Memo to Mrs. Pelosi: Put Up Or Shut Up

Mrs. Pelosi thnks immigration enforcement is unpatriotic.    Well take these Mrs. Pelosi, Evan Perez, Wall Street Journal:

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric Holder said some detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, may end up being released in the U.S. as the Obama administration works with foreign allies to resettle some of the prisoners.

Mr. Holder, in a briefing with reporters, said administration officials are still reviewing individual cases of the approximately 250 detainees to determine which will be put on trial and which may be released to comply with plans to close the detention facility by next year.

Kim Priestap, Wizbang, who I beleve lives in the PRM(People’s Rebulican of Michigan) says not in her backyard:

Here are some suggestions: How about Chicago? DC? Los Angeles? Hollywood!

Seriously, though. When our attorney general says that some detainees who are currently being held in Guantanamo Bay for their role in 9/11 or for supporting, aiding, and abetting terrorism against the United States could be released into our midst, we have a serious problem on our hands.

 video:

Hat tip and more  Melissa Clouthier

No one wants a Gitmo detainee for a neighbor and for good reason

Mr. A.G. I don’t know where you planning on planting your Gitmo detaineess.   Trust me, theyare not staying in my neighborhoood.  Let Mrs. Pelosi have them.

Back on the 11th of this month, I posted a quick note from my Palm Treo, asking about those DVD’s Obama gave Gordon Brown. Were they even playable, I wondered, given the technology changes between the states and the UK.   Wrong region, and wrong encoding scheme.  Person giving the gift being clueless. By way of James Joyner,  I note an article in the Telegraph which answers that question:

Alas, when the PM settled down to begin watching them the other night, he found there was a problem.

The films only worked in DVD players made in North America and the words “wrong region” came up on his screen. Although he mournfully had to put the popcorn away, he is unlikely to jeopardise the special relationship – or “special partnership”, as we are now supposed to call it – by registering a complaint….

A Downing Street spokesman said he was “confident” that any gift Obama gave Brown would have been “well thought through,” but referred me to the White House for assistance on the “technical aspects”.

(Chuckle) I called it, again, not that it was all that hard to do. If there’s a chance Obama will get it wrong, that’s the spot to put your money.  I’m telling you folks, this Obama and his people could screw up a wet dream.

Addendum(Bit):

Mark Steyn quips:

When the president and his Teleprompter visit London for the G20 summit in a couple of weeks, it would be a tragedy were Barack Oprompta to rise for his big speech to find nothing but the words “Wrong Region” flashing on his screen (although I’m sure the Queen would be very polite and string along and make all the swells stand up and join the toast to “Ron Region”, whoever he is).

But don’t forget, folks: Somewhere in Texas a village has been reunited with its idiot, and we now have the whip-smartest administration of David Brooks’s lifetime.

Heh. Ain’t it real.
Obama has revealed himself internationally as a man of substance. That substance? Donkey manure.
Trouble is, he’s dragging us down with him.

As of 07:44 ET today, spring is among us.

I can’t think of any better way to honor the arrival of the end of winter than to pass along this grand old tune.

If the reprobate, who thinks he is Attorney General, Eric Holder, has commented on this case, I am not aware of it.   James Taranto, Wall Street Journal, reports on an effort to recall a New Orleans council woman because she is the wrong race, to wit white:

WDSU-TV reports that a group styling itself Citizens For Accountability and Transparency in Government has filed a recall petition against Stacy Head, a New Orleans city councilman. The station quotes the group’s head:

“This is a majority black district, and we think that it should have black representation,” said Malcolm Suber, who is leading the recall petition. “And if it is going to be a white representative, they should be sensitive to the black community, and she is not . . . She is opposed to the interests of the black community, and again I think she’s a racist.”

So, just to sum up, Suber’s complaints about Head are as follows: 1) She’s the wrong color. 2) She’s racially prejudiced.

Head’s crime?   It appears she suppports honest govenment and not is afraid to confront black department heads, Jeff Crouere ,Bayou Buzz:

A white council member should be able to ask tough questions of an African American department head without being charged a racist. Instead of being recalled, Head should be commended for her dogged pursuit of the truth and her courage in taking on incompetent bureaucrats. The councilwoman is trying to safeguard city assets and does not want sanitation department funds wasted. She has a right to know why New Orleans spends so much more than other parishes on sanitation services.

Given that New Orleans voters elected Cold Cash Jefferson to Congress nine times, I am not all that impressed with their sensibilities.    Is Holder too much of a coward to comment on the Head case?

As Eric rambled:

The Book: You’ve heard about Obama’s half billion dollar kids book deal, right?  How many copies are being sold to school districts on the taxpayer dime, I wonder?  And he didn’t even write the bloody thing. Steven Green has more to say on that subject. 

 Jim McElhatton and Christina Bellantoni, Washington Times:

As he empathized with recession-weary Americans, President Obama arranged in the days just before he took office to secure a $500,000 advance for a children’s book project, a disclosure report shows. The terms of the book deal were disclosed in a Senate financial disclosure report filed Tuesday.

This is not a book deal,   It is  a bribe.   Barack Obama can”t speak without a teleprompter.   Obama certainly did not write  Dreams of Our Fathers.   Do you know of a single author who is captive to his teleprompter?   Neither do I.  

Obama is sure the heck incapable of writing any book.   Half million dollars for a book Obama didn’t write and will not edit.   Obama the frat boy, is too busy partying and campaigning to actually edit anything.   I question if Obama can even read a book.

Given that Obama is not capable of having actually written the book and the advance has every appearance of a bribe, Given that the so-called book deal is for a school book, and the money will be coming from school disticts getting stimulus dollars, it is only appropriate for the people, that is us, to recoup our money.   Fortunately there is a simply solution, a one hundred percent retrobactive tax on the Obama’s book  royalies.   After all the blokes at AIG did actually show up for work.    Congress should tax Obama book royalties at one hundred percent.  Tom Raum:

WASHINGTON (AP) – Denouncing a “squandering of the people’s money,” lawmakers voted decisively Thursday to impose a 90 percent tax on millions of dollars in employee bonuses paid by troubled insurance giant AIG and other bailed-out companies.

  The House vote was 328-93. Similar legislation has been introduced in the Senate and President Barack Obama quickly signaled general support for the concept.

 

Congress can then use the money to fund healhcare for wounded veterans.    After all, it is only fair.

Addendum:(Bit) Is it just me, or does this take on an uncomfortable parallel to Mein Kampf for kids?

It’s time we faced things for what they are.
And, what they are not.

Welcome, one and all to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the ‘sphere; The Bitsblog Nightly Ramble

•  When reality strikes: It has become startlingly clear that there’s a major difference between candidate Obama and President Obama… as I have always insisted there would be.  References to this today come from all over, notably James Joyner, Byron York,  and the AP.     Clearly, the now axiomatic point that all of Obama’s promses come with an experation date, is being reinforced daily.
•  What’s that line? I want to take a second to officially anounce I am a Duke fan, again. And I couldn’t even care less about March Madness. Indeed, I’m constantly amused with the idea that anyone is. Never could get into college sports.
• The cause: Here it comes, America… a UN levied tax on oil.  “green new deal’ they call it. Now, think; Obama is now saying his cap and trade thing would end up costing us about three times what was originally predicted… gee big shock… and that was already enough of a job killer. Can you imagine how much worse a program from the UN would be, given their further isolation from accountability?
• The effect: Oil’s back up… $52 as of this morning.  gee, ya think this might have something to do with Obama putting our own oil back off limits again? And the UN nonsense? Idiots. How many jobs do you suppose this will cost us in the end?
• Memo to Micheal Steele:  Time for Arlen Specter to get booted. There’s your first task to reclaiming our party from the capitulation crew.
• Double standard: Boortz says today he’d like to know what Barney Frank has to say about Fannie and Freddie and the bonsues being passed out there. It’s a good point, but in my bit of this morning I didn’t mention drool face, because you know what we’re going to get from him… panicked silence is the sure bet.
• Oh, and three cheers for Rep Burgess who proposed in the house, today, a tax on congressional bonuses.  LOL.
• We have found the enemy: You’ll recall I’ve asked several times if Obama was working for the other side. That would appear to have been asnwered.
•  The Book: You’ve heard about Obama’s half billion dollar kids book deal, right?  How many copies are being sold to school districts on the taxpayer dime, I wonder?  And he didn’t even write the bloody thing. Steven Green has more to say on that subject.
•  Really? The “say what?” of the day goes to Obama, who compared AIG and banks to suicide bombers. An interesting notion, given what Obama plans to do with Gitmo detainees.
• Crash helmets, anyone? Natasha Richardson’s family finally did hit the switch.  As I said when the story frst broke, it ended up being a mere formality. Sad.  Hard to fathom how she could have gotten hit so hard, given she was on the bunny slope.  Part of me wonders if she had some pre-existing condition, finally triggered into prominence by the fall. Guess we’ll never know. Assuming that to be causal, and by extension, one could ask how many of the rest of us are similarly ‘gifted’ with stuff like that we don’t know about.  It’s the kind of incident that brings you up a bit short. I’m waiting, though for the Canadian government to mandate crash helmets on skiers. And how’d you like to be the ski instructor? Or the slope operator? (Shake of the head) And yes, those of you who sent me feedback, just because I’m prone to facing the reality of the thing, as I was in my last post on the subject, doesn’t mean I’m unsypathetic.  Try reading a little deeper, next time.
• Israel and the west:  Every time I start wondering about Rupert Murdoch’s sanity, he comes out and makes a statement one can only classify as both politically incorrect and blazingly obvious.
• It’s the culture, stupid: I’m watching Maggie Gallagher with some amusement. You go, girl. I’ve said it many times… in the end culture is the most powerful force… even moreso than government.

From the Morning Bell from The Heritage Foundation

 

Speaking to a crowd of 1,500 supporters in Costa Mesa, California, about the bonuses given to employees of 80% taxpayer owned AIG, President Barack Obama said [1]: “I know a lot of you are outraged about this. I’m outraged, too.” We’ll leave for others to decide the level of Obama’s outrage, especially considering reports [2] this morning that the Obama Administration found out about the bonuses on February 28, not March 10, as they originally claimed. But what we would like to see some genuine outrage over are the millions of taxpayer dollars going to executives at the taxpayer owned companies Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae [3].

Fannie and Freddie reported combined losses of about $108 billion last year [4]. But the damage they caused the entire economy goes for beyond the losses on their balance sheets.

Fannie and Freddie are at the core [5] of the current economic meltdown. Although they were only recently fully taken over by the government; for much of their existence Fannie and Freddie were quasi-governmental agencies that made no actual home loans.

Instead they buy loans from banks, and then bundle and repackage them as securities. For years Fannie and Freddie leveraged their government-sponsored advantages – including exemptions from state and federal taxes, lower capital requirements, and the ability to borrow at rates well below those paid by private companies – to create a co-monopoly in the housing finance sector [6].

Contrary to what the left claims [7], Fannie and Freddie were integral to the creation and expansion of the subprime loan industry. With Fannie and Freddie as their largest customer, subprime king Countrywide Financial grew from a tiny institution to the largest mortgage lender in the country [8]. Fannie and Freddie’s subprime business was not isolated to Countrywide.

Fannie and Freddie both bought subprime securities since 1995, and by 2004 they were purchasing $175 billion worth of such securities a year, or 44% of the entire market [9]. From 2003 through 2006 Fannie and Freddie bought more than a half trillion dollars in subprime securities. [9] That is more than any other purchaser in the entire world.

In 1991, following the Savings and Loan disaster, Heritage pushed for the full privatization of Fannie and Freddie, predicting that “maintaining secondary mortgage firms in a twilight zone between the public and private sectors … may be a recipe for an eventual taxpayer bailout [10].” We just didn’t realize how huge that bailout would be.

Back in California, Obama told his audience [1]: “We’re going to do everything we can to fix it. So for everybody in Washington who’s busy scrambling, trying to figure out how to blame somebody else, just go ahead and talk to me, because it’s my job to make sure that we fix these messes, even if I don’t make them.”

President Obama did not create the Fannie and Freddie disaster, but he is not fixing it either. Instead of learning from the disastrous consequences of Fannie and Freddie’s market distorting housing interventions, the Obama Administration is doubling down by making Fannie and Freddie a center piece of their housing plan [11]. Now that is something to be outraged over.
 

With the minor quibble that Obama is to blame for this mess a well, to the exact extent of his involvement with pushing Democrat party policy in the  days he spent in the Senate, I’ll stipulate to the rest of this.  

What interests me is how the two situations, AIG, and the priximate cause of AIG, Fannie and Freddy, are viewed by this administration. 

Observe, for example the bonus money being paid to AIG execs, and the reax to that, versus the reax to the bonus money being paid to Fannie and Freddie execs.

Q&O’s  Michael Wade:

If you are inclined to accept without question that the bonuses paid to AIG employees deserve unmitigated moral indignation, as Pres. Obama and the Democrats seem to, then shouldn’t that opprobrium cut across the board? Well, I guess some animals are more equal than others:

At least four Fannie Mae executives are slated to receive more than $400,000 in bonuses each this year as a result of the company’s government-approved retention program, The Post’s Zach Goldfarb reports.

The executives include chief operating officer Michael Williams ($611,000), deputy chief financial officer David Hisey ($517,000), and executive vice presidents Thomas Lund ($470,000) and Kenneth Bacon ($470,000).

Each of these executives earned about $200,000 in retention payments last year and salaries ranging from $385,000 to $676,000.

According to the report, such bonuses are doled out depending on how integral the employee is to the companies, as approved by the FHFA:

Fannie Mae, which suffered $59 billion in losses last year, has requested $15 billion in taxpayer assistance, and has said it expects to need plenty more.

All major compensation decisions are authorized by Fannie Mae’s federal regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which created a retention program when the company was seized last September to hold on to key employees.

Under the program, employees are eligible to receive up to 150 percent of their salary in bonuses this year, but many will receive far less than that, and some might receive zero, depending on how central they are deemed to the company’s task.

Wade goes on to aptly draw comparisons between this situation and the Animal Farm Pigs.

As I have done several times in the past, I’m forced to ask if Obama and his people really want to fix the situation, or if they’re more bent on moving us first to the status of a third world nation.  At the moment, I’m forced to conclude the latter.

Things are moving fast with the Obama administration, as I suggested previously they would. They are in fact moving faster than even I foresaw… and I thought my statements on the matter long- played the voter anger out there by quite a bit. Turns out, even that was an under-estimation.  You’ll recall at the end of one month of the new Obama administration, I observed:

In looking at all of this, I can’t help but wonder if we aren’t at or beyond a tipping point against Obama and the Democrats… even from people who supported their election. The amazing part is, whereas it took Bill Clinton quite literally years to get to this point, we’re only 30 days into the Obama presidency. We still have 1470 days, more or less, to go. Frankly, it’s becoming a question of him lasting quite that long.

This morning, James Joyner notes:

A few weeks ago on OTB Radio, Dave Schuler predicted that Timothy Geithner would be out as Treasury Secretary by the end of the year.  At the rate he’s going, he might not last to summer.

It’s bad enough his every public appearance causes the Dow to plummet.  Now, he’s been openly contradicted by his boss on the AIG creating what NYT correspondent Jackie Calmes has dubbed “perhaps the worst week in a string of bad weeks for the Treasury secretary.”

Mr. Geithner’s once-heralded credentials with Wall Street were already marred by false starts in revamping the Bush administration’s bank rescue program, even as his perceived closeness to financiers — he is the former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — and unease with populist politics left Main Street skeptical.

On Wednesday, a junior Republican in Congress and some traders on Wall Street went so far as to call for him to quit or be fired. The Republican leader of the House, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, told a conservative talk-radio host that the secretary is “on thin ice.”

But Mr. Geithner’s boss, the president, interjected a vote of “complete confidence.”

Which is Washington speak for “I haven’t fired him yet.”

Timothy Geithner, scapegoat?

Indeed, that IS the standard translation. That, and “Don’t bother printing that order of business cards… you won’t need them”. But, given what we know of the White House and their ability to manipulate the press, (For example the Rush Limbaugh affair, just two weeks ago, now) one cannot help but look askance at the  harmony being sung by the dinosaur outlets like the Times.  Can, thereby, the press harping on this stuff be taken as an indication of the White House attitude and it’s future moves as regards Geithner? It does seem a  reasonable assumption.

In my estimation, the only thing keeping Tim Geithner in a job is the question in Obama’s mind;  “Will tossing Geithner to the wolves sate them enough to keep them from eating ME?”

I tend to think not, given I judge the size and depth of the anger out there to be far larger than one scape goat will feed. Desperation, though— which is surely what marks Obama’s position of late, will make one do things that are, shall we say, less than logical.

Even assuming he keeps Geithner around for whatever reason, he still has some serious rehab to do on the images of both Geithner and himself, a job that even the best of image consultants would turn down in a heartbeat.

And as James correctly points up, there’s not a lot in the history of Obama to make anyone think he’s inclined to spend that much political capital… something already in short supply…. on Geithner, or anyone else, for that matter. The already crowded underside of the Obama express is looing like the most obvious future residence of Mr. Tim Geithner. One wonder if at that point he’ll be legally accountable for being a tax cheat.

And what of Chris Dodd?

It seems that Dodd, too, is intensely aware of the wolves sniffing around his door, and is thinking Geithner a convienient scapegoat. Jen Rubin at Commentary Magazine:

Sam Stein at the Huffington Posthas been digging around, trying to find out exactly what happened to the amendment to the stimulus bill offered by Sens. Wyden and Snowe which would have nixed the AIG bonuses. Fingers were pointed at Senate Banking Chair Chris Dodd. But yesterday on CNN, Dodd was part of this exchange:

CNN Producer: “There’s the suggestion today being made that you received more money from AIG than any other senator. And that you were responsible for the February 11th, 2009 date. Again, I just want to get — you’re saying you had nothing to do with . . .”
Senator Dodd: “Absolutely not.”
CNN Producer: “And there was nothing you were doing that was aimed at protecting AIG?”
Senator Dodd:  “Not at all. Not in the slightest. . . . The point is when that language left the Senate I wrote, that was not included.”

Today, on CNN’s Situation Room, Dodd changed his tune and implicated the Treasury Department. He did not name Geithner personally, but neither did he say Geithner was unaware of the goings on.

I can’t help but think that there will be other congressional Democrats caught in this web. One must also wonder how much of the misinformation about AIG was distributed based on orders directly from the only pol who was given a larger sum of campaign money than Chriss Dodd… Barack Obama.

Now, usually, when incidents happen early on in an administation, the party in power banks on the idea that the memory of the voter will be short enough so as not to affect the voting at the first mid-term election. In this case, no matter how this falls out, this mess has had such a high profile, it’s my guess it’ll take several cycles to erase the voter memory of it…. even assuming no criminal charges arise from this mess.  At the moment, that seems an overlarge asumption.

Meanwhile, the Republicans…. the smart ones, at least… are sitting back and watching the Democrats boil in their own pudding.

File under too ironic to shcch, Washington Post:

The Service Employees International Union, considered the most influential union in the nation, has notified the union that represents about 220 of its national field staff and organizers that 75 of them are being laid off. In return, the workers’ union, which goes by the somewhat postmodern name of the Union of Union Representatives, has filed unfair labor practices charges against SEIU with the National Labor Relations Board. The staff union’s leaders say that SEIU is engaging in the same kind of practices that some businesses use — laying off workers without proper notice, contracting out work to temp firms, banning union activities and reclassifying workers to reduce union numbers

Savor.

Old question, new President, David Freddoso, National Review:

Sen. Chris Dodd (D, Conn.), who until today has been blamed as the author of the statutory protection for bonuses, is in turn blaming the Obama administration for insisting on the provision back in February. Just how long had the president really known about the situation before he made his melodramatic denunciation of AIG on Monday?

‘Rat on ‘rat fratracide, love it.

President Obama is mulling declaring war on wounded veterans, David Goldstein, McClatchy Newspapers:

WASHINGTON-The Obama administration is considering making veterans use private insurance to pay for treatment of combat and service-related injuries. The plan would be an about-face on what veterans believe is a long-standing pledge to pay for health care costs that result from their military service.

 

But in a White House meeting Monday, veterans groups apparently failed to persuade President Obama to take the plan off the table.

[…]

Veterans claim that the costs of treating expensive war injuries could raise their insurance costs, as well as those for their employers. Some worried that it also could make it more difficult for disabled veterans to find work

More, Gateway Pundit, and we second the motion of This Ain’t Hell:

To General Shinseki I say RESIGN NOW. This is the only possible way to preserve your integrity as a soldier’s soldier. To do anything less is to slap the face of every wounded warrior and leave yourself as nothing more than a liar and pathetic political hack.  I don’t call for you resignation because of any malfeasance that you did but as a principled position against this atrocity and solidarity with the soldiers that you once commanded.

BO proposes for wounded veternans to pay for their own medical treatment.   This proposal will not stand.   To you, Mr. Presidnet, we return your one fingered salute.

Addendum:  (Updated and bumped)

This ain’t Hell, is reporting victory:

Sources tell us that the White House called the Veteran Service Organization representatives back for a meeting at 1 PM today to announce that they’re backtracking on their proposal to force veterans into health insurance to pay for service-connected treatment. Despite the fact that the Obama/Emanuel/Shinseki team made it clear that they couldn’t be persuaded, somehow they got persuaded. I guess when their own Congress turned against them, they figured it wasn’t worth the political capital they’d have to expend

Well done gentlemen.

Mrs. Pelosi, a/k/a Speaker Table Cloth, evidently thinks it is acceptable to pander to illegals, and their supporters, by insulting our Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents, from Real Clear Politics:

Appearing in front of a group of legal and illegal immigrants at a church in San Francisco, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said it is “un-American” to enforce current US immigration law

Video:

Now let me see if I can get the gist of what Speaker Table Cloth is saying, and not saying. Having imigrations laws on the books is not unpatriotic. However actually enforcing said laws somehow is unpatriotic? Well nobody has ever accused Mrs. Pelosi of being smart.

Congressman Lamar Smith(Texas – Twenty One), courtesy of Michelle:

“The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Speaker Pelosi called worksite arrests and deportation of illegal workers ‘un-American.’ That’s quite a powerful word – ‘un-American.’ And it’s quite a spectacle to have the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives call the actions of our law enforcement men and women ‘un-American.’

“We should praise them, not insult them, for enforcing our immigration laws.

“Twelve million Americans are out of work. Seven million illegal workers hold jobs that should go to citizens and legal immigrant workers. Let’s let the American people decide what is ‘un-American.’ We should not criticize law enforcement personnel; instead, we should be grateful for the job they do.”

You know what’s un-American?

If Mrs. Pelosi thinks our immigration laws are unpatriotic, as Speaker of the House,  she has the power to introduce legislation to take the laws off the books.    However until Mrs. Pelosi does introduce legislation to such effect, she should simply shut up and support our nation’s laws.   To do otherwise is simply unpatriotic.

Welcome, one and all to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the ‘sphere: The BigsBlog Nightly Ramble.

This is the Black Sign Edition. Mostly because I’m running out of names.

• Memo to Chuckles the Clown Schumer:
  

  Article 1 Section 9

  No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

  Article 1 Section 10

  No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

  It’s obvious by your over the top rethoric about AIG that you’ve never heard of this concept. I know the Constitution, where these passages come from,  doesn’t mean much to Democrats anymore, but at least you could do us the courtesy of actually reading and understanding the law that you swore to support and defend. It’s clear you have not.

•  Weapon of Mass Distraction:  If you wanted more proof that this whole thing with the AIG Bonuses was simply smoke to cover something larger, you’ve got it. 
• By the way:  Don’t ignore my post on this earlier today… it’s key for understanding any of this. Also, don’t miss out on Billy’s comments. I keep waiting for Republicans to get a clue on this stuff.  And waiting. And… waiting. But, no… they joined in the pillory shooting of Ed Liddy, today. Idiots. And be sure to check Doctor Krauthammer on this.
•  Mob mentality: Jen Rubin apparently thinks along the same line as I about the mob mentality we’re seeing on AIG. One of the folks in the comment area brings up something I meant to research when I first heard it this morning… I’ve not had time today… the fact that the biggest political contributions AIG made were to Barack Obama and Chris Dodd. Scrappleface quips “This was not the political donor I knew”.  The furious backpeddling on IAG from the Democrats is interesting to watch.. kinda like a train wreck.  Now if we could just get McCain and Grassley to shut up, we’d be better off.
• Interesting, that we’ve not heard a peep out of Michael Steele of late, even with all this going on. Just sayin’…
• He did WHAT?  More evidence Obama is on the other side.
•  Journalism? By way of Billy, we get pointed to Clay Shirky, who says:
  

  Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism.

  Now, Shirky uses the line to speak to the commercial ventures of journalism and the issues of Intelectual property, brushes up against Digital rights management and so on. But that line… that one line… That’s an important distinction, that we shouldn’t pass off lightly… Journalism is not newspapers.  Nor is it TV, radio, or for that matter, the interenet. 

  Back when AM radio was king, but fading (which was about when I was involved in that business)  I made the point that the medium could in the end, never supercede the messages sent over it on any more than a temporary basis, and if the programming on the AM station was better than that of the FM, the AM station would survive. With the advance of Talk Radio, that certainly has proven true; with Talk radio AM has found something that in large part FM operators have been unwilling to provide. (Yes, I know there are some FM talkers, but for the most part these are offshoots of some AM operation. WJFK roars to mind as a prime example).

  The internet, too. Sure, when the ‘net was new, it was the message… and it took a while for things to sort themselves out, and now it is down to sites being popular or unpopular based on the message, not the medium itself. 

  Dead tree based news is getting outdated, and suffers from a sheer lack of techoolgy in this age of technology.  TV news, similarly, at least in the frame work of the old big three nets.  They’re all going down the rails toward oblivion, as is all technology that exists today.  Granted, the leftist tilt of these dinosaurs adds rocket power to that rail car, making their respective trips to oblivion faster. They’d still be a potent force today, but for that added rocket power, but they’re going down eventually anyway.

  What the issue is, isn’t the medium… AM, FM, TV, cable, Satalite, Internet, whatever. All these will eventually fail and be replaced as new mediums come along. These only slightly impact the state of journalism itself, however. It is journalism itself and it’s future as such that needs examining.  Each of it’s current mediums will go by the way as technology changes. But the content of it, however it’s delivered, will not go as the medium goes.  content, after all, will always be needed.

  So, the question then becomes, whence comes our next generation of journalists, regardless of their form of delivery? 

• Live by the teleprompter, Die by the Teleprompter.  Amazing.  Even MoDo is saying the man cannot get mad without a teleprompter to guide him through the process. When even she sees it, there’s something seriously wrong.
• Disconnect:  Oh, shut up, George.
• The Fix is In: Boortz says, today:
  

  What’s sad is that more people in this country are shocked and horrified about the revelation that American Idol is fixed. More people are outraged that America won’t get to choose the top four on American Idol, but they are not outraged that the man they have chosen to be president is spending this country into the ground. Or that Barney Frank and his wealth envy crew are on a mission to “recover” bonus money from AIG executives..

  Well, look, Neal; If you can’t tell the fix is in on Idol, you’re damn sure going to be useless when it comes to detecting that you’re being played for a fool in the larger and more complex affairs of government.  How do you suppose Obama got elected, anyway? It’s like I keep saying, facts have nothing to do with support for Obama,  which is why mere facts won’t defeat him. I’ll tell you this; I wish my fellow bloggers would catch on to this concept.  It’d save a lot of back and forth.

• From Small ACORN grows giant corruption:  This time, the census.
• Meanwhile, back at the grass roots:  The Tea parties continue.

Barack Obama even needs a teleprompter to get mad.

Maureen Dowd, New York Times.   Tis a shame, I could not have snarked this all Irish squabble on Saint Patty’s Day.  Alas the luck of the Irish wasn’t with me.