any rumors you may have heard about Fox being some bastion of conservatism, are certainly dispelled with this incident.  Dan Riehl gets into it. He thinks that people remember this betrayal.  I think he’s right.
• A RUMOR IS A RUMOR UNLESS IT’S FACT: (At which point the Obamites will argue it’s not fact)  David’s already mentioned this, true, but I can’t resist getting a lick or two in. Elena Kagan, on Obama’s short list for John Paul Stevens’ seat on the USSC,  is reported as being openly homosexual. Like we needed a report to give us the clue. Of course, that this gets reported since the Obama White House into spastics.  They immediately jumped all over conservatives, and amusingly, CBS, as well.   Joyner gets this one right:
  

  

  James Joyner

  It’s all truly bizarre.   We’re at the most gay-friendly time in American history and have, arguable, the most liberal administration ever on social issues.  And yet they’re treating casual mention of Kagan’s sexuality as a smear orchestrated by the Right?

  If anyone is to blame for anything, it’s always the right, with these morons.  No matter what the subject is.  This is simply one more instance of that pattern. Seems to me, that the real story here is that these people in the White House are deadly serious about what James correctly labels a completely bizarre defense. It tells me, among other things, that she was and possibly remains the top candidate for the position.  Which, given the way -outside -the -mainstream politics of the Obama administration, shouldn’t surprise anyone at all.  Maybe that’s why they’re being so defensive about it.  They’ve once again been exposed as the far left radicals they are.  This business was already known, folks. And Kagan being homosexual was also well known. So why all the smoke form the White House? More political spin. Period.  Meanwhile, color me approximately as surprised as the day they forced Ricky Martin out of the closet.  (yawn)

  Eleanor Clift of all people has some thoughts on this point, through the filter of what had happened with Eric Massa, here in New York.

  “It took just three weeks for upstate New York Democratic Rep. Eric Massa to resign his seat in Congress after accusations surfaced that he had sexually harassed members of his staff. The long trail of unwanted and often abusive advances that preceded his resignation—and why his alleged behavior went unreported for so long—highlights how much Capitol Hill is a feudal society, with each member the lord of his or her own territory.”

  There’s always a leaning among staffers and supporters to hide or at least discount the reports of sexual behavior that’s out of the mainstream… the sense that doing so serves the left’s political goals. And that’s really the issue, here with Massa and with Kagan.  Consider; If sensitivity to a “lifestyle choice” were the motivation would the Democrats have attacked Mark Foely? Was Clift making excuses for Foley and his staff as she did for Massa, I wonder?  Would we have heard liberal  Slimeball Alan Colmes going on night after night n his national radio show, about Massa’s denials that he was homosexual? Funny thing I don’t recall Clift saying word one abut that, though she may have.  Clearly, in those cases and in this, the ‘higher political good’ is what’s being protected here, not someone’s sexual sensibilities.  Sorry, what it is.

• THE CLINTONS AND POLITICAL EXPLOITATION: Fifteen years ago this week the big topic on everybody’s tounge was Oklahoma City and the bombing there.  It’s interesting to note, that there are launched number of people on the left including Bill Clinton who are using this occasion as a club with which to attack the right.  The New York Times, particularly has been trying to draw parallels between that attack, and the tea party movement.  Only one problem.  It turns out that the left, again Bill Clinton in particular, used OKC  for their own political gain, then and since.   Byron York tells us about it.
  

  

  Byron York

  What Clinton and his supporters do not talk about is the way in which Clinton, aided by pollster/adviser Dick Morris, exploited the bombing to make a political comeback from what was the lowest point in Clinton’s presidency to that time. (The Lewinsky scandal was still three years in the future.) In the days after Oklahoma City, Clinton and Morris devised a plan to use the bombing to discredit and outmaneuver the new Republican majority in Congress. . . . It was a political strategy crafted while rescue and recovery efforts were still underway in Oklahoma City. And it worked better than Clinton or Morris could have predicted. In the months after the bombing, Clinton regained the upper hand over Republicans, eventually winning battles over issues far removed from the attack. The next year, 1996, he went on to re-election. None of that might have happened had Clinton, along with Morris, not found a way to wring as much political advantage as possible out of the deaths in Oklahoma City. And that is the story you’re not hearing in all the anniversary discussions.

  What York is describing here, of course, is nothing more than political leverage.  It’s something that the Clintons did rather well.  That lesson has not been lost on Obama.  That’s particularly true, given that the two presidents share so many in the way of advisers. what is being attempted here is the control of thought.  By attempting an association between the tea party movement and what happened in Oklahoma City fifteen years ago, what bill Clinton is attempting to do is discredit the line of thought embodied in the Tea Party.  Anyone who thinks the government has grown too large, is immediately associated with violent acts against said government.  First of all, I raise the question again, at what point is a violent act against the government justified?  That’s the way that nobody ever seems willing to address.  That aside, as Powerline suggests :

  Clinton knows how false and dishonorable his charges are. But they worked for him, and he is helping Barack Obama set the stage for a similar political comeback in the event that some violent event might occur; or, perhaps, in the absence of any such event. So far, all of the violence associated with Tea Party or townhall events has been perpetrated by union thugs employed by the Democratic Party, but that hasn’t stopped the Democrats from claiming that it is the Republicans who are somehow violence-prone.

  

  Waco Texas... the direct result of Democrat incompetence

  Exactly so, as I pointed out in last night’s Ramble.

  Oh, lest we forget, what Clinton is really reminding us of is the massive incompetence and the massive over zealotry that they showed us in Waco Texas.  It strikes me, that if Bill Clinton is trying to play the elder statesman, and the one promoting an anti-violent stance, he’s fallen rather short. What he’s providing is a reminder of the horrific deaths at Waco he and his imposed on peoplethe the whose politics he couldn’t deal with. Including women and Children.  The incompetence of himself and his subordinates in that situation does nothing to sell him to the American people in that lofty role he’d like to claim..  Further, it tars the current Democrat administration with similar charges of incompetence, which given the state of our foreign affairs, our economy, and so on is already at serious question. It’s not much of a stretch to wonder if the current administration doesn’t have similar tendencies.  Particularly given what we saw in Michigan just recently.

  As an aside, this situation as strikes me as definite proof, that the Democrats understand the implications of the Tea Party, far better than the Republicans do. No, I am by no means suggesting that the Tea Party is as the Democrats charge either all over Italy or covertly violent, racist, or any of the rest of the crap being thrown their way.  What I am suggesting, is that they have a clear understanding that the tea partners are about limited government.  They also understand, that they represent the vast majority of the American voter. They correctly see the Tea Party is a serious and possibly insurmountable threat to their power.  And so, since they can’t see themselves getting out in front of that particular Lynch mob like it’s a parade that they’re leading, as Bill Clinton did back in the day on welfare reform for example, they going to attack mode. Trying to tie these people to a violent attack, is itself an attack, I believe.   This thinking does much to explain the spin we see coming from the Obama White House and their official spokespeople in the lamestream media as demonstrated in a Beeler Cartoon at the Washington Examiner the other day. The Republicans, meantime, particularly the Rockefeller wing of the party, a remaining quiet as proverbial church mice, in the apparent hope that the whole thing will have just gone away when they come out from underneath their bed covers. I’d say the American people are ready for a conservative government.  About as far right is we’ve moved 100 years is the center.  We’re ready to take the next step.

Bring I Won on, Dim Won goes to California to boost Barbara Boxer, Sean J. Miller, Hill:

President Barack Obama returns to Southern California on Monday for his first fundraising swing in nearly a year to lend support to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).

The three-term Democrat has seen her reelection prospects diminish as the Golden State’s unemployment rate has climbed above 12 percent and the GOP prepares to field a well-funded challenger

Dumbo certainly has the reverse  Midas touch.

Then send him back home, David Weigel, Washington Post:

Former congressman Tom Tancredo’s speech at the National Tea Party was a misstep that gave organizers their only lasting, negative coverage.  At a Sunday afternoon tea party rally in Greenville, S.C., where he was the keynote speaker, Tancredo stepped in it again.

[Tancredo] said Americans have reached the point where “we’re going to have to pray that we can hold on to this country.”As for Obama, Tancredo said, “If his wife says Kenya is his homeland, why don’t we just send him back?”

The reference is to this speech by Michelle Obama, in which she mentioned her husband’s famous trip to Kenya in 2006 — she called it, in a slip, his “home country,” not “homeland.”  Kenya was one of several African countries visited by the Obamas on the 2006 trip, but the only one to which he had familial ties — hence the word “home,” which she hesitates over just slightly.

Michelle Obama is a Harvard Educated Lawyer.  Don’t we have the right to assume that as a college educated lawyer she has command of the English Language and her words can be taken at face value?   As Obama was educated on the meanings of words, does not a citizen such as Tom Tancredoh have the right to pose a question premised on her words being true?

If Tancredo, A private citizen, is such a minor figure, why is Weigel having such an effing cow over the question Trancredo posed?   Do not citizens in representative republic have the right as ask questions?

Better right late, than never, national republicans to dump Charlies Crist:

Washington (CNN) — The top political strategist for Senate Republicans urged key GOP consultants Monday to persuade Florida Gov. Charlie Crist to forgo an independent bid for Senate if he withdraws from the Republican primary, CNN has learned.

Rob Jesmer, executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, sent an e-mail to national political operatives just before noon in which he also predicted that Crist will decide not to compete in the GOP primary against former state House Speaker Marco Rubio.

If true, a belated hat tip to the Senate republicans.

Public Employee labor unions are the problem, I am not anti-union. I recognize the important role that private sector unions played in improving life for working class families.  That said, I have no freeping use for public sector employee unions and would gladly banish them.  If  they ever served a puipose, it has long gone,a and yes I am talking about you Danny Doyle.  From Steve Malanga, City:

The camera focuses on an official of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), California’s largest public-employee union, sitting in a legislative chamber and speaking into a microphone. “We helped to get you into office, and we got a good memory,” she says matter-of-factly to the elected officials outside the shot. “Come November, if you don’t back our program, we’ll get you out of office.’

World’s Second Sexist Man? First I noticed Mrs Wertz’s blog post “Today’s blogging is brought to you by Old Spice.”   That is I noticed the embeds, but did not view.  Then I noticed Mrs. Shaidle’s blog post  “Allan West: the Congressman your Congressman could smell like.”    Then I viewed the video:

Get of hold of Ann Coulter’s reax.  Enjoy.

Live and in living color, (where available) it’s the most intense nightly read anywhere on the net today… The BitsBlog Nightly Ramble.

• GOLDMAN-SACHS CHOSEN TO BE THE SCAPE-GOAT: I note by way of the WSJ a story you’ve all noted over the weekend:
  

  Goldman Sachs Group Inc.—one of the few Wall Street titans to thrive during the financial crisis—was charged with deceiving clients by selling them mortgage securities secretly designed by a hedge-fund firm run by John Paulson, who made a killing betting on the housing market’s collapse.Goldman vigorously denied the Securities and Exchange Commission’s civil charges, setting up the biggest clash between Wall Street and regulators since junk-bond king Drexel Burnham Lambert succumbed to a criminal insider-trading investigation in the 1980s, helping to define the era. “The SEC’s charges are completely unfounded in law and fact,” Goldman said in a statement, promising to “contest them and defend the firm and its reputation.”

  The civil charges against Goldman and one of its star traders, 31-year-old Fabrice Tourre, represent the government’s strongest attack yet on the Wall Street dealmaking that preceded, and some say precipitated, the financial crisis that gripped the nation and the world. Goldman’s shares fell 13%, one of the steepest slides since the firm went public in 1999, erasing some $12 billion of market capitalization.

  The SEC lawsuit likely strengthens the position of President Barack Obama as he tries to push financial-overhaul legislation through Congress. He vowed Friday to veto any version of the bill that doesn’t bring the derivatives market “under control.”

  Yeah, I just bet. Doctor Bainbridge is equally cynical, here.

  “It was inevitable that the government would go after one of the big investment banks for their conduct during the run up to the credit crisis. Someone must be thrown to the lions so that the polis are distracted from the role their government played in the fiasco.” But he rounds up reactions from three others who think the SEC has a pretty solid case here. Which seems reasonable enough, in that the SEC gets to choose its cases and isn’t likely to go after an adversary with enormously deep pockets unless it thinks it can win.

  That’s right, I think. Frankly, it isn’t necessary for the SEC to win this one , for the point to be made.  This is strictly for show.  A win is not needed for the political goal to be served. Those goals being both the upping the weak polls and as the WSJ points out, granting the government more power.

  The left in this country for years has been making the case that deregulating the banks is what caused the financial collapse.  That the banks were wholly responsible for that collapse. The fact of the matter was, and remains, that none of the current credit crisis or the bank’s responses to it would’ve been possible or even likely without the government’s actions in trying to provide loans to people who couldn’t afford them. You know the group were talking about; people likely to vote Democrat. The object now is to pin the blame on somebody other than governmental actors. You can blame greed if you like, but why not include Democrats trying to buy votes on someone else’s money? Doesn’t that qualify as greed? I’d say it does. Why is it the left figures government types aren’t greedy? Are they really that foolish?

• AND BY THE WAY…. Should we mention that the fund manager there is a major Democrat party contributor? Now of course, the manager of the fund that supposedly defrauded everyone there, isn’t being charged at all in any of this.  Yep… nothing to see here, America.  Go on about your puny lives and the Democrats will take care of all of this mess.
• GOP STILL NOT GETTING THE MESSAGE: I think Andrew Klavan is right here. I really wish he wasn’t.
• NO CHANCE OF OPPOSING VOICES: The Obama administration is taking great care these days to silence as much as possible anyone who could possibly oppose him.  So it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone to find out that the speech he made at NASA the other day, was made to an audience filled with absolutely zero NASA workers. Go ahead.  Tell me he’s not still in campaign mode.  I, for one, don’t question the importance of space exploration.  I do have to say though, that this handling of NASA employees strikes me as highly smelly, highly political, and alarmingly average for this administration.
• ARREST RECORDS: I’m willing to bet that there haven’t been a total of 25 arrests of Tea Party members, in all the Tea Party gatherings to date.  Yet, Andy Stearns SEIU… you know, the union that so closely connected to the occupant of the White House tries to put a protest together over in Columbus, and look what happens. The unions in this country have come down to the level of organized thuggery, which has not been seen since the mob wars in Obama’s claimed hometown of Chicago.  Do the math, people.
• SPEAKING OF THE TEA PARTY: Rick Moran has a great column up that should be on your reading list for today.

B.J. Clinton in the New York Stimes:

Gee... looks to ME like he was taken at the point of a gun...

Criticism is part of the lifeblood of democracy. No one is right all the time. But we should remember that there is a big difference between criticizing a policy or a politician and demonizing the government that guarantees our freedoms and the public servants who enforce our laws.

I will not be lectured by a lying sexual predator who kidnaps children under the color of authority at the muzzle of machine gun.    Note, while B.J. was demonizing talk radio for  Oklahoma City, Usama bin Laden was planning Nine-Eleven.